As Judy reminds us, we have a chance to flip the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to a progressive majority, if Vinnie Bacon wins the South Country district.

This is the most important, consequential race for all of Alameda County on the November ballot. A victory for Vinnie will completely shift the balance on the five-member BOS which has resisted grass roots efforts to audit and restrict the Sheriff’s budget, combat his cooperation with ICE, his militarized form of policing and abusive conditions at Santa Rita Jail.  Vinnie Bacon is the clean money candidate, pro-labor, environmental candidate, and he needs our full-out support.

We are co-sponsoring a Meet-&-Greet for Vinnie. And a small contribution should go a long way in this race. Pre-registration is required.

I am re-pasting this with updates (the updates in ranking are shaded yellow). Nothing significant has changed, except that the Republicans declined to nominate nutcase Kris Kobach in Kansas. I am pleasantly surprised to see that the first post-primary polls show it is still a one or two point race, against us at the moment.

EDIT 2020-09-22: I have taken this chart down, because there is a revised version here.

Mode	Committed	Done
Postcards	3895
Letters	900
Phone calls	550
Texts	3000

For the time being, as people report progress I will update this table by hand. If I become either more clever, or pay WordPress their ransom for further upgrades, we can automate it.

Monmouth has a new poll of all the Iowa House races released today. We were correct to concentrate on Rita Hart. She is 3 behind, based, I surmise, on inferior name recognition compared to her opponent, who has lost the last three elections for this seat (but to Dave Loebsack, who is retiring).

Notwithstanding their frequent requests for money, Democratic incumbents Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne are comfortably ahead.

With vicious bigot Steve King denied renomination in the Republican primary, the fourth Iowa CD is no longer competitive. Garden-variety Republican Randy Feenstra is almost 20 ahead.

I started off with a review of what we need to worry about, and what we don’t.

Bruce talked about phone calls and texting, encouraging us to find a local or regional campaign that suits us. For example, just calling for Biden may not work for you.

Naomi: everyone should make a 100–day plan. Here are some resources.

• Vote Forward [letters]
• August 8 Swing Left Letter Writing Party
• Postcards. Virginia. Tony the Democrat.
• Flip the West [phone bank] [text and phone bank schedule]

Bill will be hosting a series of phone banks to Michigan on weekends. Contact him for information.

Time: Aug 2, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Judy Stacey was nice enough to get me a speaking slot to the Wellstone Democratic Club. My points were familiar to Indivisible Elmwood participants.

• Don’t give money out of spite (McGrath in KY, probably Gideon in ME).
• Don’t give money to candidates who already have all they can use (Kelly in AZ, Jones in AL).
• Look for Democratic candidates for whom money can truly make the difference between winning and losing (Gross in AK, Ossoff in GA)

I prepared a spreadsheet that also showed how much more (or less) our candidates have compared to the opponent.

EDIT: A full-size version of this spreadsheet is here, and of our slate, here.

Well, if you were at the meeting, you will understand that I am enabling the Waiting Room. The alternative is not exposing the link in a public forum, which will complicate our long-term growth strategy. I will have someone make sure you don’t get left in Purgatory.

We made decision on current fund-raising (Al Gross, Jon Ossoff now; House and State House races later). The ActBlue page has been updated and I reset the thermometer. Let’s send it high again.

I also reviewed why I think these races are good value for money and effort.

For the special campaign of Vote Forward for August 11, which is to get Floridians to vote in their August 11 primary, either email Naomi or go to http://www.votefwd.com.

Bruce said the last national Indivisible call had “a lot of meat”—Call notes. He also plans to sign up for the virtual workshop Training to Win 2020: How We Win During a Pandemic. Also, VirusFreeVoting.org rolls the Voterizer app on Saturday, July 25th at 5:00 (PT) on social media. Theme is a Trump Retirement Party.

We are going to try to coordinate our auction items with EBAA, which has an auction of its own.

Topic: Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Jul 19, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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