M E M O R A N D U M
11/26/04
From: Zach Polett
RE: Political Strategies 2005 & Beyond: Building on the 2004 Voter Participation Work
ACORN sees the need to move forward aggressively to take advantage of the unprecedented electoral capacity built in 2004 with a program that combines voter registration, issue-based voter education and mobilization, volunteer recruitment and training, progressive ballot initiatives in 2005 and 2006 and election administration campaigns with a longer-range effort focused on marginal state legislative districts, the Congressional redistricting process and marginal Congressional Districts.
2005 Project & Priorities
The overwhelming success of minimum wage increase ballot initiatives in Florida (71.5% in favor) and Nevada (65% in favor) this past November argues strongly that this strategy should be moved in many more states in 2006. Key initiative states where ACORN is exploring this strategy include OH, MI, AZ, CO and MO (see attached).
The thinking behind this strategy:
In addition, we will seize opportunities that exist to run municipal minimum wage initiatives in states where this hasn’t been pre-empted by state law. Initiative campaigns planned for 2005 include Albuquerque, New Mexico and a 3-city campaign in Alameda County, California (Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville), taking advantage of ACORN’s successful 2003 minimum wage initiative campaign in San Francisco that raised the minimum wage there to $8.50 per hour.
New Jersey and Virginia are the two states with gubernatorial and legislative elections in 2005. ACORN has multiple offices in both. Neither state had vast registration projects in 2004, so there is much work to be done.
In 2005 and 2006 we will continue our 2003 – 2004 voter registration program in which we registered 1.125 million voters, though at a reduced level. States emphasized will be those with 2006 elections. Whereas in 2004, because of the magnitude of the program, we produced the majority of our registrations by hiring and training local residents from ACORN neighborhoods, in 2005 we will invest more of our energy and resources into developing volunteer-based registration programs, using full-time organizers to recruit and train volunteers. Preliminary voter registration goal for the 2005 – 2006 cycle is 450,000.
In addition we will work in 2005 to institutionalize the high school senior voter registration project we tested in the spring of 2004. By working with and through local school administrators, their national associations (including the Council of Great City Schools and the American Association of School Administrators), and the two major national teachers’ unions, our methodology is to gain access to high school seniors in minority communities through assemblies, English classes (since all high school seniors take English), and school cafeterias to register them to vote and, where possible, create volunteer voter registration opportunities for them in the larger community.
In 25 targeted ACORN cities we will employ a full-time political organizer who will recruit, train and support a network of 60 – 120 ACORN electoral activists who will build and maintain precinct networks in their communities. Responsibilities of these precinct network volunteers will be to maintain ongoing contact with approximately 30 residents of their community, including registering to vote those who aren’t already registered, involving them in ballot-initiative and other electoral campaigns, contacting them bi-monthly to invite them to meetings and forums with elected officials, and then in the 4 weeks prior to an election contacting them 3 times each to turn-out to vote.
This is a long-term, multi-faceted project with the following goals:
The strategy here is to build the long-term, targeted organizing and electoral capacity needed if we are to have a Congress with a progressive majority. The redistricting process is key, since it is unlikely that there are enough competitive House districts to end right-wing control of the House of Representative before 2012. But we need to start now.
The first step is to review the literature analyzing the redistricting process state-by-state, determine which states’ re-districting processes are in the hands of state legislatures (most), which state legislative bodies have a close enough Democrat-Republican ratio to be in play, and which state house and state senate districts in those states are competitive. With this information, one can then target appropriate legislative districts. We have identified an organizer with previous experience with 21st Century Democrats and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee who we would like to hire to develop this targeting plan.
The program in a district has three parts:
The way to prevent what Tom DeLay did in Texas in 2003 is to make sure that right-wing forces don’t have control of both houses of the state legislature and the Governor’s office in states where the legislature determines re-districting. That way, even if it isn’t possible to adopt a re-districting map that favors progressives, one can prevent a right-wing gerrymandering by throwing the process into the courts, helping to ensure at least a “neutral” map.
