Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement, fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission because victory for Louisiana requires you.
On this week's episode, I host Gabby Goldstein, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Sister District, to discuss the importance of state legislatures in advancing progressive policies and protecting democracy. The conversation includes a deep dive into the work Sister District is doing across the country to share data, support organizers, and build coalitions as part of a complete strategy to shift legislatures to the left.
Gabby Goldstein! Thank you so much for joining me on Louisiana Lefty today.
Lynda, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.
Well, I feel so honored because you reached out to me on Twitter and offered to be on the podcast, and that's a first for me. But I am very excited you're here. And I always start the podcast with how I met my guest. We were connected by email regarding legislative races back in 2019 by both Ryan Bernie, who was on the podcast recently, and Stephen Handwork, who at the time was the Executive Director of the Louisiana Democratic Party, who had connected us regarding data I guess at the time. But you also reminded me we had lunch together? Was it the same year? It was 2019, right?
Yes. Last time that the legislature was up.
And we went to Luke, which was, we were just commenting, a lovely restaurant in New Orleans. And you came here to do--I think it was a training. Was it a training or a fundraiser? I remember it being very hot.
Oh my gosh, so hot. Yeah, I was doing a lot of work around those legislative elections. And so, it was fantastic to connect. I remember that lunch. I remember listening and learning so much from you about New Orleans politics and Louisiana politics. Of course, the governor was up that year for reelection. And I know you were so involved in that campaign. So, you know, it was great. Twenty nineteen in many senses seems like forever ago but also yesterday.
Right. I think that's right. Well, what's your political origin story? What first got you interested in politics?
Yeah. And you know, when I saw you were doing this podcast, I reached out to come on and chat because I love Louisiana politics so much. There's so much opportunity for progressives in Louisiana. And I love the fact that you're doing this podcast and highlighting folks on the ground and outside of Louisiana, in my case, that are invested in this work and this long-time long-term goal of really making the state more progressive at the political level. And so, my origin story in politics like most folks or at least many folks in politics, I fell backwards into electoral politics. My background is in health law and health policy. And so, I was practicing health and bioethics law in San Francisco and finishing up my PhD in health policy when the 2016 election happened. So, I was really a policy wonk. I was super invested in how law and policy can be a force for good, a tool to expand health care access and lessen racial and economic disparities in health outcomes. But the 2016 election really pushed me to think about the fact that the policies I care about only matter if you know, they only have a chance if we elect the right folks into office in the first place, especially at the state level. And so, policy is kind of the dessert, right? It's the election, the electoral work is really the meat and potatoes for building the world that we want to see. So, I got super lucky. A few other women and I met on a Facebook group right after the election and hatched this plan, this idea for Sister District. So, I like to say it's a postmodern love story because we all met online, but the idea was: what if we were able to harness the energy and the resources from folks in one place, often a blue place but not always, and direct those resources towards strategic winnable state legislative races somewhere else where we could make a big difference. So, like a sister city except at the district level: Sister District. So that was the idea. And we focused on, we honed in really quickly on state legislatures as the place where we wanted to organize because we saw a gap in organizing capacity and resources going specifically to Democrats at this level of the ballot, who are and continue to be routinely outspent by wide margins and whose races kind of toil in obscurity at the state level. And you know, I hate to say it, but Democrats are tardy to the party when it comes to paying attention to state races. The Republicans have just been so masterful at this for so many decades really focusing on state legislatures as venues to incubate their own regressive policies and share them around. So that's how we started, and we've grown to now more than 50,000 volunteers across the country, organized into more than 150 teams, and have had lots of electoral successes since we started and going strong. Trump is not the end of this race. This is a lifelong project that we all need to be involved in, maintaining our democracy and keeping it healthy and safe. So, it is 2021. And we're rolling right along.
So, you're the Co-Founder and Political Director of Sister District.
