John,

I want to take a moment to tell you about two AMAZING leaders that we’ve thrown our full support behind for upcoming elections — Ramin Fatehi and Stephanie Morales.

But this will be a long email — I’m going to give you a full rundown on who these candidates are and why we’re backing them. So if you’re short on time, you can make a split donation between these compassionate, principled prosecutors here.

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I can’t stress enough how excited I am about these two candidates. Let me tell you a bit more about them.

Stephanie Morales is running for re-election as the Commonwealth Attorney in Portsmouth, Virginia. And our admiration of her goes back quite a ways. She was one of our first-ever endorsements in 2017. But her work as the Commonwealth Attorney actually predates us. Since first taking office in 2015, she has been on the frontlines, fighting to reimagine our racist justice system. Some of that work includes:

• Spearheading the efforts to end mandatory minimum sentencing, the death penalty, cash bail, and “three-strikes" sentence enhancements;
• Establishing a program to help convicted people navigate the pitfalls of re-entry after their sentence is served;
• Fighting to hold police accountable for acts of violence — like securing a conviction against a former Portsmouth police officer who killed an unarmed, 18-year-old Black man;
• And working to restore the voting rights of formerly incarcerated persons, and allowed the criminal records of many to be automatically expunged.

Our second endorsement this week is Ramin Fatehi. He’s running for Commonwealth Attorney in Norfolk, VA. And like Morales, his record as a compassionate leader is strong:

• He is the ONLY candidate in this primary who has advanced people-first policies as both a public defender and prosecutor.
• In 2020, he led the effort to abolish jury sentencing in Virginia — a policy that repeatedly subjected people to longer sentences.
• In 2019, he lobbied the Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney’s Office to get rid of cash bail and to dismiss all marijuana-possession cases.
• At a time when many prosecutors are unwilling to buck the status quo, Ramin has repeatedly condemned the death penalty and vowed not to pursue it when elected.

Thanks to you and thanks to candidates like Stephanie Morales and Ramin Fatehi, our movement is STRONG. But that also means we have a huge target on all our backs. We’ve never run into as much police union opposition and spending before. We need to rally together and send a message that we’re not backing down.

Please make a split donation today between these two incredible candidates and our Real Justice team. Together, we WILL win and continue to transform the justice system — one city, district, and state at a time.

In solidarity,

Chris Lazare
Real Justice

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