RFS feel-good update (5/24): What will we regret?
A few new winners, 50 new endorsements, & some food for thought...
Hi all -
This is a jam-packed update — let’s dive right in…
Last week we got in a few more election results…
Tyler James Titus won their primary for Erie county executive — they will likely be the first trans county executive in the country.
Xander Orenstein won their race for district magistrate in Allegheny County, PA — beating the incumbent by only 39 votes to win the Democratic primary. Xander (who is nonbinary) is a housing advocate who was drawn to the race because the incumbent had been setting bail higher than nearly all other county district judges. They’re on track to be the first openly nonbinary judge in the entire country.
We also endorsed 50 amazing new candidates for 2021. That brings us up to a grand total of 244 2021 folks, 57% BIPOC, 53% women, 27% LGBTQIA+, and 20% people with disabilities. (Obviously there is overlap among those distinctions.) 82% are running for municipal office, 11% for education, 5% are running for state leg.
Some amazing highlights of our newest class:
Bridgette Craighead is a single-mother, and social activist that made national news for organizing the first Black Lives Matter chapter in rural southwest Virginia and then again for speaking up when a photo of two local Police officers, posing inside the Capitol, surfaced after the events of January 6th. If elected, she will be the first woman and first woman of color to serve as representative for VA State Delegate in district 9.
Rhett Dietz is a farmer and social worker also running for Virginia State Delegate. Rhett decided to run for office after seeing the fallout of COVID-19 on her brother’s education due to a lack of affordable, functioning internet in Southwest Virginia. As an elected official, Rhett wants to ensure that rural communities have the same opportunities to thrive and function in times of crisis.
Community advocate Judy Pineda Neufield is running for Somerville City Council in MA to continue her work in service. Judy’s background — a working class Latina and Jewish woman — has propelled her need to serve underrepresented communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic Judy acted as the head of Somerville’s Immigrant Services Unit, bringing resources to her immigrant neighbors under her city’s emergency response team.
Run for Something in the news: We talked with ABC News about how the pandemic (and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020) made all politics local — the further down the ballot, the closer to folks’ doors, so they say.
Beyond the elections news, some other updates from our 2021 candidates…
As part of our ongoing work on AAPI Heritage Month, we partnered with the New American Leaders Action Fund to spotlight 18 AAPI candidates folks should know about.
NYC council candidate Julia Forman explains how she’s going to fight for the senior citizens of her community and their ability to “age in place.”
Down in San Antonio, Jalen Mckee-Rodriguez is running against his city councilmember specifically because of the discrimination he experienced working in that office.
Buffalo mayor candidate India Walton explains her vision for reforming public safety by cutting $7.5 million from the police budget to change their role in mental health work and minor traffic enforcement, and reallocating that money to boosting youth employment, living-wage jobs, housing, and more.
Let’s check in with our alumni…
WI Assemblywoman Francesca Hong talked with HollywoodLife.com about how grief drove her to run for office.
James Michael Bowers has become the first openly gay man elected chairman of the Lincoln City Council in Nebraska. History!
In Michigan, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit asks: “What public safety function are we serving by prosecuting cases involving psychedelic mushrooms? I frankly couldn’t come up with one.”
Waterloo City Councilman Jonathan Grieder successfully got a proposal passed that incentivizes child care providers setting up business in his Iowa city.
“When Rebecca Mitchell launched a bid for the Georgia legislature in the summer of 2019, the public health scientist had to balance the logistics of her first political campaign with mothering four children under the age of 5, including twin girls. Mitchell, a faculty professor at the time whose husband also worked a full-time job, toted her kids to campaign events. She didn’t feel like she had much of a choice. Georgia has unclear rules for candidates who want to use campaign funds for child care.” Read more on how candidates like Rebecca navigate this tricky campaign finance landscape.
Sen. Robert Peters has successfully led on an effort to decriminalize HIV transmission in Illinois.
VA Del. Danica Roem is trying to make FOIA requests cheaper or free in order to make government more accessible.
Rep. Kirsten Harris-Talley sponsored a bill to require gov’t agencies to put the most-polluted communities first in their projects & policies — Gov. Inslee just signed it into law!
Congrats to Rep. Fentrice Driskell, who has been elected to lead the FL House Democratic Caucus in 2024-2026 and will be the first Black woman to lead the caucus.
TX Rep. Erin Zwiener sponsored legislation to allow all workers - no matter the size of their company - to file sexual harassment claims against their employers.
