Progressive Challengers Need To Come Up With New Campaign Strategies-- STAT

Ask a progressive challenger to lay out a roadmap to beating a conservative incumbent and inevitably you will hear about a muscular voter registration drive. That becomes a lot trickier with a pandemic raging. But not impossible. In Arizona there are quite a few organizations that work to register people who are likely to vote for Democrats. Unfortunately there is far more likelihood that these voters will skip primaries and vote in general elections only. From the first time I spoke with Eva Putzova, she has always told me she is focussing on likely primary voters. Yesterday, I asked Eva, the progressive candidate taking on reactionary Blue Dog-- and "former" Republican-- Tom O'Halleran. She  reminded us that she "ran 3 successful campaigns before I embarked on this journey in Arizona's first congressional district: in 2014, I won a seat on the Flagstaff's City Council; in 2016, I lead a local initiative raising Flagstaff's minimum wage to $15 per hour; and in 2018, I successfully defended that initiative against an attempt by the local chamber of commerce and the Koch brothers' network money to repeal it. None of these campaigns were easy and there's no magical recipe for success. But in all three campaigns, I planned the strategy in advance, started early with voter outreach, stayed focused for a prolonged period of time, and intentionally pursued a consistent message platform that was authentic and rooted in facts. I took these lessons and the discipline from the last six years into my congressional campaign and recruited a very competent team. We launched the campaign in January 2019 and the long campaign cycle allowed us to learn a lot about what works and what does not in a vast district like ours. Even without the pandemic, our campaigning has looked differently because we can't physically reach a critical mass of voters by simply knocking on their doors. Because we are running a grassroots campaign without any corporate PAC money, we have to be very strategic in how we spend our lean budget. I'm not going to pretend that raising funds a few dollars at a time is not difficult but how we run our campaign is important, because it's indicative of how I will legislate: with integrity and for the people."

One candidate told me that he and his team are "still trying to figure out how we'll proceed over the coming months, honestly. We need to attract the youth and working class voters who never show up, and the team is meeting regularly via Zoom, trying to work out some ways to do that electronically, but it's in early stages. A lot of our planning was built around a massive ground game that's now impossible."

Reporting for NBC News, Alex Seitz-Wald wrote yesterday that "Presidential elections are typically prime time for bringing new people into the political process, but the coronavirus pandemic is making voter registration more difficult than ever, prompting concerns that many young Americans and other nonvoters might miss their chance to get onto the rolls before November." His concern is the presidential race. Ours is for congressional contests. There's next to no enthusiasm for Biden and unless he can get non-voters in their 70s and 80s to register, voter registration drives don't matter for him anyway. But they certainly do for West Virginia progressive Paul Jean Swearengin, who is taking on Trump rubber stamp Shelley Moore Capito, for the Senate seat Capito has basically given over to Trump. My team has been amazing during this time to expand voter outreach. "Our county captains," she told me, "are making phone calls, texting and sending postcards. We have expanded our digital marketing strategy, are hosting virtual townhalls, and expanding fundraising to air a commercial. It's challenging but it can be done." Seitz-Wald:

"This is the moment when we historically see people take action to register to vote," said Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "The public health crisis has brought all of that activity virtually to a grinding halt."

Voter registration happens year-round, but the months leading up to a presidential election are crucial as interest in politics spikes and funding for registration efforts flows in.

In the runup to the 2016 presidential election, Americans filed more than 77.5 million voter registration applications, according to the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that helps states administer elections, and total registration topped 200 million.

That still left tens of millions of eligible Americans who are not registered to vote. And this year, millions of new Americans will become eligible by turning 18 as Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012), the most diverse in history, is expected to surpass the silent generation (born between 1928 and 1945) as a share of the electorate.

Millions more Americans have moved and need to re-register at a different address, while others have been purged from the rolls for not voting in recent elections, including in key battleground states such as Wisconsin and Georgia.

But now, all the traditional ways of signing up voters are out the window, prompting concerns that a large swath of Americans will miss their chance to participate in this year's elections.

"Registration is going to be an issue for everyone," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is pushing for emergency voting reforms to respond to the coronavirus crisis.

"Both parties typically register people at events," Klobuchar added on a call with reporters. "And if there's no events, and no way to go door to door, that's going to be a problem."

