Do More, Worry Less (9/22/24)

Simon Rosenberg
Feb 12, 2024
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Hard Work Is Good Work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- Our community has already done so much. In 2023 we helped win elections in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. We kept working hard in 2024, helping win another election in Florida and NY-3, the Suozzi special election. This year we’ve focused our energy on three big projects:

  • Electing Harris-Walz by supporting the ticket and working to win our “checkmate” states of Arizona, Nebraska (NE-2, the blue dot) and North Carolina

  • Flipping the House by working to elect Democrats in the 11 mostly likely Republican held seats to flip. We’ve both been raising money for these critical races and launched a weekly Thursday night program to postcard and call into the districts.

  • Keep the Senate by getting in early and supporting Ruben Gallego, an open seat candidate in a critical battleground state who started late (due to Sinema staying in longer than expected) and needed a boost.

Together we have now raised over $1m each for Harris-Walz, AZ/NE-2/NC and our Winning The House 11. Thank you all. Every time the Hopium community has been called you have answered.

With new our new ticket and our new electoral landscape, after consulting with folks here in DC, and listening to the recommendations of the Hopium community, today I am updating our 2024 targets by adding four more open seat and challenger races to our Winning The House list and the Tester and Sherrod Brown Senate races. I have also set new, ambitious goals for our existing candidates and states.

In the House we are adding the following candidates to our core 11:

There are now three ways to support our 4 new candidates. Our one click donation now spreads your donation to all 15 of our House candidates. I’ve established a new link to give just to these four. And of course you can go to our Winning The House page and give directly to any one of our candidates.

All of our House candidates with the exception of Bohannan and Stelson are the 13 races rated most likely to flip red to blue in the Cook Report. We’ve added Bohannan and Stelson due to my discussions with folks here in DC, and their optimism about what we are seeing emerge in the new post-Kamala landscape for the House. They are stretch but doable races. I know some of you are advocating for other candidates and I will take one more look at everything in early October and make adjustments if warranted.

So here is our new, updated Hopium doing more and worrying less list, with a new fundraising goal date of November 1. And friends, thank you. All gas, no breaks!

Harris-Walz For President - $1,058,000 raised, $1.5m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel. Hard work is good work!

Our Presidential Checkmate States - Learn more about our “checkmate” strategy, and support Ruben Gallego and these two frontline state parties:

  • North Carolina - $502,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton. We have hit $500,000 everyone. So amazing. Thank you all!

  • Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $366,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

  • Nebraska/Blue Dot - $174,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb. Nebraska has become very important to us this year - please consider donating today!

Winning The House - There are three ways to support our 15 Winning The House candidates:

Keeping The Senate Blue - By popular demand, we are now supporting Senators Tester and Brown in addition to Ruben Gallego:

I view the Tester race as a toss up and Sherrod Brown maintains a small lead. I know there is chatter out there that Tester trails. I don’t believe we have enough data to say that. The last two polls in the state were conducted by the Republican Party and Trump’s pollster. The one before that had Tester ahead. The Senate folks here in DC view this race as a toss up as will Hopium until there is data clearly showing something else, either way.

My general take on the Senate right now is that we are favored in every race except Montana (an amazing achievement), and Montana is likely to stay close and be decided on Election Day. I am keeping an eye on the other possible Senate stretch races but for now I think adding Tester and Brown is an important additional step for our community, and one many of you have been advocating for over the last few months.

Ways you can do even more -

  • Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you. Early voting has now begun in MN, SC, SD, PA and VA today!

  • Promote I Will Vote to help people check their registration status and register to vote. There are many weeks of voter registration left. Let’s keep making more Democrats!

  • Watch my With Dems presentation on the greatness and goodness of the Democratic Party and this six minute video on the incredible stakes in this election.

Grow and Strengthen The Hopium Community - Help grow the Hopium community. Use this link to encourage others sign others up. You can gift a subscription to a friend or student here and get group rates too. From now until Election Day a paid annual Hopium subscription is 10% off. If you have changed credit cards or moved you can update your payment information or check your renewal status by following these instructions from Substack. Let’s keep our community growing and the Hopium flowing! Paid subscribers help keep most of our content free for the 115,000 strong in our community down the home stretch!

