“Houston, we have a problem.” This line, from the troubled Apollo 13 flight, was how a Democratic staffer in D.C. tried to kid about the real-life political issues that were being discussed with regards to president felon’s call to redistrict the Lone Star State to help Republicans pick up seats in Congress. He didn’t know that my father had worked on the Apollo 13 launch at Kennedy Space Center — he was just trying to be funny. But both things were serious and Democratic legislators in both Austin and Washington hoped that Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website] volunteers would make the same kind of effort we had in 2021.
Jokes aside, Hope Springs volunteers were instrumental in keeping Gov. Abbott’s strident calls to arrest Democrats who left Texas in 2021 from becoming an issue in their 2022 re-election campaigns (in brand new legislative districts). We canvassed with their staffers and used a robocall to voters when a legislative staffer was going to knock on their door. It was probably our most notable accomplishment that Summer (2021), coming after the Georgia Senate Runoffs — looking back, it was a good year.
We’ve now been canvassing in the 3 areas that Texas Republicans are trying to rejigger for 3 years with our Issues Survey or Benchmark canvass. Although we only knock on the doors of Democratic or unaffiliated voters’ households, we’ve developed a rhythm as they say, a pattern of data collection that is extraordinarily valuable in the face of this “rigged-districting” calamity.
Before i delve more into this, let me note that we found these voters (which we estimate (without full numbers yet) to be 37% Democrats and 63% independents) much more amenable to the Democratic story than GOP messaging. Texas Democrats have argued vociferously that going forward with a partisan redistricting plan before taking any steps to address one of the state’s worst natural disasters in generations is problematic — and symptomatic for Republican responses to this president.
Responding “more appropriately” to the Texas Flood was a prominent response to Questions 3 and 4 (this is really interesting since we aren’t canvassing in the areas affected by the flooding). But i learned a long time ago not to quibble about how voters interpret and respond to these questions. It’s part of the reason we ask. Volunteers have found the same thing — a number of them have mentioned how different things look from voters’ perspective than they assumed before they started canvassing.
But it’s also been a factor in re-connecting Hope Springs efforts with Texas Democratic legislative staff. I was down in Austin last week — and am returning to Texas tomorrow night — to meet with Democratic state legislators and their staff on the possibility of their fleeing the state to stop the monstrous GOP redistricting gambit to help president felon hang on to his majority in the House. Which they now have. A number of Democratic state House members wanted more definitive answers to their questions — “more than speculation” one said, from the back of the room (all i know was that it was a male voice!) — about leaving.
Before this year, Hope Springs volunteers had conducted 324,901 voter surveys of Democrats and unaffiliated voters scattered throughout Texas. So far, this year, we’ve collected an additional 41,878 data points. Which meant i could answer their questions with the freshest data possible. You don’t have to be a politician to understand how valuable this is.
One of the threats we talked about last week was Abbott’s threat to remove them from office if they don’t return to pass the GOP’s proposed new congressional maps. He made it again yesterday. But our volunteers have repeatedly said that doing so would only encourage them more to protect these legislators — and work on the plans i will discuss in future diaries. There’s been a lot of thought put into planning for this reaction to Trump’s desperate need to prevent Democrats from winning back the House here.
Hope Springs from Field has developed partners before — most notably with Black Churches and Divine Nine chapters — but two things, in particular, gave our volunteers credibility when planning this with Texas Democratic legislators. First, we were already in the field, knocking on doors, and have been since March 1st of this year. But, secondly, we already had done this before, partnering with Democratic legislators in 2021, when they had left the state in their last showdown. At that time, the Governor tried to shame Democrats into returning to his Special Session by claiming that we (Democrats) were neglecting their constituents and weren’t worthy to serve voters any longer. But we had collected 631 Constituent Service Requests at voter’s doors that Summer when canvassing with Democratic legislative staff — and people remembered. Voters told their legislators they remembered.
One of the first questions i got last week was, why did you leave? They didn’t realize that the CSRs they dealt with that Summer were re-directed in the last few years.
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 1st. We target Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans. The voters we talk to continue to tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.
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:
Texas Legislature Special Session Quorum Break Out
Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do.
More than 1,100 volunteers in Texas came out to knock on doors on Saturday. Maybe a third (probably not quite a third) were new to us, having come from the campaign organizations or volunteer lists of Democratic Congress Members, or state Senators and Representatives. 83 of these “new” volunteers were Democratic state legislative staffers. Again, state legislators were looking for “more than speculation” before they made their decision to Break the Quorum. Several staffers told organizers they were to report back immediately — and i know that a couple of them took what we refer to as the long lists, canvass walk sheets of ~125 houses, and stayed out knocking on voter’s doors more than 5 hours on Saturday. They wanted to data — they wanted to make an “informed choice."
This is what i agreed to last week with these Democratic members of the Texas legislature:
- Hope Springs would redouble our efforts at the doors. We had very specific discussions about whether or not to include Republican households (these Democratic legislators were eager to remind us they served more than just Democrats!), but ultimately agreed that they didn’t want to interfere in our process (which was helpful, given the fact that organizer workloads just increased)
- That our canvasses would include Texas legislative staff (2 or 3 state legislators, too), where appropriate
- That Democratic legislators would be involved in our efforts to pre-warn Texans, through robocalls and digital notifications, that leg staffers will be in their neighborhood that Saturday. IOW, they voiced their own voice memo and uploaded it for those robocalls.
- We encouraged more volunteers — especially those in these state legislative districts — to take their walk lists home. For these new volunteers, who weren’t around prior weeks, this meant that we trained them — mostly peer-to-peer — on our voter contact “homework” assignments, including goals, process and return dates.
- Finally (for this diary — we aren’t even close to detailing what we’ve done to strength Democratic resolve here), we broadened our data-sharing for Constituent Service Requests for the households in the Democratic state legislative districts. Both state house and senate districts were included (we all came together).
The first volunteer feedback to come across my desk on Saturday when one of the Congressional staffers joined to “supervise” data collection came from the valley. The Rio Grande Valley is not only home to my wife’s family (which has lived north of the Rio Grande River since the 1720s) but also the area that Republicans intend to crack to gain or add 3 new Republicans in Congress. This is an area that president felon did much better than expected because of his focus on the economic message last year. But these primarily Mexican-Americans also responded to the message about border security.
“This president isn’t going after criminals like he promised,” one voter is recorded to have said. “He’s going after people with brown skin, like me. We’ve been had.”
“We need to keep kids from dying,” one woman told us. In the Observation Form, the volunteer asked if this was a reference to the flooding or just a general comment.
Another voter asked this: “When the Labor Secretary talked about ‘native-born employment’ increasing, what did that mean? Should I be worried?” Questions are recorded on the Q (or question) slips with which every volunteer walks. This was asked to one of our (Hope Springs) volunteers, and reminds me we need to be stronger with the new volunteers in their training.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was that voters all across the state had a single interpretation to this Trump/Abbott gambit: that it was corrupt. “Changing the rules of the road” (i would have said game but, you know, voters).
We also had voter reactions that aren’t exactly appropriate for family viewing. Let’s just say that Abbott evokes some visceral reactions.
But we also asked (in a semi-persuasive manner): Gov. Abbott has called your state legislator back to Austin for a Special Session to boost the number of seats Republicans have in Congress. President Trump has asked for Texas for this because of worries about the slim Republican House majority surviving the midterm elections. Texas Democrats in Austin want to leave the state to break quorum to stop this partisan redistricting plan. Will you punish them for wanting to stop the Trump-Abbott rigged-districting of Texas?
While we didn’t have a lot of voters say they would punish their legislator if they broke quorum (btw, the terse wording of this question was heavily negotiated among the Democratic legislators — damn lawyers!), 42% of the responses turned in so far were from voters promising they wouldn’t punish anyone.
“Abbott’s an a**,” one man told a volunteer. “I don’t know how anyone puts up with that!”
“We shouldn’t be expected to jump through Trump’s hoops,” another voter said.
“First things first,” one female voter responded. Again, we’re not sure what her priorities were, but we know that they aren’t this!
Hope Springs volunteers had an exceptionally good day registering new and re-registering existing voters on Saturday. More than a hundred new voters — quite a few younger, but also people who are moved from other states (in this case, mostly around San Antonio, Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston metro areas). Less than half of our new voters were African-American (iow, a result of our special voter registration project with D9 volunteers).
One “special” observation from one of the legislative staffers who went out with us on Saturday: Even when people don’t have an issue to report or to see addressed, we get a lot of pleasantly surprised voters who appreciate the fact we are walking with Constituent Service Request forms. All of these things (voter registration, issues questionnaire, constituent service request forms) are things that are great for first round canvassing. Gives you a reason to be knocking on their doors, reminds them that Democrats Care!, leaves positive impressions about the party and our elected officials. Gets volunteers trained on how to canvass. And they really feel productive, like they are serving their community.
But in working with the Democratic House staffers, who were very inquisitive about our canvassing approach — specifically about the use of the issues canvass, the constituent service request forms and robocalling for areas they knocked — we gleamed an apparent strategy on their part: to hold out as long as possible so that when the new voter laws were challenged in court — which they are certain they will be — that there won’t be sufficient time to resolve the issue before the 2026 election. Now this could be wishful thinking on their part, but there did seem to be a strategy in place. There is an obvious question here: what happens to redistricting if the Texas House Dems hold out “forever.”
And, finally, that leads to the other question Democratic electeds had for me: Can we (Hope Springs volunteers) stick with it? Maybe it was, will we? Of course! I can tell you, because of my own conversations with Texas volunteers, that they were eager for this fight (and they hope their Democratic state legislators will do the same). But here’s the thing: we are incredibly over-stretched now. I had 100,000 pieces of new lit printed for Saturday, and we ran out in some of our 58 locations. We weren’t the only ones: most legislative staffers (and their campaign volunteers) walked with their own literature and some of them ran out, as well. But i have to print more this week. And i do need your help here. We are literally in the trenches here. Remember:
At the urging of President Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called his state Legislature into a special session this week that includes a call to redistrict the Lone Star State to help Republicans pick up seats in Congress.
The move is part of a gerrymandering effort pushed by Trump to prevent the GOP from losing control of the House of Representatives next year. If Democrats take the House, they could derail the president’s agenda, which has so far included a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, tariffs on imports, rescinding efforts to combat climate change and undercutting state protections for the LGTBQ+ community, among other policy priorities.
Hope Springs has been called “the most comprehensive, organized grassroots voter contact project out there right now. It is truly astonishing that it is grassroots-based!” Not sure why it is “astonishing,” but i probably have more faith in grassroots or self-organized efforts because of my experience with Barack Obama’s early days in 2007.
If you are able to support Hope Springs from Field’s efforts to turn out the vote here, protect Democratic voters, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, we would appreciate your support:
Texas Legislature Special Session Quorum Break Out
If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!
