We need your help this weekend!

Don’t wake up on November 3rd to Senator-elect Rossi!

Fellow Democrats,

There will be plenty of ghoulish moments other than Halloween if we don’t return Senator Murray to the US Senate. Forget the yard work, the costume doesn’t have to be perfect, the home is just fine. Voters have the 46th Voter’s Guide. Now we need to GET OUT THE VOTE. We need you to canvas for Patty Murray. Here are the details:

Canvassing:

Saturday, Oct. 30 – Meet at the Cloud City Café, 8801 Roosevelt Way NE (88th & Roosevelt). Sign up for the 10:30 am and/or 1:30 pm shift. Call Brittany to reserve your spot!

Sunday, Oct. 31 – Meet at Metropolitan Market, 5250 40th Ave. NE. Sign up for the 11:30 am and/or 2:30 pm shift. Call Brittany to reserve your spot!

Phone Banks:

There will be a phone bank running this weekend between 11am and 8pm at the Coordinated Campaign office:

1310 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA
Call Brittany: 425-503-3032

Monday and Tuesday, there will be a phone bank running from 9am to 9pm at the same address. Please contact Brittany if you have time Monday or Tuesday!

The urgency and need is real. Commit to help over the next four days!

Questions? Call Brittany – (425) 503-3032, 46th District Field Organizer
or Bernadette Laqueur – (206) 525-8911, volunteer

Volunteer Outreach Email

This year more than ever, we need your help to ensure that progressive candidates are elected into local, state and national office. As you read this, corporations (some even outside the United States) are spending millions of dollars to defeat democratic candidates both nationally and here in Washington State. That’s why we need you to volunteer today! The only way to counteract such blatant abuse of democracy is with grassroots people power.

By now all voters have received their ballots and it is up to us to ensure that we are doing all we can to support our friends and allies. However, with 9 many days left before Election Day, time is beginning to run out. Please sign up to volunteer and join me, and thousands of progressive activists across the country, as we work together to ensure that big corporations don’t steal this election and our democracy.

Earlier this week, former President Bill Clinton was in Washington State to fight in support of Senator Patty Murray and other congressional candidates in our beautiful state. His message to us, "Don't be fooled, don't be played, don't stay at home."

In this election, the choice is clear. Please volunteer in the effort to move our great country forward by signing up for a volunteer event here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/GOTVolunteer2/?source=wa_dems.

Help the Coordinated Campaign!

Ways to volunteer with the Coordinated Campaign:

Phone banks:
9am-9pm Monday-Friday and 11am-8pm on weekends
1310 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA
Call Brittany: 425-503-3032

Additional Phone Banks: Monday – Friday, 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm, 615 2nd Ave. (2nd & Cherry)

Doorbelling Saturday & Sunday October 23 & 24 in N. Seattle
Saturday, 10:30am; Sunday 11:30 & 2:30
Café Lati, 35th & 110th near Nathan Hale High School

Please call Brittany to RSVP so she can get a list printed and ready for you to pick up!

Phone banking for I-1098

There will be phone banking for I-1098 hosted by the UFCW Local 21 every Sunday, Monday and Wednesday at 5030 1st Ave S at 5:30pm.

And SEIU 925 will be hosting phone banking at 1914 N 34th St on October 27th at 5:30pm.

There will also be two canvasses on Saturday morning at the Jefferson Community Center 3801 Beacon Ave S starting at 10am on Saturday October 24th.

And the University of Washington Young Democrats and others will be meeting at 9am at the Burke Museum that day as well.

Please do everything you can to help this measure pass so our kids can get a stronger foundation!

And thanks so much to Imogene Williams, a PCO in the 43rd Legislative District, for bringing this information to our meeting tonight!

Another report from our membership

One of our members just sent me this and I wanted to share:

I am in Washington DC and will go to the Jon Stewart march next Sat and will be here on election night.

I'll be back Wednesday and I hope I get a better seat mate than coming. An evangelical minister sat between me and a Republican and he had to do this tightrope walk trying to keep us from blows. I have to practice just saying 'WHAT??!! You can't argue with them.

We may not be able to argue with some people, but we can certainly vote against their candidates. Please help GetOutTheVote!

Report from one of our PCOs

Chad,

I completed my whole list earlier today. I also put flyers at the 20 unit new house/condo complex, that was not on the list at all.

I can't remember which of you told me this: to put a single-hole punch in the upper left corner of the endorsement flyer with a thin rubber band looped through the hole, so I could hang it on door handles and not use the mail boxes. (I remember, Chad gave me this tip). This worked great.

I also printed labels that said:

Scott Leiter
Questions? Ideas? 206 522-9208
email: scottleiter@hotmail.com
PLEASE VOTE!

and affixed them to the space on the back of each flyer. This worked quite well and could be made up easily for the less tech savvy in the future.

I am happy to see Patty Murray is ahead in the latest poll (KCTS). I am bummed that 1098 isn't doing better. I am working on an appeal to health care providers next. I am also pulling for Suzan DelBene.

See you on Thursday night, after seeing Obama/Patty in the morning at Hec Ed at the UW.

Scott Leiter

PS - My time is limited until next weekend. If more help is needed then, let me know.

