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.

If anyone wants to join a phone bank, we need every vote we can find. Here is info about Sister District’s phone banks tomorrow. Sign up!

Word on the street is this is going to be close in both Houses of the General Assembly (what VA calls its legislature). HD–97 (Feggans) is one of three key House of Delegates districts to flip.

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.

Starting this Thursday, Oct. 12, you can MEET THE CANDIDATES running for Congress in 6 key California districts!

The MEET THE CANDIDATE interviews are the first events co-hosted by the brand new California Grassroots Alliance, formed to offer Indivisible and other grassroots volunteers a focused six-district strategy, effective tools, and fresh intel. It’ a virtual event—Join from anywhere.

Mondays and Thursdays  7 – 8:30pm PDT

The road to the House majority runs through California. We have the power, right here in California, to take the Speaker’s gavel out of GOP hands by mobilizing grassroots volunteers statewide. We can do the work to sweep six key seats—five flips and one hold—and stop destructive MAGA stunts. Our state can put Congress back on the path to governing.

Following each lively 45-minute candidate interview, Indivisible Sonoma County’s Tom Benthin will facilitate a wide-ranging participant discussion about the target district, the candidates, and the election outlook for re-taking the House via California victories.

Bring a friend, list your questions, and get ready to activate!

Use this link to sign up: https://mobilize.us/s/2ojfWE (You may need to put in your own name etc to receive a unique link for attending.)

DATES: NorCal/Central Valley Series
Oct 12:     Phil Arballo, CA-13
Nov 6:      Rudy Salas, CA-22
Nov 27:    Adam Gray, CA-13
TBD:        Melissa Hurtado, CA-22

We’ll meet on Sunday Oct 29 4:00-5:00

I will present the book The Tyranny of the Minority which is getting lots of press. We’ll review how things are going in Virginia and what activities remain for everyone to get involved in for that. Meanwhile, there is still time to write letters, mail postcards and phone bank. The Sister District phone banks continue to get really good press –more info about that to follow. If anyone else has something to present at our meeting, please let me know. We look forward very much to seeing everyone.

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.

In preparation for the 2024 election push, California Indivisibles are proud to present an interactive live zoom meeting with Simon Rosenberg! This event should definitely be worth attending—Simon was the first national expert to refute the false “red wave” narrative during the 2022 midterms, and has recently begun publishing the “Hopium Chronicles” as an antidote to some of the dismal predictions in the media. Use the link below to sign up.

Date: Wednesday 10/24/23; Time: 05:30 PM Pacific Time

RSVP: https://bit.ly/SimonRosenbergCA

This meeting will be the first opportunity to hear from Simon on his early views on the 2024 elections here in California. The inspiring citizen blogger Robert Hubbell recently wrote, “The most consistent, reliable source for information about Democratic prospects at the state and national level is Simon Rosenberg.”

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.