As the national political dialogue has grown increasingly chaotic, conflicted and unmoored from basic facts, political junkies may have begun to wonder if they’re the crazy ones. The so-called reality-based community seems to be imploding, with the media treating a thin-skinned would-be strongman with multiple felony convictions as the almost-inevitable victor of an election where, in all likelihood, he will fall short of a popular-vote majority for the third straight time.
That may all have changed with President Biden’s abrupt withdrawal from the race and a surge of enthusiasm and fundraising for Vice President Kamala Harris, his anointed replacement. On the other hand, it may not. The recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity serves as a reminder that the supposed institutions of democracy will not save us. It’s the people who will save it, if anything does.
Salon once again turned to Swing Left for a reality check on how people outside the Beltway media bubble are trying to do just that. Since its founding within days of Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March in 2017 (Salon story here), Swing Left has been a vehicle for turning anxiety into action. Now, with more than a million members and 400 groups nationwide, and with political anxiety at or near record highs recently, the organization claims its activism is surging as well. Continuing our coverage spanning the years, I spoke by Zoom with Swing Left executive director Yasmin Radjy. Our original conversation occurred before Biden withdrew from the race, but Radjy revisited her comments after that. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
In January, I spoke with you and others at Swing Left about your plans for 2024. Since then there's been lots of drama and turmoil in the media and partisan politics, culminating in Joe Biden dropping out of the race. But we haven’t heard much about non-party organizations and grassroots activists who do critical campaign work, along with long-term community organizing. So tell me how Swing Left sees this election now.
At Swing Left, we channel the energy of grassroots volunteers and donors to help Democrats up and down the ballot, and we focus on the most competitive tipping-point races that swing the national balance of power. That’s what we’ve been about from the very beginning. We started in 2017-18 with the House, but we were founded at the very beginning to oppose Donald Trump and MAGA extremism and we are facing a challenge again, just at different levels of the ballot.
The 12 “super states” that we're focused on include eight that are focused up and down the ballot, from the presidential level down to the state legislature. And so in canvassing, in letter-writing, in donations and phone banks later on, we're focused at all levels of the ballot in those states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We have to win those to win a federal trifecta which remains our goal, even as political winds keep changing. The two states where we also focus on the Senate side are Ohio and Montana, and then California and New York on the House side.
I’m most interested in the inside perspective, what you’re doing and seeing. But I think it’s important for folks to understand your strategic perspective in a more detail. While the House is just part of this, it’s the most legible part. So how would you explain what you’re aiming to accomplish?
Democrats narrowly lost the U.S. House majority in 2022 by just 6,675 votes across a handful of competitive districts. Now Democrats need to net just four seats to flip control. That goal is well within reach if we invest in the most competitive, winnable races.
Swing Left is targeting 24 House seats, 10 of which are in New York and California – two of the super-states we’re investing in the most heavily this cycle. Some of the candidates we’re paying extra attention to are those coming out of primaries held later in the year, especially those who are contesting House seats that flipped to Republicans in 2022. They’ll need more support in volunteer recruitment and fundraising in order to mount effective campaigns, but these seats are primed for Democratic candidates to take them back. These candidates include John Mannion (New York’s 22nd district), Janelle Bynum (Oregon’s 5th district) and the eventual Democratic nominee for Arizona’s 1st district, about whom we’ll have more information at the end of the month.
We also have a larger slate of “red-to-blue” candidates that we’re focusing on as well, including George Whitesides (Calif. 27), Adam Gray (Calif. 13), Adam Frisch (Colo. 3), Mondaire Jones (N.Y. 17), Ashley Ehasz (Pa. 1) and Laura Gillen (N.Y. 4).
How have things changed from 2020 and 2022?
The really big difference from 2020 is that we’re going all-in on canvassing. For obvious reasons, we couldn't do that in 2020. As we debriefed with campaigns, they shared how much that negatively impacted their races, and as we talked to volunteers, they saw this election as essential to get back out and talk to voters face to face, particularly because of the sharpness around issues like abortion. So we started canvassing early this cycle, much more in a way that resembles 2018. The key difference being that we're focused on those broad levels of the ballot, like in 2020, whereas in 2018 it was just the House.