---

If you would like to tell your story about how doorbelling is going in your precinct, please feel free to comment on this blog post, or send me an email so I can post it!

Update to Voters Guide

It looks like we skipped one of the Ballot Measures in our Voters Guide, and I wanted to make sure that we put out our preference on Senate Joint Resolution 8225. We did discuss this measure at our August Endorsement meeting, however I forgot to include it on the Ballot Measures page, so it was also forgotten when we drafted the Voters Guide. I'll fix the website now.

Debt Limits Constitutional Amendment. The proposal would change the way interest payments count toward our debt limit. Gina from the Treasurer's office spoke in support of this proposal. It had overwhelming support in the Legislature. The Federal stimulus bill reimburses states for interest payments. The proposal would align with the stimulus bill language to take advantage of the Federal subsidy. Gina believes this will provide approximately $650 million over 5 years, although the actual amount depends on economic conditions.

46dems Endorsement Results: Support 43; no position 1. We Support this Amendment.

Also, we published our Voters Guide before King County Elections had released the official titles of the King County Charter Amendments, and I wanted to update everyone with the correct references.

Here is what we originally published:

On King County Charter Amendments we endorsed a Yes vote on Ordinances 2009-0496 and 2010-0328, which are both common sense reforms eliminating redundant candidate filing, and highlighting duties in unincorporated areas, respectively. However we ask that you Reject Ordinance 2010-0169, since it is an important check on the powers of the Sheriff to have bargaining rights reside solely with the County Council.

Here is how that should read:

On the King County Charter Amendments, we endorsed a Yes vote on Charter Amendment No 1 (Amendments to the Preamble) and Charter Amendment No. 2 (Amendment of Section 690 - Campaign Finance), which are both common sense reforms highlighting duties in unincorporated areas and eliminating redundant candidate filing, respectively. However, we ask that you vote No on Charter Amendment No. 3 (Amendment of Section 890 and New Section 897 - Collective Bargaining), since it is an important check on the powers of the Sheriff to have bargaining rights reside solely with the County Executive.

Please don't forget to vote!!

Followup: Streets for All Seattle

We passed a resolution in September supporting the efforts of Streets for All Seattle. This is a letter and special request for our consideration.

Dear Chad and the members of the 46th Legislative District,

Thank you for your on-going membership in the Streets for All Seattle coalition; we continue to be excited by our momentum working with the Council to make sure that Seattle's transportation infrastructure works for all of us.

As we have gone through the last eight months, one of the problems that has arisen time and time again is that there are too few options for transportation funding at the local level, each of them problematic. While the State's gas tax goes to build new highways and streets where there weren't ones before, our local ability to fund the creation, maintenance and operations of our local transportation infrastructure is severely hampered by the lack of local tools.

To that end, we are developing a letter--a draft of which is enclosed--to Seattle's state legislators asking them to seek more local transportation funding options in the upcoming 2011 General Session. As a member of the Streets for All Seattle coalition, we would like to include the 46th District Dems as a co-signatory to the letter. With your special relationship to the legislators, we wanted to highlight your signature on the letter.

Please let us know what we can do to help you be comfortable adding your signature to the letter. We are trying to have the signatures by the end of the month.

Thanks,
Brice Maryman
Streets for All Seattle Cabinet Member
Great City Board Chair
Email: bmaryman@gmail.com

Notes from the Chair, October, 2010

I saw a question on Twitter the other day. It was from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, asking “What will you do to make sure Dems win?”

My answer: “I will stick to my principles, no matter what.”

I believe that our voters want to see a clear choice in November. I believe that it is our mission to give them that clear choice. They need to know what we stand for, what we will work for, and what we will do over the next few years if they will give us the honor of representing them in the halls of Congress and in Olympia.

It is a clear choice between people who want to see our foundations secured so that we and our children may reach for our potential, and people who believe that our goal should be in selfish desires to profit from that foundation.

It is a clear choice between people who will work for the common good of all, and people who work to give an advantage to only a few while claiming to support the right of everyone to eventually, maybe, get those advantages themselves.

This has been the clear choice for years. Decades. Centuries. This is the choice that we made during World War II, when we fought against fascism. This is the choice we made during the American Revolution against the British East India Company and their government allies in King George III’s Parliament. Whether to have a government focused on giving everyone a fair chance at a good life, or if we wanted a government that allowed money to twist the rules out of the hands of We the People.

And it’s the choice we will make in November. After two years of seeing what kind of change is possible in our systems of government, it seems nobody is satisfied. Both the Conservative Movement and the Progressive Movement are struggling to come to grips with the pace of change. It is far too fast for many on the Right, and too slow for many on the Left. But it’s moving in the right direction. Our votes in this election will determine whether we keep moving in that direction.

Our PCOs are going door to door, trying to get our Voters Guide into people’s hands by the time the ballots drop on October 15th. We’ve gotten a LOT of good responses so far. Thanks for the support. Please do your part by volunteering to help elect our candidates and spread the reasons why we have taken our positions on the ballot measures.

It’s really the WHY that is important. Because we believe in our Platform, and we stick to our principles.

Can we win? Sí se puede!

Chad Lupkes
Chair, 46th District Democrats