Rep. Matthew Wilson in GA is under investigation for…wait for it….giving out pizza to voters in line during the 2018 election.
NY State Sen. Michelle Hinchey is sponsoring legislation to create a taskforce that would study the challenges faced by EMS companies & employees in rural communities like hers.
Carlsbad City Councilwoman Priya Bhat-Patel wrote a beautiful letter to her newborn son in the San Diego Union-Tribune: “What I am writing for you today is how tough the fight for equity, representation and systemic change is and will be. Speaking out and speaking up is not something often celebrated or tolerated in women candidates, especially Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women candidates. We are expected to step aside and patiently wait our turn behind the scenes. But for future generations like you, and so many of the youth and student volunteers supporting my campaign, we need to pave a real path and pipeline for service-oriented individuals from any background to run for office. Normal people, voters and our neighbors know it is time for a fresh perspective and a diversity of voices.”
Phoenix Vice Mayor Carlos Garcia is pushing for using federal relief funds to support a local stimulus check for city residents who need it.
MI Sen. Mallory McMorrow is experiencing first-hand how hard the workplace is for new mothers in the months after she became only the second woman in the MI state senate to give birth while in office.
“In the mere three months since he has taken office, Rep. Marvin Lim … has spoken out against Georgia’s new restrictive voting laws, personally written and submitted 32 bills, sponsored gun control legislation in the wake of a mass shooting, and worked directly with the Biden-Harris administration to combat a rise in anti-Asian violence.” We love to see it.
In related reading…
Good news! VA Democrats are contesting all 100 House of Delegates races for the first time in decades. That means that no matter what the gubernatorial campaign strategy is, there will be a Democrat candidate organizing in every community in the state — which is how we generate reverse coattails. Let’s go!
Bad news! In between essentially banning abortion and suppressing voters, the Texas state legislature has also found time to push bills that play down slavery and racist parts of Texas’s history in the school curriculum — which, as we’ve discussed in previous updates, directly affects textbooks nationwide. Nearly a dozen other GOP-led state legislatures are doing similarly. This is sustainable power in action: Using their control to lay a foundation for future victories. (The same is happening with universities.)
More bad news! The GOP has spent years investing in state legislatures specifically for this outcome: “If Roe were overturned, abortion would be likely to quickly become illegal in 22 states. 41% of women of childbearing age would see the nearest abortion clinic close, & the average distance they would have to travel … would be 280 miles, up from 36 miles.”
Even more bad news! (Sorry!) Pro-Trump conspiracy theorists are taking over Republican state parties. This is why we have to fight for and win every single office, no matter how small: It’s Trumpism all the way down.
Final piece of bad news: Because of our losses on the state legislative level, many of our rising stars in Congress are going to be top targets after the redistricting process.
I point out all this bad news not to bum you out but to make something super clear: Our biggest regret as a party right now is that 10-12 years ago, we failed to meaningfully engage in state legislative and local elections — and now we’re dealing with the dangerous consequences.
I want you to consider: In 2031, what will Democrats regret having neglected?
New research…
Our partners are BallotReady identified the clear stats of uncontested local elections in 2020. For all the work Run for Something has done, remember the scale of work needed is exponential.
In particular, I’ll call this stat out: Of the partisan races where there was only one candidate on the ballot in November, 12,199 (74%) were Republican Party, 3,561 (22%) were Democratic Party, 507 (3%) were Independent, and the remainder were minor party candidates.
We have come a long way, and still have so far to go.
This week on the Run for Something Podcast: First, some news! The Run for Something podcast now had a voicemail box. Give us a call at (833) 244-5382 with any questions, hopes, fears, dreams, or thoughts on who you want us to talk to next.
Then, a great conversation with Chi Ossé, who's been making headlines as an activist and culture-driver, and now as a fresh 23 year old, one of the youngest candidates for NY city council. He announced his campaign on Juneteenth during the protests after the murder of George Floyd and has been on the doors and talking to voters non-stop for the last 11 months. Learn about his story, his campaign, and whether being "cool" is part of the strategy. Then get involved at osse2021.com; you can sign up to join us for a phone bank for Chi's campaign on June 2nd.
We have a wild June coming as we hit primaries in Virginia and New York, so I hope you enjoy the long weekend coming up — next week’s feel-good update will hit your inbox bright & early on Tuesday morning!
Thanks for making all this possible. You’re a star.
- Amanda