Elections Are Won on Front Yards
From the desk of Bibek Gurung, Senior Digital Strategist
Democracy Docket makes a sharp point: elections are won in inches, not yards. Republicans fight over every voting rule they can find, late-arriving ballots, signature matches, missing dates, because a single tweak at the margins can decide who controls Congress.
They’re right about the yards. But the inches are won on front yards. On porches and doorsteps, in the thirty seconds it takes to look a neighbor in the eye and ask for their vote. No lawsuit ever knocked a door, and no legal brief ever talked a wavering voter into showing up.
That’s the ground game, and it’s the part they can’t litigate away. The campaigns that win those front yards in November are building their field operations right now, and ours starts at the GOTV Bootcamp on 08/08
💻UPCOMING LIVE TRAININGS
Tech Time: Setting Up a Virtual Phone Bank
07.27
10 am PT
Tech Time: Cutting Turf in VoteBuilder
07.28
10 am PT
Explore upcoming events + trainings coming up this month.
NDTC Learner Spotlight
Congrats to NDTC learner Jessica Harper on her primary win for Ohio House District 93. A high school civics teacher who watched her students go without, Jessica built her campaign with NDTC on her own terms. Now it’s on to the general.
SUBSTACK
Meet the Trainer: Stacey Chavis on Why Your Mom (or BFF) Should Be Your First Official Campaign Fundraising Call
A Georgia-based political strategist and fundraising trainer on the mistakes campaigns keep making, why a personal touch still wins, and what it actually takes to run in a red state.
I got to sit down with Stacey for this one. A piece of our conversation:
NDTC: You work in Georgia, which means you’re running Democrats in tough terrain. If you could wave a magic wand and change how the party approaches red states, what would you do?
Stacey: Throw out the boring messaging. The tried-and-true, we’ve-always-done-it-this-way message is not working. It is not working. You need different messaging to reach your 18-to-35 voters. You need different messaging for people in the middle. You need different messaging for senior citizens. One size does not fit all, and pretending otherwise is costing us elections.
ICYMI
GOTV Bootcamp: Maximize Turnout Tactics for the Home Stretch
Join us for a free virtual bootcamp built for candidates and staff heading into get out the vote season. If you’re operating as a one-ish person campaign with a compressed timeline, this one’s for you.
What’s On Our Newsfeeds
Wisconsin regulators say it’s illegal to bet on a race you voted in, and rather than fold, Polymarket and Kalshi are pushing back. Back in the day, you profited off an election by electing someone who actually made your life better.
Why this story matters:
Arizona Republicans nominated Andy Biggs, who voted against certifying 2020, for governor. They also nominated an election-denying attorney for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections. Fielding candidates who tried to overturn an election is a bold way to run on election integrity.
Why this story matters:
Days after his primetime warning about the problem, reporting notes Trump has spent his term hollowing out CISA, the very agency he created to stop foreign meddling. Nothing says election security like firing the people in charge of stopping it.
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