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Debbie Stabenow Retires; Michigan was already competitive, We Can Tip the balance towards Our Side [1]
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Date: 2023-01-05
2024 Electoral College Outlook
Even in the midst of all the chaos in the U.S. House, Debbie Stabenow's retirement reminds us just how fragile is the Democratic majority in the Senate. Hope Springs from Field PAC was already going into Michigan, simply because it is a competitive state in the Electoral College and had a potentially competitive race in the Senate. Today’s (thankfully early) announcement reinforces that intent.
538 ReMap: Democrats hold all Blue and Grey (Swing) seats
The 2024 map really expands our vision for early, Deep Organizing in swing states. Primarily, that means that we are not only considering Senate Swing States but also swing or competitive states in the Electoral College. Hope Springs from Field was organized around one central premise: we can’t lose the U.S. Senate or the White House until there is actual balance in the Supreme Court. The extreme far right justices that currently occupy and control SCOTUS means that we can’t take even a foreboding election cycle off. I’ve already gotten some push back on my “optimism,” yet we just can’t give up. The Democratic Senate majority may seem a hard climb, but the 2022 cycle map looked that way, as well. And we survived that threat (still bitter about losing Wisconsin, though).
Like the last cycle, Hope Springs from Field will bring its volunteer-driven voter contact model based upon Voter Registration, Issues Survey and Constituent Service Request forms aimed at Democratic and unaffiliated households. In 2022, volunteers from Hope Springs knocked on 2,984,214 doors of Democrats, Independents and Unaffiliated Voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This followed our 2021 canvasses in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where volunteers knocked on 371,020 doors (not including the Georgia Runoffs, Texas or special elections). In addition to our Special Elections Mobilization "Strike Force," we also engaged in Field Staff/Voter Protection Training and targeted canvassing for Voter Suppression Mitigation and "super-compliance" Voter Registration purposes.
Hope Springs from Field PAC was involved in the registration of 117,671 voters, and, with our ongoing efforts to ensure voters have the necessary photo identification, we helped 14,142 Georgians get their free Georgia Voter ID cards! We focused especially on turning out the New Voters we registered through our Post Cards to New Voters effort and, in Georgia, those whom we helped get the needed photo IDs in order to vote.
In 2022, we talked to 230,305 voters and 144,029 of them answered questions in 2022 (45,317 and 21,765 respectively in 2021) on the Issues Survey with which we walked every weekend. The valuable data we obtain by asking voters what issues are important to them and how they feel about their elected officials all got entered into VAN (the Democratic database/voter file) available to all Democrats who use VAN in those states.
Our plan for Michigan follows this strategy: register new voters (and re-register existing voters at their new addresses) and then TURN THEM OUT; work with Black Churches, the Divine Nines and other Voter Rights orgs to protect the Right to Vote for everyone; collect data on Voter interests and make that data available to all Democratic candidates who use VAN; and help voters access government services through our Constituent Service Request forms that volunteer canvassers carry — and then GET OUT THE VOTE, including Ballot Curing, if possible (not every state allows this).
And, as you can see from the specifics provided above, we endeavor to keep people informed of our progress by weekly data dumps for each state where we are canvassing. While those weekly posts can be tedious, they provided early indicators to this community about concerns over, for example, John Fetterman’s health among unaffiliated voters or how tight the Nevada Senate race results would be.
Here’s the thing: in the absence of strong, overarching Democratic party organizations at the local, district and state level, no one is doing this kind of Deep Organizing for the purpose of retaining the Senate or winning the Electoral College. And there are things we can do. Things the grassroots can do. We won 4 out of the 8 Senate Swing States in 2022 (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, with Pennsylvania being a net pick up, while losing Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin — still bitter about that Wisconsin loss); won 16 out of the 18 (mostly) swing Congressional Districts where we canvassed and not only registered voters (including in Florida, where Republicans went to extraordinary efforts to stop it) but mobilized those newly registered voters through extraordinary efforts to get them to the polls.
