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Summer Winds are Blowing in North Carolina, It's a Bad Time for the GOP to Abandon a Senate Seat [1]
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Date: 2022-08-11
Two months ago, North Carolina was a promise. “We have a Democratic governor,” people would say. “We voted for Barack Obama.” “Nothing is impossible.” “People should pay attention to this race, we have a great candidate.” Both volunteers and voters would lament the lack of coverage here. On Saturday, North Carolina was the state I visited. As I’ve mentioned before, I am trying to go to one state each weekend, but I was needed this weekend out of necessity because one of our organizers was picked up by a campaign. She was needed “right away.”
But this was my favorite bit of advice: “Run Through the Tape.” 90 days left. Because, you know, I needed reminding. But people are noticing. The Media is noticing.
We don’t throw our (volunteer) organizers parties — at this point, no one is paid although everyone should be. But we do help them get campaign jobs and I can rave endlessly about the job they have been doing. If half of them take their training of volunteers and the Obama-era techniques we teach with them, we will have done our job. ‘Always be training your replacement,’ it’s the first piece of advise I remember.
And this is more important on the Democratic side than the GOP. Republicans have the full complement of field organizers who have done this for years. We Democrats, we don’t tend to retain field staff, everybody wants to move on to policy, work on the Hill or the White House. Field organizing is a means to an end, not a career. Which is why we keep losing the field skills and techniques that Hope Springs from Field PAC was organized around. So I love it when a campaign “steals” them away.
Since the primaries, we have been knocking on doors in counties that have historically tried to suppress minority participation in voting. Much of this has been driven by our partnership with African-American congregations in their attempt to duplicate what we have done in Georgia. Our Deep Organizing practices emphasizes both the relational and the data, and we are targeting specific areas to monitor during the primaries because of information gathered from the Incident Reports we collect or other databases on Election Performance. As we have done so, the number of weekly volunteers has grown, as well.
394 volunteers came out to knock on doors on Saturday with Hope Springs from Field PAC. We are still knocking on doors in the silver “Toss Up” Congressional District (NC-13; an Open (R+3) where Democrat state Senator Wiley Nickel will compete against Bo Hines (R) in November) south of Raleigh, as well as in Robeson, Rowan and Chatham Counties. We continue to use our Issues Questionnaire as a conversational tool, offer Constituent Service Request forms (and incident reports for those who have witnessed election malfeasance) and left our lit at every door on our lists.
We canvass with an Issues Questionnaire that allows voters to tell us what is on their minds. We use it as a conversational check to guide volunteers through their dialog at the door. It makes it easy on our volunteers as provides us with vital data that will be entered in VAN (the Democratic database) after the primary. I can’t tell you how much our volunteers like this technique and how much *they* learn from knocking on doors.
We ask voters whether they have a primary issue concern. What we are looking for is to determine whether they are “single issue” voters. We use open-ended questions because we are really looking for quick, immediate responses. People know what issues they will be voting on, and if they can’t think of any, that doesn’t defeat the purpose. The Economy and especially the prospect of a Recession was the Top Issue in North Carolina according to the voters we talked to on Saturday. Health Care Costs was the second highest concern. Schools was third place among the voters we talked to this week. Like other states, we still hear about Reproductive Rights and Gun Violence in the “single issue” or message to Congress query.
Voter views of President Biden have rising (which is notable or strange given the media right now). 56% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in North Carolina on Saturday. 8% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. Governor Cooper (who is term-limited and can’t run for re-election) had 58% job approval from the voters who answered their doors and responded to the questionnaire. Democratic Senate nominee Cheri Beasley had 75% approval.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First Round of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of the communities most effected (the intended targets or victims) of these new voter suppression laws.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Hope Springs from Field PAC understands that repeated face to face interactions are critical. And we are among those who believe that Democrats didn’t do as well in the 2020 Congressional races as expected because we didn’t knock on doors — and we didn’t register new voters (while Republicans dud). We are returning to the old school basics: repeated contacts, repeated efforts to remind them of protocols, meeting them were they are. Mentoring those who need it (like first time and newly registered voters). Reminding, reminding, reminding, and then chasing down those voters whose ballots need to be cured.
We registered 13 New Voters at their doors last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 52 voters.
We ask people who open their doors about local concerns, and specifically whether they need services delivered to their neighborhood. 96 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms last Saturday. In general, we send these to Democratic elected officials responsible for the requested functions, but if the appropriate office is held by a Republican, we still send it along. For Democrats, though, we encourage them to reach out immediately to the voter who filled out the Constituent Service Request forms and let them know they are working on the issue. This credit-taking is enormously valuable to the Democratic office-holder.
We also ask voters in the Issues Survey if they have any concerns about the upcoming elections. Voters who tell us they have experience voter intimidation or other problems with voting are asked to fill out Incident Reports. We found 3 voters who wanted to fill out an Incident Report in North Carolina on Saturday. We collate these Incident Reports, to be shared with local, state and federal officials in charge of voting, as well as use them to plan out our Election Protection strategy in the fall. They could also be used in court cases.
But asking — and collecting — Incident Reports has a second purpose at this time. We are reminding voters that we care about Election Protection, that if they witness something, they can say something and it will matter. It also assures them that we are ready to do something if they see something.
If you are able to support our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, please donate:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2022senateswing
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/11/2115871/-Summer-Winds-are-Blowing-in-North-Carolina-It-s-a-Bad-Time-for-the-GOP-to-Abandon-a-Senate-Seat
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