I am the Co-Founder, and my role at this--I was the Political Director since we started but recently have moved over to a new role where I'm our Senior VP for Strategic Initiatives.
Okay. And you have a lot of great information on your website, which I'll link to in the podcast notes, including your full strategy. Looking at it last night, I saw your target states, and Louisiana is not a target state. But most of them are states that are very familiar to all of us now. You do study legislative races in Louisiana, though. And I know you have at least one chapter here.
Absolutely. And Louisiana isn't on the target list because we just do our electoral strategies in two-year chunks. And you guys aren't up this year or next year. So when--your legislature has four-year terms right? So, 2023 is the next time that your legislature will be up, so it'll be on our map when we get a little bit closer.
Okay. And like I said, you have a chapter here. Are there more than one that I just don't know about?
No, our New Orleans team is our chapter in Louisiana.
Are you looking to have more chapters in Louisiana?
Absolutely. If folks are interested in working with us, there are so many ways to get involved. Absolutely. Starting a team or chapter is great, but we also have lots of affiliates, so if folks are already part of an Indivisible group in Louisiana, a Women's March huddle, whatever your activist home is, we'd love to work with you. We can send you our phone banking links and make our organizers available to you to help grow your team and your efforts. So, we're here to be a resource and ally, and of course, always looking to start new teams but also really looking to work with organizers already on the ground in their activist units that already exist.
Okay. And how would a candidate win your support? Do they contact you? Do you go research and find them? Is there a litmus test that they have to pass?
So, it's a little bit of a "don't call us, we'll call you" with candidates. The first cut is always on the data. Each year the chambers will be a little bit different, but we're always looking for three types of state legislative chambers. We're looking for chambers that we think we could flip this year, flip blue. So those are chambers where Democrats are down just a handful of seats. We're also looking for blue holes, chambers where Democrats have a really fragile majority, and we have to hold on to that majority and not let it slip away. And then the third category is what I like to call no chamber left behind or our blue inroads chambers. And those are places, frankly like Louisiana, where we don't have a one-cycle solution to flipping the chamber, but we have to make inroads. We have to put our stake in the ground as Democrats, run everywhere, support candidates everywhere, and build toward being in a position to flip the legislature on a much longer timeline. So that's the initial cut. And then when we decide which chambers fit within those categories, then we look at the data at the district level and identify districts that look either flippable, which we define as having gone within about five points in a few prior elections. And we look for districts where there's a Democrat who's very fragile, fragile incumbents. We do incumbent protection, which is not the sexiest thing, right, trying to keep people in office, but it's something we absolutely have to do, and it's baked into our strategy. Otherwise, we can never move forward if it's two steps forward one step back by losing those fragile incumbents. So, once we identify those districts, then we reach out to candidates and have them go through our endorsement process. We don't get involved in contested primaries, so we wait until after the primaries, or we work with folks who are not in contested primaries, just where there's one Democrat running. And I know in Louisiana that's often an interesting situation. So, we can talk about the primary, the jungle primary situation, but then they go through our endorsement process. And that does include some policy planks that we ask our candidates to agree to, and they're really meant to be the floor. We're really just trying to set some ground rules around what we think all Democrats should be able to agree to. Things like climate change is real, and we need to protect our environment. We should pursue sensible gun safety legislation in accordance with the Second Amendment and local needs. We have a policy plank around reproductive choice that women should be able to choose the healthcare access that they want and need and a few other policy planks. And even working in places like Mississippi and Louisiana, we've been able to work with candidates who are able to agree to all of those policy planks even though of course, some issues are a little bit different in Louisiana than in other places. And then the last step in the process is pairing up our teams to the candidates that we choose, which is a little bit more of an art than a science, but we really try to make sure that each candidate we work with gets as close to an equal level of support from our teams as all the other candidates so that it's not super lopsided. So that's a little overview of our endorsement process and how we approach that sort of thing.
Okay, and you're called Sister District, but you don't have to be a woman to be a Sister District candidate, right?