Voter registration activists typically seek out crowds, but there are none now.

Students are not on campuses. Churches are not holding regular services. Fairs, parades and community events have been canceled. And even setting up a table outside a grocery store or a shopping area on a warm weekend afternoon is questionable.

Departments of motor vehicles are the source of about 45 percent of all voter applications nationwide, thanks to the Motor Voter Act, but they, too, are closed in many parts of the country. And so are other places where registration forms are typically available, such as libraries, high schools and government offices.

Another big source of registrations in states that allow same-day registration is polling places, but many of them will be closed in upcoming primaries and it's not clear how many will be open by November as states try to shift to mail-in balloting.

Groups that would typically be sending hundreds of canvassers into the field to sign up voters right now have shut down in-person operations and switched entirely to digital organizing.

Over the last month, we noticed that small dollar contributions had dropped off noticeably for our candidates through Blue America. Yesterday we started an online fundraiser for Texas progressive Mike Siegel and we're seeing slightly more normal patterns of contributions than what we've been seeing since the financial uncertainty that was engendered by the pandemic and the stock market crash. Associated Press reporter Brian Slodysko wrote yesterday that presidential candidates have backed off aggressive asks. "What used to be a routine request for political cash," he wrote, "could now come across as tone-deaf or tacky. The two also run the risk of competing for limited dollars with charities trying to raise money for pandemic relief. With a recession potentially on the horizon, there's a question of whether wealthy donors are in a giving mood and whether grassroots supporters who chip in small amounts will still have the wherewithal to keep at it. That presents a delicate challenge as both candidates try to stockpile the massive amounts of cash needed for the general election campaign. 'It’s hard to have a conversation with someone right now to ask how they’re getting by, and then ask them for financial support in the next sentence,' said Greg Goddard, a Democratic fundraiser who worked for Amy Klobuchar's presidential campaign before the Minnesota senator dropped out of the Democratic race. To Tim Lim, a Democratic consultant who worked for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, 'it's a world where no one has a good answer.' He said that 'on the fundraising side, we are going to take some massive hits as a party.' The task is particularly acute for Biden. The former vice president is trying to pivot from the primary to the general election in a race essentially frozen by the virus."

Biden-- and his status quo platform-- have virtually no grassroots enthusiasm anyway and he's been dependent on ultra-wealthy donors and corporately-funded SuperPACs, even more so than Trump. Slodysko wrote that "The pandemic has put all big-dollar fundraisers on hold, like all in-person political events. That's forced Trump and Biden, for now, to rely on online fundraising. Biden is holding virtual fundraisers via video conferences. But they lack the exclusivity and tactile nature of an in-person event, where donors can network, see and be seen. Biden and Trump continue to send out fundraising emails and texts."

“It isn't easy for me to ask you for money today,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a fundraising email Thursday, seeking contributions as low as $5. “There are so many deserving charities and small businesses in your community where your money makes a huge difference right now. And of course, your own needs and the needs of your family take precedence.”

But, she continued, "we have to keep fundraising because we have to keep campaigning. And we have to keep campaigning because it's the only way we can defeat Trump in November.”

...Sanders has earned praise for turning to his army of small-dollar donors to raise $3.5 million for virus relief instead of his campaign. The senator, whose campaign is fueled by grassroots online donors, has stopped sending out fundraising emails.

"Right now my focus is on this extraordinary crisis,” Sanders told The Associated Press on Wednesday, after declining to discuss the future of his campaign.

Bloomberg also shelved plans to leverage his billions of dollars of personal wealth to run an outside group aimed at preventing Trump's reelection. Instead, he recently promoted a $40 million philanthropic effort aimed at curtailing the spread of the virus.

While the virus has disrupted many facets of life, Democratic fundraisers are optimistic that a degree of normalcy will return eventually. That will be a benefit to Biden.

And "normalcy" is all Biden has to campaign about-- hoping that few voters realize that his version of "normalcy" is what made Donald Trump feasible for tens of millions of voters in the first place. Meanwhile... over the weekend, Michael Stipe released a demo of his new solo song, "No Time For Love Like Now."





Two weeks ago, Michael released a comforting end of the world message... that may sound familiar.