Check out Greg Speed’s latest Huffington Post piece on winning back the states from the ground up.
When partisan dominance can defy the popular vote and lock down years of control, it’s clear this is no longer just a problem for progressives — it’s a problem for our democracy as a whole. How do progressives begin to turn the tables in this climate?
Progressives’ best chance to break through the conservative firewall is a multi-front, long-term strategy to win back the states. Too often we’ve measured our electoral success based on winning states for the presidency or control of the U.S. Senate, while overlooking vital the contests further down the ballot. Those days are gone — we can no longer afford to settle for lonely victories at the top of the ticket. We must fight back against conservatives’ ground-up strategy with a ground-up strategy of our own.
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America Votes and hundreds of our progressive allies are developing [ ] six-year plans within and across states. Our goal is to identify critical opportunities to build back power in the states each year from 2015 through 2020. America Votes will help make hard-nosed assessments about trends on the ground and critical decisions on the best opportunities for us to make progress on our overall goals.
Click here to read the full blog post on the Huffington Post.
Politico’s recent story, “Greens grow into electoral powerhouse,” is a great testament to the value of coordination among progressive organizations. The story focuses on how several of our partner organizations and influential environmental organizations, including League of Conservation Voters,NextGen Climate, Sierra Club, Environemt America and Environmental Defense Action Fund, are collaborating with the broader progressive community and are having a growing impact across the nation.
In the piece, AV President Greg Speed and AV-Florida State Director Josh discussed America Votes’ coordinated field work with these groups and their importance to our tables:
NextGen and LCV have emerged as leading members of America Votes, a progressive coalition founded in 2003 that has three dozen national partners, including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, EMILY’s List, House and Senate Majority PACs, NARAL, Service Employees International Union and the National Education Association.
America Votes President Greg Speed said NextGen, which is funded largely by liberal billionaire Steyer, has been a huge asset in mobilizing Democratic voters who tend to skip the midterm elections.
“Thanks to them in a number of these states, we’re going to be able to reach our overall goals for contacting drop-off voters,” Speed said, particularly in Florida and Michigan.
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The new collaboration – and especially the support of NextGen – will enable greens to knock on more than 2 million doors in Florida by Election Day to target drop-off voters, far more than the 300,000 doors the progressive coalition knocked on in the 2010 midterms, according to Josh Giese, who heads the Florida operation of America Votes.
Click here to view the full story on Politico.