No, although most of our candidates do identify as being women. I think this year, it's about 80% of our candidates are women. And that's pretty stable across the years. But we do take folks who identify as men, as women, as non-binary folks, but as the cookie has crumbled, we are very proud to support lots of women, who of course remain very underrepresented in state legislatures across the country.
Do you only work with Democrats?
We only work with Democrats.
And you try to work with progressive Democrats?
Absolutely. We work in exclusively purple districts, right? We're just looking for those districts that could really go either way. But what we found is that folks running in those districts share the same values, and many of them consider themselves progressives and are in fact progressives, when you look at the issues and the votes that they eventually take in office.
Well, I loved reading that one of your stated goals is to support organizers. That hit me in the feels. So, you have a network of volunteers that work with you, but like you said, you also work with other groups. What is the support that you're really offering to a candidate?
Well, there's two pieces. So, on the electoral side for candidates, what we provide to them are hard side, meaning coordinated, working directly with them and their campaigns, field and fundraising support. So, on the field side, we're really an extension arm of the campaign. So, we run phonebanks. We send postcards and letters to voters in the district. We send text messages. We send canvassers when we can. Obviously, the pandemic has changed that over the last couple of years but very excited to get back on the doors. And I think we'll definitely be able to do that this year in Virginia, where the sort of marquee state legislative elections are this year. So, there's the hard side: field and fundraising. And then we also have staff to provide candidates with professional support, basically in kinded general consulting. So, whether that might be a second pair of eyes on a mailer, or a conversation about how to work with vendors, or how to read your poll, or how to work on a poll, all of that stuff is available to our candidates in our candidate services program. So that's on the candidate side. In addition, and you mentioned supporting organizers, which is such an important part of what we do and what is needed in the progressive space, we have a new program this year called State Bridges, which is essentially a program where we're identifying really incredible, impactful organizations in various states that we're working in, who are doing year-round, community-based organizing. And we're holding fundraisers for them and raising their visibility and helping them reach their fundraising goals, reach new donors, new networks so that they continue to be able to do that year-round community-based organizing that frankly makes the electoral work possible, right? We don't want politics to be transactional, right? We want there to be ongoing relationships between voters and their communities around advocacy, around issues, and all the rest. So, working to support those year-round organizers is a really really important part of that process. And just the other night, we held a State Bridges fundraiser for LUCHA, which is an incredible organization in Arizona. We raised $22,000 that night just in that one fundraiser. We had almost 200 people on our Zoom fundraiser. So, we're holding a series of those this year to support those organizers on the ground and drive critical resources, early resources to them. And as Tomas Roblas, who's the Co-Executive Director of LUCHA said the other night, "$100 now in summer of 2021 is worth more than $1,000 of October 2022 money." Early money is so important. So that's one of the things that we're really focused on this year is driving those early resources to those year-round community-based organizers so that they can be in a good place as we head into a really interesting set of midterms next year.
I like that early money point. I appreciate you letting me talk to you about the nuts-and-bolts stuff, because that's where I live. But I know you really want to talk about the importance of state legislatures in general. So, let's get into that. Really, we're talking about the hold that Republicans have on the state legislatures that they've been working for years to get to that space. And they're passing egregious legislation. We're not passing legislation that's meant to help people. We've got the redistricting issue coming up, where they control a lot of that. And one of the big issues now is that they're trying to pass all these new voting laws that will allow the legislatures to have more control over the results of elections. So, I know that's some of the stuff you want to get into, but I just want to kind of let you go. I wanted to preface your conversation with that, but just go ahead and talk about all the things you want to talk about in that space.
