Getting progressive bang for your buck
Getting progressive bang for your buck
And turmoil across the country.
Welcome to the big Wednesday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
The bad news: Everything feels like it’s on fire right now.
The good news: There are ways we can put an end to the madness and start the work of building a country that lives up to its ideals. We just need to work together.
Let’s dive in!
But first: Thank you to recent donors William, Matthew, and Philip!
Progressive Bang For Your Buck
A new generation of progressive activists was born from the wreckage of the 2016 election, determined to rebuild the Democratic Party from the ground up.
With state parties across the country in shambles, many of us focused on local and state elections. One of the most thoughtful and effective campaigns launched ahead of the 2018 election was the Give Smart program, a grassroots fundraising initiative that supported great Democratic candidates in races where a little bit of money would go a long way.
The goal was to flip as many state legislatures and break as many GOP supermajorities as possible. It was a huge success, raising over $1 million in a short time for a slate of impressive candidates who helped Democrats flip several legislatures. Now, Give Smart has returned for the 2020 election in conjunction with the Future Now Fund, where Give Smart co-founder Aaron Kleinman serves as the Director of Research. Future Now is focused this year on five different states: North Carolina, Arizona, Kansas, Montana, and New Hampshire. At Progressives Everywhere, we’ve focused a lot on candidates from NC and AZ, but the other three are new territory for us.
I spoke with Aaron about the races he’s focused on, why they’re such great opportunities, and how Democrats can flip more states.
You work with Data for Progress on selecting states and districts. How do you determine which you think are the best investments?
The process started more than a year and a half ago. We started compiling electoral and demographic data as well as some proprietary data about how we expect voters to behave in these districts. Then we talked to all these candidates — anyone that we've endorsed is someone that we know a decent amount about. It’s also a matter of campaign finance, identifying where the money gaps are. We have polling that helps tell us which candidates might really benefit from a boost of small donations right now.
Small donations go the furthest in states where there are contribution limits on direct donations. There are states where there are no contribution limits, where you can raise a bunch of $50 donations for a grassroots candidate and feel great, but then some oil billionaire can cut a check to the candidate they're running against and wipe all that out pretty easily.
It's a lot harder in a state where a billionaire can only cut them a check for $3,000. We have programs in states that have less stringent campaign finance laws, where we work with larger groups that help pool resources to match the special interests, but in terms of individual giving, these states are where you can make a big difference.
Montana is an interesting choice — with so many states where Democrats can flip chambers, what drew you to it?
Jon Tester actually won a majority of statehouse districts in Montana as he won re-election to the Senate. Looking beyond the presidential race this year, you have a heavily contested US Senate race and a heavily contested gubernatorial race and a contested US House race in Montana, so there's going be a lot of activity in that state. And it's a state where Democrats have consistently out-performed presidential top lines down-ballot, so we really saw an opportunity there.
They have one of the lowest campaign contribution limits of any state in the country and small districts, so you can really make a difference there for those candidates. It’s a flip opportunity so if you can win the State House, you can set them up for a better COVID-19 response, protecting public lands, and other policies.
And Kansas, that’s an opportunity to break the supermajority to help the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, right?
I actually think it's one of the likeliest Democratic objectives to be reached this cycle, breaking the supermajority in Kansas, because it’s so close. Kansas has been Republican for almost its entire existence as a state, so people become Republicans there almost by default. The national party's extreme right turn took longer to manifest itself there. Donald Trump changed that.
What we saw in 2018, when Laura Kelly won the governorship, is that there is a path for Democrats in the state running through the biggest population centers outside Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita. She carried a majority of the legislative districts in the state and they’re almost all in the population centers.
There are so many opportunities for Democrats in the state and they only need to flip one State House seat and three State Senate seats. Those are very reachable goals. And even if the presidential race probably won't see too much attention there, you have another heavily contested US Senate race and a bunch of potential US House races, so it's going to be the center of a lot of political attention.
You mentioned talking to all the candidates you endorse — along with a winnable district, what do you look for in a candidate?
A commitment to doing the work. That's the most important thing that a candidate can do. If someone is willing to go out, and it used to be knocking doors and now it’s mostly phone calls, but if they’re willing to put in the work to run a good grassroots campaign, that’s what we’re looking for.
Do you worry about ideology and policy positions or is the focus on winning for Democrats no matter what?
We want to make sure that these are candidates that will support America's Goals, which is our policy agenda. We want candidates that support things like clean air, good jobs, equal opportunity for all, and that is an important part of our process. They all have to sign the America’s Goals pledge.
