Events

Election 2023 is over, but an existential 2024 election is almost upon us that will determine whether or not America’s democracy will survive (not to mention action on climate change, abortion rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, corrupt Supreme Court Justices, etc.).

Too many Americans, including many Dems, are “looking away”, either unwilling to acknowledge the current reality or hoping others will do the work to keep that from happening. The more people who hold this mindset, the more likely our nightmares will come true.

Decide if you should be one of the people who actively works to preserve our democracy in the coming year. If yes… a good option is to become empowered and energized and activated by becoming more involved with other local Dems in 2024… perhaps by taking a role at the January Reorganization Meeting!?

Local Option #1: Early In-Person Voting

You can still do Early Voting today, Friday, and Saturday at the Registrar’s Office in the City Hall Annex,120 7th St. NE, Room 142. Be sure to bring a valid-for-voting ID (see this overview and list of acceptable forms of ID). Saturday is our “Donut Forget to Vote”, see below.

Hours of operation:

• Monday – Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm (Thursdays until 7:00pm)
• Next Saturday, October 28, and also Saturday, November 4, from 8:30am – 5:00pm

Note 1: When you do vote (whether Early or 11/7), be sure to wear the “I Voted” sticker they give you, to remind others to also vote!

Note 2: Curbside voting from a car is available to anyone with a disability, limited mobility, or who is over age 65; just call 434-970-3250 when you arrive at the Registrar’s Office.

Whether you’re voting early or voting on Election Day, check now to make sure you’re registered; botched Republican “voter security” efforts mistakenly purged thousands of eligible voters. Check your own registration, and warn friends and family to check theirs too!

Helpful website pages:

• Voter Registration and Voting Information

• City of Charlottesville’s Interactive Precinct Map to find your polling place

• Upcoming Local Elections

Local Option #2: “Turn Out the Vote Thursdays” 

No more Option 2 efforts needed; we wrote and mailed approximately 7,500 postcards! This is far more than we’ve ever done before, thanks to (1) so many of you who pitched in by coming out to write postcards and/or who donated to buy stamps and cards, and (2) superb organizing by Mary Ann Harris, Nancy Damon, and Suzanne Michels -– huge kudos!

So our Thursdays at Ix work is done for this election cycle; no more Ix Park meet-ups until Spring!

Local Option #3: Canvassing (Last Chance!)

This is our last weekend to reach voters; we need to make a BIG final push to overcome what is looking like an otherwise low-turnout election (not good for abortion rights or continued constitutional government or any of the issues that you care about!). The Charlottesville and Albemarle parties are partnering to ensure we win all our local races; with several uncontested City races, it makes sense to shift some of our energy and resources their way.

Senator Mark Warner came down last week to give our canvassing surge a boost (see report below) because winning Senator Creigh Deeds’ State Senate race is critical to keeping it under Democratic control, but all these races we’re canvassing for are very important:

• State Senate: Incumbent Senator Creigh Deeds is favored to win our crucial Senate District 11, but the district has some very conservative areas, and we can’t be complacent if we’re going to keep this seat. His opponent, Philip Hamilton, is quite a piece of work; among other claims to fame, he’s publicly misgendered his own 12-year-old, claiming that school teachers had poisoned his child’s mind into being non-binary. And he favors schools outing gay students to their parents (see below in “Preaching Beyond the Choir”). This is not someone we want representing us; please donate to or canvass for (or both) the Deeds campaign!

• House of Delegates: Amy Laufer (our Albemarle County neighbor running in a competitive District #55 race, recently endorsed by Gabby Giffords’s Gun Safety PAC) and Katrina Callsen (running unopposed in our District #54).

• Charlottesville City Council: Natalie Oschrin, Michael Payne, and Lloyd Snook (running unopposed).

• Charlottesville School Board: Amanda Burns, Shymora Cooper, Chris Meyer, and Nicole Richardson (four candidates running unopposed for four open seats).

• Albemarle County Board of Supervisors: Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, Ann Mallek, and Michael Pruitt.

