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Eliminating the Crazies. North Carolina is Choosing Team Normal in '22. A Senate Swing State Canvass [1]
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Date: 2022-09-09
North Carolina is supposed to be a reach state. It has voted for a Democratic president, elected a Democratic senator, has a Democratic governor but is also the state that sent Jesse Helms and the completely forgettable John East to the Senate. It has a long history of racism and Republicans dominate the state legislature. But it also has an open seat and, in any year, an open Senate seat is something to pay attention to.
North Carolina also has rapidly changing demographics, the kind that makes any election unpredictable. And unpredictable seems to be key to 2022. But the volunteers here have been highly motivated for more than a year now. Last year, Hope Springs from Field PAC had been asked to make a special effort to react to the ruling in the Community Success Initiative v. Moore case. For a short time, 56,000 felons had their voting rights restored and we raced to register as many as possible. This effort, aimed at tracking down those newly eligible, resulted in extraordinary success, not because we found tens of thousands of felons but because we canvassed in neighborhoods where they likely lived and made sure voters and potential voters knew what are purpose there was.
We had Georgia organizers and volunteers drive to North Carolina, as well, and those who did spent an extra day (Sunday) sharing the excitement that was the 2021 Senate Runoff election in Black Churches as well as Sunday canvassing. That excitement rubbed off, and some of our North Carolina volunteers began a friendly competition with our Georgia volunteers. “If Rev. Warnock can win, than Cheri (Beasley) can, too!”
More to the point, this “competition” meant that we have Georgia volunteers come up to North Carolina for our GOTV efforts there and North Carolinian volunteers go to Georgia for their’s. And one of the things North Carolina was doing was holding First Time Voter parties for their (virgin) voters that employed some tactics that were unknown to our Georgia volunteers. And our Georgian volunteers wanted to take those North Carolinian tactics back to Georgia. The cross-fertilization created even more excitement. The ability to share something with these amazing Georgian volunteers and organizers gave them more confidence. Even if people aren’t paying attention to this race, North Carolinians said, we not only have skills and experience others covet, but we can compete. WE CAN COMPETE! In North Carolina!
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors in 8 Senate Swing States for more than a year now and our data-mining practices are not only helped our efforts by energizing our volunteers. Who knew? The point is, of course, returning field efforts at voter contact to reinstall best practices, and specifically practices we perfected in the field during the Obama campaigns. Because the pandemic meant we lost years of best practices because we didn’t knock on doors in 2020.
163 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 (Hines being the “next Madison Cawthorn, so go throw Nickel a few dollars)) 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 (“a single issue that will determine how you vote”). What we are looking for is to whether people think their Top Concerns are their voting issue. And 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. In North Carolina, our responses to the “Most Urgent Issue” question was unchanged. The Economy and the prospect of a Recession was the Top Issue in North Carolina according to the voters we talked to on Saturday. Schools was the second highest concern. Concern over Rising Health Care and Health Insurance Costs 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). 60% of the voters we talked to expressed approval of President Biden in North Carolina on Saturday. 6% expressed disapproval in the job the president was doing. Governor Cooper (who is term-limited and can’t run for re-election) had 55% job approval from the voters who answered their doors and responded to the questionnaire. Democratic Senate nominee Cheri Beasley had 78% 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 10 New Voters at their doors last Saturday and updated (or corrected) the addresses of another 45 voters. More than a handful of the new voters we registered this week were the result of our partnership with Black churches and the willingness of their members to walk with us.
We ask people who open their doors about local concerns, and specifically whether they need services delivered to their neighborhood. 59 voters filled out Constituent Service Request forms last Saturday. More than a handful of these were the result of our partnership with Black churches and the willingness of their members to walk with us. 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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