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Groups unite behind CD1’s Griego, legislative candidates
Eric Griego (Courtesy photo)
The Working Families of New Mexico coalition is partnering with the federal Super PAC Progressive Kick to help progressive candidates win their Democratic primary races.
A handful of self-identified progressive organizations have partnered with a federal Super PAC in an effort to elect Democrat Eric Griego to Congress and five new Democrats to the N.M. Legislature.
The group calls itself Working Families of New Mexico, and it has partnered with the federal Super PAC Progressive Kick to help progressive candidates win their Democratic primary races.
In the 1st Congressional District race, the group’s efforts have included a radio ad and knocking on almost 33,000 doors, in addition to Progressive Kick’s TV and radio ads and a pamphlet.
In addition, the group has endorsed candidates in five Democratic legislative primaries – Eleanor Chavez in Senate District 14, Christine Trujillo in House District 25, Maxine Velasquez in Senate District 30, Larry Martinez in Senate District 35, and Louis Luna in House District 32. The group is sending mailers in support of those candidates and doing door-to-door canvassing to help Chavez and Trujillo, according to Tomas Garduño, director of New Mexico New Majority.
That is one of five groups that are part of the Working Families of New Mexico coalition. New Mexico New Majority is a 501(c)(4) organization affiliated with the nonprofit SouthWest Organizing Project. The others involved in the coalition are Organizers in the Land of Enchantment (OLÉ), Communication Workers of America, MoveOn.org and Native American activist Laurie Weahkee.
Groups anticipate ‘extremely close contests’
A letter Garduño provided to NMPolitics.net, which was sent to supporters of the coalition this week, states that the groups “came together around the opportunity to help elect Eric Griego – someone who many of us have known for years as a dedicated and forceful leader in the progressive movement to Congress.”
“All told, up and down the ballot, the races look like they’ll be extremely close contests,” the letter states. “We can’t know what Tuesday night will bring, but we feel satisfied for having started a progressive effort that will grow stronger and more effective with every election cycle to come.”
The groups’ efforts include attempts to unseat three state legislative incumbents – Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith of Deming, who currently represents Senate District 35; Dona Irwin of Deming, who represents House District 32; and David Ulibarri of Grants, who represents Senate District 30.
That’s noteworthy because progressive groups are generally well-organized in New Mexico and effective at turning out voters, and in recent elections progressive challengers have had some success at unseating more conservative lawmakers.
Working Families’ partnership with Progressive Kick isn’t the only effort to replace more conservative Democrats with progressives in the primary. As the Las Cruces Sun-News is reporting, Conservation Voters New Mexico has spent $30,000 thus far to try to unseat Ulibarri and incumbent Sen. Phil Griego of San Jose, who represents District 39.
What the groups are doing, spending
NMPolitics.net has already highlighted Progressive Kick’s work in the CD1 race and the Deming-area legislative races, and learned of the larger coalition in the course of that reporting. Garduño and Joshua Grossman, who heads Progressive Kick, revealed a much broader effort than NMPolitics.net had previously reported.
Progressive Kick has aired an ad on cable TV (which was briefly taken off the air to be reworked) and radio attacking Grisham, and it has distributed a Griego-supporting pamphlet. It also sent out a mailer in the Deming-area races that was produced with the help of OLÉ.
The letter that was sent to supporters of the coalition this week highlights additional efforts to help Griego, including polling to “determine the most powerful messages” to help the candidate, knocking on 32,900 doors by Election Day, making 8,800 phone calls, and producing a radio ad hitting Griego opponent Michelle Lujan Grisham.
OLÉ’s Matthew Henderson told NMPolitics.net the canvassing is targeting already-identified Griego supporters and trying to get them to vote early. In addition, it will target 300-400 supporters of Chavez and Trujillo in their legislative races to encourage them to vote early. He said he expects the canvass to have a “big impact” in the 1st District race.
“Whether we are in the South Valley or deep in the Northeast Heights, voters seem really open to discussing the race with our canvassers and receptive to the message that Working Families of New Mexico are projecting about Griego putting working families first,” Henderson said.
The efforts are all done through independent expenditures, which means the groups can’t legally coordinate with the candidates. According to OpenSecrets.org, Progressive Kick has spent more than $95,000 thus far on the CD1 race – including paying OLÉ $25,000 to run the canvassing.
The Super PAC, which is based in Oakland, Calif., has raised more than $300,000 this election cycle and is funded largely by San Diego-based real estate investors Lawrence and Susan Hess and MoveOn.org.
Of course, in the CD1 race Griego isn’t the only candidate with outside help. In fact, the Women Vote! Super PAC has spent a little more to help Grisham than Progressive Kick has spent on the race (view a breakdown here).
Garduño said independent expenditures set up for the state races have been done primarily by Progressive Kick and OLÉ. NMPolitics.net could find little information about those independent expenditures online. Grossman said that’s because all that’s required in New Mexico state races is a list of expenses disclosed in its federal report, which is here.
Grossman said the group’s total spending on the five state legislative races won’t add up to more than $15,000.
‘We’ve begun to build a new broad alignment’
Even if its candidates aren’t successful on Tuesday, the Working Families of New Mexico letter to supporters states, “we think we’ve gained something immensely valuable.”
“Together, we’ve begun to build a new broad alignment among progressives in New Mexico – the ‘Working Families of New Mexico’ – with the courage and skill to make a real difference in helping to elect progressive leaders who share the values of the 99% and who will fight to make life a little better for ordinary working class and middle class New Mexicans,” the letter states.
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A paid Griego staffer called while I was at Costco. This is almost like live blogging a GOTV effort.
That makes two paid contacts and an AFSCME contact just today. That a lot of money going into getting my vote to the polls.
It didn’t have to be this way. The Griego campaign didn’t have to choose the horde approach, where they do zero actual organizing of volunteers but instead try to get a big horde of people to show up at HQ in the few days before the election, and then give them randomly selected supporter lists. The AFSCME lady said that indeed she’d gone to HQ and stood around and gotten the list and then driven across town to my house – rather a lot of overhead and wasted time.
There’s a much better way. Imagine it’s mid September. You round up about 50 volunteers (your candidate has been running for local office for a decade or more, surely there are 50 identifiable early volunteers). You introduce them to each other, get them working together. You give them lists of other probable supporters in their neighborhoods (or neighborhoods they want to work on). You have them recruit more volunteers, with whom the recruiter will continue to work, continuing to recruit. The new volunteers work with the volunteer who recruited them (rather than being tossed into a general horde reporting to the staff), so you build friendships and trust and knowledge of each other.
Let’s say each volunteer can recruit 1 (one) other volunteer every month. That shouldn’t be too tough, should it, especially if you’ve got lists of supporters from previous elections, and lists of other likely supporters. That’s 50 in mid September. By mid October, 100. November, 200. December, 400. January, 800. By the ward and precinct elections in February you’ve got 1,600 supporters, all of them organized into a hierarchical structure with a chain of command, a group where people knows those with whom they’re working, and know their territories.
You could absolutely pwn the ward and precinct elections.
Now you keep you volunteer organization going. 3,200 in mid March. 6,400 in April. 12,800 my mid May. 18,000 by primary election day.
Of course, it wouldn’t actually grow that fast. One new recruit for every existing volunteer each month is a tough pace. But I bet you could easily get a structured group of 4,000 people – if you just tried actually organizing, instead of counting on having a horde in the few days before election day. And 4,000 people who knew each other, knew their territories, and had already identified and talked to the people you want to get to the polls, 4,000 people who could work together efficiently and effectively, that’d be a political force to be reckoned with. KOB(1) is reporting about 35,000 votes cast already, and predicting a low turnout tomorrow. I’ll bet 15,000 votes takes the CD! Democratic race.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s the multi-level marketing approach. It’s Amway. It’s also the sort of approach that allowed the Romans to stomp the barbarian hordes every time – a structured group of people who know how to work together will beat a horde every time. And volunteer who feel that they are a valued and important part of an organization, that they are doing meaningful work and are working with people they like and respect, will be far more persuasive and effective than a bunch of people who are given a call list and a short script and told to go sit in a corner and make calls.
But the Griego campaign spent its time and energy raising money for TV and direct mail instead.
(1) http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2643836.shtml?cat=500
Alleluia! An actual volunteer for Griego just knocked on the door.
Of course, she’s not an endogenous volunteer, she said she was an AFSCME member.
Really, Griego has been running a seriously dishonest campaign – at least with respect to his claim to be running a “people powered” campaign. I’ve seen only a SuperPAC campaign and an interest group based campaign.
Apparently my impression is correct: the campaign itself has put all of its serious effort into raising money and courting interest groups, counting on TV ads, direct mail, and others’ GOTV efforts. A people powered campaign? Not hardly. I think I’m now officially irked.
I’ve gotten two postcards from Working Families of New Mexico in the last few days.
They both appear to be handwritten, and they both say:
“Hello Michael,
Thank you for supporting Eric Griego for Congress. Please don’t forget to vote early!
- Your friend”
One was signed Lori, the other Genevieve. The handwriting of both looks to me like the writing of a 12 year old girl, and both have little happy face thingies.
[I assure all readers, including particularly any law enforcement personnel, that the number of 12 year old girls with whom I'm on a first name basis is precisely zero.]
Upon close examination, I don’t believe either was handwritten. They don’t smear with water, there’s no indentation in the paper. I don’t believe that there are such people as Lori or Genevivieve. That is, I’m sure there are people with that name (I know someone my age called Lori, but she doesn’t use happy faces with her signature)
I’ve been called by them once (that I answered) and the caller also sounded like a young girl (for values of “young” that may reach the mid 20s. I’m 59)
Do the ones addressed to ‘Dear Betty’ get signed with a name like Buck or Randy? The mind reels. The gorge rises. Tonstant voter fwows up, as Dorothy Parker might say.
Frankly, this sort of crap just annoys me.
Carolyn .. the ad is still up and it is running on KRQE, but the KRQE footage has been removed
Here is an example of the attacks ads of Ms. Grisham.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRUJOwsoi2w
This is not a POSITIVE TV ad by Ms. Grisham.
Carolyn, I can’t get that link to work. Is it me, or is it the link?
There is a major differnce between what outside groups are doing for Lujan Grisham and what Super PACs are doing for Griego. Outside groups are staying positiive and telling people why they should vote for Lujan Grisham.
Griego’s Super PACs are attacking and distorting Lujan Grisham’s record. KRQE forced them to take down an add because it was false and misleading. Griego’s Super PACs are engagied in Karl Rove tactics. Griego says he wants money out of politics, but if the money falsly attacks his opponenets, he is ok. You can watch KRQE go after Griego’s Super PAC attacks at the link below.
http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/politics/attack-ads-hit-the-air-in-congress-race
These groups could be doing as the groups supporting Coss, buying less than $500 ads under different names at different times and thus not having to report anything.