In the spring of 2004 Project Vote, in partnership with ACORN and others, conducted a $1.1 million program in 13 states to help ensure that local and state election administration officials enabled every vote to count by getting all the millions of new voter registration cards added to the voter rolls and by getting states to implement positive aspects of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). We learned from this effort that “the devil is in the details” and that engagement with local and state election administration officials is necessary to make the election machinery work for previously non-participating voters. In 2005 and 2006 we will conduct neighborhood-based campaigns to get election administration services (machines, poll workers, polling places) delivered to low-income and minority precincts at the same level they’re provided to other communities, thus eliminating the “long-lines” problem that plagued low-income precincts in Ohio and other states in 2004; deploy trained election administration project staff in 25 major metropolitan counties; challenge in partnership with the Advancement Project and other legal support centers the improper use of provisional ballots to deny voters their franchise; and move a campaign, initiated in 2004, to get state governments to implement the provisions of NVRA that require them to provide voter registration services to clients of their food stamp and other social service agencies. The 2004 work on the project was funded by grants from the Open Society Institute, Proteus Fund, Rockefeller Family Fund, HKH and Bauman Family Foundation.
ACORN/AISJ Bridge Organizer Training Plan
ACORN and the American Institute for Social Justice (AISJ) are conducting a 5-month organizer training program from November 2004 through the beginning of April 2005 with 70 of the best and most dedicated field organizers and canvassers from 2004’s voter participation work. The goal of this program is to retain some of critical field organizing capacity built during the unprecedented 2004 civic engagement work conducted by ACORN (and others) and, through direct on-the-ground organizing drive training, turn them into longer-term ACORN community organizers, with both community organizing and voter engagement skills and vision. Graduates of this organizer training program will be assigned both to existing ACORN offices to build active membership and a volunteer base from the communities targeted for voter registration and voter turn-out in 2004 and, once sufficiently experienced, to open new ACORN offices in strategically important cities and states.
The majority of the organizer trainees will come from the best field managers, organizers and team leaders from ACORN’s 2004 voter participation program. ACORN had over 400 political organizers and team leaders working on the project, leading a team of over 8000 GOTV canvassers. We intend to produce 70 organizers from this pool of 400, which means retaining 17.5%. From October 1st through November 5th we conducted an interview and assessment process with all political organizers and team leaders and some canvassers to determine who are candidates for careers in community organizing. This process produced 320 organizer-trainee candidates who we put through a 2-day Organizer Academy (conducted in a dozen cities) the weekend after the election. From these Academies, we identified 210 trainees whowe enrolled in a paid 2-week organizer training project ending just before Thanksgiving. We expect to retain 140 of these trainees for a 2nd 2 ½ week training program running Nov 29 – Dec 15, followed by a 3-day national training in New Orleans from Dec 16 – Dec 19weeks. Like the airlines, we intend to overbook, so we expect about 70 trainees to come from this pool, that we will whittle down to the 40 – 50 we project. Most of the trainees from this pool will be African-American and Latino organizers, many of whom are long-term residents of the communities where they will be working.
The other group of trainees will come from outreach we will do to the even larger pool of people working for a variety of groups and campaigns on the 2004 election. We will hold a series of 2-day Organizer Academies in selected cities in the first half of November to which we will invite voter participation and campaign workers who want to be considered for full-time, long-term organizing positions. We require a minimum one-year commitment, after training, from anyone seeking to enter the program. On the last day of the Academies our trainers conduct exit interviews and offer positions in the paid on-the-job training program to the best people from the Academy. We expect to produce 20 – 30 of the 70 organizers from this pool.
