We're doing it. We're crashing the gates in Florida. We've taken the advice we've read and the lessons we've learned and we're turning that into action. We're fighting to change things. And it's working. No, we aren't kingmakers and we don't have major influence...yet. But we are making things happen. We are breaking down doors. We are crashing the gates.
We're crashing the gate of the Florida Democratic Party. To be fair, this one was quite easy. We just asked them if we could be invited to the party (both literally and figuratively) and they said yes. It was that simple. The party held a Netroots Luncheon for us at their largest annual fundraiser. They gave us press access to meet Nancy Pelosi and to the fundraiser dinner, the most successful in FDP history. We're meeting with them today to plan our series of workshops at the state convention in October. We're forming an official Netroots Coalition that will be a voice inside the party for activists and bloggers. More and more of us are joining our local DECs and other Democratic Party clubs and caucuses. We are the future leadership of the party.
We're crashing the gates of the media in Florida. In the Senate District 3 Special Election Democratic Primary held last month, the Netroots provided more substantive coverage of the race than the entire written mainstream media for the district combined. And that covers parts of 13 counties. We're getting access to people and events that had historically been confined to a few select media outlets. And some in the press are upset about this, grumbling about being lumped in with "activists" or ignoring our very existence. Similar things are happening at the national level. The problem with this is that if the traditional media were doing their job, the blogosphere and wikis and the like wouldn't even exist. There are some good individual reporters and some high quality publications, but not enough. Some don't have the resources to cover everything they should. Others don't have the desire to cover everything they should. That doesn't mean that the people don't need that information anyway. So the people have decided to go get it ourselves.
We're crashing the gates of the electoral process in Florida. Alex Sink was the first active candidate we interviewed. She went on to become one of only two Democrats to win statewide office and now serves as the highest ranking Democrat in state government. Now she won because of her quality as a candidate and her well-run campaign, but we like to think we had a role in that. In the recent Florida special election primaries, both Democratic winners interviewed with us first. We can't count the number of candidates we've lined up for interviews for the 2008 election cycle. The Florida Progressive Coalition website has more information about Florida politics and politicians than any other site on the web. We are the place to go during election time. More and more, when someone wants to know who to vote for in an election, our website is the best place they can go to figure it out. And the Republican Party of Florida is scared of our potential. Their LG vandalized our website in a story now dubbed "Wiki-Gate." We also hear that they are scrambling to get some kind of web presence to try and keep up with us.
This isn't a solo deal, either. We have numerous groups and individuals working together to achieve something greater than ourselves -- Florida Progressive Coalition, Florida Netroots, Florida Kossacks, FLA Politics, people from DFA and FDP -- teamwork is the key. We're doing it. Are you?