Well, how much time do we have, Lynda? So that's exactly right. Republicans have been extremely strategic and masterful over decades in identifying and leveraging state legislatures as a venue of power that they can build and control and use. And it goes back a long, long time. I think that thinking about what the idea of state's rights is and the fact that progressives have ceded a lot of narrative to conservatives over many decades, over probably hundreds of years, right? Progressives and Democrats have really focused on federal protections as the exclusive venue for promoting civil rights and protections for people. And the problem with that--like that's great, that's great. And we need federal laws, and we need federal protections. The problem is states do have certain powers. And those powers are growing. We have a conservative Supreme Court that part of the goal of conservative jurisprudence is to limit federal protections. That's like a top-line goal of conservative jurisprudence is to make federal protections as narrow as possible. We see that coming out in Supreme Court decisions more and more frequently now that conservatives control the court, kicking more issues back to the states to decide. That's not going anywhere. That is a long-term trend that we all just have to face and deal with. The problem is Republicans are very comfortable with fighting for issues at the state level. And we're not. We don't have a lot of infrastructure around state advocacy. We don't have, just as you said, lots and lots of Republican controlled state legislatures across the country. And we don't really have a good narrative either. And I think one of the things that we really need to work on as a movement of progressives is developing a narrative around states and the power of states, the positive power of states, the things that states can do that are good and the sorts of state laws and policies that are good, good for people and good for the environment and good for the economy. And it doesn't have to be an either-or. It's not just we work on federal issues or state issues, which is really how progressives have looked at it. It's a both. We have to do both. We can fight for federal protections and federal laws at the same time that we're building up power in our states. So that's I think a really important message for folks everywhere is really that it's not an either-or. Our advocacy efforts and our activism has to include both federal and state pieces, components because both are really, really important. And the state stuff is not going away regardless of who's in the White House. States are increasing their power for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. So, we can't just turn a blind eye and focus on federal stuff. We really have to focus on what's happening in our states too.
Well, and I do know, we've had some of our community groups really step up and try to inform the electorate more of what's going on in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Now, my comment about that is that for years what's happened there has happened in a vacuum, and they've been able to get away with so much stuff. And it really impacts our day-to-day lives. People don't realize how it gets that way. So, we're trying to go back and stop things from getting worse, maybe help people have things get a little better. So, we have these community groups who are stepping up to really try to fill that space. But it's so much work. It's so much work to inform people. And then we're constantly going back trying to have these Herculean efforts or sometimes Sisyphean efforts to push back some of the worst stuff that they're trying to do. And I think part of what we're battling, you mentioned before we started recording, is ALEC. I know LABI, in Louisiana, is the business association that has a whole lot of power lobbying our legislators more so than just the average voter calling and saying, "We don't want you to vote this way. We do want you to vote this way." LABI has a huge amount of influence, but they're really sort of under the same banner and same model as ALEC, which works in every state, correct?
Yeah, ALEC--there's some next-level genius strategy going out on the right, and I admire it very much. And it's very inspiring, and we should all learn from it and use some of the tactics that have worked so well on the right. But yeah, that's exactly right. There's an organization called ALEC, which is the American Legislative Exchange Council, and it's an organization that's comprised of conservative, basically Republican state legislators and business. Those are the two members, types of members, in ALEC. And they get together, and they decide every year what the issues are that they're going to tackle. They develop model legislation. And the organization provides support to state legislators to enact those model bills. And so sometimes they're called copycat bills. But really what ALEC does is ensure that the conservative agenda is sort of propagated across state legislatures across the country. And so, each year, hundreds of ALEC bills are signed into law in various states. It's an incredibly efficient organization. Everything they're fighting for is essentially quite regressive and detrimental to the causes that we're fighting for on the progressive side. But it's a great model. They've got something really good worked out for themselves. And it's a challenge. We have a challenge on the left to try to develop those sorts of supports for state legislators. State legislatures, Louisiana is no exception, most of them, they're part-time legislatures. It blows people's minds to know that Texas, which is one of the most populous states in the country, their legislature only meets for a couple months every other year. They don't even meet every year. It's the same in Nevada. So most state legislatures are part-time. You don't make nearly enough money to have that be your job job. And what that means is that people who can run for office tend to be wealthy, right? Who among us can take six or eight weeks off of work every year to go be a legislator. Very privileged position to be in if you can do that. And it skews who can run for office, who is in our legislatures making these decisions. But again, going back to ALEC and gets back to this issue of needing to develop new ways to support progressive state legislators so that they can do the work that they want to do. And so that we can get policies enacted and share those policies between states and all the rest. There's much we can learn from the right. And certainly, state legislator support is an area where we can learn quite a bit about what works well.
