Guest Post By Mike Siegel: Second Time's the Charm-- From "No Chance" To The Brink Of Legendary Success

Mike and his team are on track to mail out 25,000 postcards

Three years ago I was getting ready to sue the Texas Governor on behalf of the City of Austin. I had never run for political office before. I knew I was "represented" by one of the worst Republicans in Congress, Michael McCaul, and I knew that we had to do everything we could to resist the Trump regime. But I was more focused on stopping Texas Senate Bill 4, a horrible anti-immigrant law that was causing terror in my community.

Today, I'm the favorite to win the Democratic nomination in the Texas 10th, a national battleground district, and I have a fantastic chance to win in November. I've built a broad coalition-- labor, progressives, environmentalists, Democratic activists from every corner of the District-- while raising three-quarters of a million dollars for the primary and winning endorsements from local, state and national leaders.

Along with fellow progressives who are looking to finish the job on their second try-- folks like J.D. Scholten in Iowa, Marie Newman in Illinois, Kara Eastman in Nebraska, and Julie Oliver in the neighboring Texas 25th-- I didn't know when I started that this would be a four-year commitment. If you had told me I'd need to stop working for this long, make such huge financial and personal sacrifices, and endure attacks from all sides, even from within my own party, I'm not sure if I would have started this project.

But now I know-- this is what it takes.

This is what it takes to remove one of the wealthiest Republicans in Congress. To flip a gerrymandered district-- a map so radically redrawn that, after the Texas GOP gerrymander of 2003, the Democratic party didn't even nominate a candidate in the 2004 election. To win a seat that the Democrats were losing by 20% and 30% before my 2018 campaign. To activate a nine-county region that had't seen an active field campaign in decades before Beto O'Rourke and I barnstormed the rural, suburban and urban areas together.

In 2018 we pushed the rock three-quarters of the way up the hill. In 2020 we get to the top.

I've learned so much along the way. Before I ran for Congress the first time, I understood community organizing and electoral field campaigns. I'd knocked doors, worked as a campaign manager, even won a school board race when I was younger. I'd also raised money-- founding two nonprofit organizations, and building one of them from an all-volunteer effort to a 40-person staff, $1 million annual budget operation. I understood organizations, and power-building, and the importance of messaging.

But I didn't understand why "call time" is so critical for candidates. I didn't appreciate the importance of what "consultants" can do for a campaign-- and how to easily distinguish fraudsters from effective experts. I didn't know what was possible when you are really clicking on all cylinders-- from engaging volunteers on a weekly basis, to running a dynamic email campaign, to earning endorsements from local leaders, to winning support from key funders, to opening doors in DC to catalyze more success. Some of this stuff I understood vaguely or intuitively. Not the way I do now, however, as we put all the pieces together.

My opponent in the 2020 TX-10 primary runoff has tried to turn my experience in the 2018 campaign into a liability, arguing "Siegel had his chance and didn't come through." This is an incredibly facile and unpersuasive argument; most TX-10 activists see through the opportunism at a glance. It ignores the fact than in 2018 most observers thought running against McCaul in TX-10 was futile. That pollsters said it was a "safe Republican" seat. That donors refused to invest. That national organizations allocated resources elsewhere. That there was little or no foundation to even build off of.

Despite all those obstacles, we mobilized over 1,000 volunteers, made over 300,000 voter contacts, and held a 7-term incumbent to 51% of the vote, narrowing his advantage from 19% to 4% in the process.

And along the way, I learned countless valuable lessons, that have put us in position to win in 2020.

This cycle we've done big things. We've earned national news fighting for a Green New Deal in the heart of Texas. We've led in the statewide battle to secure universal vote-by-mail during the COVID pandemic. We finished first place in a three-way runoff despite being outspent by over $2 million in the Super Tuesday primary-- by two Democrats who supported my 2018 campaign, but decided that now it is close, they'd like to be the nominee.

Like most things in life, electoral politics is a struggle, and nothing is given. Each day, we have to fight to preserve our gains, and win new battles on the path to victory. The experience of 2018 provides invaluable insight into what needs to be done in 2020.


We've built the foundation. Now let's finish the job.