Feel-good update: One more sleep until Election Day!
We’re hopeful & optimistic about tomorrow. Here’s why.
Before I get into the highlights from the last week (and wow there are a ton), I want to say one thing about tomorrow, and it’s the same thing I’ve been saying for most of the last two years whenever asked:
While I’m aggressively out of the prediction game, I’m deeply hopeful and optimistic about what’s going to happen tomorrow.
After all, I (along with the incredible RFS staff) have spent 200% of our time working with folks who have changed their lives in order to change their communities and change the world. They’ve knocked thousands (and in some races, tens of thousands of doors), shaken up tired institutions & conventional ways of thinking, pushed the definition of what a politician looks like, and engaged voters on issues that truly matter to them. When you see them in action, it’s hard not to genuinely believe we’re on the edge of something groundbreaking.
Tomorrow, we’ll have ~420 endorsed candidates across 46 states, 65% running for state legislature, 50% of whom are women, 35% of whom are people of color, 15% who identify as LGBTQ and 100% who are under the age of 40, first-time candidates for local office, and who are fucking amazing.
We’ll be updating you on our folks’ results via Twitter and on our website, and I’ll of course follow up with the details of how the day goes for us. Whatever our win rate ends up as, I am so proud of what we’ve built together. Thanks for being a part of it.
On to the final pre-election week in RFS…
We partnered up with Sean McElwee & Data for Progress on a report digging into who our potential candidates are and what makes someone more or less likely to run. My favorite stat: Only 3% of the folks who actually get on the ballot mentioned Trump in their intake survey.
Bustle digs in on the wave of millennials running for state & local office, and how we’re going to change the world. MSNBC also did a segment on the movement — both mention how Democrats have nearly 700 millennials running for state legislature, while the GOP was only able to say they have “a bunch.”
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story on Friday about our candidates in California and the broader movement.
Rolling Stone asks and answers: Where will the next generation of Democratic party leaders come from? (Spoiler alert: It’s us!!)
“Young women are one of the most potent political forces in 2018” — Vox.
I sat down with HuffPost Live on Thursday to talk about what we’re excited about and why it’s so important to give a shit about local elections.
https://twitter.com/HuffPost/status/1058060037036408834
Our candidates have been all over the news this week — we’re spotlighting them on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. One that I particularly loved: Slate’s deep dive into Katie Muth’s race in Pennsylvania. Katie is the exact kind of RFS candidate I love: gives no fucks, serious about the issues, hard-working, and knocking 60k+ doors.
Tomorrow’s going to be a long, amazing, overwhelming, disappointing, inspiring day. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you — thank you a million times over.