Winning The House - Hopium Endorses 10 Candidates for The US House

Early Voting Starts in Minnesota and Virginia on Sept 20th - 4 Months Away!

Happy Tuesday all. Got a big one today:

Let’s Win The House - Hopium Endorses 10 House Candidates - Today Hopium is endorsing 10 candidates for the US House. These 10 are all challengers working to flip seats currently held by Republicans. If we win these 10 seats we will flip the House and gave Joe Biden a vital legislative partner for his 2nd Presidential term.

Here are Hopium’s 10 initial candidates, proud patriots all:

• Andrei Cherny, AZ-01

• Kirsten Engel, AZ-06

• Adam Gray, CA-13

• Rudy Salas, CA-22

• George Whitesides, CA-27

• Will Rollins, CA-41

• Sue Altman, NJ-07

• Laura Gillen, NY-04

• Mondaire Jones, NY-17

• Josh Riley, NY-19

I picked these 10 because here at Hopium we focus on growth and expansion, non-incumbent races and taking things away from Republicans. These 10 seats are the 10 seats currently held by Republicans considered “Toss Up” races by the Cook Political Report. They are the most likely to flip. And they will with our support. An 11th Cook GOP Toss Up seat, OR-5, will produce a primary winner today and we will consider adding the victor once all the votes are counted.

This is not our final list this year but it is where we are focusing now. We are open to adding races as the election progresses, but from my many years of working on races - including a stint in the 2018 cycle as a senior advisor to the DCCC - I think bearing down with everything we have to win these 10 is how this plucky community can have the most impact and get the most out of our limited resources and volunteer time in the closing months of the 2024 election.

Here’s how this is going to work. First, I’ve set up a single ActBlue donation page where your contribution is split 10 ways for these candidates. Next, I’ve set up a “Winning The House” page here where you can meet and learn a bit more about each candidate. In the coming weeks I’ll be interviewing all 10 of our candidates so you can get to meet them in greater depth. I will also be adding links so you can give to each candidate directly in case that is how you prefer to proceed or have a few that are of greater interest to you. For those who want to volunteer perhaps you can adopt a candidate or two to make calls, write postcards, text or canvass.

My advice - take your time, but not too much. Get to know these 10, and decide how you want to help. Some of you will make a donation to all 10 through this site today. Some will wait, and pick a few who are of greatest interest. Our Californians and New Yorkers have a lot of work to do as 7 of these 10 come from the Golden and Empire states - we are counting on you! Whatever you do, thank you. For taking back the majority in the House - an urgent, urgent priority - runs through these races.

A note about Arizona’s first district. Unlike these other districts, AZ-01 has not yet chosen their nominee, so here I am endorsing in a competitive Democratic primary. I am doing so because our candidate, Andrei Cherny, is an old and dear friend, and simply one of the smartest, accomplished and most remarkable people I’ve ever known. If elected he has an opportunity to be more than a Member of Congress - he has the potential to become a deeply consequential national leader in a time of enormous challenge. I know not everyone in Arizona will be with me on this one, but I am all in for Andrei and I promise that all of you will come to understand why in the days ahead.

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 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, last month 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 it’s 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.

Early voting in the 2024 general election begins in 4 months - September 20th. The Presidential election election is close and competitive today. Our candidates for the Senate are all in good shape but we cannot lose a single race or we lose the majority. We can flip the House, starting with these 10 critical races. I believe, deeply, that we can and should have the year we all want to have - re-elect Joe Biden, keep the Senate, flip the House - but it is going to come down to how hard we all work over the next few months. We have done important things together so far here at Hopium, but our most important work lies ahead. I hope you will join me in supporting these 10 courageous candidate in the coming days and kick in for what is going to be our next succesful project here at Hopium - winning the House in 2024.

One thing I want all of you to consider - invite your friends to join us in this effort. Let’s reach beyond the current Hopium community, and give this focused list to others you know. I get asked every day, many times a day, where is the best place to put my money and time? It’s here. In these 10 races. In Ruben’s race, in North Carolina with Anderson Clayton, and of course every day with Biden-Harris.

Proud to be in this fight with all of you. Let’s get to work and win the House, together - Simon