WASHINGTON The Democratic National Committee requires a chair to be the public face of the party, representing Democrats on television and at major political events.

At the same time, the chairmanship is primarily a managerial post with more mundane responsibilities: recruiting candidates, raising money and devising winning election strategies.

New Hampshire Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley, a long-shot candidate to head the national party, is hoping that the DNCs 447 voting members put more weight on the latter criteria.

I am the guy that can actually do the job. There is a lot of folks, either thinking about running or running, who have never even been to a Democratic National Committee meeting, Buckley said.

Buckley lacks the national name recognition and the charisma of the races front-runners, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Labor Secretary Tom Perez .

But hes had a formidable amount of experience as a party official, beginning at age 18 when he became head of his local county party in New Hampshire. He has been the states party chair since 2007, and the president of the association of state Democratic Party chairs since 2009. From 1986 to 2004, he was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

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From a party standpoint, Buckleys experience in New Hampshire has been relatively successful. Despite the states past Republican leaning, Democratic women now occupy all four of New Hampshires U.S. House and Senate seats, and the state went for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.

A sore point was the loss of the states governorship in 2016. But overall, Democrats have won 11 of the last 13 statewide races, Buckley noted.

We are now firmly purple, leaning a little blue, he said.

Buckleys biggest criticism of the DNC is a familiar one: He argues the party has abandoned the 50-state strategy that ushered in major Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008.

Thats mainly been a matter of the DNC reducing the money it gives to state parties since 2008, according to Buckley. He also argues that the party spends far too much on television advertising as opposed to on-the-ground organizing.

New Hampshire proves that, because I have been able to raise the funds and continue the programs that we started in those years, Buckley said. So we have the ground operation, unlike some of the purple states who were unable to withstand that surge that Donald Trump had.

Without disparaging President Barack Obama outright, Buckley appeared to echo many party officials criticism of Obamas decision to create the independent fundraising outfit Organizing for America.