Notes from the Field #7 We won!!! (the "flip of the cycle")
Hello Friends,
In what was called by 538 reporters called “the flip of the cycle” (they projected 2% chance of victory), our volunteer-led door knocking effort pulled of an incredible upset with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory in WA-3! This victory felt so sweet for all of us volunteers, especially keeping the smug Joe Kent out of Washington.
Also, McCloud Skinner OR-5 lost, likely helping to cost Republicans the house, but I’ll keep it positive for today, and save that story for another post.
So far the press is missing the story of exactly HOW the WA-3 race was won. Below is a press release sent by some of our key volunteers that attempts to tell the story, as it should be considered by other campaigns going forward. If you know any reporters who would be interested in interviewing key people on the ground, let me know and I can provide contact information for the key volunteers and staff in this race.
Cheers,
Harley
*Press Release*
Behind Marie Gluesenkamp’s Stunning Upset: An Army of Young Mothers
Knocking on 40,000 doors
How 500 volunteer door knockers flipped a red Congressional district in Washington State against all odds.
In the run-up to the Nov. 8 election, the pollsters were giving Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, 34, a Democrat and an auto shop owner from a rural part of the district, a two percent chance of winning a congressional seat in the District 3 race against Joe Kent, a well-funded MAGA Republican and career soldier allied with Trump. They figured that Kent would win by a margin of 11 points.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee decided it had bigger fish to fry defending a seat in Oregon’s District 5, just across the Columbia River, leaving Gluesenkamp largely to fend for herself. On a shoestring budget, she hired Tim Gowen, a college friend with no political experience, to be her Field Director.
Yet last evening, several major news outlets declared Gluesenkamp the WINNER by less than two percentage points in District 3, a largely white suburban community that includes the city of Vancouver in the southwestern corner of Washington. How did Marie do it? Simple. Gowen and a handful of seasoned volunteer organizers unleashed an army of more than 500 volunteers, most of them young mothers from the district, to knock on doors and persuade their neighbors one by one to throw their support to Gluesenkamp.
And knock on doors they did — more than 38,500, in fact! (One paid staff member knocked on another 1,000 doors, bringing the exact total to 39,587.) The troops were largely mobilized by 10 volunteers who formed a “call squad” — not to call voters, but to direct and follow up with the volunteers who were knocking on voters’ doors. The all-volunteer squad was a mix of mostly young mothers from the district and young people of color from out of town who had been trained as grassroots organizers by Base Building for Power (www.basebuilding.net), a training program for recruiting volunteers.
As the volunteer army began to mushroom, young people began to outnumber the “boomers” who well-acquainted with “old-style” canvassing had been among the first to volunteer for Gluesenkamp.
Moving the moderates
At the door, the Gluesenkamp volunteers encountered thousands of frustrated moderates who did not like the extremism of the Republican Party and, in particular, did not like former President Donald Trump. Many had voted in the Aug. 2 Republican primaries for Jaime Herrera Beutler, R- Battle Ground, Wash., the District 3 incumbent who voted to impeach Trump after the assault on the Capitol last year. She paid the price and lost to Kent. Volunteers convinced many moderate voters at their door that Kent’s extremist positions were out of touch with the district, and his ties to Trump would just give Trump more power. Many moderates were convinced through grassroots organizing, and were willing to vote for a Democrat who would better represent their district.
One of the first-time canvassers for Gluesenkamp was a swing voter herself. Mel Finn-Kamerath, from the small town of Kalama, Wash, was scared to knock on doors at first but quickly got the hang of it. On one gusty, rainy day, a voter told her, “I am too busy raising three young kids to think about politics.” Mel countered: “I have three kids too, but I’m out here because it’s important to my family. Last time I voted for a Republican, and this time I’m supporting Marie.”
In recent years, as money has poured into politics, the campaigns are focusing less and less on volunteers. Those who do mount serious ground campaigns, as the labor union UNITE HERE has done in Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, rely primarily on paid canvassers. But studies show that the most effective way to move voters is with a volunteer at the door.
The DCCC was not involved in the mostly volunteer ground campaign in Washington’s District 3. In contrast, the DCC was running the ground campaign in Oregon’s District 5; and the progressive Democratic incumbent, Jamie McLeod-Skinner, is losing by a two percent margin to Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican who ran as a centrist. The DCC had more resources in OR-5 and much fewer volunteers knocking on doors, yet the volunteer-driven effort in WA-3 sealed an improbable victory.