I don’t have to tell you that Michael Feggans won by 8, that the State Senator (Rouse) whose district is included in Feggans’ won by 12, and the Dems flipped the House of Delegates. We found the margins surprising, because when we went to bed, Feggans was 4 behind and Rouse up by less than one. Even when Gideon texted us an hour later that Feggans was now expected to win, he was only up 4. Unfortunately for the numbers-inclined, the Virginia counties were not consistent in whether they counted mail or Election Day ballots first, not to mention geographic implications in partial reports that we can not even guess at. In our district, however, we can be sure that the mail vote was counted last, as it accounted for the entire ~2200 vote margin and then some. Feggans fought the Republican to a near-draw between the early in-person vote (pro-Dem) and the day-of vote (pro-Rep), but last I saw was up 2:1 in the mailed ballots.

This means I can’t say much about the remaining uncalled races. First, there’s three days’ grace for receipt of mail ballots. In one race, they have not yet finished with the initial count, and no one seems to know what type of ballots remain uncounted, or why. Then there will be the curing attempts on the mail ballots that have some sort of error. So, I wouldn’t give up on those yet.

There were nine canvassers from the East Bay, and we knocked, by my count, on about 2000 doors. The campaign had all the volunteers needed. We heard every target door was knocked on at least twice. We funded a well-organized machine that was ready for everyone who came through the door. (This does not apply to their poor taste in donuts.) Student delegations came down from DC to help. We were a little skeptical of the young campaign managers’ confidence based on turnout, but they were correct.

This post would be seriously incomplete without mentioning our wonderful hosts, David and Carol Pariser. Not only did they open their spare bedrooms, they cooked us dinner and uncorked a really first-rate wine every night.

Details tomorrow. Only regret: count was slow and race tight. We left the watch party before he could claim victory.

Reminder: this is the last meeting of the cycle at our house.

Naomi gave a book report on The Tyranny of the Minority. The American system has always been skewed, but the situation is unusually difficult with the Senate and Electoral College. As an action item, there’s support for the Popular Vote Compact, which would break the EC stranglehold as states pass laws to award their electors to the popular vote winner. Unlike abolishing the EC, this is does require a Constitutional amendment to the founding document most difficult to amend in the developed world.

Bill: Organizing in the Central Valley is moving along. Central Valley Matters is hard at work. Rudy Salas seems to have the primary edge in CA–22 over the other Democrat. In CA–13, Adam Grey retains a name-recognition advantage. Phil Arballo is the more energetic Democrat.

I talked about the preliminary returns in Virginia. The local expert appears to be Tom Bonier. The Democratic early-vote advantage is much less than in 2021, but this is in part that the Republicans have changed their minds about encouraging voting by mail. He predicts a close election. Virginia still has a large number of voters who go to the polls on Election Day. Michael Feggans took a break from door-knocking to give us a special shout-out.

Aaron Frank of Focus for Democracy announced their latest fundraising is on behalf of Courier Newsroom. F4D’s analysis shows an 8-point swing towards Democrats when people are connected to local news, the function Courier is trying to perform with the disappearance of newspapers. F4D has both a tax-deductible 501(c)3 arm and a 501(c)4. They earlier pitched for a number of grassroots organizations they feel gave bang-for-buck.

We’d like to have one more meeting before closing up for this cycle (and before Naomi and I leave to work Virginia Beach for Feggans). It will be either the 22nd or 29th.

We have no arrangements for a phone bank. And it runs very close to Yom Kippur services. So, stay home and enjoy massive Democratic overperformance (about 6 points better than 2020/22) in last Tuesday’s special elections.

Sister District is running phone banks. Sign up here. Note they are all earlier in the day (check time zones), to not catch people too late on the East Coast.

Seems that the Virginia Democratic Party never thought to image-search the Internet for one of their candidates.

Va. Dem. House candidate performed sex online with husband for tips

Novel way to finance a campaign. Personally, I think her best chance would be saying she was proud of this and wondering how many MAGA men will vote for her out of fantasy, but instead she’s complaining the videos were taken from one freely-available porn site to another, which looks like a legal non-starter.

No link to the videos; this is a family Indivisible site.

Links we promised

Vote Forward Virginia letter campaigns

Postcards for VA, Feggans is in the first row, House of Delegates

Other highlights

Champagne. Surprising amount left over. I’ll have another bottle for the convictions.
Zoom with Nicole Zambrano of Sister District. Three critical races in Virginia, of which Feggans is one. She talked about the difficulty of being a first-time candidate in a new district.
Bruce gave a summary of CA Indivisible… welcome to make a post!
We had a new person. Welcome, Harry!

Phone banking and postcarding for Virginia begins. Sister District is planning to organize something in the East Bay for mid-July. In the meantime… you can join these.

• Sister District Yolo Phonebank for Michael Feggans 
  • Every Monday, 2pm-4pm PT
• Sister District Sacramento Phonebank for Michael Feggans
  • Wednesdays, 2:30pm-5pm PT
  • Saturdays, 10am-12pm PT
• Sister District Greater Chicago Phonebank for Michael Feggans
  • Wednesdays, 3pm-5pm PT 
• Sister District National Phonebank for Michael Feggans 
  • Thursdays, 1pm-3pm PT

We are also asking for 500 Feggans addresses for postcards. We’ll let you know when they become available.

Vote Forward is doing letters to Ohio against the August referendum-to-stop-referenda. The purpose is to prevent passage of a referendum in favor of abortion rights.

Our auction is up. Tell your friends. Our direct Sister District link for Feggans donations is here.

The world shows no sign of slowing down…

We began with an excellent bottle of champagne. As part of our ongoing membership drive, I pledge that all further Trump indictments will also have champagne. If he goes to prison, that day I will splurge for caviar to go with it.

Our fundraising for Michael Feggans of Virginia is only about 60% complete. For this campaign, because we have allied with Sister District, the donation page is ActBlue under their auspices. And to raise a little extra cash…

The auction is back!

and you may look at and bid on twenty lots of campaign memorabilia at this link, which you should share with all your friends. Once again, that link is https://www.32auctions.com/elm2023 .

Sample items — 

Other items: Bruce and I gave reports on Zoom meetings about 2022 campaigns. One was California Donor Table, the other Aaron Frank and Focus for Democracy. CDT had to admit that California underperformed in 2022, and announced the seven districts (no surprises) that they are targeting for 2024. We heard from a number of field organizers. Everyone knows we do better if we engage voters ahead of time. The most interesting point from Focus for Democracy is the large number of net Democratic votes that Working America (a project of the AFL-CIO) obtained in every swing state except Arizona. Frank is very interested in maximizing donor bang for buck, spoke well of them.

Bruce is working on getting us a guest speaker. Details to follow.

CDT has another Zoom session this Wednesday, noon. (One source says 1:00 pm, but the previous meeting was at noon.) Register here.