Hey, everybody! Ben Hardin here — Marie Newman’s campaign manager in Illinois’ Third Congressional District.
Three weeks ago, we defeated Dan Lipinski in the Illinois Democratic Primary by a 2.5% margin. Our coalition overcame 30+ years of opposition name ID, our opponent’s strategy to influence Republican voters to pull a Democratic ballot, a major cash disadvantage, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our opponent had an over $450,000 cash advantage when we kicked off our campaign in April of 2019. So our fundraising team built a truly grassroots operation buoyed by folks from all across the country — many of you reading this now (thank you!!) — giving an average of $40 each. We ultimately raised over $2M from 34,500 individual donors.
Our opponent had the backing of the DCCC, the Democratic establishment, and the Chicago Machine. So we organized the old fashioned way, hosting over 300 meet and greets in living rooms across IL-03. We built a coalition of 30 grassroots organizations, the Coalition for Change in Illinois Third District, and with their help and the help of countless other supporters, we knocked on over 110,000 doors and made over 400,000 phone calls. We picked up support from bold national and local leaders in the Democratic party who understood that electing someone who would fight for the values of everyone in their district was more important than protecting the status quo.
And when we were forced to cancel over 1,000 canvassing shifts GOTV weekend due to concerns of exposing volunteers and voters to COVID-19, our field team completely flipped the operation to a digital one with two days notice. We moved those 1,000 door shifts to our predictive dialer, and between Saturday March 14th and election day, we made over 200,000 phone calls and sent over 150,000 texts.
Our coalition — driven by thousands of supporters in Illinois’ Third District, by our dedicated partners in organized labor, by a ton of amazing grassroots organizations, by a collection of bold national organizations, and by you in the Daily Kos community — overcame all of these obstacles and made history. Now, we are one step closer to sending a strong progressive leader to Washington at a time when our country most needs its lawmakers to fight for workers, better healthcare, and an economy that puts workers and working families first.