Harris campaign chair: “I don’t know that [local voter engagement groups] got funded early enough”
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris Campaign Manager, speaking on Pod Save America, 11/26/2024 (“Exclusive: The Harris Campaign On What Went Wrong”)
A couple of MVP staffers were listening today to Pod Save America’s election post-mortem episode with key leaders of the Harris-Walz campaign… and our ears perked up at 50:17, when campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon had this to say:
“There are really important groups out there that do important work that are targeting key coalitions.
“When we’re talking about how we needed to reach young people and African Americans and Latinos, the voices and the strength of organizations that are not this campaign, that are not political, that have a history and a foundation of doing this work, that have credibility with different communities, is really important for us.
“And I don’t know that those entities got funded early enough.”
— Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris-Walz Campaign Manager
In essence, Jen is describing MVP’s 2024 strategy (documented here for posterity, however much it might sting to look back now, given the election’s outcomes).
She went on to say:
“My personal opinion is that there are a lot of really important groups that do shit really well and they need the resources to go do that.
“We don’t need to recreate the wheel and we certainly don’t need to funnel everything through one place.
“We need to have groups that have the ability to reach these very difficult-to-reach voters in ways that can be compelling and long-lasting, to have the funding that they need to go do that.
“…we should let people do what they do well and help support them in that and just have some coordination. So that would be my recommendation going forward.”
For the visually-inclined, here’s the video starting at 50:17:
The truth is that we couldn’t agree more with Jen on this. It’s why MVP has focused since 2017 on resourcing and scaling up the best year-round, community-based voter organizing groups in battleground states around the country.
To be clear: We advise being wary right now of anyone who says they have all the answers to what went wrong this election and where we go from here. Human beings have an interesting tendency to interpret new information through the filter of their existing conclusions.
That said, our preliminary 2024 report-out shows the ways local organizing saved us from far worse outcomes in this election, helping to stem our losses in the Senate, fight to a draw in the House, and defy national headwinds to win key state contests.
Common sense and a growing body of evidence suggest that strengthening the kind of year-round voter engagement infrastructure described by Jen is at least one key part of the path forward.
Speaking of the path forward: RSVP here to join our briefing on December 10 for an early peek at our emerging 2025 strategy.
Until then, we hope you find some good relaxation and joy this week. Thank you for all your support of MVP, and we’ll see you in December!
