And Florida Purple (at least)!

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 state and 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.

Join us and you can help turn America Blue and Florida at least Purple.

Mary McMullen