No detail provided. By now you know the drill and why it is so important. Today I am just providing how you can support races nearby or from home. There are links for how to call from home in support of Beto O’Rourke, Xochitl Torres Small, Abbas Akhil and others. For a complete action guide for a far wider range of campaigns, click here for the 2018 Voters Action Guide.

Santa Fe Activity. The Democratic Party has created a network of offices throughout the state of what is being called New Mexico for All (NMFA). At each location there are schedules of canvass launches, phone bank hours and other activities you can participate in to ensure victory on Tuesday.  At the bottom of the page, you will find the locations and contact info for these offices from Shiprock to Farmington, to Clovis to Roswell, to Las Cruces and all points in between. This is a remarkable and well-coordinated effort that makes it easy for you to get involved.

At its NMFA office in Santa Fe  a range of phone banking and canvassing activities pretty much every day, all day, click here to get to their events page. The Democratic Party is also hosting phone banking most every day all day at its adjunct office at 2006 Botulph, suite 2 in Santa Fe. Click here for times, dates and actions (canvass/phone banking). The site provides times for a range of local campaign efforts including those for statewide candidates and for nearby State House races like Matthew McQueen HD 20, Christine Chandler HD 43 and Andrea Romero, HD 46. 

At the bottom of this page is the

Virtual Phone Banking for Xochitl Torres Small from home. Click here.  It is very easy and very important.

The Xochitl campaign is overwhelmed with volunteers and now they need a volunteer to grow their Valencia County coordination team from 3 to 4.  If you want to serve as a volunteer coordinator, call Soledad Roybal at 917 757-1963. If you want to canvass for Xochitl in Los Lunas, get to 5100 Grand Ave. NE, ABQ by noon if you are not an experienced canvasser, or by 1pm if you are. You will canvass from 2-6:30 and then be bussed back to ABQ. There is housing available in ABQ for those who want to cut down on the driving. If you could use some cash, they are now paying $15/hour for canvassers if that makes a difference in your capacity to commit time.  Let’s Do This.

We strongly recommend that you support Stephanie Garcia Richards. She is locked in a virtual tie with Lyons, a truly heinous candidate who is lauded for having experience, but that experience has been to consistently shill for PNM, gas and oil interests at the expense of our land. He should not be entrusted with this position.  In a shamefully misguided endorsement, the Santa Fe New Mexican endorsed Pat Lyons and now he has just received $2 million from Chevron to fuel his hit ads against Garcia Richards. If you go to SGR’s campaign site and go to Volunteer and sign up, Sharon will contact you and give you the link and phone bank code. Once you’ve got that, the rest is easy. Click here for times, dates and actions (canvass/phone banking).  Click here for times, dates and actions (canvass/phone banking) taking place at Democratic Campaign Headquarters on Botulph.

Aside from the Governor’s race, we feel that the Public Regulation Commission, Dist. 5 race is the single most important race in the state. In Roundhouse races, the choice between one candidate or the other represents one of seventy House Representatives. At the PRC this election is for one of five seats and, as constituted’ two PRC commissioners are strong environmentalists and three are consistent supporters of the extractive industries and nuclear energy.  Click here to get in touch with Fischmann’s campaign. I am trying to get info on how you can phone bank from home.

Texting from Home for Working Families Party.  A Remarkable Tool. I ran tinto Eric Shimamoto at the Abbas canvass kick off (below), and he introduced me to the Working Families Party (national, not NM) website where you can sign up to text for WFP endorsed candidates: think Stacey Abrams for Gov in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida, also Governor. From Eric I learned that you can go to WFP, click to join #Text4Resistence, a Slack platform where you obtain a ‘coach’ to support you and where you get lists to text to for various candidates.  Scripts are provided, even responses to most common questions. You can pick the candidate from among the WFP candidates. Once you sign up on slack you are directed to download “Scope” an app which is the tool you use to actually text voters. What happens next is a miracle. You can text 50 people from your list in less than a minute. Each recipient will get a brief message about why to support candidate X and how to get more info on the candidate and where to vote. Then you stop for a bit and wait to field questions. The system takes a bit to figure out, hence the value of the coach, but for those who don’t feel fully comfortable representing a candidate and discussing positions with someone on the fence, this is a great way to get in the game. Click here to sign up. You can be texting within 15 minutes.

Abbas Akhil (HD 20):  This could be the most important House race in 2018. Let’s elect a climate scientist who also believes in science. Can’t canvass, they need drivers; can’t drive, they need callers.  Let’s Do It.  First a note from Neri, Abbas’ campaign manager. It should inspire you:

“Hi Friends—I’m managing Abbas’ campaign and I want to tell you where things stand and why your help these final few days matters. We expect turnout to be around ~ 63% or 11,100. There are 19,306 registered voters in HD20 (39% Dem, 35% Republican and 26% Declined to State or DTS).

