November 18, 2023 Newsletter
Posted on November 18, 2023
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Massachusetts' best resource for keeping the House and the Senate and turning purple states Blue.
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Volunteers Taking Back Democracy
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When We Work, We Win
● Frontline Update: 2023 in the Rearview Mirror/2024 Ahead
● SBA Goes All Out for VA
● SBA and Other Grassroots Work & Win
● Host Recap
● Catch the Latest: SBA Website Update
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2023 in the Rearview Mirror/2024 Ahead
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Swing Blue Alliance has had a great year and is already planning for a great 2024. Come hear about it at this week’s Frontline Update.
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We’ll be talking about how our name says it all: how “Alliance” with local, Democratic, and grassroots organizations really works. We’ll review all we accomplished in 2023 through phone banking, canvassing, and postcard/letter writing. Finally, we’ll slide right into how we’ll address the challenges of 2024.
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Join us for this year-end wrap-up and be part of our cohort, the volunteers who believe that when we work, we win.
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Sun, Nov 19 @ 5 - 5:45 pm EST
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In a very tight election, Swing Blue Alliance helped protect democracy in Virginia, where Dems held the State Senate and flipped the House of Delegates.
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While the Senate candidate we supported lost, we also supported down-ballot candidates in his district, one of whom won by a substantial victory, helping to clinch the new Democratic legislative majority in Virginia. The other House candidate we worked with had almost no support aside from what Swing Blue provided, and she ‘overperformed’ what would be expected in this fairly red district, losing by a mere 550 votes (out of 28,957).
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SBA offered substantial support for the campaigns:
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- 16 volunteers went to Virginia and knocked on over 5,000 doors, spoke with 1,100 voters, and identified 565 supporters.
- 125 volunteers had nearly 3,000 phone conversations with voters and identified over 2,000 supporters.
- 198 donors raised $48.5K for Virginia candidates and voter empowerment organizations.
- SBA volunteers sent 77,300 postcards on behalf of urban and rural candidates.
- Swing Blue Alliance, Rural GroundGame, and Red2Blue recognized the need for a political infrastructure that would empower Dem candidates to reclaim rural votes. Together, they set up phone banks where volunteers spoke to over 1600 rural voters, found 1034 supporters, and recruited 77 volunteers. They also sent over 50,000 postcards to these voters.
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SBA and Other Grassroots Organizations Work to Win
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We and our grassroots compatriots proved that when we work, we win:
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KY: Democratic Governor Andy Beshear beat the opposition in a state that Trump carried by 26 percentage points in 2020.
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NC: Democrats won a clean sweep in Huntersville, the second largest town in Mecklenburg County.
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NH: In September, Democrat Hal Rafter took 56 percent of the vote to fill a Republican-held seat in the NH State House; On Nov 7, Nashua’s Dem mayor held his seat, and Dems narrowed the Republican hold on the State House of Representatives to only one vote.
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OH: The ballot initiative that codifies abortion rights in the state constitution passed in a state that voted twice for Trump; this win was possible
due to the defeat of an earlier Republican ballot initiative that would have made passing ballot initiatives extremely difficult.
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PA: Democrat Heather Boyd won a state representative seat in Delaware County, allowing Dems to maintain control of the House; Democrat Daniel McCaffery won a seat on the State Supreme Court; and Pennsylvania Democrats also maintained control of the Allegheny County executive office, despite the massive fundraising advantage of Boyd's opponent.
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VA: Dems held control of the State Senate and gained a slight majority in the State House of Delegates.
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WI: Thanks to a hard-fought win by Judge Janet Protasiewicz, liberals took control of the State Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years, protecting abortion rights; her win sets the stage to rule against the most severely gerrymandered maps in the country.
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This is a reminder that polls do not tell the whole story. In contrast to all the media stories of doom for the Dems, look what we have achieved. All the work of grassroots organizations like Swing Blue Alliance has resulted in these wins. In turn, these wins laid a firm foundation for building turnout and involvement, our surest path to victory in 2024.
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Swing Blue Alliance contributed to the outcome of these elections in multiple ways.
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Our Mission
Swing Blue Alliance (formerly Swing Left Greater Boston) is the largest all-volunteer Democratic grassroots organization headquartered in Massachusetts. We use proven methods to protect our Democracy, work on competitive local and national elections, and strengthen the Democratic party at the grassroots level.
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Your contribution will help fund the operations of this volunteer-produced newsletter, which goes out to over 15K subscribers.
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