John,

It’s Andrew, Alexandra’s Field Director, writing with an update on the outcome of our fight for ballot access. You probably saw my email on Saturday with the ‘Emergency’ subject line, sorry if I gave you a fright but I can assure you the emergency was very real for us.

We received intel last month that our opponent would be challenging every signature of ours to keep us off the ballot. That meant we needed to get at least 3x more than the required threshold of 1000 to be safe. That’s why we had this past weekend planned out as our big final push for petitioning prior to the Monday due-date of our signatures.

Snow storms and outdoor petition gathering do not go well together so when this weekend’s snow storm hit Philadelphia our carefully made plans went out the window.

The lights were blinking red and we were fearing that we might come up short on our needed 3x amount. Oh was I wrong.

We emailed out a distress call requesting support to mount a response and what we got was nothing short of a miracle. Donations to help us launch a rapid mobilization came in from all over America and volunteers poured in from across Philadelphia to support our efforts. We deployed our pop-up army of volunteers to grocery stores, the subway stations, and just about anywhere there were still people out and about, and they got to work.

When all was said and done we received over 3500 signatures, more than three times the required amount. If our opponent and the dark money PACs that back him want to challenge our signatures, they can try, but with 3500+, we’re making that ballot.

This is just the beginning. We now have 62 days until our May 17th Primary and we are stepping on the gas. In these 62 days, I have to continue building out a massive voter contact operation and it will not be cheap.

Our predictive dialer, a tool that increases a volunteer's call output per hour by over 800% saving our volunteers time by only connecting them with live calls costs over 5 cents per dial. When you are calling thousands of voters each month those nickels quickly turn into ten of thousands of dollars.

Our volunteers need food, PPE, and an office to work out of. As a campaign for working people run by working people we must also make sure we pay our staff a living wage. On days like last Saturday and Sunday, we provide hot drinks and soup to the stream of volunteers that flowed in and out of the office. It costs money but it’s the little things that win elections.

It will be expensive to contact the voters we need to flip this seat but we must keep pushing and we are well on our way there. The feeling in the district is palpable, we can win, but we’re going to need your help to do it. Can I count on you to make a donation of $20 to help us get the tools we need to make history in Philadelphia?

If you've stored your info with ActBlue Express, we'll process your contribution instantly: