Feel-good update: 299 winners & counting!
Last week, we elected our 299th person! Congratulations to Rachel Junck, who won her run-off for a seat on the Ames City Council!
Last week, we elected our 299th person! Congratulations to Rachel Junck, who won her run-off against an incumbent to take a seat on the Ames City Council and become one of the youngest women ever elected in the state of Iowa. We have another runoff this week; good luck to Zack Quintero in Albuquerque.
Today is the Texas filing deadline — we’ve been running six figures worth of ads and working closely with partners on the ground to identify as many candidates as possible for state legislature and municipal races as we work to flip the TX state house. We’ve already endorsed a number of Texas candidates for 2020, including Rish Oberoi, who just last week went from challenging a GOP incumbent to contesting an open seat after his opponent got pushed out of the race for being too racist. Keep an eye on this race!
Some good alumni news & reflections:
“I’m a son of a single mother who was a teen mom who defied all the odds to help put me through an education system that was never designed for me.” — Tay Anderson, newest member of the Denver School Board, who was sworn in last week by his mom.
FL Rep. Anna Eskamani writes in The Nation on how she won a Florida swing seat as a proud abortion rights supporter: “Consultants advised me not to talk about my work for Planned Parenthood. But I didn’t want to win an election if I could not be myself, and supporting reproductive freedom is foundational to who I am.”
Brianna Titone was inspired to run after she saw Danica Roem win in 2017 — she didn’t realize trans people like her could actually win elections. She knocked 9,000+ doors in her district & met with folks who’d never met a candidate running for office before, all of which has informed her first year in office.
When you elect millennials to office, you get people tackling millennial issues: PA Rep. Jen O’Mara joined a Republican representative to create the Student Debt Caucus in Pennsylvania. Not-so-fun fact: Pennsylvanians owe on average $37,061 per graduate, the highest in the nation.
Rep. Chloe Maxmin, who flipped a seat in the Maine state legislature, reflects on her first year in office and what she’s learned.
Congrats to RFS alum Judge Lina Hidalgo, Nadya Okamoto, and CT Sen. Will Haskell for making the Forbes 30 under 30 list!
More broadly, in RFS-related reading…
A must-read if you’re unsure why Democrats’ ideas are more popular (and effective) and yet we keep losing: “There is no way for a political party or social movement to win long-term without building strategic power in cities and states.”
No More Nice Dems
The likes of Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer seem actually averse to defeating Republicans. Unlike their…www.nybooks.com
There are 2,200+ sheriffs & prosecutors up for election next year who will directly effect criminal justice reform, immigration law, and more. We’ll be working on some of these races as candidates pop up.
Next year, folks expect to see aggressive bills that effectively ban abortion in Tennessee, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, and Idaho. Repeat the mantra: To protect our right to choose, we have to elect Democratic state legislatures.
I want to end this on a high note, since this is supposed to make you feel good: Watch Rachel in Iowa find out she won. (This kind of stuff never gets old.)
Thank you for making this all possible. Just a few weeks left in 2019 to lay a strong foundation for 2020!