Right now our level of volunteer engagement is 90% higher than this moment in 2018. And that was a moment where the zeitgeist was all about volunteers getting out talking to voters face-to-face, how that was going to be transformational. We’re seeing bigger numbers now, in a way that's just not getting a lot of airtime. What we’re experiencing at the doors [before and after the Trump-Biden debate], is a lot of movement in our direction and a lot of openness to substantive and long face-to-face conversations, which we were used to in 2018 but were absent in 2020, both because of COVID and because we see less focus on face-to-face in general in politics. So we’re really heartened to see that. We’re feeling really optimistic about that engagement.
Can you be more specific about what you’re hearing?
I did a round of conversations with a number of our highest-performing volunteer-led groups around the country, after the debate [but before Biden’s withdrawal]. Biden and the debate were almost never coming up. And if they were coming up, it was very much in passing. This is in communities of color, in swing Republican or independent white suburban districts, across our super-states.
The two issues that were coming up consistently were the economy and abortion. On abortion, Republicans and independents who folks are talking to door-to-door are open to the perspective of Democratic candidates, are open to conversations with canvassers and are moving across the commitment spectrum faster than our canvassers had ever experienced in their political lives. Some of them started in 2017, some started before that.
And then, on the economy, they're starting out really skeptical of Democrats and as canvassers are engaging with them in conversations about how the economy is moving, trying to bring that to earth in terms of the personal lived experiences of people, they are much more open to the Democrats’ perspective. Now, with Kamala Harris being the new presumptive nominee, we expect these issues — reproductive rights and the economy — to remain front and center in our conversations with voters. What’s more, early polls are indicating that voters have even greater openness to Harris on these issues than they did to Biden.
So that covers the voters. What about your own people? How are they feeling?
Even prior to the debate, our national numbers on volunteer retention and recruitment have been way high up, the sort of numbers we expected to see in September. Our local groups have said that the most consistent feedback is that volunteers feel like we're not giving them enough to do, rather than that they’re not feeling motivated.
That's not to say that folks have not been anxious — in fact, before the debate, anxiety was the main emotion motivating our volunteers and donors. But it's been a starker contrast than I expected between what we've been reading and seeing and experiencing in our media bubbles versus what our volunteers on the ground are feeling and hearing from voters.
Since President Biden decided to withdraw as a candidate, we’ve seen an immediate mood shift – and anxiety has been replaced with excitement as the driving motivator for volunteers and donors. That excitement is anchored first and foremost in a commitment to defeating Donald Trump and MAGA extremism down ballot. But that excitement is also about Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee, and about what appears to be a real moment of unity in the party after a tough couple of weeks. This has translated into concrete action among our members: Over 3,000 of our grassroots donors raised more than $530,000 in the 48 hours after Joe Biden ended his candidacy, including more than $200,000 to our Swing Left Presidential Fund, which will benefit the eventual Democratic nominee.
We’ve also seen the two best weeks all year in terms of Swing Left volunteer sign-ups: over 4,250 unique volunteers signed up for at least one shift, and our affiliate organization Vote Forward had over 550,000 voters adopted for its national letter-writing campaigns, with 200,000 of them in the 72 hours after Biden’s announcement. Additionally, we had over 1,000 people join a virtual call we organized last Monday to outline how they can allocate their time and money to have maximum impact in key battleground races, further highlighting people’s enthusiasm and eagerness.
This is one of those sea-change moments that could propel Democrats to a victory up and down the ballot.
For weeks there was a conversation about Biden damaging down-ticket candidates, but among activists there’s been a growing awareness of a reverse-coattails effect. In states like Ohio, as David Pepper has argued, Democrats have been damaged by not running full slates in state legislative races. What have you seen?
We believe that reverse coattails are essential to pay attention to. That's part of why we anchored on a super-state approach. On our nonpartisan affiliate side, Vote Forward, we did some research in Nevada last cycle on the reverse-coattails effect of volunteer handwritten letters. This was for the Nevada secretary of state race, and we had some clear evidence that those letters didn't just turn out people to vote for the Democratic nominee for secretary of state. They also had on an upward impact on the U.S. Senate candidate. So we've seen real evidence of this, this is not just an academic theory but rather something that we've been testing and investing in.
