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John,
Last year, David Dayen of the American Prospect said about our WV Can’t Wait movement: “It’s kind of a throwback to the political machines of yesteryear… Only this time, the machine is allied with the people, over the powerful.”
Last night that movement won.
35 WV Can’t Candidates claimed seats and Primary positions up and down the ballot. Tonight our people won in Wheeling, in Monongalia County, in Pendleton County. Our people won city council races, delegate races, state senate races, and all four congressional races--an auditor’s race too.
Compared to any slate before us, we are the truest representation of the people of West Virginia: working and middle class, brown and black and white, gay and straight and queer, young and middle aged and old.
Unfortunately, I am not one of those candidates who has advanced.
To our supporters, if you are at all like me in this moment, you are feeling every possible emotion, perhaps all at once. Some of us are feeling joy and pride for the campaigns that won and sadness for those that didn’t. Others of us are feeling anger or regret, wishing we had done something more or different. Some of us may feel relief, because now we’ll have a little more time to tend to the other people and needs in our life. Some of us may feel hopeless or bitter, wondering if things can ever really change. Some of us are already spoiling for the next fight, ready to risk even more; others may never want to fight again. We welcome all that.
Those sharp feelings are proof of our great capacity for hope and for imagination. They tell us that we are alive. That we love. That we have fought and reached for something beyond ourselves. In short, that we have done our work.
We have always known that one Governor wasn’t the answer to our problems , and that the change we seek can’t be achieved in one election cycle. Our goal was always to get nearer to the promised land, to wield more power than we had before. Let there be no doubt that when we wake up tomorrow morning, we will find ourselves more powerful than we were 2 years ago, more powerful than we were a month ago. Here is what we have already won, what no one can’t take away from us :
🔹55 county volunteer teams
🔹39 constituency teams
🔹A union staff that has set the bar created a template for future campaigns
🔹The boldest, most detailed policy platform in WV history written by the people
🔹Too many new skills to count, to many new leaders to count too many new relationships that can’be be broken.
And the WV Can’t Wait movement has dozens of candidates who are advancing. It gives me peace of mind to know that those candidates will need us now to carry them over the finish line. Ahead of us is more good work to do, battles harder than any we have experienced thus far.
Since its founding, the government of West Virginia has belonged to a wealthy Good Old Boys Club—bent on rigging the economy to serve themselves. For generations they have stolen our tax dollars, cut our pay, gutted our healthcare and left our roads and schools in disrepair.
How? By dividing us up. Because they know, when we stand together, there are more of us than there are of them. They try to divide us Christian against Muslim, White against Black, kayaker against coal miner. They even find their way into our homes and try to divide our families, turning us against our own kin when they get sick on drugs, telling us to hate our own blood because they don’t check the same box on Election Day. But we know better. When we fight each other, we lose. When we fight for each other, we win.
If you want to find your role in this movement, we’re just getting started. Call me. My cell phone is 304.610.6512. My email is [email protected].
We need your experience, your energy, your ideas. Because nobody knows this state like you do. Nobody knows its burdens and how to ease them better than you.
My name is Stephen Smith, and I am conceding this election to Kanawha County Commissioner Ben Salango, the Democratic nominee for Governor. Ben, congratulations.
Never in American history has one politician, or one election, brought the kind of change our state desperately needs. It’s going to take all of us. West Virginia can’t wait.
Stephen
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