December 2023 Newsletter: Your Impact in 2023
Friends,
As the year comes to a close, the MVP team is getting ready for a few weeks of rest, before we hit the ground running to do all we can to win the 2024 elections. (Read the p.s. for some inspiration on that!)
But first, we want to take a moment and celebrate what we’ve accomplished together this year.
The headline: Local organizers won big in 2023. Your support made it possible.
When you read what our local partners achieved this year — for so many people’s lives, and for the future of our country — we hope you feel proud.
LOOKING BACK
What We Won in 2023
If 2022 was a year of defying the odds, 2023 was a year of building momentum.
MVP local partners helped win scores of state and local elections, achieve major state policy breakthroughs, and lay the foundation for victory in 2024 — especially in the key presidential and Senate battlegrounds.
Voces de la Frontera Action in Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, we helped flip the state Supreme Court. Now, MVP partners are suing to throw out the GOP’s rigged Congressional and state legislative maps — which could help Democrats gain up to two U.S. House seats and reclaim the state legislature.
In Pennsylvania, we helped win a state Supreme Court seat, flip the Superior Court, and secure down-ballot victories, including in Bucks County, the state’s largest swing county. Next steps in 2024: Win the Presidency, open U.S. Senate seat, hold the state House, and move closer to gaining the state Senate majority.
In Arizona, we helped re-elect Tucson’s climate champion mayor and a progressive councilmember, and our local partners are collecting petitions to put abortion on the ballot in 2024, when the state could also decide control of the presidency and the Senate.
Down Home North Carolina, celebrating their successful campaign to expand Medicaid
In North Carolina, MVP partners won a victory years in the making to expand Medicaid to 600,000 Carolinians. We helped win key mayoral and city council races, while building momentum for 2024 when our partners will knock on 3.8 million doors to win the presidency and governorship.
In Georgia, we helped mobilize Black and brown voters in hundreds of local municipal elections, winning several mayoral and city council positions. And, MVP partners have helped galvanize Atlanta-area voters to collect signatures for a ballot measure to stop “Cop City,” a plan to cut down 80+ acres of forest to build a police militarization training center.
In Michigan, because MVP partners helped narrowly claim the governorship and legislature in 2022, Democrats have now passed an ambitious agenda including major clean energy expansion, gun safety, LGBTQ+ rights, and more.
Black Voters Matter Fund, getting out the vote in Ohio, in front of their iconic “We Won’t Black Down” bus.
In Ohio, MVP partners protected voters’ ability to amend the state constitution, just in time to win a constitutional abortion rights ballot measure. Our next step: Save Sherrod Brown’s must-win Democratic U.S. Senate seat in 2024 — and pass a ballot measure to create a citizen-led redistricting commission that could finally un-gerrymander the state’s legislative maps.
In Virginia, we helped Democrats regain full control of the state legislature, thereby saving abortion rights and voting rights from GOP attacks. Next step: Keep Virginia voting blue in 2024 and win back the governorship in 2025.
In Minnesota, MVP partners reaped the fruits of over a decade of consistent, strategic organizing and electoral power-building, which enabled Democrats to pass a progressive agenda so bold that it has become a blueprint for state governance. We also helped elect progressive majorities on the Minneapolis and St. Paul City Councils.
Florida Rising celebrating the election of Orlando City Council Commissioners Bakari Burns & Patty Sheehan, and Tom Keen for FL House District 35.
In Florida, we helped win two Orlando commissioners’ races and a state House primary, and our local partners are now organizing to put abortion on the ballot in 2024. 891,000 verified petitions are needed to qualify. So far, almost 1.4 million petitions have been collected, with 753,306 verified already and the rest awaiting review and validation.
In Kentucky, MVP partners helped fuel the turnout effort that re-elected Democratic Governor Andy Beshear by five percentage points.
One Pennsylvania getting out the vote for the November 2023 elections
When we say donor support makes all the difference, we mean it.
In the multi-generational struggle for racial, social, environmental, and economic justice, organizers are the frontlines — and donors are the supply lines.
MVP exists to connect these two essential pieces of the puzzle in the most efficient, effective way possible, so that dollars turn into organizing power, votes cast, elections won, and policies passed.
Here is what our local partners had to say after last month’s victories.
From Steve Paul, Executive Director of One Pennsylvania:
“Our team has hustled to expand the electorate and bring into office working peoples’ champions who have the courage and commitment to face the crises our communities suffer — from housing to environment to the rising threat of facism.
“We sent 190,000 texts. We made 23,000 phone calls. We had 18,623 conversations on the doors.
“We succeeded in experimenting to learn important lessons and building foundational infrastructure. All of this set the stage for programs of the scale and audacity our communities will need to beat back MAGA next year.”
From Tram Nguyen, Co-Executive Director of New Virginia Majority:
“Since May, New Virginia Majority organizers made nearly 300,000 door knock attempts and over 113,000 phone calls, talking to tens of thousands of voters across the state.
“The vast majority of these voters cared about healthcare access, more investments in public education, gun safety, and making sure that Virginia families don’t have to struggle to make ends meet.
“[This election’s] results reflect those conversations, and voters made a decisive choice to disagree with the Republican agenda. With Democrats in control of the Senate and the House of Delegates, Virginians kept in place a brick wall to prevent Republicans from rolling back all the progress that has been made over the last few years on voting rights, healthcare access, gun safety, climate change, and much more.
“We win when we can show a clear way forward and policies that fundamentally change lives for the better.”
MVP local partners, clockwise from top left: Advance NC, Detroit Action, GA Alliance, LUCHA (AZ), Leaders Igniting Transformation (WI), 1Hood Power (PA)
All across the country there are hundreds of local organizations like One Pennsylvania and New Virginia Majority, led by ordinary people who have stepped up to take extraordinary action for the sake of their communities.
They live where they organize. They are in it for the long haul. They know the local issues that will drive their neighbors to get engaged – and to turn out to vote instead of tune out.
The most important thing they need is the money to turn their vision into action.
And that’s what you’ve helped give them this year.
Thank you.
MVP’s 2024 state targeting
LOOKING AHEAD
How We Win in 2024
This might be hard to believe, but early voting for 2024 starts in nine months.
Sneak preview… In 2024, we have three jobs:
- Job #1: Win the Presidency.
- Job #2: Win a bold, Democratic Congress.
- Job #3: Win in the states – governorships, state legislatures, ballot measures, and down-ballot elections that all make an enormous impact on our daily lives.
If we succeed, we can pass the most progressive policy agenda of our lifetimes in 2025, and start building a 21st-century Progressive Era.
Our strategy is simple:
- Inspire center-left donors – large and small – to make their biggest investments ever, as early as possible.
- Send unprecedented funding to the best local voter organizing groups who can tip the scales in every competitive race.
Fired up? Sign our Early Giving Pledge. Talk to your spouse, your financial advisor – whoever you talk to! Adapt and share our sample message with your networks by email and social media.
Above all, in these darkest days of the year: Rest, celebrate what we’ve already won, and cherish time with loved ones — so we can lead with love and fuel our movement with joy in 2024.
Let’s do this!
With deep appreciation,
The MVP team
p.s. – In September, we put out a widely-read memo called “Sending Up the Bat Signal,” our call to action for early investment in 2024. Now it’s time for the sequel. Stay tuned for “the Bat Signal 2,” coming soon to a theater an inbox near you.
p.p.s. – We were about to publish this when we saw: Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times just shouted out MVP in her new Op-Ed! It’s appropriately entitled: “Make a New Year’s Resolution to Fight Trump.” Read it here.
