At Daily Kos, one thing you’ll hear us talk about frequently is getting “bang for your buck” when it comes to grassroots donations. But what exactly do we mean by that?
In short, we generally (though not exclusively) focus on supporting races that do not receive sufficient attention and resources. For instance, a candidate for state supreme court or secretary of state might spend just $1 million to $2 million, but these offices are so, so vitally important. The people who win these posts will, among many other things, determine how our elections are run. What could be more critical than that? And given their relatively small budgets, collectively, grassroots donors can have a huge impact on contests like these.
Click here to donate right now to every Daily Kos-endorsed campaign for the November midterms!
Of course, races for U.S. Senate have vastly bigger budgets, but they also offer enormous leverage. I don’t need to explain just how massive a difference there is between having 50 Democratic senators versus 49! Plus candidates like John Fetterman get people excited, and often we find that people who donate in high-profile races soon find themselves contributing further downballot as well.
Related to all this, we always want to make sure that we’re backing candidates who have the chance to make a difference. That doesn’t mean we only back the surest winners. (If we wanted to pad our win-loss record, we’d just endorse incumbents in safe seats—which plenty of groups do.) Rather, we look to winnable races and opportunities to expand the playing field. Making an incumbent Republican sweat a race they otherwise might have cruised in is hugely important because then that Republican isn’t out there raising money for his buddies in other, more vulnerable seats. I like to think of this as playing chess rather than checkers.
None of this is an exact science, of course. But we really value the trust this community has placed in our endorsements for almost two decades, and we know we’re asking people to part with their hard-earned money, so we take all of these considerations very seriously.
If you’d like to learn more about each of our endorsement slates for 2022, check out our guide right here. And for full details on how the Daily Kos endorsement process works, you’ll want to read our complete explainer.
Can you donate $10—or even $100—to the campaigns Daily Kos is backing ASAP? Time is almost up!