Thinking specifically about state legislative races, I live in Southern California, so I'm especially sensitive to Arizona, where our SEIU local has had heavy involvement for years. What can you say about that?
At the state level, Republicans have played the long game for decades, building power in state legislatures. This has had significant national implications, allowing them to pass extreme anti-democratic legislation and draw favorable, gerrymandered districts. As painful as it is to admit, Democrats must learn from their patience and long-term focus — and learn fast.
Every two years, the most political attention is paid to federal races, but it's crucial that Democratic volunteers and donors help to continue to make progressive gains at the state level. There are a number of chambers in key states where Democrats could break a GOP trifecta (in New Hampshire), protect a recently formed Democratic trifecta (in Michigan) or continue to make consequential gains (in Pennsylvania and Arizona). There’s also a layering effect at play here: driving out voters for top-of-the-ticket races and down-ballot contests helps us win at both levels.
This also extends to key gubernatorial races, including in North Carolina, where a Democratic governor (in this case, current nominee Josh Stein) could serve as a crucial check on Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. Stein’s opponent [Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson] is also wildly extreme, virulently anti-LGBTQ+ and opposes reproductive freedom.
Broadly speaking, we can think of political campaigns in terms of what stays the same, or stays on the same trajectory, and what changes unexpectedly. So what stands out in the first category, and then in the second?
Abortion remains extremely salient and front of mind for voters. I know that was a big question mark as the distance increased after the Dobbs decision. Would the salience of that issue decrease and other issues become more front of mind? We are finding that it remains top of mind, in the eight presidential super-states, but also in New York, California, Ohio and Montana. That's something that I'm heartened to see, that's been really consistent from very early in the cycle and is not wavering.
In terms of an unexpected challenge, the change in nominee means we have an unprecedentedly short runway to support the Democratic nominee. That means our priority is setting up the Democratic nominee with the necessary support, resources and infrastructure to defeat MAGA extremism.
Of course, all signs point to that nominee being Kamala Harris, a fact which makes this short runway more manageable, as the transition of the Biden campaign to the Harris campaign couldn’t have been smoother. To that end, our members have been reaching out en masse to share their excitement at the strong level of unity they’re experiencing and observing, a feeling which inspires great confidence among volunteers and donors.
Tell me about the status of races on your watchlist. How are those changing?
At this point in the cycle, we often expand our list of targets based on confidence that our tipping-point candidates are on stable footing. However, given the uncertainty facing our priority candidates, we are not ready to take our foot off the gas in directing resources to our existing House map. We’re hearing from top-priority House candidates that donors are not investing the resources they otherwise would, due to uncertainty around the top of the ticket. In contrast, we at Swing Left are exceeding expectations in grassroots fundraising for those same candidates. Swing Left plays a vital role here as a trusted, honest broker connecting these candidates with the grassroots funds and volunteers that they may be unable to secure themselves.
Our House watchlist is constantly evolving as we adjust our ratings based on what we are hearing from partners, available public data and our own internal metrics. This month, we will likely move a few races off our House watchlist – both to activate as new targets or because we believe time and resources would be best spent elsewhere. Our goal is to not be reactive to the political winds, but to synthesize the information available to guide grassroots volunteers and supporters on where they can fight for races that have the best chance of winning.
What can you tell me about the motivation of your grassroots leaders and activists?
In every survey we've done of our members, abortion is No. 1, democracy is No. 2 and every other issue is a significant step down from those two issues. Those are the dominant issues — they were in 2022, they were in 2023 and they’ve remained that way in 2024. Obviously the word “democracy” entails a lot, in terms of what's motivating people underneath that. I would say that from the beginning, since Swing Left was founded, Donald Trump is the motivator for why people are paying attention and beginning to take action. And in terms of their sense of agency and participating as organizers day in and day out, it's often those down-ballot races. So the House is our most popular level of the ballot, both for donors and for volunteers, in part because we have a lot of members in New York and California and those are the closest races to them.
