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.

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!