RFS feel-good update (11/8): Election results!

SO MANY WINS!

Hi all -

What an incredible Election Day.

You can get a full rundown of our winners — updating live as we get results in — here.

As you might imagine, it can take a while for these races to get called as votes are being counted, but we’re solidly over 150+ wins (giving Election Day a better than 50% win rate!!), including some historic victories, seats flipped red to blue, and incredible stories.

Perhaps the biggest headlines of the night: RFS candidates & alum held the VA State Senate, stopping an abortion ban in its tracks and protecting access in the last state in the South, and helped flip the state House of Delegates. (We also won at least two school board seats.)

Lives will be demonstrably better because of these victories. Saying screw you to Glenn Youngkin & his stupid vests feels good and satisfying, but we don’t do all this hard work just to make a bad man feel stupid. We do it because who’s in charge and how they use their power can be transformative.

Candidate recruitment matters. Asking good people to run, then helping them run good campaigns matters. The work we do (and have been doing for years) is paying off big time.

Some of our other big wins:

• Brandan Sakbun, a 27 year old military veteran, beat out a 16-year Republican incumbent for mayor of Terre Haute, Indiana.

  

• Carrie Budzinski won her city council race in Livonia MI, becoming the first Black candidate ever elected -- this is a particularly big deal in Livonia, which has a history of being one of the country's largest sundown towns, and a place where some deeds to homes still have language restricting the sale or lease of the home to anyone who's not white.

• 22 year old Nick Roberts won a seat on the Indianapolis City Council. Gen Z, come through!!!

• In Danbury, CT, Roberto Alves flipped the mayor’s seat after 22 years of Republican rule over the city.

• Fabian Nelson officially became the first openly LGBTQ+ elected official in Mississippi!!

• St. Paul could have an all-women city council that includes at least 3 RFS candidates, Nelsie Yang, Hwa Jeong Kim, Saura Jost, and possibly Cheniqua Johnson pending results. 🥹🥹

• Henry Santana, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who grew up in public housing and has had to work overnights as a security guard to be able to make ends meet on his campaign, won his race for Boston City Council, at-large. 🥹🥹🥹

• Catherine Fray will be the first non-binary person elected in North Carolina (as far as we know)

• Gavin Scott Griffin became one of the youngest people elected in PA — just 19 years old, he won a seat on the Titusville City Council.

• RFS alum Sara Innamorato won her race for Allegheny County executive, a HUGE win for democracy, as the position oversees election administration.

• 100% of the people in these photos are RFS candidates/alum. We worked with Jason in his race for Minneapolis City Council in 2021 — then with Zaynab in her historic race for MN state senate in 2022, and now with Aurin Chowdhury in her victorious campaign for Minneapolis City Council. Progress builds on itself!!

• Neil Makhija made history as the first AAPI county commissioner in Pennsylvania history when he won his race to oversee Montgomery County. This will be key victory for democracy in 2024.

On school boards, Moms for Liberty and the education extremists had a truly terrible night. Our folks played a big part in that:

• Amelia McMillan (who you may recall from her readathon fundraiser earlier this summer!) and Benjamin Walker helped flip the Central York, PA school board after a year+ of fighting against extremists trying to ban books and bring far-right ideology into schools.

• Rolling Stone had a big headline earlier this year — RIGHT WING ACTIVISTS ARE TRYING TO TAKE OVER VIRGINIA’S SCHOOLS — that featured RFS candidate Madison Irving working to stop them. Good news: HE WON, flipping the school board in the process!

When we run against Moms for Liberty and book banners, we win. That’s why our 50 State School Board Strategy is so critical — we have to be in the fight in the first place!

Thanks for being on this team. Your support made this all possible.

I’ll be back in your inbox on Monday morning, per usual, with more election updates! I hope you feel good today. You deserve it.

- Amanda