Here’s a video our friend Jane Kleeb just sent thanking the Hopium community for our investment in her, Nebraska’s blue dot and Tony Vargas. Do watch - it’s awesome!

Here’s the great Anderson Clayton, Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, thanking the Hopium community for being the largest outside investor in North Carolina in the country this cycle:

Our Work Together Since Launching Hopium Last Year - Here’s what I shared with our community when we launched our Winning The House campaign on May 21st:

We won’t be giving up on our current list of projects - Biden-Harris, Ruben Gallego and Anderson Clayton, and the NC Dems. With your help, we’ve hit our fundraising goals for all three of these vital efforts in recent days. Winning Arizona and North Carolina will still be central to everything we do here until Election Day, and of course, electing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is and will always be Job #1 for all of us.

My hope is that together we can raise $250,000 for these 10 candidates by the June 30th filing deadline. I know this is a lot of money, and folks are stretched, but since the founding of Hopium last year when I have called you have answered. Let’s review:

  • Last spring I brought on WI Dem Chair Ben Wikler to talk about the critical Supreme Court race there, and many of you went to work and helped wrest back control of the Court in their April election.

  • We then heard from Donna Deegan, running for Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida’s largest city. This was a critical race to signal there was a path forward for Democrats again in Florida. And many of you gave and volunteered and Donna won and is making us proud every day as Mayor.

  • We then heard from David Pepper about the need to win the abortion ballot initiative in Ohio. Many of you went to work there too, and together we won both the August and November state-wide votes and took the six-week abortion ban away from the corrupt extremists in Ohio. Simply these were remarkable and inspiring victories in a very tough state.

  • We then heard from Delegate Dan Helmer, who was running the campaign to win flip the Virginia Assembly. Here, our community really went to work, alongside our friends at Network NOVA, raising more than $200,000 for six swing state senate and Assembly candidates. Many of you volunteered, some even flew into to do GOVT work in the closing days. Together we kept the Senate, flipped the Assembly, and delivered a serious blow to both the political aspirations of Glenn Younkgin and his effort to make the 15-week abortion ban the GOP’s escape hatch from the political costs of their abortion extremism. This was a huge and important win.

  • We then heard from and went to work for Tom Keen, who was fighting to turn a critical Florida state house seat blue. With our help, Tom flipped this seat and gave our friend, Democratic House leader Fentrice Driskill, another strong leader in her growing Caucus.

  • We then heard from Tom Suozzi in NY-3, a race where this community really went above and beyond. We raised more than $115,000 in just a few weeks from over 2,000 of you. Many more volunteered in this race, and we flipped this seat in February, giving Democrats a big win in what the national media called a “bellwether” that would tell us much about 2024.

  • Over these last few months, you’ve also heard from Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Anderson Clayton, the great new Chair of the NC Dems, and again the Hopium community has stepped up. We’ve raised $200,000 for the NC Dems through this site (and more in other ways) and more than $150,000 for Ruben. I traveled to Maricopa County, the largest country in Arizona, in April to headline a fundraiser there which brought even more money and support. I know many of you are working hard in Arizona and North Carolina - thank you all. Realistically there is no map for Trump if we win these two states and we just need to put our heads down and bring these home.

When I launched Hopium a little more than a year ago I did not know that we would become a community that raised money and supported candidates. I knew it was possible, but as I got going here many of you pushed me to join the work you were already doing in Wisconsin, Ohio, and other places. So I did. I reached out to my old friend Ben Wikler, the dynamic chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and he joined us for a live event to explain why we all needed to help him flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Many of you were already working on the race. Many more joined in that day. And in April we won. It was a big win, and I began to realize the power of this community even in its earliest days. I could feel the hunger, the fight, the passion, the love of country, the patriotism that was driving so many of you. And so we became a place that went to work together - do more, worry less as we say - and we’ve gotten big and important things done, together.”

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon

Sept 22, 2024 - Washington, DC

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