As a Staff Sergeant and Captain, Keke Williams served our country for 24 years in the US Army.
Now she’s fighting to become the first Black woman veteran to serve in the Texas House in the very competitive TX House District 54.
But someone keeps tearing her campaign signs down.
And Keke Williams is doing something about it.
Putting them right back up again!
Keke Williams is Dkos-endorsed (please consider pitching in, these candidates are vetted and have been selected very strategically) and her campaign is also endorsed by none other than President Barack Obama (which is not an easy one to get.)
But it’s her indomitable spirit that I want to emphasize tonight. Because it encapsulates something that every last one of us Democrats need to internalize.
::
As Nate Silver highlighted, there’s a structural tilt that favors rural states and locales that is impacting the balance of power in the United States.
This tilt impacts the U.S. Senate, the Electoral College, and not only the US Supreme Court itself but via redistricting and voting rights decisions that have allowed the Republican party to gerrymander, rake in billions, and voter suppress their way into a position of a virtual “ruling minority.”
There’s two simple things we can do in response.
1. We need to understand that when it comes to governing, this is the only play the Republican Party has got. It’s temporarily a strong hand. They’ve blocked Obama’s agenda via the U.S. Senate, run rampant with Court Appointments, and won the Presidency while losing the popular vote.
Here’s the thing.
At this point, we can’t expect the GOP to follow any strategy other than that of a minority party using structural tactics to enforce their agenda. We need to understand that the deck is stacked, they know it, and they are going to ruthlessly exploit that until they can’t. Trump and the GOP’s increasing extremism are byproducts of this. Just like it’s continued after Denny Hastert, Paul Ryan, Karl Rove and Tom DeLay have left the scene, it will continue long after we’ve said good riddance to Donald Trump.
But fact is, the GOP is a one trick pony at this point.
Like Keke Williams can testify, tearing down our signs is all they’ve got.
2. Given the above, we need to fight for every winnable race.
We need to fight smart and allocate our resources, our energy and our votes to slowly but surely changing the map.
This year you can see the map changing before our eyes.
In Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin and Texas Republican gerrymanders have reached their sell by date.
Now is the time for us to support great local State Legislative candidates with everything we’ve got!
::
As David Nir asked Are you sick and tired of Republican gerrymandering?
Then dig deep and donate again!
(Keke Williams is on that list and we’re up to 4,395 donors for $369,000 which is great but a rounding error compared to recent US Senate contributions in much less winnable and more expensive races.)
But there’s another thing you can do, and it’s free.
Grab your mobile phone and make sure you have the Twitter app installed.
Got it? Great.
Click on this link for State Leg Heroes.
This is my hand-crafted list of over 100 completely worthy local Democratic candidates working their butts off to flip Red districts Blue.
(If you need to find this list inside your mobile Twitter directly just go to my handle @kidoakland and you’ll find it as a pinned tweet at the top of my profile.)
Now that you’re there, click on the list, subscribe to it and then go to your Lists in Twitter and hit the PIN BUTTON (it looks like a pin) so that this list becomes an additional, easy to access feed in your Twitter mobile account.
Now you’ll see your pinned list “State Leg Heroes” as an alternate feed on your Twitter feed.
Now simply click over and you can Like, Retweet, Amplify, Comment and Celebrate these hundreds of State Leg candidates in the run up to election day. You can always click back to your main feed.
Not only do you have a front row seat to tons of Blue Flip legislative races, you can make an impact by supporting them every day, and it just takes a few minutes.
Don’t have a huge Twitter following? Don’t think you’ll make a difference? Wrong. Every like and retweet will help these candidates reach people in their district with Volunteer sign ups, important information and Name Awareness, which is crucial for local candidates. Btw, this is a neat trick available on mobile twitter, on desktop you’ll just have to click on the list but it works there. too.
Here’s the deal.
Keke Williams is counting on you.
And so many more great downballot candidates working to flip districts Blue.
::
About this series:
I’m a longtime local election activist and Dailykos blogger dating back to 2003. I was part of helping local blogs and the netroots drive Democrats to take back the House in 2006 and helped build some of the biggest and most successful grassroots and online groups supporting Barack Obama.
The 2020 Democratic State Legislative candidates are heroes, and deserve our support. They are our best chance of changing US politics including GOP voter suppression and gerrymandering for decades to come and many of them will run campaigns that help us win electoral college votes and key US Senate and House votes:
Mokah Jasmine Johnson (GA) | Akilah Bacy (TX) | Joanna Cattanach (TX)| Ricky Hurtado (NC) | Sara Rodriguez (WI) | Franccesca Cesti-Brown (FL) | Brandy Chambers (TX) | Anton Andrew (PA) | Chokwe Pitchford (MI) | Sarah Yacoub and Emily Siegrist (WI) | Travis Boldt (TX) | Patty Smith and Lindsay Drew (PA)
You can also visit the State Level Impact 2020 ActBlue Page (Page created w/ an email privacy option for those who prefer to make a one time donation to multiple candidates.)