But I think the other thing is that it’s so easy to feel a lack of agency in this media ecosystem. There is so much doom surrounding people that I think what motivates our volunteers is feeling like they can't control everything but they can control some things. So participating, whether it's knocking on doors, writing letters or donating what they can, and understanding the return on that investment, especially in those down ballot races, that's what motivates them to keep doing it.
A number of our volunteers have updated our organization's motto of “turning anxiety into action” into “turning enthusiasm into action.” I think that’s a great summary of the vibe shift folks are experiencing on the ground. Of course, news cycles can change on a dime, and given the high stakes of this election and the greater Republican unity behind an extreme platform, there’s still plenty to worry about. But we’re optimistic that our volunteers and donors will be able to weather the storm at even greater levels. They now have new wind in their sails.
We know that the elections up and down ballot will be very close and likely come down to a few thousand votes in a few key states and districts. But we have a fighting chance and we need to do everything that we can. There is just too much at stake to do anything but, like, lean in as hard as we can to take action.
As you just said, a consistent theme of Swing Left from the beginning has been providing a way to turn voters’ anxiety into action. How has doing that changed?
When we first started, it was clear that our primary first line of defense was to win back the House. Folks didn't need a whole lot of communication or education on the why — that was really clear. It was just, “Tell us which races can benefit the most at this moment from our time and our money.”
I think the biggest shift has been making sure that people have enough information to be able to walk and chew gum at all different levels of the ballot, but without the kind of information overload that leads to paralysis. A lot of what we hear from our volunteers and donors is that they feel inundated with so much information, whether it's from other organizations, whether it's from campaigns, whether it's from the press, that they just don't know how to prioritize.
So our biggest shift has been doing more information about the relative impact of time and money and different levels of the ballot, and also people's different abilities to participate. Someone in San Francisco cannot canvass seven days a week in the Central Valley if they work and have a family. So how do we help them with their time budget on the Wednesday nights that they have available? Or someone who has already given the maximum of their budget, has never volunteered before and that feels sort of paralyzing or scary — how do they participate or go canvass where they're going to feel comfortable? So I'd say that communication has just become a bit more layered because it's different levels of the ballot.
Swing Left was born in emergency mode. That’s different now, isn’t it?
In 2018 everyone was in emergency mode. All of a sudden they opened up their pocketbooks as wide as they could, invested all the time that they possibly had. Right now we’re in the marathon period, not the sprint. So getting people what they need to sustain their action as a long-term investment requires more communication rather than a rapid-response moment.
If people reach out to you and want to get involved for the first time, what do you ask of them?
They can sign up to volunteer or donate or a combination thereof. We are here to help make that process as easy as possible and as aligned with their budget of time and money as is feasible. We really see ourselves on the fundraising side as a donor advisor for the masses, so no one should feel stuck about where to give in terms of candidate priorities. On the volunteer side, whether someone is seasoned or brand-new to politics — and whether they have a lot of time or a little time — we’re here to help them connect with a community of other people who believe that the antidote to anxiety is action.
What's the most important question I didn't ask? And what's the answer?
I think we talked about this in our conversation in January, but Swing Left's one million members run the gamut of progressives, centrists, people in swing states, people in blue states. The Democratic coalition is demographically and ideologically very reflected in who our members are. There are pretty different perspectives about what should happen at the top of the ballot, different perspectives on the future direction of the party. Our folks have not be distracted by those in a way that’s been really impressive. They're discussing those things, as anybody does, at the dinner table and in their group meetings. They read the news, they share articles, etc. But they are really, really focused and their level of commitment to outcomes — to doing everything we possibly can to win majorities — supersedes their personal sentiments, including frustrations, heartbreak, stress and anxiety, all those other things.
I feel really, really hopeful. There's a lot we cannot control, and who knows what's around the corner. But the focus, resilience and dedication of our volunteers is really amazing and unwavering. So even as we've hit major headwinds in the past few weeks, we’ve seen a growth in participation, in donations, in participation of volunteers. I think that's because this is the home for people who believe that the antidote to anxiety is action and that’s their ideology more than anything else. So I feel, certainly, a whole range of emotions, but really hopeful in a way that doesn't feel pollyanna-ish in this moment of turbulence.
