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REPORT: Senator Mark Warner’s 10/28 GOTV Visit
Last weekend the Albemarle Dems hosted a Sunday pre-canvass get-out-the-vote (GOTV) event at Pen Park with Sen. Mark Warner as guest speaker. The Senator was in fine form, flagging the many ways that Democratic policies over the past few years have benefitted Virginians:
- Preserving abortion and reproductive rights
- Infrastructure improvements under Biden (massive job-creating investments)
- Internet access for more people
- Efforts to address climate change and Environmental protection
- Democracy and rule of law (our election systems and Justice Dept withstood Trump’s/Republicans’ lawlessness)
All this progress (and more!) disappears if we lose our razor-thin majority in the Senate; Creigh Deeds’ seat is critical!
Roughly 90 Dems came out to hear his inspiring remarks; they asked questions, took pictures, and then went out to hit lots of doors in the canvass afterwards. Buoyed by the nice weather and provided lunch, spirits and energy were high! Thank you Albemarle Dems chair Karen Combs for organizing this great gathering.
Work for Democratic Victories on November 7!
Local Option #1: Early In-Person Voting
Early Voting is happening now through November 4 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). 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: 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
Local Option #2: “Turn Out the Vote Thursdays”
No more work at Ix needed, we wrote and mailed approximately 7,500 postcards! This is far more than we’ve ever done before, and it happened due to:
- Superb organizing by Mary Ann Harris, Nancy Damon, and Suzanne Michels – huge kudos!
- Sincere gratitude to everyone who pitched in throughout the Summer and Fall by writing postcards and/or donating money to buy postcards and stamps.
So our Thursday at Ix work is done for this cycle, no more meet-ups at IX Park this Fall!
Now for the details about those 7500 postcards:
- 700 to new City of Charlottesville voters
- 1,800 to new Albemarle County voters
- 2,000 to City residents
- 500 for Rachel Levy in Louisa County
- 500 for Michael Feggans in Virginia Beach
- 1,000 for Susanna Gibson in Henrico County
- 1,000 for Lily Franklin in Montgomery County.
It was a pleasure spending time with old friends and getting to meet new friends — spending our Thursday afternoons together working to help elect the best candidates locally and statewide! We’re most definitely looking forward to sitting around the picnic tables in the Spring when the BIG 2024 presidential election cycle begins.
We hope most of you will join us for the big Sunday October 28 Canvassing push with Sen. Mark Warner at Pen Park! And… make sure to remind all your Dem-leaning friends, both City and County, of the importance of voting; we can’t take victory for granted, it’s all about turnout!
Local Option #3: 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. 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, use SignUp Genius to participate in one or more of these coordinated canvasses:
Option #4 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” for Senate and House of Delegate seats. Please please please:
SD 17 is enormous: Suffolk, Isle of Wight (including Franklin City), Portsmouth (part), Southampton, Brunswick, Greensville, Dinwiddie (part), Emporia, Chesapeake (part).
Note: past newsletters have highlighted other great candidates in close races, like teacher Schuyler Vanvalkenburg, tech entrepreneur and veteran Michael Feggans, long-time Democratic staffer Lily Franklin (for Delegate Sam Rasoul and Josh Throneburg), and more!
10/23/23 Executive Committee Meeting (Zoom only)
The Executive Committee will meet Monday, October 23, at 6:30 PM via Zoom (link to be sent out before the meeting). The only agenda item at present is last-minute election planning (e.g. promoting the last week of early voting, possibly via a “Donut Forget to vote” mini-event and getting the word out about the importance of turnout for Creigh Deeds and other local elections we’ve been actively helping).
Note: The next Full Committee meeting will be on Monday 11/27 (Thanksgiving is 11/23). To suggest something to add to the agenda, please email cvilledemschair@gmail.com .
Winning in November, Option #1 — “Turn Out the Vote Thursdays” at Ix Art Park
We meet every Thursday 4-7pm at the Ix Art Park (on the Brazos Tacos lawn if nice weather, inside the restaurant when not-so-nice). Come when and for how long your schedule and mood dictate; it needn’t be every week or the entire three hours.
Today (Thursday 8/31) we’ll start writing GOTV cards to City of Charlottesville “Lean Democratic” voters, stressing the importance of turning out for Creigh Deeds. If you can, bring a chair and a clipboard/something similar to write on.
There are 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.
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! 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
