Hope Springs from Field PAC is all in for 2024. But, in preparation for the repeat of our outstanding success in 2022, a declaration of “war.” Notification that Democrats won’t let this stand. So we start 2023 with unfinished “business” as well as an odd election year opportunity. Because we have just gotten started.
Our first task is a challenge, the gauntlet thrown down by George Santos. Santos, you probably remember, was elected to Congress after fabricating almost everything in his bids to win. The Liar initially said that "if 142 people ask for me to resign, I will resign."
He later clarified in an interview on "Steve Bannon’s War Room" with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that he was referring to the more than 142,000 people who elected him in November's race in New York's 3rd Congressional District. Santos said he would be in Congress "until those same 142,000 people tell me they don't want me."
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Santos has been caught fabricating or embellishing large parts of his background including his college education, religion, volleyball experience, jobs and his mother's experience on 9/11.
Challenge accepted.
While no one can determinatively say who the 145,824 people are who voted for Santos we can say that Santos is broadly representative of Republicans currently in the U.S. House. Santos is not an outlier; it’s hard to articulate how he’s different from Kevin McCarthy, or Jim Jordan or Margarie Taylor Green. Or, for that matter, a large number of Republicans in Congress. Integrity is not their strong suit.
Hope Springs from Field was already looking at this seat, as well as a few others in New York and elsewhere (districts were Biden beat Trump). But the boldness of Santos’ lies pushed us forward, to add a special feature of our efforts in NY-03: circulating a petition asking Santos to resign from Congress immediately!
Now there are several other online petition efforts requesting that Santos resign, and we aren’t going to duplicate those (sign as many of those as you find!). In fact, we will be concentrating completely inside the NY-03 voter universe, collecting signatures in the course of our regular canvassing efforts, at voter’s doors. We know that George Santos isn’t going to resign, but we need to take back this seat to regain Democratic control of the Congress. This petition, as a part of our regular canvassing activity, is the start of a GOTV list.
About 40% of the voters we talk to by knocking on doors are independents or unaffiliated voters. New York has a closed primary system so those voters don’t signal their primary partisan loyalty. But this kind of petition can signal intent or at least lean. It won’t substitute for other forms of personal voter contact, but remember that the kind of canvassing Hope Springs volunteers are doing is early canvassing, tantamount to a First or possibly Second Round in a traditional 5 Rounds of voter contact at the door. We are collecting vital data by knocking on doors early in the election cycle, before campaigns begin their (general election) field programs, let alone before primaries decide general election candidates.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since 2020 (when Covid left Democrats at a disadvantage on the ground) in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
What do we mean by GOTV lists? Well, a great example of how Hope Springs uses the GOTV lists that we generate can be found with the GOTV efforts we started this week in Wisconsin. We have been canvassing in Wisconsin now for two years, knocking on doors with an Issues Questionnaire that asks voters some basic questions. Over that period, 6,772 volunteers knocked on 541,207 doors in Wisconsin and talked to 42,780 Democratic and unaffiliated voters. 25,830 of them responded to questions from our Issues Survey. We also registered 598 new voters and re-registered 1,897 voters at their current address. Those 27,000 voters now represent the GOTV universe for the February 21st Supreme Court election primary.
The upcoming Supreme Court election will likely determine the future of reproductive rights in Wisconsin. Legal issues like gerrymandering are also at stake. Three judges and a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice are running for a seat on the state's highest court in a race that will decide control of that court. Currently, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is divided, 4-3 Republicans/conservatives over Democrats/liberals. But one of those conservatives choose not to run again, which created this open seat. Of the four candidates, two identify as Republican or conservative and two identify as Democrat or liberal. “Should a more liberal-leaning jurist win the job in the April election, it would flip the balance of the state’s highest court for at least two years.… The top two finishers in the Feb. 21 primary will face off in the April 4 general election.” Our goal in the primary is two ensure that Democrats and moderate and liberal unaffiliated voters turn out to vote in the February primary.
Even though this winter has been rather mild, it is too early to canvass in Wisconsin before the primary. In discussions with organizers and a couple of “Super Volunteers” who have been out there, we decided on a GOTV strategy for the primary that pairs the volunteers with the voters whose doors they knocked on. So we are asking those prior volunteers if they are willing to make calls and texts to the voters they had already talked to over the past two summers. We aren’t advocating for any candidate, but asking the voters we had already talked to if they would vote for one of the two Democrats running for the court. So we have spent the last week creating contact lists for volunteers who have agreed to participate (and will continue to do so) in contacting their GOTV lists.
If you would be able to contribute to our GOTV efforts in Wisconsin, we would most definitely appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
Our other “special project” for 2023 (so far — there could always be a potentially competitive special election that we’d jump into) are the Virginia state leg races. We will especially concentrate on the competitive races inside of VA-02 (the reddish district that includes Virginia Beach in the lower right hand corner of the state) in an effort to help Elaine Luria run and regain her old Congressional District. Hope Springs from Field will bring its approach of Voter Registration, Canvassing, collecting voter data, Constituent Service Requests and GOTV to these state house and senate races that will decide whether Democrats regain control of the state house and keep control of the state senate in light of Governor Youngkin’s efforts to create a basis for a run for the presidency in 2024.
These off-year elections, both before and after presidential years, are critical to the narrative of which party is the favorite in presidential races. Youngkin’s surprising win in 2021 solidified the message that Joe Biden was in trouble and gave hope to Republicans running for Congress in 2022. We want to squash any hope that Republicans will have that advantage in 2024.
Hope Springs from Field has had success by targeting swing districts using this approach. In 2022, Democrats won 16 out of 18 (mostly very competitive) Congressional Districts that we targeted in the effort to win Democratic seats in the Senate. So we know this approach works. These aren’t new tactics, they are old school voter contact, personal voter contact with sustained follow-up. 2023 is just another test, but if you are like me and want to retain the Democratic majority in the Senate, you know we have to keep facing these tests and winning. Momentum matters here.
Please join us. Hope Springs from Field PAC is trying to reinstitute best field practices, such as canvassing with people who look like the voters we are talking to and targeting former voters thrown off the rolls. A lot of these got forgotten because of the Covid restrictions in the last cycle, and we have an entire cycle of campaign staffers who were trained without the benefit of actually getting to do field. That’s why it is so important to start knocking on doors now, and not wait until a month or so before the primaries. We have a lot of make-up work to do. Can you help?
If you are able to support our efforts to mobilize Democratic voters, especially in minority communities and swing districts, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!