Hi there --
I can not say this any more clearly: If we let Republicans maintain control of state legislatures, they will gerrymander Democrats out of power after the 2020 census and rewrite the rules to ensure minority rule for a generation. Governing will be permanently broken, no matter who holds the White House.
That's why we're doing what we're doing. Electing progressives to state legislatures isn't a fun project we assigned ourselves to kill time between Democratic presidents; the heart and soul of our democracy is at stake. The GOP spent $35 million to win the House in 2010, and I bet they spend at least five times that to do it in 2020. They've got more billionaires, less scruples, and fewer ideological internal wars to fight, plus they've spent the last decade writing the rules in their favor.
So here's where I ask you to chip in. Not because it's tax deductible or because you'll get some merch in return, but because you're the person who cares enough about protecting our democracy to make an investment, however big or small.
I feel like I'm a broken record, going crazy, or just super boring lately because I don't understand why we aren't shoveling money into these state legislative races -- both into recruiting good candidates for every single district and making sure those campaigns are fully-funded. We have barely two months to recruit candidates in Texas, for example, and there are still top-target races without a single Democratic candidate. I want to throw as much money and human capacity as I can at the problem, but we (and our partners) are limited by what's in our bank accounts -- which isn't much, after we pay our monthly bills.
I would also love to throw money into Virginia ahead of this November, and into recruiting candidates in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and everywhere else. But it's at least $50,000 in online ads and approximately $100,000 for staff support -- per state. And that's on top of maintaining our support resources for the hundreds of candidates we're already working with, and thousands more in the pipeline.
This shit is HARD. It's hard to do and it's particularly hard to fund with, you know, everything else going on. But flipping state legislative chambers is the whole ballgame. I'm asking for your help today because we're ready to do the work -- if we can get the resources we need to do it.
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Thank you,
Amanda Litman
Co-founder
Run for Something