• Albemarle County School Board (ACSB): Rebecca Berlin, Judy Le, Ellen Moore Osborne, and Allison Spillman. A few notes about Allison’s race: she’s running against Meg Scalia Bryce, the daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Bryce (a) said on 10/15 at an NAACP forum “not everybody agrees that there is systemic racism. And it has to be OK for people to disagree about that.” (She’s also very offended by the County’s anti-racist curriculum), and (b) is very concerned that the ACSB has been treating LGBTQ kids with respect and support. Although Allison has been closing the fundraising gap, Scalia Bryce is still ahead. We can’t let extremists like her (e.g. a fan of the Moms for Liberty book banners) start taking over our local schools (per Forward Albemarle, all her kids attend private schools). Please help Allison’s campaign any way you can, especially via donations and canvassing help.

If you’d like to canvass locally (it takes about 3 hours):

1. On a weekday, please email karencombs6522@gmail.com.

2. On a weekend, sign up via Mobilize to participate in one or more of these coordinated canvasses:

Maps to Combs’ Office and Mudhouse (Crozet)

Option #4: “Donut Forget to Vote” Saturday Morning 11/4 Event!

On Saturday November 4, the last day of Early Voting, we’ll be partying 8:30-11:00am near the Cville Registrar’s office (120 7th Street NE at City Hall Annex, near the Pavilion). Come join us and a medley of candidates who will chat with us and encourage us (and those walking by!?) to get their vote in. Donuts never hurt, so we’re offering them too!

Please contact Suzanne Michels suzemichels@gmail.com if you’d like to help with this event or have any questions. Thanks to our friends at Himalayan Fusion for help with staging logistics.

Sen. Creigh Deeds needs all our Cville blue votes to keep his seat and a Dem majority in the VA Senate. Don’t let the City’s uncontested races lull you into complacency; we need to work to make sure our neighbors and friends turn out to vote! So far this cycle, Early Voting is way down, which is worrisome…

 

Option #5 Non-local: Help Key VA Races with Time and/or Cash

Republicans control the House of Delegates and the Governor’s mansion, and Dems barely hold the Senate; if Republicans take the Senate, then Virginia will become Florida, which means forced childbirth laws, schools teaching whitewashed history, “don’t-say-gay” laws, and other measures to erase LGBTQ youth…we can’t let this happen!

Below is a list of the hottest “battleground races” (sorry it’s so fuzzy below, clearer in our newsletter for some reason) for Senate and House of Delegate seats.

Please please please:

1. tell your friends and family who live in these districts how critical it is that they get out and vote for these Democratic candidates!
2. ask them to ask their friends and family too!

SD 17 is enormous: Suffolk, Isle of Wight (including Franklin City), Portsmouth (part), Southampton, Brunswick, Greensville, Dinwiddie (part), Emporia, Chesapeake (part).

Note: past newsletters highlighted some of these great candidates, e.g. teacher Schuyler VanValkenburg, tech entrepreneur and veteran Michael Feggans, long-time Democratic staffer Lily Franklin (for Delegate Sam Rasoul and Josh Throneburg), and more!

Local Option #1: “Turn Out the Vote Thursdays” 

For the past three years, we’ve had many many dedicated people joining in. In 2022, we had 100+ volunteers who attended at least once to eat, drink, chat, and pitch in together to help our Democratic candidates win; many attended almost every week!

There’ll be lots of different ways to help over the next few months; do what’s most comfortable for you! For example:

• Writing postcards and making follow-up phone calls to newly-registered voters. That combination has been very successful, resulting in this group voting at a consistent 75-80% rate in 2021-2023.

• Distributing “walk sheet” name and address lists of Dem-leaning people for our campaign canvassers to visit.

• Sending some specific issue-message postcards (a new idea we’re considering).

• Writing postcards and phoning people we’ve previously registered.
• Writing postcards and phoning for campaigns near Charlottesville.

If you’ve joined us before, please join us again. If you haven’t tried it yet, come on down and meet fellow Dems and enjoy yourself while working for a big win on November 7!