Hope Springs from Field PAC has been knocking on doors since 2020 (when Covid left Democrats at a disadvantage on the ground) in a grassroots-led effort to prepare the Electoral Battleground in what has been called the First and Second Rounds of a traditional Five Round Canvass. We are taking those efforts to the doors of Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans.
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/fistfulofsteel
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.
Like last cycle, we will focus (at least initially) on the swingy Congressional Districts (the grey districts in the map above) in Michigan: MI-03 (Hillary Scholten (D)), MI-07 (Elissa Slotkin (D)) and MI-08 (Daniel Kildee (D)). We hope to start canvassing there by April (canvass starts are always weather dependent). But the intent is to show the flag, remind voters that Democrats endeavor to deliver for them, and make sure that Democrats and unaffiliated voters are registered at their current address, as required by federal law.
Whenever we start in a new state or new area of an existing state, we focus on training, to prep volunteers to not only knock on doors but to keep them on task. First of all, we expect a lot from the volunteers who knock on doors with us. We are sending them out with clipboards, about a dozen Issues Questionnaires, 3-4 Constituent Service Report forms, a couple of Incident Reports, Q-slips and Observation forms, Voter Registration forms and lit that we leave at the door. It’s a handful and the first time working this system can seem daunting. Hope Springs focuses on the data and you really only get a sense of the importance of the data that you collect knocking on doors after you’ve done it once or twice. So training volunteers before they start knocking in critical.
And, as you’d expect, we got more than a few people who came out Saturday who had already canvassed before “and didn’t need to get trained.” But there are always volunteers who just want to get on with it (count me among those) and want to forego any formal training. Walking them (people like me) through these sheets in a compressed training is oh so fun!
But it is really simple for people who have never canvassed before. The Issues Survey means that instead of persuading voters to accept a campaign’s message priorities, we are asking voters to tell us about their priorities. For volunteers who are nervous about canvassing, this approach really allows them to ease into it, and really takes the pressure off.
But this approach also means volunteers don’t have to be prepped to talk authoritatively about Democratic or Democratic candidates’ issues and priorities. In fact, we discourage answering these kinds of questions. One reason (but by no means the only reason) we walk with Q(uestion) Slips and Observation Forms is to keep the focus on the voter and their concerns, not the campaigns’ or candidates’. If voters have a question, we fill out a Q-slip and let the campaigns/candidates speak for themselves. And we discovered last year that, if we do somehow end up talking to a Trumpist of Fox News consumer, this approach really circumvents their “own a lib” strategies.
As you can see, Hope Springs from Field PAC has a hybrid approach. We aren’t interested in competing with regular campaign field organizing. We are in the field before they get there and then move on when the Democratic campaigns start their intensive field work. Indeed, when we wind up the typical field work by next year’s Labor Day, we will encourage all the volunteers working with us to move over to the Senate campaigns in their states (and hope that our field organizers will be hired on by those campaigns).
Like last year, after Labor Day of 2024, we will hand off any field organizers we hire to these Senate or other statewide campaigns, in part to help them understand the data we’ve collected and placed into VAN for their use. All the data we enter into VAN are classified as public, which will allow any Democratic candidate who uses VAN to access it. Laws pertaining to election protection changed in the rash of new election laws Republican legislatures passed last year and we successfully got ahead of that.
Hope Springs from Field PAC is trying to reinstitute best field practices, such as canvassing with people who look like the voters we are talking to and targeting former voters thrown off the rolls. A lot of these got forgotten because of the Covid restrictions in the last cycle, and we have an entire cycle of campaign staffers who were trained without the benefit of actually getting to do field. That’s why it is so important to start knocking on doors now, and not wait until a month or so before the primaries. We have a lot of make-up work to do. Can you help?
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 help:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fistfulofsteel
Thank you for your support. This work depends on you!
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