NOTE FROM CHARLOTTEDEMS.COM
We need Democratic candidates to run for local offices in Charlotte County to provide our community with choices.
Charlotte County is served by virtually all Republican elected officials. We have One-party rule, and like it or not, that party is led by Donald Trump.
The majority of registered voters 55%, is split almost evenly between Democrats and No Party Affiliates, while about 45% are registered Republicans.
Our has a unique political landscape, likely influenced by the many retirees from Midwestern states that traditionally voted Republican. This demographic advantage favors one party, but potentially leaves the majority without any representation. In normal times, local Republican candidates have had an enormous electoral advantage, but we know that advantage is slipping fast. We know many of our Republican neighbors are starting to evaluate their values, and their political party’s values. Traditional Midwestern or even more broadly American values are simply inconsistent with Trumpism.
Now, more than ever before, we Democrats need to elect local leaders.
This week, we will be featuring reasons to RUN FOR OFFICE!
Learn more at www,CharlotteDems.com/
IN 2020 RUN FOR OFFICE EVERYWHERE
SOURCE: CROOKED.com AMANDA LITMAN, ROSS MORALES ROCKETTO / FEB.25.20
America’s two-party system in 2020 is premised on the idea of competition: Candidates run against each other. Voters go to the polls, see their options, and pick the candidates they like. If voters don’t like incumbents, they have alternatives.
Unfortunately it often doesn’t work this way.
In too many elections, Democrats fail to compete at all, leaving entire communities unorganized, and creating weakness outside those races. We’re losing elections because we’ve failed to invest in long-term candidate recruitment and instead prioritized funding flashy tools and top-of-the-ticket stars without seeing a bigger picture.
Here are some stats that should scare the shit out of you:
- According to the Reflective Democracy Campaign, in the November 2018 midterms, over half of all races were uncontested; 68 percent of those races were at the county level and 26 percent were at the state legislature level. (And, unsurprisingly, 56 percent of those candidates running without opposition were white men.)
- In 2016, 40 percent of 7,383 state legislative races were uncontested. Eighty-two percent of Georgia’s state representative races were uncontested, making the state’s legislature the least competitive in the country, but in Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Texas, 50 percent of races or more went uncontested.
- In 2017, in Macon County, IL, 120 of 174 races went either entirely uncontested or were contested by candidates without institutional support.
- In 2015, 78 percent of school board races in Washington State went uncontested. In New Jersey, more than half of the 1,528 school board seats went uncontested, and 130 of the positions had literally zero candidates.
- In 2016, in Wisconsin, only four to five percent of municipalities, regardless of population, reported two or more candidates for each board seat, and in 52 percent of communities, there were either one or zero candidates for each seat.
- In 24 of Los Angeles County’s 88 cities, elections were canceled at least once between 2004 and 2014.
- When the Tea Party flipped 63 seats and won the House of Representatives in 2010, they did so in part because Democrats left 24 Republican seats uncontested.
- In Texas, in 2016, Hillary Clinton won Republican Congressman Pete Sessions’s House district—but because Democrats didn’t field a candidate, all those people who showed up to vote for her had no alternative to Sessions to vote for.
THIS STORY CONTINUES AT Crooked.com/articles/run-2020-election/
