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The Primary Results are In! A Rural Progressive in PA Moves Forward (Hint, it's me) [1]
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Date: 2023-05-18
Hi all:
This may be TL;DR for some folks. If you want specifics and details, keep reading, if you want the most summarized version, just get to the end.
I wanted to give a quick recap of a rural PA county. First, let me give a quick summary of who I am (for those who stumble upon this) and part of the reason as to why I am running. My name is Robert Zeigler, I'm an anti-corruption type of guy who went up against the (at the time, now former) Majority Leader of the PA State House, Kerry Benninghoff, last year. I am a rural Progressive who has done a lot of great work and my blunt nature tends to get me more support than usual. My grassroots nature led to the GOP spending over $400,000 in a race where the GOP member should win about 75% of the vote (Gerrymandering or Kerrymandering as I called it). Kerry is also personally financing my opponent (as are land developers) because I want to address affordable housing (I can charge fees to fund affordable housing as per Act 137 in PA law), blighted properties (another fee I can charge as per Act 152) and paper alleys (an issue for undeveloped areas of "no man's land" where nobody knows who owns these "alleys"). At any rate, that's my race in a nutshell.. on to the work done that helps drive results. I won, had more votes than my General Election opponent based on primary results.
Now, as an FYI my campaign has knocked a few hundred doors easily, we've made a couple of thousand calls, and we've done over 40k texts (22k to Dems for mail in ballots/support, 18k to Dems for GOTV). The most interesting part is doing the texting, our response rate tends to be around 10-12% and we have a decent amount of commitments. The only Democrats who tend to not support me are ones I hold accountable for... well whatever misdeeds they do. I know, what a surprise. Anyways, I have publicly supported some candidates, helped fundraise, etc. Most of these candidates are on the Democratic side, but, as many folks in PA are experiencing, extremists are running on a lot of local elections on the GOP side, especially in rural areas. On toward results...
You can check out the numbers here . Centre County has a slight left lean to it (Penn State University and State College "metropolitan" area. The outlying parts of the county are a bit red. However, the interesting bit is that the turnout for Democrats is 3% higher than for Republicans. My campaign texted every "likely" cell phone for every registered Democratic voter in Centre County. From what we can tell, our texting brought out about 3% higher voter turnout from Democrats or roughly 1200 voters. This matters on multiple levels... 1) higher turnout helps win elections, 2) outreach helps with engagement, 3) earlier engagement helps get people involved, and 4) if they invested in you as a voter in the primary, they are very likely invested in you for the General.
I looked more specifically into the race for my school board race (those looking at the numbers, it's PVASD aka Penns Valley Area School District, this includes precincts 6, 9, 53, 54, 62, 63, 69, 70, 71 for those really curious). Now, with the slate of extremists violating electioneering laws (confirmed, multiple reports by both Democrats and Republicans) at multiple locations and having people at the polls, Democrats cranked out the vote. As in, out of the 9 precincts there was only 1 where more Republicans (% of their voters) outperformed the Democrats. It was so high in my town that we almost had 44% voter turnout for Democrats and we actually outnumbered Republican voters in raw numbers.
Why does this matter? The overall average of voter turnout for Dems in my area was higher than that 3% average of the county. In some areas, the difference was up to 14% higher turnout for Democratic voters (3 out of 9 were 10% or higher). Only 3 out of 9 precincts in my school district area were at the average or lower for the "Dem" advantage. There are also a lot of Republicans who didn't know about how the extremists are and not having a different narrative at the polling locations led to folks just voting for them because they got a slip of paper telling them who the "Republicans were".
What I am asking out of you folks is a few things (assuming supporters of Democratic candidates):
1) Invest in rural areas, whether that is door knocking, calling, or being at polling locations handing out literature and engaging with all voters.
2) Support candidates in rural areas that are rational. Democrats as candidates (not all, but most) are great local candidates and in rural areas, there are some Republicans that do solid work. We need rational people on school board whose focus are doing right by the kids, not agendas. Support that. It's what we're doing here in Penns Valley. The rational folks finally are waking up to how bad the extremism is in their own backyard. Some are in literal shock.
3) My goal is to continue to expand the grassroots work I started in 2021 from my state house campaign. This will include expanding into ridesharing for infrequent voters to drive up turnout more. If you can donate to my county campaign, please do so here .
TL;DR version:
Rural progressive (Robert Zeigler) who, at times will anger establishment folks, utilizes texting to Democrats to get about 1200 more Dem voters out in the primary in his county. If you want details, read above.
He is asking for any support in rural areas as it actually works, if you want to chip in to help him continue that work that fends off fascists and extremists trying to undermine Education and Democracy, then click here .
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