We have every year about two months of legislative session, and the advocates and activists gear up for it every year. But it's with a sense of dread because it's just this sprint, and they know all the games to play. Like for instance, one of the things that happened this year is one of the groups had gotten a bunch of people to go testify for a committee hearing. And the people who could go testify and wanted to testify on this bill were people who it might be a hardship to get a day off of work to go speak. But they coordinated that, taking people in buses up to the Capitol. And of course, the person who authored the bill voluntarily deferred it, so he could bring it back on another day, which he could do with the drop of a dime with no notice, no real notice. So that you really wouldn't be able to organize people to go speak against it. And that's offensive to me. That's not allowing the public to speak on something because you know they're going to be against your bill. And you don't want that in the public record. So that's a horrible game, but they do things like that all the time. They're those little tricks that they can play to get away from having to listen to the public. And then they always have an excuse later as to why they did it. So, I very much feel for the people who are trying to advocate, and I have, until the pandemic that was actually something I did every year was work on advocacy during the legislative session. But I just know from being in that space around the advocates and the activists that it's just that we always have countdown clocks to when legislative session begins because you're just so not looking forward to it.
Yeah. Louisiana, it's tough sledding, right? And the challenge in Louisiana, one of the challenges, is really to have the mindset that this is a decades long strategy that we have to have. And it'll take a long time to get where we're trying to go. This is where the rubber hits the road on health care, access, education, infrastructure, all of the things that impact our daily lives. And these races are often decided by just a few votes. They're so much smaller, more bite-size than federal races or your statewide races. The return on investment for volunteer time is so high at the state legislative level because these are races that really are decided by a few hundred votes or even less. We had a race in 2017 that was decided by one vote. And it actually was the deciding vote for control of the chamber, and it didn't go our way in the recount. But literally, every vote counts at the state level. And the other thing is that the cost of these races, they're so much smaller, they're so much cheaper races than congressional races or statewide races or federal races. And being involved in state legislative politics, in these races and in the advocacy later on, it's just a really high return on the investment for our time, for our dollar, for all of that. And you said it earlier that these aren't always the sexiest races, but they're really important. And there's something to be said for working on stuff that's a little bit off the radar. The Republicans have been great at that, right. Flying under the radar, finding the strategic moments that they can be impactful, and we can do the same thing. And these races and these positions in the state legislature are just absolutely critically important. It's why we decided to focus on state legislatures in the first place. We really saw them as overlooked venues of power for progressives. These are our policy pipelines. So many bills, we've been talking about the regressive bills that start at the state level and get around like a cancer, but that happens on our side too. There are so many bills that are shared between blue states and even purple states, states with divided government. So critical policy pipeline, state legislatures are our leadership pipeline. Half of all presidents started in their state legislature. Half of all members of Congress started in their state legislature. You guys just had a special congressional election where state legislators ran and won that congressional seat. So, it's a critical leadership pipeline. And then, of course, you mentioned redistricting. State legislatures remain an absolutely critical piece to fair districts and voting rights. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are creatures of state law. That's where they come from. They come from state legislatures. So, it's just really, really important that we recognize the power of these venues and start to harness that power for our progressive goals.
