RFS feel-good update (11/21): The wins keep on coming (+baby pics!)
At least four RFS alums will lead legislative caucuses in 2023
Hi all -
Run for Something is on pace for our best election ever, and last Wednesday we got more exciting news: RFS co-executive director & co-founder Amanda Litman had her baby, Joan Dana Litman! We’re so excited for Amanda, and of course we have a picture to share:
Amanda will be on maternity leave until early March 2023, so we’ll be subbing in to keep you up to date on RFS progress and, hopefully, give you something to feel good about in these exhausting times.
Welcoming the newest member of the RFS team to the world wasn’t our only win last week: As of this morning we’re up to at least 230 winners! Thanks to a bunch of hard work and your help, we’re on pace to have our best election ever. We can’t thank you enough, because there’s no way we’d be in this position without you.
You can keep following our progress on this tracker, as well as our social media accounts (Twitter 🥴 | Facebook | Instagram).
Since Amanda’s update last week, we’ve celebrated 17 more wins - with many more races still to be called. Of our 230 winners so far:
Nearly 60% are women
More than 54% are people of color
About 25% are from the LGBTQIA+ community
And 9 are GenZ: Sathvik Nori (CA), Michael Ankton (AR), Jasper Martus (MI), James Aguilar (CA), Nabeela Syed (IL), Hector Bustos (CA), Miguel Sanchez (RI), Zaynab Mohamed (MN) and Joe Vogel (MD).
Every day last week we saw more RFS wins and more history be made.
Helen Tran was elected the mayor of San Bernardino, CA, and will be the city’s first Asian American mayor. She is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees and won with over 60% of the vote.
At 27, Nick Miller is the youngest person elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate in more than 135 years.
In Nebraska, John Fredrickson won by 82 votes. His win will keep the GOP from holding a supermajority in the chamber.
In more every vote matters news, Megan Cotter’s Election Day lead was confirmed! Listen to this podcast to learn how Megan flipped a GOP-held seat. The race was one of the closest in the country:
Ruwa Romman made history as the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House, and the first Palestinian American elected anywhere in the state: “Ruwa Romman remembers the sadness she felt as an 8-year-old girl sitting in the back of a school bus watching classmates point to her house and erupt in vicious laughter. ‘There’s the bomb lab,’ they jeered in yet another attempt to brand her family as terrorists. On Tuesday, the same girl – now a 29-year-old community organizer – made history.” Amazing!
Zooey Zephyr and Tiara Mack are two of the many history-making LGBTQ candidates across the country.
In Colorado, Dylan Roberts over-performed in his win for a state senate seat.
“The new District 8 leans 7 percentage points in Democrats’ favor. Roberts was winning as of Tuesday morning by 12 percentage points.”
Eva Burch beat back a Trump-endorsed Republican to claim a seat in the Arizona State Senate.
Read this NBC News article about 23-year-old Nabeela Syed flipping a State House district in Illinois and becoming the youngest member of the body. Nabeela was also featured in The Washington Post:
“Syed is among a cohort of candidates who made history this year by becoming the first Muslim Americans to be elected to the state legislature in states including Texas, Illinois, Georgia and Minnesota. All of them are Democrats, many are women and a rising number are Somali Americans.”
Watch Zaynab Mohamed on CNN talk about her historic win:
RFS alums have been in demand since the election to discuss why Democrats did much better than the pundits expected.
Mallory McMorrow broke down how the fight for abortion rights made a huge difference to down-ballot races across the country.
Juliana Bennett talked about how young voters stopped a red wave: “We came out and ... just [gave] a middle finger to the establishment and everything the GOP stands for right now.”
We also learned that now there are at least four RFS alums who will lead legislative caucuses in 2023!
Matt Wilhelm was elected to lead the New Hampshire House Democratic Caucus.
Andrés Cano will lead the Democratic caucus in the Arizona state House.
You probably remember that Fentrice Driskell was elected the leader of the Florida House Democratic Caucus in May.
And Zach Wahls, who has been the leader of the Senate Democrats in Iowa since 2021, was reelected by his colleagues last week.
In Colorado, where women will hold the top three leadership positions in the state House for the first time in state history, Jennifer Bacon was elected assistant minority leader.
We’ve seen over and over again that electing young progressives means better policy.
Read about how RFS alums Jennifer Gutiérrez and Pierina Sanchez, two of three new moms on the New York City Council, “may be well-positioned to tackle – or at the very least draw attention to – issues that affect mothers.”
In conversations with City & State, the three Democrats spoke passionately about the challenges of giving birth and raising newborns in New York City, from accessing safe maternal health care to finding affordable child care. “The thing that I find myself saying over and over is that it is impossible, and there’s no way to do it, and we do it anyway,” Sanchez said.
And check out this op-ed about investing in early childhood programs that was co-written in part by RFS alums Kyle Evans Gay and Sarah McBride.
“Creating a high quality, developmentally appropriate, and affordable early childhood education system in Delaware will not only stabilize our workforce by providing access to safe and nurturing childcare, it will also set up our youngest learners for future success.”
We love to see RFS alums staying in the fight. Alessandra Biaggi gave up her New York state Senate seat to run for Congress. While she lost that race, she said she will “probably” run again (but first, she’s going to Harvard Divinity School).
“I hope people understand that when you speak out against big systems, and powerful interests, even if you win some fights and lose others, at the end of the day, that's the purpose of this job. Again: Use your power. It's not about whether you hold the seat. It's about whether your contribution to the seat and to the conversation is actually moving forward.”
And make sure you read this from The Guardian: Why the Democrats’ biggest wins of the midterms weren’t in Washington DC
Before we let you go, some of you might be wondering who Abe is and why he’s in your inbox. Well, he started as the managing director at RFS last month. Here’s a bit from him:
As a longtime fan of RFS, I couldn’t be more excited to be on the team. Working to elect young progressives is in my professional DNA. I got my start in politics my senior year of college, when my former roommate convinced me to help him run his 25-year-old brother’s campaign for state representative in Missouri (Stephen Webber, who won that race and went on to become the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party). In 2012, I managed Jason Kander’s successful campaign for Missouri Secretary of State, which made him the first millennial to win a statewide office in the country.
I also co-founded Let America Vote, managed Kander’s 2016 Senate campaign, served as the Deputy Secretary of State of Missouri, worked on Beto O’Rourke and Deval Patrick’s presidential campaigns, and had two stints on the Hill.
I’m pumped for the opportunity to help keep you connected to RFS through these updates while Amanda is on leave. Please send any questions/comments/advice my way (aberakov [at] runforsomething.net).
See you in your inbox next week!
Ross and Abe
P.S. Have you RSVP’ed for Run for Something’s 4th Annual Alumni Awards Ceremony yet? Don’t miss your chance to (virtually) hang out with our winners and celebrate their achievements as part of our Off the Record event. Grab your free tickets today, and join us next Wednesday, November 30 at 7:30 p.m. ET.
If you liked this post from Run for Something feel-good updates, why not share it?