I've been around here since 2007. I don't really blog anywhere else. This is my family. And when I came to you in spring of 2013 with this insane idea about how we could come together to make an impact in local and state politics, you embraced it and supported it. I was overwhelmed. Now after our first election year and your continued support I want to share with you some thank you notes from campaigns and cause organizations who were able to get help affordably directly because of you.
We didn't have a ton of campaigns to work with this year. Some of that was by design. We wanted to make sure, at these early stages, that we could effectively manage those we did have. We have a great strategy and training team with amazing skills and experience and expertise. A few campaigns trickled in, mostly referred by kossacks and people in our team's political spheres of influence. And that was fine with us this year, our first election cycle.
Here's what some of them had to say:
I have to say that, as volunteer campaign manager for my mother’s campaign for North Carolina House, I was quite pleasantly surprised with the advice and support Bold Blue Media gave to her without the first dime spent. The folks at Bold Blue Media know what they are talking about in any location, because they have paid attention and done their research. They seek to empower candidates on their level, in their locale, because they truly care about good, progressive candidates having the clearest path to victory. I would recommend Bold Blue Media to anyone who is scratching their head about any aspect of their campaign. They will give you the support you need!!
Asa A. Gregory
Campaign Manager,
Bobi Gregory for North Carolina House
As a campaign strategist, I’ve worked at the federal, state and local levels and I can attest to the value of Bold Blue Media. Bold Blue Media is a cost effective way to augment the activities of your staff and volunteer efforts. They’re accessible to small campaigns, either on the front lines or as backup support for strategies that are already in place. But, most of all, Bold Blue Media is accessible to all campaigns—they don’t cherry pick the most winnable races and ignore the more problematic battles. I depend on Bold Blue Media - they are a big part of my candidate success rates.
George Fisher
Democratic Political Strategist
"I’m really impressed by Bold Blue Media’s support for down-ticket races that are not often in the spotlight and which have a real need for services that can help them win but which they often can’t afford. Whenever I called they answered right away and were ready and eager to help. I'm really excited about what they're doing at Bold Blue Media and I'm confident that in the future, more activists, volunteers and campaign staffers will find the same type of value I did."
Suzanne Prescott
New Mexico Political Activist
Volunteer Campaign Coordinator
At AFL-CIO of NWFL, we're already supporting political candidates. We're always looking for ways to maximize our effort on behalf of candidates. What Bold Blue Media does makes what we do easier by preparing candidates and giving them campaign support that augments much of what we do. They help push candidates toward running successful campaigns and this makes our investment in those candidates go further.
James Lingley
President
Northwest Florida Federation of Labor
As the executve director and co-Founder of Florida's Moral Mondays movement, I heard about Bold Blue through some colleagues in the political space. I was relieved to learn that their training and support services are available to cause campaigns, not just to candidates. As a new 501c3, we are always trying to find ways to get effective services as economically as possible. We don't (or can't) do everything in-house and developing trusted partnerships is going to be vital as we grow. It was nice to sit down and talk about our needs with Bold Blue Media - very approachable, helpful, and passionate people - and to know that they'll be an excellent resource for us as we move forward.
Aaron Wazlavek
Executive Director
Moral Mondays Florida
We took probably couple dozen more calls. We put out a lot of fires; we referred people to systems and services they needed but that we couldn't yet provide. We helped them their non-VAN voter data. We provided dozens of people with
free media training thanks to our media training partner TJ Walker, a work renowned communications expert and media trainer. We wrote talking points and press conference speeches and even built a
last minute website or two. And we did it all affordably for the candidates because of
YOUR support.
And also, remember that call bank center I told you about back in August? Well, we built one from scratch because the platform provider I THOUGHT we'd worked a deal with doubled his price on me and we found we couldn't afford it. So we built a simple platform. We had a stable of multilingual paid phone bankers available and, in response to some campaigns who didn't even have enough for that, we set up another service called "Volunteer Caller Connect" that connected willing volunteer callers directly to campaigns. (There's something to be said for being able to be agile as an organization!). Anyway, here's what one of our callers had to say about that experience.
It was great to be connected with small campaigns who needed a few calls to made. I signed up for the Caller Connect and pledged to make 10 calls but I ended up making a lot more. It was nice to know I was helping a candidate who didn't really have a lot of other options.
Kymberly Lewis
I guess, in retrospect, I'm pretty happy with how our first cycle went. It can be very frustrating at times, dealing with the day-to-day business operations. But the feeling I got helping these candidates assures me that we are on the right path.
And it's all because of you. This movement started here at DailyKos with my dkos fam. I want to share with you our plans for 2016 (which we're preparing for now).
Bringing Bold Blue Media to Full Scale for 2016
In the coming days, we're going to be introducing a new member of the Bold Blue Media family. It's called Go Left America. It's mission is to foster excitement and awareness about the importance of state and local politics and deepen engagement of everyday citizens, to help re-empower them in their states and communities. This will allow supporters to not only support our mission, but actually provide opportunities for them to get involved in a key element of progressive success: true voter engagement. Go Left America is also tasked with growing our movement, so that Bold Blue Media is financially positioned to serve thousands of candidates and causes by the 2016 campaign cycle. I'll give a full update when we're ready to launch. But this is exciting stuff.
Getting the Word Out, Building Trust
Just like the small campaigns we serve, Bold Blue Media's success will ultimately depend on trust. That means hubby and I will hit the road in 2015 to meet Democrats and community activists all over the country. We want to make sure people know who we are and how we can help, offer them some free goodies ALREADY - and most importantly, to LISTEN to their suggestions about what they really need. We believe that the best way to do that is "retail politics" - just like the small underfunded campaigns we seek to help. In the coming months we'll be taking suggestions about places we should visit. We're building NOW for 2016.
Firing on All Cylinders
Even though electoral politics is the crux of Bold Blue Media's mission, several factors influence how successful our candidates can be, even when they run flawless campaigns. We'll be creating a team to work on strengthening "the narrative", our side's messaging, and to develop ways to make sure they get out into the mainstream. We'll also be developing and carrying out some offline engagement strategies for key groups of typically Democratic voters. It's always bothered me that we wait into two months before an election, then we pester people relentlessly to GO VOTE! We'll, that's backwards. And we're developing the step-by-step strategy to fix that as well. I'm fond of saying "Democrats don't have a GOP problem, we have a GOTV problem."
2016 for 2016
Our goal for 2016 is to find 2,016 serious and committed liberals in every state to support these efforts. Our 2016 for 2016 campaign will get us positioned to do all of these things and more and deliver more seats to Democrats in one year than I think has ever been done (on purpose) before. That's when we can begin to reverse this damage that the GOP has caused and get our country back on the right track toward progress.
The small town school board/city council/county judgeship is where the Right's Counter Revolution began. We're taking a page from that history, and turning it to our advantage.
Arise.
Josef D. Pinter
(Director of the soon-to- be-formed) Bold Blue Media Narrative Coalition
And in fact, it's just begun.
We still need your support. Please consider a $5/month or $10/month subscription to Bold Blue Magazine. Free issue at the link.