RFS feel-good update (7/5): Lots of problems with the same solution
Spoiler: It's recruiting & supporting diverse young progressives for local office
Hi all -
Hope your long weekend was whatever you wanted it to be, whether you celebrated or stayed mad — we’re back at work, ready to take on the many many many fights ahead.
First, some good news, as befits this email! In the mix of everything else happening over the last week, there were elections! A few of the highlights:
Congrats to Nabeela Syed, who handily won her primary and will move on to a competitive general election against an incumbent Republican in the IL state house.
Also congrats to Hoan Hyunh, who won his primary against the establishment pick to put him on the path to become the first Vietnamese American in the IL general assembly.
Rachel Ventura won her race against an incumbent for Illinois state senate!
Nate Blouin handily won his race against an incumbent who’d been in the Utah state senate since 1999 — Nate wants to tackle issues like air quality and affordable housing.
Anthony Joel Quezada advanced in his race for Cook County Board of Commissioners in Illinois.
Arturo Alonso won his primary for Oklahoma state house and will likely be one of the youngest elected Latinos in Oklahoma City!
Juan Ardila won his race for state assembly in Queens, NY, promising to fight for affordable housing, public transit, and a plan to combat climate change.
On Thursday, we announced a new class of 74 amazing endorsed candidates from 30 states — 62% women, 43% people of color, and 23% are LGBTQIA+. Scroll through and learn more about the present and future leaders of our party & country.
This new class brings us up to 476 endorsed candidates in 2022 across 46 states total, and we’re not done endorsing for the year just yet. Stay tuned.
On the long fight ahead to win back abortion access:
I don’t love sticking a big thumbnail of my face in an email but such is life - I joined Ali Velshi on MSNBC on Friday night to talk about the wave of young people who’ve signed up to run for office in the wake of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. (As of today, it’s up to nearly 3,000 people who’ve signed up in the 11 days since the decision came down.)
I also chatted with legal journalist Chris Geidner in the days immediately after about what comes next in this fight. Spoiler: It’s a long sustained effort to win power locally, even and especially in red states.
That’s why we laid out a long-term strategy to win back our rights in all 50 states. Read it - let me know what you think.
I’d also be remiss not to flag this NYT column on what we learned from the anti-abortion movement:
That campaign prevailed because of a movement that spent decades mastering the nuts and bolts of American politics, persisting despite years of failure and disappointment.
This doesn’t just mean “vote harder.” It means contesting every level of power, all the time, including local elections, judicial selections and administrative rule-making.
We’ve already seen what happens when you elect pro-choice leaders to local office. Blue cities and counties — even in red states — have already taken action to protect abortion access however they can. (Read about it in The 19th and Vox.com, for starters.)
It’s as simple as this: Abortion will be on the ballot at every level of government. Even the Vice President is making the case
RFS candidates & alumni across the country have been speaking up forcefully at protests, on chamber floors, and to the press, promising to do everything they can to protect and expand access to abortion with whatever power they have. (Check it out in Iowa, Colorado, and Pennsylvania across the state, for a sampling of the dozens of clips floating around the RFS Slack.)
They won’t stop speaking up, and we won’t stop having their back.
(And relatedly, not to alarm you, but: Anti-abortion advocates are shopping around legislation to block people from cross state lines to seek care. I can’t say it enough: What happens in red states never ever stays in red states, which is why we have to invest everywhere.)
On the ongoing importance of Clerk Work, our program to recruit and support pro-democracy leaders running for local election administration roles:
Election deniers are running for county clerk offices all across Colorado. The good news: Run for Something was able to recruit pro-democracy candidates for many of these races. The bad news: We could have done much much more had we had the funds we needed earlier. (Colorado has somewhat onerous filing requirements in order to get on the deadline, including a substantial signature requirement — we were only able to start recruitment there two weeks prior to the deadline.)
Election conspiracy theorists have been barnstorming the country spreading their bananas dangerous gospel far and wide: "It's this constellation of election conspiracy theorists," said Chris Krebs, a former Department of Homeland Security official who oversaw the federal government's election security efforts in 2020. "You can see the complexion of local politics shifting as a result. They have decentralized post-January 6th and are really trying to effect change at the lowest-possible level."
Not great! We’re nearly done recruiting for 2022 at this point, but are digging in with the hundreds of candidates we’ve gotten on the ballot and are prepping to begin recruitment for 2023, when at least 7 states will elect local election administrators (including places like Pennsylvania…)
And finally, on our ongoing work on school boards:
RFS has worked with a number of candidates for TX State Board of Education for exactly this reason: “A group of Texas educators have proposed to the Texas State Board of Education that slavery should be taught as “involuntary relocation” during second grade social studies instruction.”
Also bad: A Wisconsin school board dismissed a book about Japanese American incarceration as “unbalanced.” - they wanted to show ~both sides~ of the internment camps…
Florida Republicans (including Gov. Ron DeSantis) are going all-in on school board races. This will help spread the governor’s organizing infrastructure deeper across the state, as these candidates will have the resources they need to knock doors and talk to voters even in places where DeSantis isn’t otherwise organizing.
All that is why we’ll continue going all-in on school board races, in as many places as we can afford to.
All those above sections (on abortion, on Clerk Work, on school boards) might make it seem like we’re tackling a bunch of different issues or are a little scattered. In fact, the exact opposite is true: The solution and strategy for all of those fights is the same! Recruit and support young diverse progressives running for local office in order to fight for our values.
We’ve been doing this exact work for 5+ years now and we’re not stopping anytime soon. Onward!
In other RFS community updates:
Justice Horn, candidate for Jackson County legislature in Missouri, had one of his campaign banners defaced. We stand with him in the fight against hatred.
TX Rep. Erin Zwiener has an op-ed on FoxNews.com about what’s next in Texas in the fight for abortion access.
Phoenix City Councilwoman Yassamin Ansari is highlighted in this NYTimes story about the larger trend of state and local governments accelerating their work on climate change as federal climate-fighting tools are taken away.
DE state senator Kyle Evans Gay led on successfully passing legislation to bring vote by mail to the state permanently! Sen. Gay also led on legislation to protect abortion providers and patients in the state — an incredible accomplishment.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo passed the deciding vote on three measures to direct county departments to expand access to contraception, sex-ed, family planning, and access to safe abortions whenever possible.
RI Rep. Leonela Felix led on a new budget line item that would bring a year-long free fare pilot program along the state’s busiest bus route - the line accounts for more than half of all the state’s public transit traffic.
NH Rep. Becky Whitley joined with colleagues to point out the deep hypocrisy of the NH GOP, which killed a number of bills that would directly help women and children while claiming to support those same people.
Thanks to the hard work for NY Sen. Samra Brouk cutting through bureaucratic red tape, New Yorkers can now get the mental health care they need without spending months on a waitlist.
Waterloo, IA, city councilman Jonathan Grieder successfully led on establishing two new task forces, one that specifically names gun violence as a public health issue and brings folks together to tackle it and a second that looks at how to support young people at risk.
TX candidate Becca Moyer DeFelice, who’s running against an aggressively anti-abortion GOP incumbent, joined the Symone Sanders show over the weekend to talk about why she’s not shying away from the abortion fight.
In our ongoing bench watch: Congrats to Dr. Yadira Caraveo, who is now officially the Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 8th congressional district, and is in a competitive race in November.
That was a lot! But no such thing as a slow summer in RFS-world. Thanks for making all this possible. We’re lucky to do this work with you.
- Amanda