It’s 29° and a snowday for Arlington Public schools. The Federal Government is closed for the barely inch of snow — largely to keep people off the roads. It’s hard to explain to people in more northern states, where you see snowplows devoted to interstates and cities where an inch of snow wouldn’t stop anyone from going out.
But here in the D.C. Metro area, where snowplows are rare and a saline brine is now used instead of salt, an inch of snow (hell, not even an inch) can shut down the city, even if they don’t call a snow day. 778,800 people worked inside D.C. in November. D.C.'s population on an average work day grows from 680,000 to more than a million, on average. Approximately 220,000 people commute from Maryland into Washington D.C. and almost as many from Virginia, about 85% who drive in. Just walking across the street i found ice yesterday — just as it had really started snowing. D.C. area drivers are notoriously bad in these conditions (rain, too), where a normal day commuting leaves many people frustrated, even angry.
All of which is to say, i’m glad i made my eastern states visit to Swing States last week instead of this one. Living so close to National Airport (officially called Reagan National now), i flew in and out of Pennsylvania Tuesday, returning home late Tuesday night before continuing down to North Carolina and then Georgia last week.
I couldn’t even get started at my first Pennsylvania stop before someone shouted, “Abortion is on the ballot here, too!”
Pennsylvania won’t have an Reproductive Freedom referendum this year (it’s not currently possible) but that doesn’t mean that we don’t find Abortion voters here — or have volunteers driven by that issue. 108 volunteers from the Pittsburgh area went to Ohio last year to do GOTV (get-out-the-vote) in the Cleveland suburbs and another 29 volunteers from the Philadelphia region volunteered in Ohio, including 8 who went in November. While we did have Pittsburgh area volunteers who canvassed in Ohio in October, pretty much everyone stayed home to do GOTV for local candidates in Allegheny in November.
Hope Springs from Field PAC volunteers knocked on 648,868 doors last year. More than a million doors (1,016,396) over the last three years — almost 20% of the households in Pennsylvania. Most of these doors were in the swing Congressional Districts (PA-01, PA-07 & PA-17), but we had also walked on the Mainline and in minority neighborhoods in Philadelphia. We registered 196 New Voters in the state, and re-registered 820 (for a total of 1016 voters registered at their doors). We collected 2077 Constituent Service Requests here, and we found the CSRs to be extremely popular in Pennsylvania.
But our volunteers seemed less dissatisfied in Pennsylvania than in the other five (Western) states i had visited before the new year. They were keenly aware of the shifting political ground underneath them and volunteers in 5 of my 6 stops mentioned the fact that 35,589 registered Democrats had switched their party affiliation to Republican last year. Allegheny and Bucks counties, both where we have been canvassing, were among the largest net losses in Pennsylvania. Rare was a week in Western Pennsylvania where a volunteer (often more than one) didn’t make the observation that “Trump is strong here.” And, yet, Democrats won the Allegheny County Executive race in November, and with a progressive, to boot!
But take the warnings to heart. So far, Trump is running a more disciplined campaign (although not yet a disciplined candidate) than his prior two efforts. More professional, too. Trump may have claimed credit for last night’s win, but he was rarely there. He served more as a token for a credible field operation, putting up 2,000 fully trained precinct captains for the first time in his 3 campaigns. The question in Pennsylvania is whether this primary effort continues after he clinches the GOP nomination (Pennsylvania’s primary is at the end of April); our Pittsburgh area volunteers were pretty vocal about their fear of a full-fledged primary effort by the Trump campaign there, especially if there was no effort on our side to match it.
But that’s the reason for these trips. Getting volunteer input about goals and observations, listening to their thoughts about 2024 strategy and frustrations, and outlining our collective observations about Hope Springs’ 2024 strategy and goals.
One place where Pennsylvania is unique among the states we are working in right now is their determination to knock 1 Million doors in their state before Labor Day. “That’s realistic, right?”
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since 2021 in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battlegrounds 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 volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. We believe that in-person voter contact that is interactive and volunteer-driven is key to success in 2024. But we need your help.
We raise money before we start knocking on doors in order to pay for literature (we leave a piece of lit at every house we target) and for access to the voter file (VAN). We dropped more than 2,066,424 pieces of lit in Ohio last year, and we are still trying to pay off the debt to the printer for our GOTV literature we dropped in October and November. We’ll need to do that before we can start printing up 2024 lit!
Our Pennsylvania volunteers were also pretty vocal about their U.S. Senators. Obviously, Sen. Casey is on the ballot this year, likely to be running against Republican millionaire David McCormick. But they also had plenty to say about John Fetterman. And the war in the Middle East. You can see to the right that these concerns differ markedly from those expressed by voters last year.
Our Hope Springs volunteers are eager to re-elect both President Biden and Bob Casey but they wanted their voices to be heard. “You’re the closest thing we have to a White House contact,” something i hadn’t heard before. But it made me think i should have started these trips before this winter!
But i have known some of these volunteers for 20 years now! Not that those were the ones that spoke up. People reach out to me in different ways (email, texts etc) and i’m pretty tolerant of the diverse views that Democrats have because i understand that the Democratic Party is an alliance of numerous special interests. We don’t have a cult leader that imposes his view upon us, we have millions of voices that want and need to be heard. But this is also why we walk with our Issues Survey, because our voters want the same thing.
Our volunteers in the Pittsburgh area didn’t bring up the Ohio referendum (referendums, if you include the August attempt to raise the standard for amending the state constitution) — many of them had gone to Ohio and it was definitely a subject much discussed there. 2 of the 3 Philly area groups did raise the subject. (FTR, the volunteer who said that “abortion is on the ballot here” was from the Pittsburgh area.) But Pennsylvania is being pulled in two directions and the fear over increased abortion restrictions is “just one election away,” according to one of our volunteers there. So the feelings of a perpetual swing state.
Pennsylvania is the state where we first noticed voters paying attention to Dobbs. Very informed electorate that served as the canary in the coal mine here. We have identified 78,821 single isssue abortion voters in the state, 94% of them female. About 17% of them are under the age of 30. It will be interesting to see if that changes in the new year.
If you are able to contribute to our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please do. We need your help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
You can follow that link for our mailing address, as well (for those who would rather send us a check). Thank you for your support! This work depends on you!