I focused a lot on the negative things that we're combating, but there are positive things that happen in our legislature too, and we've certainly talked about that. You and I talked about JP Morrell earlier because he was on speaking about the unanimous juries. And there are ways for us to pass progressive reforms through this legislature if we find the right messaging and the right way to move it forward. But the long-term goal certainly needs to be getting more Democrats, more progressives in our legislature right now. We've got one supermajority of Republicans in one chamber, and then there's another chamber that's very close to being supermajority. And fortunately, we have that Democratic governor who himself came from the legislature. So, you're right about the pipeline being that's our bench. That's our space to develop our leadership, and it should be. Fortunately, we have Governor Edwards as sort of a backstop on the negative bills that they're passing but also for the redistricting. He can help a little bit there. But it's just going to be critical for us to flip some of those seats back to Democratic where we can. And I know y'all study that. Y'all study where the districts are. Is that information that you share it even if you decide that you're not going to work on a race?
Oh totally. Teamwork makes the dream work. And all of our data, and all the research that we do is publicly available on our website. We have a large research operation. And the reason why we started it was because so much political data exists behind a paywall by consultants, right? There's such a consultant culture in politics, and it keeps a lot, it locks away a lot of the information about what works, what doesn't work, messaging, voter contact tactics, all the stuff. So we have just libraries of information from research studies that we've done and that we've culled from other places. So that's all there. And you're exactly right, having Governor Edwards is crazy important, huge win, huge win for his re-election in '19 because he is that backstop on so many issues. And even in this Republican controlled legislature, there have been a few bright points legislatively. I was excited to see that Representative Freeman's bill on sexual assault survivors being able to get out of their leases was passed. There are some things along the way--I know that was just signed maybe yesterday or the other day, the governor signed that bill. And so, there are places, and I know Melinda White was really at the forefront in the past few weeks talking about domestic violence and ways that the legislature could better protect folks who are going through those sorts of situations. And so there's huge amounts of opportunity at the state level. And it's--I don't want to talk too much about other states that are farther along on that journey of building progressive power, but I think Virginia is a really great example of a state that was quite red not that long ago, which is now a blue trifecta. We finally flipped both of those chambers in 2019. Not that long ago. But not that long ago in 2016, Democrats were down 17 seats in the house there, in their state house. And so really concerted effort to move that state into a more progressive political environment by the organizers on the ground, the activists on the ground doing that work for decades so that it was ready to flip when a window of opportunity came. And it's been incredible to see what Virginia has been able to do on expanding voting rights, on rolling back ridiculous restrictions on women's reproductive health care issues, huge strides in environment, issues of protecting the environment in Virginia. Huge strides. I can't name the amount of bills passed this year and last year that were the first in the south, where Virginia is the first in the south to pass, for instance, comprehensive protections for the LGBTQ community. So, it's an example of how we can take a state that is from the south, of course, further north, but still not too long ago, a very southern state, and move it from being a red trifecta into being a blue trifecta, and that's the power of state legislatures is being able to move on those critical issues. And just this past year, we've seen Virginia pass a number of bills around criminal justice reform and responses to the George Floyd murder and how can we keep our police accountable and pass bills for police accountability and so forth. So that's all to say, the entire lower chamber in Virginia is up for election this year. And it's in that blue hold category of being a fragile Democratic chamber. We can't afford to lose any seats in that chamber or else we'll lose that beautiful blue trifecta that so many folks have fought so hard for and let it slip back into Republican control. So that's something that we're really focused on at Sister District this year is keeping Virginia blue and making sure we maintain that Democratic trifecta so that we can continue to have Virginia be the first in the south on so many issues and push for progressive policies that are just making a tremendous difference in the lives of Virginians.
I think it's important for us to always have hope. Because it's very easy, particularly in the middle of legislative session in Louisiana, it's very easy to think of things as dark and hopeless. So, I like the idea of having hope and having Virginia as a model of what we could accomplish, but I also like the warning that you can never rest on that. You don't flip a chamber blue. You don't flip a governorship blue and just assume that it goes that way. The work has to continue. It can't ever stop. You recently had a summit earlier this year. How was that? Do you do that every year?
