Yesterday, we launched a new campaign, Grassroots SEO. The campaign goal is to increase the visibility of fact-checked, unflattering news articles about Republican candidates in competitive House districts. This will be done by teaching people who sign up for the campaign about how what they write is interpreted by major search engines. Please, sign up to take part in the campaign now.
The first step in the campaign is to find the articles we think voters should read. Already, hundreds of responses have been sent in to SEO@dailykos.com, some of them quite excellent. For example:
We have learned that Jesse Kelly, running for Congress in AZ-08, declared that he would “love” to eliminate Medicare, and also phase out Social Security, during the Republican primary. However, now that he has won the nomination, he is sending out mailers about how he will protect Social Security and Medicare. Grrr.
In CA-11, it turns out that Republican nominee David Harmer wants to abolish public schools. We know this because ten years ago he published an op-ed in his local paper entitled “Abolish the Public Schools.” I wonder if he will actually tell anyone about that position over the next four weeks.
In central Florida, Daniel Webster, who is running against Alan Grayson, wants to cut Social Security. I wonder how well that will go over in Florida.
In IA-02, Mariannette Miller-Meeks thinks that we should raise the age of Medicare enrollment.
In MA-10, when he was a police officer, Republican Jeff Perry was involved in two illegal strip searches of teenage girls.
Those are just five of the dozens of excellent, fact-checked articles about Republican candidates running for Congress that Daily Kos community members have sent in over email, or posted in the comments. But, we are targeting as many as 98 candidates, so we need many more.
Please, in the comments to this post, over by email to SEO@dailykos.com, keep sending in news stories about the 98 Republican House candidates on this list (we are only targeting Republicans in competitive House campaigns). I have not yet gone through all of the hundreds of articles sent in so far, but I will be able to read all of your responses by tomorrow.
We are going to make a big difference with this campaign, but we need your help researching the articles first. So sign up for the campaign, and start sending in articles to SEO@dailykos.com. For some tips on what makes for a good article, check out yesterday’s campaign announcement.