We’re finalizing the list of training sites over the next two weeks, but our current list is as follows:
FL – Miami/Ft. Lauderdale
FL – Orlando
MI – Detroit
MO – Kansas City
NC -- Charlotte
NM – Albuquerque
OH – Cincinnati
OH – Cleveland
OH – Columbus
OR – Portland
PA – Philadelphia
PA – Pittsburgh
Our current plan is to hold an initial 2 ½ week training module from November 8 – November 24; a second 3 week training module from November 29 – December 19, ending with the 3 – 4 day national training conference; and then a 2 month organizing drive training module from January 3 – March 5. At the completion of this 4 – month training program, organizers will have the skills to build and maintain issue-based, membership-run community-based organizations that have a clear empowerment and electorally-oriented agenda, geared around increasing voter participation long-term and building a voter participation in the community.
4-Month Budget
Organizer Trainee Salaries & Fringe $840,000
Trainers 224,000
3 Day Training Conference 66,300
Travel & Lodging 75,600
Other Expenses 84,000
TOTAL $1,289,900
For further information, contact Zach Polett at 501-376-6451 or via email at poldirect@acorn.org.
Little Rock, Arkansas 72206
(501) 376-6451 phone (501) 376-3952 fax
poldirect@acorn.org
Minimum Wage Initiative Opportunities
There are 22 states that allow statewide ballot initiatives on the minimum wage (AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, FL, ID, ME, MA, MI, MO, MT, NE, NV, ND, OH, OK, OR, SD, UT, WA, WY).
Seven of these (AK, CA, FL, ME, MA, OR, WA) have already raised the minimum wage about the federal, either by legislation or initiative, so are probably off the list, though some (e.g. California) might be considered for another run to raise it still higher. (Nevada passed in 2004 but has to be passed twice to become law so will be on the ballot in 11/06 as well.) That leaves 15 remaining states for consideration. Some of these are small, highly-conservative Western states that may or may not make sense. Following is a list of states, in very rough order of priority, where we believe minimum wage ballot initiative campaigns should or could be run in 2005 – 2006 or, in some cases, in 2008.
Analysis still needs to be done on match-up with marginal House and state legislative races.
STATE KEY 2006 RACES/Other Factors
1) Ohio Governor (Open Seat -- now held by term-limited Republican Governor Taft); DeWine (R) running for Senate re-election; key 2008 Presidential Battleground
2) Nevada Governor (Open Seat – now held by term-limited Republican; Ensign (R) running for Senate re-election. (Has to be passed twice – 2004 & 2006 – to become law.)
3) Michigan Stabenow (D) running for Senate re-election; Granholm (D) running for Governor re-election
4) Arizona Napolitano (D) running for Governor re-election; Kyl (R) running for Senate re-election
5) Missouri Talent (R) running for Senate re-election
6) Nebraska First-term Senator Ben Nelson (D) up for re-election; won with just 51% of vote in 2000
7) Colorado
8) Arkansas Open Seat Gubernatorial Race with AG Beebe (D) and Lt. Gov Rockefeller (R) likely candidates.
9) Montana Burns (R) running for Senate re-election got just 51% of vote in 2000.
10) California (Already $6.75 via initiative, but SF is $8.50; could do $7.50 or $8.00 plus indexing); Schwartzenegger (R) running for Governor re-election – unless he goes for Senate – and Feinstein (D) running for Senate re-election.
Idaho
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Utah
Wyoming
City & County Minimum Wage Ballot Initiatives
In addition to state ballot initiatives, there is a smaller list of cities and counties where one could run minimum wage increase ballot initiative campaigns, along the lines of the successful 11/03 San Francisco initiative that increased the minimum wage to $8.50, indexed for inflation, and without a tip credit exemption. Following is an initial list of these:
1) Albuquerque, NM Santa Fe passed minimum wage in 2003; ACORN is starting the preparation now to put minimum wage on the ballot in Albuquerque in the fall of 2005.
2) Alameda County, CA ACORN planning now for simultaneous minimum wage ballot initiatives in the 3 Alameda County cities of Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville.
3) Los Angeles, CA
4) San Diego, CA
5) Milwaukee, WI
For further discussion or information, contact:
Zach Polett
Director of Political Operations
ACORN
2101 Main Street
Little Rock, AR 72206
(501) 376-6451 ph
(501) 256-6152 cell
(501) 376-3952 fax
poldirect@acorn.org