In my story on May 2, The Unknown Reason why Al Gore "lost" Florida in 2000 and how to stop it this year, I wrote that while FL now had a candidate for every US House District in the state, seven State Senate and 38 State House seats were currently without a candidate.
In less than a week, the incredible folks at 140 Blue Florida have reduced that to no State Senate and five State House Seats. They hope to have someone in every seat soon.
The next step is to enable the candidates to run by raising the fee of $1,781.82, plus another small amount to have a basic campaign. You can help by giving even small amounts ($5, $10, $20, $50) to 140 Blue Florida’s Act Blue page. More is OK too.
Reverse Coattails, by BlueLab for Run for Something shows how this works based on a study of seven states, including Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
Democrats across the country are recognizing this strategy. Here’s the dynamic Chair of the NC Democratic Party:
David Pepper, the brilliant Ohio Strategist, tweeted this in response to my prior story:
In my first story on this, I outlined the bullet points showing why this strategy works. Here’s a summary:
- Every vote cast for a Dem candidate for the FL state legislature is also a vote for Biden, Mucaserel and U.S. House candidates.
- In 2000, when Al Gore “lost” FL by 537 votes, there were seven out of 23 CD’s uncontested by Dems.
- Running candidates in every district works over time, such as in VA in 2019.
- A candidate can get thousands of votes for Democrats without spending a dime. In VA in 2021, Dem candidate Natalie Short received over 11,000 votes without raising a penny:
- Having Democrats in “safe” R districts forces Republicans to spend money there, taking away resources from other Districts.
- Having a candidate energizes Democrats in the district to participate and donate on state, congressional and Presidential levels.
We are not talking about a lot of money here: About $75,000 for the filing fee and another $70-75,000 for the basic campaign. So please, donate what you can to: