LET’S TURN AMERICA BLUE

AND FLORIDA PURPLE!

The possibility of a blue (or at least

purple) Florida is not as much an

impossibility as you might think. To

get there, we need a Democratic

trifecta in DC that finally passes

campaign reform. Campaign reform

that includes a mandate for district

maps drawn by independent

committees (not DeSantis or anyone

like him). Fair maps would give us a

fighting chance here in Florida every

two years. Not just

when there’s a blue wave.

Ben Wikler is a former Wisconsin

Democratic State Party Chair. He’s

given much of the credit for

Wisconsin’s political turnaround, and

he’s just written a book, “This is the

Plan – How to End America’s

Meltdown and Save Democracy” that

has a lot of great ideas for taking

that turnaround national.

The plan is to get strategic about how

we spend at least a part of our

campaign donations and volunteer

time. Instead of collectively spending

millions of dollars and hundreds or

thousands of hours on virtual

phonebanking for pie-in-the-sky glitzy

campaigns that go viral on social

media, we could support some of the

many close campaigns that are already

within a hair of flipping red seats blue.

There are always some (and

sometimes many) of them out there,

usually starving for donations and

volunteers. Supporting these

campaigns is our best route to get to

that DC Democratic trifecta, campaign

reform, and the beginning of the end

of our political nightmare here in Florida.

This new project, A Plan to Turn

America Blue (and Florida at least

Purple), takes those ideas and makes

it as easy as possible for the rest of us

to implement them. Sign up for the

project and you will receive emails,

each one featuring at least one race

where you can make this kind of

difference. They will explain why that

race is so important and so winnable.

And they will have links to the

candidate’s website, articles and

videos about them, their ActBlue

account, sites where you can volunteer

to phonebank for them, and whatever

else I can find to help you, as an

individual, make the decision as to

whether or not and how you want to

support that race. Whether or not you

want to send them a few bucks or

spend an hour or two

calling voters in their district.

This is a long-term battle to be fought

here and long distance in swing

districts around the country. Whatever

the outcome of this midterm election

we will work to improve it in two years

and two years after that and on the

many races that occur in between

those. We do not stop because we can

never again assume our democratic

government can continue on autopilot

with little to no attention from us.

Because now we know

what comes of that.

This is Phase One of this project.

Phase Two – Keeping America Blue

(beginning next year) will

involve lighting a fire under

those Congressional, Legislative,

and local Democrats who fail to live up

to the standards needed to cause voters

to continue to vote blue

in future elections.

Sign up here and you can help

turn America Blue and

Florida at least Purple.

Mary McMullen