Questions? Please contact Mary Ann Harris: harrisma49@gmail.com

 

 

Local Option #2: Canvassing

We’re partnering with the Albemarle Dems to ensure we win all our local races; with several uncontested City races, it makes sense to shift some of our energy.

• State Senate: Incumbent Senator Creigh Deeds is favored to win our crucial Senate District 11, but the district has some very conservative areas, and we can’t be complacent if we’re going to keep this seat. His opponent, Philip Hamilton, is quite a piece of work; among other claims to fame, he’s publicly misgendered his own 12-year-old, claiming that school teachers had poisoned his child’s mind into being non-binary. And he favors schools outing gay students to their parents (see below in “Preaching Beyond the Choir”). This is not someone we want representing us; please donate to or canvass for (or both) the Deeds campaign!

• House of Delegates: Amy Laufer (our Albemarle County neighbor running in a competitive District #55 race, recently endorsed by Gabby Giffords’s Gun Safety PAC) and Katrina Callsen (running unopposed in our District #54).

• Charlottesville City Council: Natalie Oschrin, Michael Payne, and Lloyd Snook (running unopposed).

• Charlottesville School Board: Amanda Burns, Shymora Cooper, Chris Meyer, and Nicole Richardson (four candidates running unopposed for four open seats).

• Albemarle County Board of Supervisors: Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, Ann Mallek, and Michael Pruitt.

• Albemarle County School Board (ACSB): Rebecca Berlin, Judy Le, Ellen Moore Osborne, and Allison Spillman. A few notes about Allison’s race: she’s running against Meg Scalia Bryce, the daughter of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia-Bryce is (a) very concerned that the ACSB has been treating LGBTQ kids with respect and support, and (b) is very offended by its anti-racist curriculum. Scalia-Bryce has been winning the fundraising race by a wide margin, and we can’t let extremists like her (e.g. a fan of the Moms for Liberty book banners) start taking over our local schools (per Forward Albemarle, all her kids attend private schools). Please help Allison’s campaign any way you can, especially via donations and canvassing help.

If you’d like to canvass locally (it takes about 3 hours):

1. On a weekday, please email karencombs6522@gmail.com.
2. On a weekend, use SignUp Genius to participate in one or more of these coordinated canvasses:

Combs’ Office map  Mudhouse Crozet map yellow=Weekends of Action emphasis

Please tell your friends and social media connections how important it is to vote (and maybe even volunteer!); we need to hit high vote counts in our area to offset more conservative areas!

Option #3 Non-local: Help Key VA Races with Time and/or Cash

Republicans control the House of Delegates and the Governor’s mansion, and Dems barely hold the Senate; if Republicans take the Senate, then Virginia will become Florida, which means forced childbirth laws, schools teaching whitewashed history, “don’t-say-gay” laws, and other measures to erase LGBTQ youth…we can’t let this happen!

Today we’re highlighting Schuyler VanValkenburg’s important race trying to flip SD16 (just an hour’s drive from us!) from red to blue, which would be a very big win. Schuyler is a high school Civics and Government teacher who’s been serving in the VA House for the past six years. He just held a great Charlottesville fundraiser with our own Senator Deeds, but his race is an expensive one and some added support from us could make the difference! Donate here.

 

 

Local Option #4: Help with Voter Registration

Our wonderful voter registration team, led by Suzanne Michels, is very active in the lead-up to Election Day: registering new voters (including those who’ve recently moved to or within our area), helping voters figure out where they can vote, and helping folks who need to have their voting rights restored file the necessary paperwork. At last week’s Ix Saturday Market they got 14 new signups (and Ix Saturday markets are not impacted by the Ix financial challenges you may have heard about).

There are few things more satisfying than signing up a new voter! You can visit this online signup form to see what dates we need people. We’d love to have more folks pitch in, and if you’re even a little bit of an extrovert, you’ll enjoy it! Or email suzemichels@gmail.com if you might be interested.

PS— we recently updated these pages on our website:

• Voter Registration and Voting Information
• Precinct Maps
• Upcoming Local Elections