(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Democrats have Done the Work in Wisconsin: Bring It On Home (HS' Final Canvass Report here) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-09-05

One of the states that pushed the hardest for the 10 Million Doors Knocked by Labor Day goal was Wisconsin. So it didn’t surprise me that Wisconsin had the second highest volunteer turnout on Saturday. “We knew we were close,” one of our organizers texted back when i let them know we had made it. “But we pushed people really hard. Somehow, i doubt our volunteers felt pushed. The Harris Energy is real.

Here’s the thing. Hope Springs from Field PAC [website] is grassroots-driven and when the grassroots wants to do something, we just facilitate that, as long as they fit within our core missions. Clearly, Knocking on 10 Million Doors fit within our mission!

The Freedom message of the Harris campaign really fits Wisconsin, especially outside of Milwaukee. The suburbs in these areas have been red in the past, purplish more recently and growing more blue every day it seems.

One thing about Wisconsin is that we’ve been knocking on doors here since Hope Springs started. One ramification of this is that we have more volunteers take “challenge turf” than in any other state.

“Challenge turf” is basically turf cut to my specifications. I’ve been knocking on doors since 1972 (for Bill Nelson’s first campaign) and i’ve continued to do so in every cycle since. I’ve honed my technique, and taken on a few “who can knock on the most doors” challenges over time. It’s one of the reasons why i try to fly out to these different states in the Spring and Summer.

You may or may not remember that Hope Springs from Field has a system of increasing the amount of doors included in turf each month. 55 doors in March, 65 doors in April, 75 doors in May and 85 doors in June. Challenge turf is 125 doors. Make it worth my while, as it were (125 is about a third of the number of doors i’ve knocked on in my “recording setting” days, lol).

Believe it or not, there are people who think that can out-knock me (at my age, people do) and regularly take out “challenge turfs” week in and week out. And want to compete when i come out. For all i know, they might even compete amongst themselves when i’m not. A little fun amongst ourselves, but it is one reason why we hit a lot of doors. And a lot of doors was needed last Saturday because there turned out to be a lot of obstacles to reaching 10M doors by Labor Day.

My point, of course, is that we had 47 volunteers take out “challenge turfs” this year in Wisconsin, the most of any state.

Wisconsin remains equally focused on their local expectations in this year’s election. Court-imposed re-districting has given Democrats the chance to win majorities in their state bodies, and volunteers here don’t want it to do to waste. Some of our volunteers even leave Democratic legislative lit at the doors they knock on, although i’d argue it might be a bit early for doing so. But we don’t stop them. (Some of them even ask voters about their impressions of local candidates, but some of the volunteers have also found that intimidating because local candidates don’t usually have the same name recognition that federal candidates do.)

1,242 volunteers came out to canvass in Wis-consin on Saturday. We continue to canvass in Milwaukee (where we are canvassing in African-American wards with primarily Black volun-teers) and its suburbs (the WOW counties), as well as Racine, Kenosha and Dane counties. The key Democratic and swing areas of this Senate Swing State. Last Saturday was our last day of knocking here, and we expect all our volunteers to transition over to the Coordinated Campaign and WisDems.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/5/2249996/-Democrats-have-Done-the-Work-in-Wisconsin-Bring-It-On-Home-HS-Final-Canvass-Report-here?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/