| Today, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced plans to spend at least $5 million in Virginia ahead of the 2021 election to support Democrats up and down the ballot — the DNC’s biggest investment in the commonwealth in history. This major investment will pay for the vast majority of the Democratic Party of Virginia’s coordinated campaign and will invest in staff, tools, and programs to engage with Virginians directly and robustly to make our case to them.
As part of the $5 million contribution, the DNC will provide a mentorship program to develop coordinated campaign staff, strategic investment and guidance informed by first-class analytics for targeted voter contact, and build infrastructure by engaging the DNC’s national volunteer network and supplying organizing tools for the team on the ground.
In addition to ensuring that Virginia Democrats have the resources they need to win, this program will also allow DNC staff and resources to pilot key programming ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“The DNC is committed to making sure Virginia Democrats have the resources they need to once again win up and down the ticket in November, and to continue to deliver results for working families,” said DNC Chair Jaime Harrison. “These investments will allow us to make our case and reach Virginians directly all across the commonwealth. From funding staffing and training to organizing volunteer capacity and protecting the right to vote, we are leaving no stone unturned in the fight to continue to defeat out of touch Virginia Republicans who are focused on kissing the ring of Donald Trump, no matter the cost.”
“Virginia Democrats have made incredible progress over the past eight years, creating good jobs, making health care more affordable, protecting the right to vote, and taking critical steps to keep our communities safe from gun violence. And we are determined to build on that great work,” said Terry McAuliffe. “With this historic investment we will ensure that we protect our hard-fought progress from out-of-touch Trump Republicans like Glenn Youngkin, protect our majorities, and elect Democrats up-and-down the ticket.”
Additional details on the DNC’s investment include:
- Funding for Coordinated Campaign Staffing: The DNC has already started funding the immediate scaling of coordinated campaign staff to organize in all corners of the commonwealth.
- Coordinated Campaign Staff Mentorship Program: The DNC has developed a 1:1 coaching program for all coordinated campaign managers to prepare them for future cycles by leveraging DNC staff resources, experience, and expertise to help the coordinated team through their planning and programming processes.
- Distributed Organizing Capacity: The DNC will mobilize the thousands of the national volunteers who took part in the 2020 election to support the Virginia coordinated campaign through volunteer recruitment, voter education, and early vote/get out the vote efforts.
- Training Program for Diverse Organizing Talent: The DNC will support the coordinated campaign in identifying local and diverse organizing talent through a DNC-led summer training program, with an emphasis on a distributed organizing curriculum.
- IWillVote Assets for Voter Protection: The DNC will provide polling place lookup tools, access to a national hotline and voter protection team database for monitoring and incident tracking, and national political engagement to raise awareness among partner groups to get involved.
This investment comes on top of the initial $20 million investment that Chair Harrison has already announced the DNC will make before the general election in 2022. It’s also in addition to a historic four-year agreement to provide $23 million to state parties as part of the DNC’s 2022 midterm strategy.
Earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris announced the DNC will invest another $25 million to expand its “I Will Vote” initiative to address and overcome efforts across the country to make voting more difficult and burdensome. |
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