We do. This was our first virtual summit. This was our fourth annual summit. Once a year in January, we bring all of our volunteer leaders together from across the country. And we did the first few in the Bay Area in California. We did one in DC, and then this year, it was virtual. And we had a few hundred of our team leaders come together for a couple of days and really have some skills-based knowledge exchange around what works well, best practices, around recruiting volunteers, getting folks to come to your events, best practices around phone banking, making phone banks fun and useful, best practices around data management for your volunteers and for voters. We had some great panels with our alumni, who are now sitting legislators across the country, almost 50 alumni. And hearing their stories about what it was like to go from being a candidate for state legislature to being a sitting legislator and that transition and the challenges, opportunities, and all the rest. It's very inspiring to be in community with our activists, our volunteers, as well as the folks that we've all helped elect and hear from them about the great work that they're doing. And it's not all roses, right? We have worked with a lot of folks who are now legislators in divided government states like yours, right? Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, tough sledding, tough sledding when it comes to being a Democrat in those legislatures. We have a number of alums who are in red trifectas from Mississippi and Texas and Arizona and Georgia. Tough sledding, tough sledding but being in community and having space for us to learn from each other, to give each other a boost, emotionally and with skills transfer and all the rest is just--it really recharges the coffers and helps us all reinvest in the work and really know what it is we're fighting for at the state level.
And I think some of that summit is available on your website too, right? Some of the videos from that.
Yes.
So that's a good resource for people to check out. Is the website the best way for people to connect with Sister District, and are your social media accounts also a good way to do that?
Definitely. You can sign up to be on our mailing list or on a volunteer team on our website: sisterdistrict.com. Feel free to reach out on socials too. We're always happy to connect with folks who want to join this journey of building progressive power in the state legislature. And like I mentioned before, if you're part of a group already that is active and doing stuff, great. We would love to work with your group. If you're in an Indivisible or a Women's March Huddle or whatever the local unit is that you're already a part of, we're happy to just be a resource and to provide some action items, calls to action, for your volunteers around state legislative stuff. So, lots of ways to get involved. And this year is a really great year to get involved because there isn't much going on at the federal level in terms of elections. It's a great time to spend a little activist time on state legislatures. And Virginia, holding on to Virginia really is the big goal this year. And also, it's not just important just for Virginia, of course we want Virginia to stay blue because it's impacting Virginian lives, but it's also a bellwether state for what's going to happen next year. And folks nationally look to Virginia, look to what happens in Virginia in these odd year elections as a bellwether for what to expect in the following year. And we're in this post-Trump world now, where it's really important for Democrats to show that we're still here to play. This is not a mission accomplished situation. But this is a lifelong process of being engaged. And so, the best way we can show that and really put a stake in the ground for the midterms next year is to work to help Virginia stay blue this year and set that tone nationally that Democrats are not asleep. It's not mission accomplished, and Republicans are not going to be able to walk all over the gains that we've made in the past years.
Well, coalition building. I love that, that you're willing to work with other groups.
Absolutely.
I like the idea also of Virginia being a bellwether state, but we've got to care what happens in all these states and particularly those swing states that y'all are talking about. Because if we leave them to red rule, they may well decide the next presidential election regardless of what their voters vote for. So those are all things we have to keep an eye on right now. Our democracy is in an incredibly perilous place, and I worry, I know I'm not alone, but I worry that there are not enough of us paying attention to it and taking it as seriously as we should be.
The good news at the state level is, like I said, these are such small races, they're decided by such narrow margins, a little goes a long way when it comes to activism and volunteering at this level. Your $20 is not going to really make a difference to a presidential candidate. Of course, still donate, of course. But $20 to a state legislative candidate with a budget of $20,000, that's a big deal. An hour phone banking, again, at the state legislature level, goes a really long way. Politics can feel really overwhelming. There are huge challenges. What can one person really do to make a difference? And at the state legislature level, one person can make a huge difference because these are small bite-sized races with smaller budgets, where you can really get to know the candidates and really feel invested in the journey that they're taking and how it aligns with your values. So, there's never been a better time to invest in, mix in some state legislative work into the work that we're all doing. I think of our activism and volunteering as a portfolio, right? We have different things that we work on, different issues we care about, and state legislature can be in the mix. Let's just add it into the mix to have it be one of the things that we do and part of our volunteering habits
Diversify.
