politics

Minutes of January 26 meeting

/ Andrew J. Lazarus / 4 Comments

The vote for DNC Chair is February 1st. We support Ben Wikler, currently Chair of the Wisconsin State Democrats. He has done a fantastic job there, with grassroots organizing and fundraising. (His principal opponent appears to be Ken Martin, who holds the corresponding post in Minnesota and is currently a Vice Chair of the DNC. In Minnesota, we are at best standing still.)

We distributed a list of California DNC voting delegates. VotePro has a Google doc of the delegates’ contact info. The list of current DNC officers and their phone numbers is here. Please contact the officers, or any of the California delegates, especially if you know them.

Our DC representatives need us to help stiffen their spines. Well, maybe not Lateefah Simon, but I’ll include her number for convenience.

The first significant 2025 election (other than DNC) is for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, April 1st. Wikler helped flip this court, with immediate benefits on gerrymandering and reproductive rights. Our candidate is Susan Crawford. Our postcards and addresses for her have not arrived yet, but we will write them when they come. You can donate at that link via ActBlue.

We also have the entire Virginia House of Delegates and the statewide offices up in November 2025. Our gubernatorial candidate will be Abigail Spanberger, formerly a Member of Congress. The current Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor, both MAGA nuts, will fight it out in the Republican primary. In 2023 Naomi and I (and our son in Brooklyn) knocked on doors for Delegate Michael Feggans who flipped HD-97 (Virginia Beach). We’ll help him again.

From the Carson River front

/ Andrew J. Lazarus / Leave a comment

I am in Dan and Karen’s Alpine County cabin (thanks, guys!), after two days’ canvassing in Reno, two in Carson City, and one in Gardnerville. It’s gone the way door-knocking usually does: many not at home, a few houses festooned [besmirched?] with MAGA signs we skip, and some who had already voted for Harris or had a clear plan to do so. So far, we have netted two new Harris voters, both young, both eligible for the first time.

The one-and-only source for understanding Nevada elections is Jon Ralston, founder of the Nevada Independent online newspaper. His analysis for Nevada is discouraging. The big hole is Las Vegas (Clark County), where the percentage of ballots received either by mail or early in-person is too low and, while plurality registered Democratic, not by enough. In the 2022 cycle, almost ninety percent of Nevadans voted early. Northern Nevadans who heeded Trump’s advice to wait got a bad surprise when a blizzard came in Sunday night before the election and many roads were still impassable on Election Day.

Similar analysis of other swing states is mostly good news for us, especially in the Blue Wall, but the people doing the analysis don’t have Ralston’s track record. What he can’t predict, of course, is how many Republicans are voting for Harris. We have met some while canvassing. They were not on our voter contact list, but their Democratic wives were. He also admits he can’t predict how the large number of “No Party Preference” voters will go: exit polling in 2020 said Biden +6. Harris will need better.

At the same time, it is worth mentioning that the national Republican organizations have pulled their TV ads for the Nevada Senate race and all three blue House seats. Trump also cancelled a potential appearance in Minden, Nevada, fifteen minutes’ from this cabin. While the County Supervisors approved the permit unanimously—I assume the First Amendment controls here—there was apparently some grumbling over the unpaid bills when he came to the same site in 2020.

And Harris is going to Texas!? What do they know that we don’t?