Hope Springs from Field PAC was created and organized around the concept of boosting voter turnout in Senate elections. We don’t take sides in primaries (primaries are good, and highly competitive primary elections make the winning campaign better — a lesson we learned in 2008) and it never even occurred to me that we’d be asked about what side we were on in the party organization.
“We don’t want nobody nobody sent,” a Chicago ward boss is said to have told Abner Mikva back in 1948 — something that might be applied to some Democrats in Nevada as well. This isn’t a criticism, but a reflection of the experience we had in trying to put together grassroots canvassing in Nevada, in support of Democrats who run in November. The state Democratic Party in Nevada could easily be canvassing already and building out VAN making it an invaluable resource for Democrats in the state. But, again, this isn’t a criticism because we aren’t involved in those disputes. It’s neither here nor there for our purposes.
But we were asked which side we are on when talking to volunteers who have prior relationships with our organizers. The rift between the Bernie-dominated state party and the Reid “machine” should not impact what Hope Springs from Field PAC is trying to do, which is to prepare the terrain for Senator Cortez Masto’s re-election in a tight political environment. But questions and resistance did appear from volunteers we asked to participate. For some, neutrality was not an option, and I doubt anyone who felt like that did come out to canvass. But there worst thing, from my point of view, is that potential volunteers felt like they would hear that very question at the door.
I can report that, after our first Saturday, no returned and said they were asked about the party squabble at the door. No one said they were asked if they were there (at the door) on behalf of the Nevada Democratic Party — or anyone else, for that matter. A lot of angst, it seems, for nothing.
But we did hear something else. “Thanks for asking,” one volunteer said a voter told her and she wrote it on an Observation Form. “Thanks for stopping by.” Volunteers love to be appreciated!
Trying to help Democrats get elected — especially incumbent Democrats running for a 50-50 Senate — shouldn’t be this hard.
Last Saturday was our first day canvassing in Nevada. A lot going on and the feedback we collected reflects that.
Our very first priority in these Swing Senate State canvasses is making sure that everyone in the houses that opened their doors was registered to vote at their current address. Updating voter registration is just as important as getting unregistered people registered to vote. Voters who aren’t registered at their current address (as required by HAVA) risk being challenged at the polls by the right-wing nuts like MGT. A lot of people don’t realize this, and don’t mind being reminded that they need to update their address to stay (legally) on the voter rolls.
We knocked on doors in neighborhoods west of Reno with our Issues Questionnaire. We staged farther from the turf than we should have (completely my fault). Whereas Inflation has been the most popular response to “What Issue is most Urgent?,” Nevadans we talked to last Saturday formulated it a bit differently. “Cost of Living” was the most popular response — and they didn’t always mean inflation. “It’s more expense here than I expected,” one voter told us. Schools was the second most frequent response and the conflict in Ukraine was third (although I lumped in at least one concern about nukes in Ukraine).
Voter views of President Biden were tempered this week. There had been a kind of bounce for the president in Florida and Georgia after the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings and confirmation (less so, it seems, in Arizona) but Biden’s favorable numbers in Nevada showed no lingering appreciation. Almost two-thirds of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in Florida last Saturday. Still, a mere 17% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. And, once again, we did get feedback from voters that they wished Biden could or would do more about inflation and/or Ukraine.
We did not get a lot of feedback on Senator Cortez Masto. More than 60% of the voters we talked to did not express an opinion of the Senator. A mere 3% told us they had an unfavorable of the senator.
Governor Sisolak, on the other hand, got a better reception. More than 50% of the Democratic and Independent voters we talked to gave Sisolak a favorable rating. 14% said they had an unfavorable impression.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to increase awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights, and, in March, we will begin an even bigger effort. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
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/hopemobilization
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. But the reason we won the Iowa Caucus in 2008 was because we registered voters and then turned them out! The approach we adopted was focused on listening, on connecting voters and their story to the candidate and our cause. Repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans did). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
Hope Springs has targeted states that have competitive Senate races in 2022 as well as districts that are remapped in ways that offer opportunities or vulnerabilities for Democrats next year. As not every state has completed their re-maps, re-districting hasn’t yet made those opportunities/needs apparent. The Senate map started out clear. That may be changing. There are places we need to defend (Georgia, Arizona and Nevada) and there are opportunities. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are such opportunities. There is a lot of work to be done!
But we got positive feedback just from knocking on their doors. Which mattered given the trepidation of organizing here.
The work we are doing now is basically make-up work. In swing or target states, Democrats -- but especially the presidential campaigns -- will focus on voter registration efforts as kind of kick-off canvassing. It is a way to generate interest, enthusiasm and finding volunteers. Asking people if they are registered to vote (hopefully, asking if they are registered to vote at their current address!) is a lot easier than asking them to vote for your preferred candidate. But we couldn't do that in 2020. Covid-19 knocked us out of the ground game.
We can't overstate the impact of not doing traditional voter contact/outreach by knocking on doors in 2020. In every single state where Hope Springs from Field PAC has canvassed, voters have thanked volunteers for knocking on their doors. We were missed in 2020, not just by those who would open their doors to canvassers but also by whole neighborhoods, who may not have opened their doors but witness canvassers in their neighborhoods, saw the literature left behind and talked to neighbors who had spoken to volunteers. The reinforcement by the process was missed. They told us this.
We knock on the doors of Democratic and Independent voters. At every door, we leave a piece of “show the flag” lit, something that tells them we were there and hopefully reinforces the Democratic brand. The lit focuses on the things voters told us were important to them last fall, aiming to appeal to every voter. Far and away the number one issue that the voters we talked to in the Senate Swing States last year was inflation or price increases, and I imagine that concern has only increased.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on to voter protection when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns). After Labor Day, we will begin organizing our Election Protection Project.
But we are also cognizant that Democratic turnout has traditionally dropped off more than Republicans in non-presidential years. So early, frequent voter contact is more important to our side. Equally important, though, is that starting early means that we can make up for our inability to register new voters in the presidential election because we took Covid and the health of our base seriously. Registering new voters (and re-registering existing voters at their current address, in compliance with HAVA) at their door is the hard way to do voter registration, but we catch people that our voter registration campaigns can miss because of their emphasis on larger-scale or mass voter registration.
As you can see from the very first question in the Issues Questionnaire, making sure that voters are registered from their current address is a major function of early canvassing.
By starting early, and aiming towards super-compliance with Nevada’s voting laws, Hope Springs from Field PAC seeks to undermine the Republican strategy of shaping the electorate.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
Thank you for your support.