Diversify the volunteering portfolio, exactly.
Well, that's a great place to pivot to my final three questions of the podcast. Gaby, what do you think are the biggest obstacles for progressives in our country right now?
Well, I would just go back to something that I talked about a little earlier, which is the narrative around the role of states and how progressives think about states in relation to civil rights, and human rights, and progressive policy. And we have to, just like we were saying about the portfolio of volunteering, there's also in our minds, we need to have a portfolio of advocacy and levers of power as we're building towards our progressive goals. And we can't put all of our eggs into the federal basket. We really have to invest some of our time and our energy into making the positive case for state policy. And it's critically important because we're not starting from much. There is not much of a narrative out there about the positive power of states. We have focused as progressives so much on federal policy, federal answers, federal federal, and it's not one or the other. We have to do both. And I see that as a big hurdle from a narrative perspective is getting folks aligned and excited about fighting for states because we have this ingrained notion that that's a conservative strategy. It's not. It's only a conservative strategy because we have not exercised that muscle, but we have to do it. And so that is my challenge to all of us is to think more expansively about the role of states and the ways in which state policy and state politics can be a force for good and how important it is that we focus on that too.
So, if I were to ask then what our biggest opportunities as progressives are? Is that what you're going to say is getting involved at the state level?
It is, it is. It's because of that return on investment that I mentioned. These are such, these are bite-sized races where we can actually really have a big impact. At Sister District, it's very typical for us to end up raising 40% of our candidate's entire budget. Sometimes it's higher. Sometimes it's lower. Last year, we did an average of something like 40% of all of the phone calls that our candidates made during their entire campaign, and we had win margins for some of our candidates of 140 votes or 47 votes. So, you can really see the impact of the work that you're doing at this level because the margins are so small and because your 20 bucks really goes a long way. So, I see it as a huge opportunity for us to focus on states and to focus on having a long-term strategy of building power at this level. Brick by brick we can get there.
Well, that's impressive numbers, by the way. I like that information. Gaby, who's your favorite superhero?
Well, I'm not a superhero person, per se. But I will say the person who has inspired me this week is Paxton Smith, who is a Texas high school student valedictorian who switched out her, there's a great video of it, you can see it online, she switched out her valedictorian approved speech for another speech that she had written to deliver to her audience to talk about the abortion restrictions that the Texas State Legislature is pursuing and the impact that has on her, on her friends, on her sisters, her mothers, all of us together in this fight. And I loved it because it was such a powerful message about states and about state legislatures and the fact that Texas, the state legislature in Texas is really having such an impact on women's lives in Texas. And the idea that someone so young with their life ahead of them and this incredible opportunity would go out on a limb like that and really take it into her own hands and speak out about an issue that she really cares about and that she sees impacting folks around her. And I think we should all be a little bit like Paxton Smith. Paxton, if you want to run for the Texas State House, give me a call. We can help.
That's a legitimate superhero. I accept that answer. I'll get the speech, and I'll link to it in the podcast notes. Gaby, thank you so much for joining me today. You're doing the Lord's work, in my opinion. And I hope you'll let me know if you get back to Louisiana.
Absolutely. We will be back in Louisiana. Lynda, you're doing God's work. And I'm so grateful to you and all of your listeners and everyone in Louisiana for being in this long fight. It's a long fight. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint, but we'll get there together.
Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please subscribe to our podcast and then follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jennifer Pack of Black Cat Studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their Swamp Pop classic "Security Guard" as our Louisiana Lefty theme song.
