John — this is a longer email than usual. But I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it all the way through, because seeing the totality of what we've achieved together this year is pretty breathtaking. If you read it and feel as inspired and hopeful for the future as I do, please consider making an end-of-year contribution to the Working Families Party so we can go even bigger in 2021:

Contribute »

Onward!

— Maurice

MEMO

TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Maurice Mitchell, WFP National Director
RE: Working Families Party 2020 Victories

WFP Family:

It has been an extraordinary year, and I mean that in every sense of the word.

First, I mean "extraordinary" in its most literal sense: unusual and beyond the norm. 2020 exploded in crisis and tragedy, from the deaths of millions across the globe due to a novel pandemic to the state-sponsored murders of Black people like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade to the wildfires that raged across much of our west coast.

But I also mean "extraordinary" in that other sense — of achievement and accomplishment. Because for all the adversity and calamity we faced this year, we rose above it.

We’ve never reached more voters than we did in 2020. Our incredible team of Working Families Party organizers and activists sent 25 million peer-to-peer texts this year (including 3 million on Election Day alone), made over 5 million calls to voters, and mobilized a total of 20,000 in-state and virtual volunteers to reach key voters in swing states.

That voter contact helped us win some amazing victories in primaries and in November, from defeating Donald Trump to electing a new generation of progressive members of Congress, state legislators, district attorneys, and more.

Here are some of the highlights:

Presidential Battlegrounds

From the outset, we stated that our moral mandate was to defeat Trump and Trumpism. We brought everything we had to crucial states to do just that, with tremendous and consequential results:

Pennsylvania WFP launched an effort to recruit infrequent voters in Philadelphia to fill out absentee ballots and vote early. We recruited over 5,600 volunteer shifts, sent nearly 2.5 million texts, made nearly 1.4 million dials, and had conversations with over 80,000 voters via street canvass. Through us, over 30,000 Philadelphians committed to vote early or by mail and we followed up to ensure they did.

In addition, we launched an ambitious early vote campaign called Vote Today PA centered on Philadelphia and the “collar counties,” but also extending to Pittsburgh and the Lehigh Valley. These efforts ultimately secured 42,537 early votes and another 36,713 absentee votes. We even helped 2,916 people register to vote and then vote that same day.

Wisconsin WFP drove a powerful grassroots, volunteer GOTV campaign with spectacular results, securing 94,383 commitments to vote from infrequent voters. That was over 4.5 times Biden’s margin of victory in the state. That effort took 905,282 phone calls and 3.2 million texts to low propensity voters in Wisconsin.

We also worked on multiple early vote events with family members of Jacob Blake and other local activists, including a march to the polls from Kenosha to Milwaukee and a rally in Kenosha followed by a march to the city’s early voting site.

Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were our biggest battleground programs, but we turned out tens of thousands of voters in other critical states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Ohio, and Florida — generating over 3 million texts and another 1 million calls.

Transforming Congress

Progressives will have more influence in next year’s Congress than they have had in generations. In primaries this year, we helped elect WFP champions Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones in heavily contested races, and defended incumbents like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib who were resoundingly re-elected despite well-funded primary challengers.

In the general election and heading into January’s runoff election, we have mobilized major GOTV efforts in support of Raphael Warnock in Georgia. A win would truly be a sign of a transformed political map, where a progressive multiracial coalition can take power in the South. That’s a coalition we will continue to build for years to come.

Transforming Blue States

2020 was a spectacular year for our efforts to elect progressive lawmakers at the state level across the nation, from our biggest primary cycle ever to a general election in which WFP made major gains in blue states, beating corporate Democrats so that we can actually pass a people’s agenda. That includes:

