The Collective PAC — Building Black Political Power
Our mission is to build Black political power, and through our various entities, we do this through educating and equipping voters, donors and candidates with various resources including trainings, technical assistance, paid communications and fundraising. We are specifically looking to improve our democracy by addressing the underrepresentation of African Americans in public office, and through recruitment, training and supporting voters, donors, and candidates, we will build an entire new generation of black civic leaders on the local, state and federal level.
https://collectivepac.org
The Collective PAC was created in August, 2016 by Quentin James and Stephanie Brown James. Quentin James serves as the Executive Director, and Stephanie Brown James as Senior Advisor. Both of them are very experienced political activists with wide ranging backgrounds. Between them they’ve led Black Americans for the Ready For Hillary PAC, National African American Vote for the 2012 Obama for America Campaign, African Americans for Obama, National Director for Sierra Club’s Sierra Student Coalition, National and Field Director for NAACP, along with several other organizing positions.
Their backgrounds show they know what it takes to win elections, from recruiting candidates to getting out the vote.
Here’s what The Collective PAC website has to say about the nuts and bolts of their work,
...we’ve launched the first-of-its-kind Black Campaign School training for candidates and campaign operatives from around the country, and we host The Black Political Power Summit every year to update the nation on black political representation. With over 100,000 email subscribers, over 20,000 donors...The Collective has grown to be the largest and most prominent organization focused on helping elect African American candidates to public office on the local, state and federal level.
collectivepac.org/...
I encourage you to check out the website, and see the visuals that show just how under represented Black Americans are in state and national offices.
2018 Mid-term Results
This organization delivered big in the House races in 2018. They donated to 23 House candidates around the country.
Their top recipients were, in order:
- Ayanna Pressley — won
- Colin Allred — won
- Lauren Underwood — won
- Joe Neguse — won
- Antonio Delgado — won
- Jahana Hayes — won
- Lucy McBath — won
- Pam Keith
- Francys Johnson
- Linda Coleman
- Ian Conyers
- Ilham Omar — won
Of these, eight won their races, including the top seven recipients. Impressive work, and instrumental victories in our big blue wave of 2018. Representation matters and part of the excitement from the big blue wave was seeing the number of POC winning races.
This article shows how these victories led to a record number of Black House members,
The blue wave had some black riders. Every African American Democrat in the House running for re-election in this year’s midterms won his or her race. In addition, voters sent nine new black members, all Democrats, to Congress. As a result, the number of black House members will grow to an all-time peak of 55, even if, as appears possible, both black Republicans (Utah’s Mia Love and Texas’ Will Hurt*) lose their seats.
*should be Will Hurd
prospect.org/...
Remember this when candidates talk about not accepting PAC money, there are lots of candidates that need PAC money. For some it probably made a huge difference in their successful campaigns. Nearly 4 billion dollars were spent on the 2018 mid-terms, this is spending on behalf of both parties, according to Open Secrets.
Democratic candidates in the House raised $714 million, and Senate candidates nearly $500 million. That’s a lot of money, and reducing the cost of elections is a matter for another diary, but it’s good to understand how much is raised and needed to win. I have a hard time imagining that the 2020 election will cost less.
Well, that’s my soapbox for this week, have a good day and a good chat.