Fall Chair’s Report

October 2019

Hello Everyone;

It is crunch time! Only days now until the Nov 5 election. Time to GOTV!

Everyone will soon have their ballot, or has it already. We need to get out there and educate our voters on best choices, answer questions, register voters, and help promote our endorsed candidates. Let’s make a difference by building relationships at the door, or however you can – phone, text, whatever works best for you.
Just do it!

If you need any assistance with GOTV (Get Out the Vote), please feel free to call me (425) 478-2418, or 1st VC, Al (832) 771-4747.

So what else have we been doing in the 21st lately?
We have been working hard in the 21st lD on many fronts.

Here are a few recent highlights:

SURVEY
In September we launched a new Membership Survey series. The candid feedback helps us better understand more about what our membership really has to say. Better information and data will help us build better LD relationships. We will be sending out more surveys to continue improving communication and interaction across the entire LD membership. Everybody’s voice matters! We know that some of you cannot attend LD meetings in person, so this is a new opportunity for us to get to know each other, and gather meaningful feedback directly from each of you.

ELECTED CONNECTIONS

It was our great honor to welcome our four 21st LD elected representatives – Rick Larsen, Marko Liias, Lillian Ortiz-Self, and Strom Peterson- who all graciously participated as a guest speaker at one of our 2019 monthly 21st LD Dems General Meetings. They each gave us us their individual insights on the political world as they know it, and each shared their recent session accomplishments, all the new goals they are working on, and what’s next in the upcoming session, too. They listened to our membership’s views and answered our questions. We look forward to seeing them again soon!

FAIR
Several 21st LD volunteers participated in manning the Evergreen State Fair booth for 2 days in August, selling buttons, sharing our Democratic platform, and promoting our endorsed candidates. It was a lot of fun.

COMMITTEES
As chair, I am honored to work with each of the Six Standing Committees. Together, our creative and hard working volunteers have accomplished a lot.

  • Endorsement & Elections Committee
    The awesome work done by the Endorsements Committee was really a big success, with a modernized online questionnaire, and better transparency to & full inclusion of our membership, the candidates, and our Local Political Organizations (LPO). We got a lot of excellent feedback on this. Nice Job!
  • Membership & Diversity Committee
    Ongoing outreach to members old and new continues at a steady pace. We are actively working on the 2020 membership drive and will soon reach our goal of 100 members. The opportunities are endless with all the extra attention we are expecting in the 2020 presidential cycle.
  • Fundraising & Events –
    Instead of our annual summer picnic, this year we are excited to announce a new ‘Political Trivia’ FUNdraising Event on October 24th, at Sully’s Pizza. We are grateful to have support from our good friend, Brian Sullivan as our partner in this adventure. The committee has worked hard to plan and execute an enjoyable event that will greatly benefit our 21st LD budget goals. We are on track for meeting our finance projections and meet our party activity obligations in 2020.
  • Education & Issues Committee
    Several resolutions relevant to the 21st LD have been successfully adopted this year, and the committee is actively planning some enlightening new educational sessions as well.
  • Rules
    Besides amending our Bylaws, the new Code of Conduct Procedure adopted earlier this year is easier than using straight Robert’s Rules of Order to resolve conflicts when they arise.
  • Technology
    Members can now login to the 21dems.org website with Facebook, in addition to the traditional 21dems.org membership userid and password (don’t you love the Easy Button?). We currently are looking at adding another new feature to sell tickets to events directly from our own site, and we are considering a newsletter or blog. Let us know what you think.
    We have increased our inter LD collaboration with our neighboring LPOS (32nd LD, 44th LD). We focused on voter registration and new member outreach at the Evergreen Fair in August, and in October we have a fundraising event planned for Political Trivia game night.

IN CLOSING

We usually plan a fun Holiday party in December, in appreciation for all the hard work of our volunteers. We will let you know more about this once the party planners have a chance to work out the details. Stay tuned!

Looking forward, the Executive Board is already working on plans for 2020; Primarily, this means being ready to support the new Presidential Primary, where we look forward to more presidential candidate visits and attention, increasing voter and activist engagement. The April 26th LD Caucus is an incredible opportunity where we can sharpen our tools, and now is the time to plan ahead for 2020 success. This is a critical election cycle for the Democrats to capitalize on. It will take all of us to make it happen.

Thank you for your support of the 21st LD Democrats.

I would truly enjoy hearing from you!

Sharon Holt