Rhode Island: Rhode Island WFP and a constellation of progressive organizations drove a wave of victories for progressive challengers and incumbents. Ten out of eleven of the WFP slate won their primaries, including Leonela Felix, an attorney and progressive policy advocate who beat out a 10-year anti-choice incumbent, and Brandon Potter, who ousted an NRA-backed establishment Democrat incumbent. The successes build off four years of work by progressives to organize against the conservative Democratic establishment.
New Mexico: A group of progressive women backed by New Mexico WFP under the banner of “No Corporate Dems” shook the New Mexico Democratic establishment. Siah Hemphill Correa, Pam Cordova, Neomi Martinez-Parra, and Carrie Hamblen unseated some of the most powerful elected officials in New Mexico, including the Senate pro tempore and the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. WFP also backed former educator Leo Jaramillo in his successful primary of an incumbent in District 5.
Delaware: The “Delaware Way” that has dominated modern politics in the state calls for bipartisan, corporate-friendly comity. Primaries just aren’t done. But a diverse WFP slate — including Black, LGBTQ, and Muslim candidates — ousted five white male members of the Delaware state legislature, including the Senate pro tempore.
New York: New York WFP also won 33 state legislative primaries across the state this cycle, including three new progressive challengers who unseated Democratic incumbents: Jessica González-Rojas, Marcela Mitaynes, and Amanda Septimo. Eleven more new NY WFP candidates won in open Democratic primaries, including Demond Meeks, Khaleel Anderson, and Jabari Brisport. And 17 WFP progressive incumbents — including Yuh-Line Niou, Diana Richardson, and Julia Salazar — won against challenges from the right. We helped elect a Democratic-WFP supermajority to the NY state legislature, which will be the most progressive in generations.

And in Colorado, where WFP and fellow progressives helped drive the highest turnout in state history, voters overwhelmingly passed a WFP-backed paid family and medical leave measure that had seen hard resistance in the legislature from business lobby interests.

A New Vision for Public Safety

Over the past few election cycles, WFP has built a track record of recruiting, training, and electing district attorneys and sheriffs running on a bold vision of transforming public safety and criminal justice in America.

This past year, we won ten competitive Democratic primaries for district attorney in states including Missouri, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Colorado, and Florida. Nine of those ten candidates went on to win their general election races, including José Garza for Travis County District Attorney in Texas, Eli Savit for Washtenaw County District Attorney in Michigan, Monique Worrell for State’s Attorney in Florida’s Orange-Osceola County, George Gascon for District Attorney in Los Angeles County in California, and Deborah Gonzalez for District Attorney in Clarke County and Oconee County, Georgia, who became the first Puerto Rican woman in the nation to be elected district attorney.

And in a city council race, DC WFP candidate Janeese Lewis George ran and won on an agenda of divesting from the Washington, DC police department and investing in social and community services that will keep all residents safe. Anti-reformers attacked her, but movement energy propelled her to victory anyway — part of a wave of victories that prove that decarceral and reform-minded district attorneys and local leaders can win in every region of the country.

New York’s Third Party

New York state this year represented a unique and critical test for WFP — and we boldly delivered a message about the kind of ambitious progressive agenda voters want to see from Democrats. In an attack against WFP’s progressive power, Gov. Cuomo first nearly tripled the vote requirement for minor parties like WFP, and then his state Democratic Party spent nearly $400,000 campaigning to try and stop us from meeting those heightened ballot requirements.

The result was clear: NY WFP and New York's progressive movement have emerged stronger than ever.

A stunning 386,010 New Yorkers ended up voting for Biden/Harris on the WFP ballot line in November, representing 7.3% of the total vote for Biden/Harris and 4.5% of the total vote in the state.

Our Vote WFP campaign in New York involved an all-hands-on-deck effort including 4.2 million texts, 327,000 calls, and 4,000 volunteers getting involved. The WFP is now the third largest party in New York state, overtaking the Conservative Party.

Conclusion

These wins are all noteworthy themselves, but the biggest stories of the year are the infrastructure we’ve built, the activists we’ve developed, and the social movements that were the real heroes of this year’s elections. Looking toward the 2021-2022 cycle up and down the ballot, we’ll be focused on advancing these gains and setting up favorable terrain for our next round of contests.

We are still a long way from having a nation that cares for all of us. Building it is the work of decades, not months — and we can only do it if we all come together. That’s what the Working Families Party is here for.

If these victories have inspired you as much as they have inspired me, I hope you’ll make an end-of-year contribution right now to help WFP go even bigger in 2021 and make sure we have the support we need to keep up this fight for the long haul.

Contribute »

We’re nearing the end of a year that has felt like a very long journey. I look forward to walking in solidarity with you in the next.

All my best,

Maurice Mitchell
National Director
Working Families Party

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