Dear MoveOn member,
FIRST: There were bombshell revelations that North Carolina’s MAGA candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, had made violent, racist, antisemitic, and lewd comments on a porn site. Robinson plummeted in the polls.1
THEN: When Hurricane Helene caused entire North Carolina communities to be “wiped off the map,” Robinson skipped a critical vote declaring a state of emergency, showing his callous disregard for the people he is running to represent.2
NOW: Robinson’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, has surged to a massive, 17-point lead—presenting a huge opportunity for a civil rights champion to be elected North Carolina’s governor.3
AND IT GETS BETTER: While experts had long thought North Carolina to be leaning toward Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump are now “exactly tied” in North Carolina—opening up a new path to victory in the Electoral College in the race for the White House!4
MoveOn has moved North Carolina into our Tier 1 target list, and we need your help to reach voters and ensure they turn out to vote for Kamala Harris in the presidential race and Democrats all the way down the ballot! Please start a weekly donation to MoveOn through Election Day, so we can get out the vote without compromising our efforts in other states.
Get-out-the-vote efforts in North Carolina were not part of our original electoral budget. And efforts to reach voters there are going to be challenging, due to the devastating and disorienting impact of Hurricane Helene.
MoveOn members have already generously stepped up, donating more than $230,000 to support World Central Kitchen’s humanitarian efforts to get food, water, and supplies to those most in need.
Now, we have fewer than 30 days to go all in in North Carolina, without diverting resources from our other critical work to win this election. Please start a weekly donation of whatever you can afford through Election Day to help us reach voters in North Carolina.
MSNBC reports that Trump has started “lying about the recovery efforts, at least the ones led by Democrats, falsely characterizing them as nonexistent.”5
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that “many voters are cut off from the internet, cell phone networks and even grocery stores,” and that “getting the word out about changed voting locations or how to vote by mail will be a major challenge.”6
MoveOn is engaged in rapid-response efforts to provide North Carolina voters with the information they need to vote. That includes up-to-date information on how to request an absentee ballot or a replacement absentee ballot, if the original was lost.
From there, we’ll engage our network of staff, partners, and hundreds of volunteers to encourage voters to triple their vote by bringing along friends and family.
Vote tripling relies on relational organizing: the idea that people are much more likely to listen to their friends and social networks than to anonymous ads and outreach. Relational organizing has been proven to be the absolute best way—by orders of magnitude—not only to inform people but also to turn them into voters who will show up on Election Day.7 And we believe that in North Carolina right now, people are more likely than ever to listen to friends and family.
So, as MoveOn members check in with their loved ones in North Carolina to see how they are, and while MoveOn members raise much-needed funds for North Carolina organizations providing post-hurricane support, we’re also working to make sure that North Carolina voters are able to make their voices heard.
We need your help to reach voters and ensure they turn out to vote for Kamala Harris in the presidential race and Democrats all the way down the ballot! But, with less than a month left, time is running out. Please start a weekly donation to MoveOn through Election Day.
Let’s be clear: This election will not be decided by undecided voters who don’t know which candidate they support. It’ll be decided by those who have not made a decision whether to vote, those who have not yet made a plan and need a reminder to make a plan—or, in the case of folks in North Carolina encountering major logistical challenges—those who need to make a new plan for voting.
The reality is that who gets elected in North Carolina will come down to voter turnout. In fact, pretty much every election victory that Democrats have earned in the last two years was due to unexpectedly high turnout by Democratic-leaning voters.8
North Carolina voters are facing unique challenges in making a plan to vote and turning out, so we need to do everything we can to help these voters make their voices heard at the ballot box. If we help them now, we will win in November!
Please: Start a weekly donation through Election Day right now, so MoveOn can add North Carolina to our election plan—without pulling any crucial resources out of our fight to defeat Donald Trump in other states.
Thanks for all you do.
–Mohammad, Allison, Alyssa, Mia, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “‘I’m a black NAZI!’: NC GOP nominee for governor made dozens of disturbing comments on porn forum,'” CNN, September 19, 2024
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics/kfile-mark-robinson-black-nazi-pro-slavery-porn-forum/index.html
2. “Hypocrite Mark Robinson Demanding Hurricane Relief He Didn’t Vote For,” The New Republic, October 2, 2024
https://newrepublic.com/post/186639/mark-robinson-skip-hurricane-helene-aid-vote
3. “Helene left at least 128 people dead and communities ‘wiped off the map.’ Now, survivors are struggling to get food and water,” CNN, September 30, 2024
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/30/weather/hurricane-helene-recovery-cleanup-monday/index.html
4. “Harris, Trump deadlocked in every battleground state, polls show,” Politico, October 2, 2024
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/02/harris-trump-polls-00182150
5. “North Carolinians need help. Trump is feeding them lies.” MSNBC, October 3, 2024
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/hurricane-helene-storm-trump-biden-harris-rcna173639
6. “Helene sets off a scramble to keep voting on track in North Carolina,” The Washington Post, October 1, 2024
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/01/helene-north-carolina-election-voting/
7. “Largest-Ever Study on Relational Organizing Shows 8.3% Increase in Turnout,” Impactive, October 9, 2020
https://www.impactive.io/blog/largest-ever-study-on-relational-organizing-shows-8-3-percent-increase-in-turnout
8. “Turnout Data Reveals the Core of Democrats’ Success in Special Elections,” The New York Times, February 3, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/upshot/special-elections-democrats-turnout-2024.html
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