Notes from the Field: Organizing post-election and Survey Results from 86 WA-3 Volunteers (email)

Dear Friends,

As an organizer, one question I have struggled with is, Why isn’t there more base-building of political campaigns in-between elections? Most congressional campaigns shut down after election day and don’t get going again until a few months before the next election. Meanwhile, the campaign volunteers are left to languish. This is a huge missed opportunity, particularly in close races like one in Washington District 3 for Congress, where Marie Gluesenkamp Perez beat a right-wing white supremacist in a +5 Republican-leaning district with only 50.14% of the vote.

Last year’s midterms were the most expensive ever; over $16.7 billion was raised. A tiny fraction of this money would have gone a long way toward volunteer base-building.

I led a volunteer organizing effort in WA-3 in the midterms, helping to mobilize 500 volunteers to knock on doors and flip the district to Democrats; the press called it the “flip of the cycle.” Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight had given Gluesenkamp a 2% chance of winning. I wrote about our work here: https://archive.ph/IdLEw and spoke about it here: https://pca.st/ao1ejo2s

In my last newsletter, I talked about my experience this February knocking on doors of moderate voters in WA-3 and calling volunteers. I found the volunteers were excited about the idea of continuing to organize, and that they were looking for the next thing to do. Just hiring even one organizer would be a huge gift to the 500 volunteers who are sitting at home after our tremendous victory – an idle army for democracy.

I pushed the Gluesenkamp campaign to invest in organizing this year, but they were understandably overwhelmed with the business of governing and fundraising for 2024. The message from the Democratic leadership to them was that this was a “raising year” and not a “spending year.” Frustratingly, it became clear to me that nothing substantial would happen if it were led by the candidate or the party. And we couldn’t expect any resources from that quarter, either.

So I got together a group of dedicated Gluesenkamp volunteers to organize on our own. We started “Washington United for Democracy,” a project of Base Building for Power (www.basebuilding.net), the organizing training program that I co-lead.

I raised $4,500 for a pilot project to hire a couple of part-time organizers. What would happen if we started working the list of volunteers for a few weeks? I had a list of 350 volunteers to start calling. I recruited three graduates of our Base Building for Power’s training program (who had also been volunteers for Gluesenkamp) to call door knocking volunteers 10 hours a week for five weeks. We put together a rap and started calling.

Before making an action plan, I wanted to see what this group of volunteers was up for. I designed a survey to ask them what issues they were most concerned about, how much they would commit to volunteer weekly and what kinds of volunteer activities were they most interested in. I collected some demographic information, too. You can see the survey here: https://bit.ly/3Vyu1Z9

We called through the list with a pitch about continuing our momentum and filling out the survey. We called everyone twice, then started sending text messages. In two weeks, we got 86 surveys and 99-209 hours per week of volunteer commitments!

Here are some the responses from the survey from 86 people:

I totaled these commitments: this group committed 99-209 weekly volunteer hours. Another 27 people agreed to volunteer once a month.

Most interesting to me, we found out that the No. 1 thing people want to do is also the No. 1 most effective strategy for winning split districts: knocking on doors. It makes sense that the volunteers wanted to continue that work because they came out of a campaign that was laser-focused on knocking on doors.

With a little work, we found a group of volunteers, fresh off of a successful campaign, ready for more. Now the question is who will organize them, keep them active, and build the volunteer base this year? Hiring organizers to recruit volunteers like this is the most cost effective thing I could think of. In this district, it doesn’t appear that the candidate or party are interested in this opportunity.

If you have any thoughts or responses, I'd love to hear them. Also, I'd love to hear about positive efforts in swing districts engaging volunteers in between elections.

In Solidarity,

Harley Augustino

• High Cost of Living (76%)

• Affordable Housing (59%)

• Climate Change (32%)

• Reproductive Justice (27%)

• Rise of Extremism (20%)

The graphs are pretty self-explanatory, but here are my takeaways:

1. 70%+ are open (said “yes” or “maybe”) to volunteering

2. They say they are willing to do the most effective activity to mobilize voters: talking with people they know

3. A high percentage (43%) identified as “moderate/independent”

4. Only 55% identified as all the time voters

5. Most people (77%) are not a part of ANY organization, and 95% were not a part of any political organization connected to their issues.

This demographic of Arizona voters - non-white moderate voters who care most about working class issues - could decide who wins the Presidency and the Senate in 2024. We found similar results in our organizing surveys in Ohio and Virginia.

The good news is that they care most about working-class issues, and that they say they are willing to volunteer by talking with their friends and family. As billions of dollars will get spent in this election- mostly in ads- saturating states like Arizona - the best way to cut through the noise- is by an Arizonan talking to their friends, family, and neighbors in Arizona, and encouraging them to vote. This is also the best way to build leadership and power in the long term.

If 90% are not a part of any political or social justice organization, who are they going to listen to this election? Especially the potential volunteers, who are willing to talk with their friends and neighbors? I have shared all the information we gathered with our organizational partners in Arizona, who have been fighting for decades successfully to change the state.

The other big question is- how many of the people who say “yes” or “maybe” to volunteering actually volunteer? What will they do? How many of their friends and neighbors can they get to vote? Are there some gems in this group that will become organizers?

We will dig into this and more in the next Notes from the Field.

Onward and Upward!