The first three months of our campaign have been extremely successful. Some people have asked why Jon waited to announce until the fall, and I wanted to provide some local context.
The current state representative, Sean McCann, is running for our State Senate seat (MI-SD-20). A Democrat hasn’t won the Kalamazoo seat in 95 years, but due to redistricting, the seat is competitive this cycle. The former conservative State Senator for Kalamazoo, Tonya Schuitmaker, no longer lives in our district and is running in her home district. As a result, Jon respectfully waited until McCann had announced his run for the state senate before Jon announced his campaign for the state house.
The downside to waiting for McCann to announce was that our campaign had less time in 2013 to accomplish our goals. Fortunately, we have a great team of people working together to win.
As a campaign we strive to contact voters and rally support in every way possible. Throughout the campaigns short duration so far, Jon has personally met with over 75 community members in a one-on-one setting. These one-on-one meetings are important to us because we’re a campaign that wants to listen first, and talk second. Jon has his own core beliefs, but we know that folks in Kalamazoo don’t feel like they’re actually being heard by our State Legislature. We want to make sure that we’re listening to the issues that are going on in the district and engaging in conversations with folks, face to face, instead of telling them what they’re supposed to believe.
In addition to individual meetings, our campaign hosted six house parties, attended by 141 supporters. The campaign also connected with over 1,900 supporters online and made over 1000 phone calls to supporters. And, which is exciting to me, we’re bringing on six new interns in January to help build out our team. We’re still pulling together final numbers on fundraising, so stay tuned for a separate post on that.
By reaching out to our supporters in as many ways as possible and personally connecting to supporters, we will broaden and intensify our support for the campaign. This campaign is built on the voices and stories of Kalamazoo. We’ve all got our own personal story, and they need to be told in the legislature. Jon Hoadley will bring these stories to the State Legislature and fight for all of our voices to be heard.
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