So who’s a candidate you’re really excited about?
Mari-Lynn Poskin out of Kansas is a really great story. She decided to run in a district with a long-time Republican incumbent who was known as a moderate. People thought, wow, you’re really running there? Well, she decided to do it, and then that incumbent actually lost in his primary. Now it’s a competitive race. We were able to raise around $9,000 for her campaign she was able to say thanks to your generosity, we are able to plan out for, you know, more media outreach to voters. This isn’t an overwhelming amount of money, but $9,000 makes a big difference.
News You Need to Know
Usually, I lead off with voting rights and election news, but I want to look at a few breaking national stories first.
National: The NBA postponed all of its playoff games tonight because players are striking in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin and the terror that law enforcement continues to inflict on communities of color. It’s a remarkable, unprecedented action and I could not admire it more. The WNBA also postponed its games. Remarkable.
Wisconsin: The situation in Wisconsin continues to develop. Last night, a white nationalist teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse drove up from Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin and opened fire on people protesting Blake’s shooting. This 17-year-old Donald Trump fanatic with an AR-15 wound up murdering two people and injuring another.
Instead of taking him down, this is how police in Kenosha treated him:
In fact, even after he murdered those two protestors, police let Rittenhouse get away. He was in Illinois today when he was peacefully arrested for his crimes. Sadly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise — just listen to the racism coming from the city’s police chief, who here suggests that the murdered protestors were culpable for their own deaths because they stayed out past a 7pm curfew:
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul will speak to the press tonight. I just hope he doesn’t trot out the infuriating “we support protests but not riots” line that we’re hearing so much from Democrats. Watch the two videos above again and ask yourself why any person of color should trust the police or government officials?
National: Speaking of malicious government officials knowingly assaulting people, word broke tonight that Dr. Anthony Fauci was undergoing surgery when the CDC was pressured to change its guidelines on COVID-19 testing to suggest people who aren’t showing symptoms don’t need to get tested.
“I was under general anesthesia in the operating room and was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding the new testing recommendations,” Fauci told CNN. “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations and worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is.”
Virginia: Here’s some great news, for a change: A federal court ruled on behalf of a transgender student who sued his high school for not allowing him to use the men’s bathroom.
The decision, made by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, is a groundbreaking one that should, along with an earlier decision made by the 11th Circuit Court earlier this year in a similar case, set an important precedent for trans rights, recognizing and respecting their gender identities.
This comes on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling on behalf of trans rights in the workplace in June.
Let’s note that two Obama appointees ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm, the student in Virginia, while a George W. Bush appointee voted against him. So, yeah, courts matter a whole lot.
Elections and Voting Rights
OK, now back to the election news!
Colorado: Last night I noted that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis seems to support a Republican-backed ballot initiative that would permanently cut income taxes in the state. There are several other initiatives that made the ballot, including:
Paid family and medical leave! On Tuesday, the Colorado Secretary of State announced that backers of the initiative had submitted far more petition signatures than necessary to get the proposition on the ballot in November.
The initiative would guarantee 12 weeks of paid leave to 2.6 million full-time employees.
It would be paid for by a 0.45% tax on both employer and employee. Companies who did some kind of comparable paid leave program on their own could opt out.
New York: Earlier this week, a bunch of business interests and millionaires announced the formation of a new lobbying organization with the vague, seemingly harmless name Campaign for New York’s Future. Days later, the organization has met its end.
A number of prominent progressive organizations were initially part of the new group, which raised a lot of eyebrows considering its stated goal: Stopping any tax increases on the wealthiest New Yorkers even as the economy flounders and the state drowns in debt due to COVID-19.
As it turns out, the progressive groups signed on without realizing what they were agreeing to endorse!
“It was really inconsistent with our values, to say the least,” Danny Pearlstein, the leader of the pro-public transit group Riders Alliance, told a local news station. “The idea that we can’t have new taxes, or we can’t have progressive sources of revenue because, at bottom, we believe in a fairer city. And progressive taxation is an incredibly important part of equitable public policy.”
It was fun to watch organizations make statements like these throughout the day, dropping out one by one until this rich lobbyist group decided to just throw in the towel.
North Carolina: A bunch of Republican lawmakers and officials have come out in support of Joe Biden.
Will it make a difference? I dunno!
Michigan: A Court of Claims judge ruled that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had the right to mail all registered voters absentee ballot applications.
Republicans are suing in states across the country to stop applications and drop boxes. Thankfully, this lawsuit failed.
Real Quick…
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