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"Can you bring me a yard sign? My neighbor... well... you'll have to come see it." [1]

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Date: 2023-01-30

I like how they "censored" one of the letters on this sign, but not the other one.

It’s 2023, which means it’s election year here in the Commonwealth of Virginia! And with brand new maps, thanks to redistricting, we have a hell of a lot of work ahead of us to make sure we win back control of the Virginia House of Delegates.

Nowhere is that more apparent than right here in central Virginia. The brand new 55th Virginia House District is an amalgamation of six- six!- previous districts. That’s how gerrymandered the Charlottesville, Virginia area was; there was one verrry blue district packed into Charlottesville city proper, and the surrounding suburbs of Charlottesville and Albemarle County were split off like slices ofl, with districts that ran hundreds of miles away in every direction, in order to dilute the voice of the people living here.

When I ran for the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017- against the very same incumbent I am running against now- it was in a district he literally drew personally for himself. Our campaign did better than anyone that had ever run against him, but even in doing that, we only pulled in 39% of the vote because of how meticulously gerrymandered the district map was. Thanks to a map drawing process in 2021 that wasn’t perfect- but was at least better than incumbents drawing their own maps- our district is now the bluest one the Virginia GOP still holds.

But the incumbent in our district is the most entrenched in Virginia. So, knowing I had an opponent with an eight-figure net worth, who has apparently branded me as “the most dangerous person in Virginia politics”- a description hilariously at odds with the discussion on a neighborhood chat group calling me “the local political equivalent of Ted Lasso”- I knew early on I had to build a campaign based on unprecedented grassroots funding and support if we wanted to win our race. I knew it wouldn’t be easy- especially as I worked overtime this fall in the ER through the worst pediatric health crisis in a generation or more- but against odds like that, I didn’t see another choice.

I guess if you only had nine human beings donate to you in six months, this would seem pretty “dangerous”!

And we’ve had an incredible start: we were the most grassroots campaign in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia in 2022. The feeling of seeing your name listed higher that incredible public servants such as Jennifer Carol Foy, Jennifer McClellan, Louise Lucas, and Ghazala Hashmi is, just… wow. I have no words at the kind of honor that is.

Part of that grassroots strategy means going out unapologetically into our almost entirely rural district, and taking our progressive message to every single holler and hill of our district nestled in the foothills of Appalachia- letting folks know that, for the first time in a generation, they’ve got the chance to have a representative who’ll actually listen to and fight for them.

And the response to that has been amazing. I sent out some emails not long after the midterm elections to people who had signed up for our mailing list, ask people to let us know if they wanted yard signs. I figured, this far out from the election we’d get… a half dozen? A dozen responses?

Two things to never forget to put on a Virginia campaign sign- the eastern shore, and a union bug.

Instead, we blew through an entire order of over a hundred signs!

The pent-up energy here in central Virginia is enormous. This is what happens when you are so thoroughly gerrymandered that your voice in Richmond has been silenced for a generation or more. In 2010, when the last round of redistricting took place, Republicans and Democrats teamed up to “gerrymander each other”, which resulted in agreements giving each incumbent, effectively, the ability to draw their own district. This was so insidious in 2015, out of the 140 seats up for election, only one- ONE- incumbent lost. The ability for our area to have proper representation was sacrificed in the name of incumbency protection.

To give you one example of this, I received a note shortly after I put out the word on our signs. “Kellen,” it read, “I would love to have a yard sign to put up at my house in (rural Albemarle county). We don’t get many eyes, but my neighbor has obnoxious Trump signs outside his house that you are going to have to see to believe, and I would love to put yours across from his.”

Unable to pass up a challenge like that, I loaded a half dozen yard signs into my pickup truck and wandered down not too far from the Walton House- the house that was the real-life inspiration and location of the one from the TV show “The Waltons”. This was down a little-trafficked road that would fit the dictionary definition of “hollers and hills”; according to the Virginia Department of Transportation, it’s one of the least trafficked roads in the Commonwealth.

One of our barn signs out and about!

Honestly, the fact that people would ask for signs with my name on them is such a surreal kind of honor that I cannot fathom saying no- especially if they’re using them to fight the intimidation from the kind of signs displayed in the picture at the head of this article.

This voter was incredibly appreciative. “Finally,” they said, “there’ll be some balance around here!” We had a long chat about a number of rural issues, and finally they said, “Look, I appreciate you bringing those extra signs, but I don’t want to use them all. When we have put up (Democratic) signs in the past, they have all ‘mysteriously’ gone missing, so you don’t need to waste our money on us.” We talked awhile longer and then came to an agreement- I would give them three signs, and I promised them that I would always- always- have another sign available to them as soon as one went missing.

The grin and handshake I got from that promise is worth more than those signs will ever cost.

And that’s because of you- because of all of you reading this. You got that voter their yard signs, you empowered them to feel able to stand up in a district that’s winnable for a progressive for the first time in a generation. You empowered, and are continuing to empower, us to go out and prove that an unapologetic progressive can run and win in rural America- and lay the groundwork and path to prove that Virginia isn’t the only place it can be done, but in every zip code, every state, and every single part of our country.

So join us, and chip in today; help us keep this grassroots momentum going, $5, $10, and $20 at a time. And let’s bring progress to Virginia- together.

Kellen Squire is an emergency department nurse from Charlottesville, Virginia, running for the Virginia House of Delegates against the author of Virginia’s transvaginal ultrasound bill. Donate today, and help us flip the bluest district the Virginia GOP still holds!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/30/2149770/--Can-you-bring-me-a-yard-sign-My-neighbor-well-you-ll-have-to-come-see-it

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