In 2016, turnout was 13,033 (41% Dem, 39% Republican and 20% DTS). Right now, as of yesterday, 6,877 voters have voted (45% Dem, 39% Republican and 15% DTS).  With your help we’ve had thousands of conversations with voters and have identified hundreds of hundreds of voters who say they are voting for Abbas.

I can make a case for why it looks promising going into Tuesday’s election—and, of course we start with a terrific candidate. We’ve also had a lot of support—people vouching for Abbas, contributing, and working on the campaign. Our communication program and mailers have been solid. But we need to finish strong because the margin will be razor thin. If you’ve got a few hours this weekend, please spend it with us. Help us as we push those final few voters to go vote and vote for Abbas.

See below for how to help – come by tomorrow to canvass with the Mayor @ 9am. Email me to let me know if we can expect you. 

• Saturday, November 3, 9am—12pm, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller will walk doors with volunteers and supporters!
• Call or Walk Saturday, November 3, and Sunday, November 4. 2018. Join us for our final push to inspire and reach voters!
  • Stop by 9am-6pm on Saturday to walk
  • Sunday, 10am-6pm to walk and 2pm to 7pm to call.
• GOTV Monday, November 5, 2pm-7pm
• GOTV Tuesday, November 6, 6:45am-7pm
  • 7pm, Election Night watch party is at Hotel Albuquerque, 800 Rio Grande Blvd NW

We meet 1727 Soplo Rd. SE in Four Hills.  Please let us know if you can walk or call or otherwise help— email Doug at fieldabbasfornm@gmail.com or call/text at 505/366-3402.

Van Going to Las Lunas next Wednesday through Friday for Steve Fischmann (PRC Dist 5). Seats Available.  During the primaries, Retake recruited Leah Cantor to canvass for Janine Yazzie. We reported on her experience, as she talked so enthusiastically about how much she loved the experience and how impactful she felt it had been for voters. Well, Leah is back at it and will be heading down to Las Lunas on Wednesday Thursday and Friday around 10 am and she’ll be out knocking doors till about 6 pm. She is working directly with the Fischmann campaign so she would be able to get you set up with training, turf and script. She has room for 4 other people in my car. Let’s fill that van. If you are interested in joining Leah, just email me at paul@retakeourdemocracy.org. There are now just two seats open. I took one. Join me.

Beto O’Rourke. Texas Senate. While the focus of Swing Left is on the Congress, there are a few races outside NM that are really resonating nationally:  Beto O’Rourke in his neck and neck battle with Ted Cruz comes first to mind. While polls show a 6-8% deficit, this does not capture the nearly 1.5 million voters who have registered in just the past few weeks. And they didn’t register to vote for Cruz.  A win by O’Rourke would send shock waves through the GOP, but despite a huge infusion of dark money, O’Rourke remains within a point or two.  Click here for a link to sign up to phone bank from home.

Andrew Gillum, Florida Governor. Running an unabashedly progressive campaign, Gillum stunned the pollsters winning the Democratic Party nomination for Governor. The GOP did him a favor and chose Ron DeSantis as their pick. An unapologetic, over the top Trump supporter, he may be too conservative even for Florida. But neo-Nazis have begun robo calls attacking Gillum and you can bet that Trump will step up his tweets, as well. This is another national race that could send a clear message AND make progressive change possible in Florida.  Click here for information on Gillum and his campaign. I am trying to find out if you can phone bank in support of Andrew’s campaign, but have not gotten that info yet. I will keep you posted.

Stacy Abrams, Georgia Governor.  It is almost inconceivable that in three solid red southern states, strong progressive Democrats could win huge races and initiate a transformation not only of Southern politics but of national politics. If you want to learn more about this race, click here.   If you want information about how you can support her campaign, click here.  I am trying to find out if you can phone bank in support of Stacy’s campaign, but have not gotten that info yet. I will keep you posted.

Swing Left. If you are interested in being involved in key campaigns outside New Mexico, you can do no better than to work through Swing Left.org. Swing Left is a very sophisticated web-based system of support with a national scope. You plug in your zip code and it will tell you where the closest swing district is, provide you info on the candidate and the race, and help you get involved in that campaign. Swing Left claims that 75% of voters live within 50 miles of a swing district. This is a great site to share with friends in other states. At the bottom of this post is a short video describing the remarkable impact that Swing Left is having.  Click here for more information on Swing Left.

In solidarity,

Roxanne and Paul