Yesterday’s 14-point blowout loss for Proposal 1 in Ohio was a huge win for democracy in a state which has seen far too little of that lately.
But it’s only half the battle to protect abortion rights in the Buckeye State—Ohio voters still have to actually pass the Reproductive Freedom amendment this November!
To that end, you can donate to these organizations working to pass it:
You can also donate to the Ohio Democratic Party and Ohio state legislative races to help them out next year:
BUT DON’T STOP THERE!
On Saturday I wrote a diary which got a lot of attention in which I tore apart a horribly misleading story by Politico’s Jessica Piper (with an assist from Sam Stein) about the state of Democratic Party fundraising this cycle.
If you haven’t read it yet, the short version is that they claimed that Dem fundraising is down dramatically compared to the same point 4 years ago when it turns out that it’s actually up 16% vs. the same point in the 2020 cycle.
In any event, Politico is gonna Politico. The best way of responding to them is simple: Donate as much as you can spare to as many Democrats running in competitive (or at least potentially competitive) races as possible...at every level.
That means U.S. House & U.S. Senate, of course, as well as President Biden...but it also means statewide executive races (both this year and next year) and, even more importantly, STATE LEGISLATIVE RACES.
For the 2018 cycle, I think I raised around $40,000 or so, mostly for candidates from my home state of Michigan.
For 2020, I decided to take things to the next level. I created fundraising pages for hundreds of candidates running around the country at the federal, statewide and local (state legislative) levels. I set a personal target for myself of $250,000, which I thought was ambitious.
When the dust settled, I ended up raising over $6 million.
For 2022, I did it again, this time doing more research into state legislative races to focus more on the most competitive races. While there’s plenty of political wonk sites which track competitiveness for U.S. Senate, U.S. House & Gubernatorial races such as Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Real Clear Politics etc., there are far fewer sites which track that sort of thing for state legislatures. I’ve found Dave’s Redistricting to be the most comprehensive & reliable source for this.
I knew that 2020’s $6M was a fluke; not only was it a Presidential year, but it was a Presidential year with Trump in the White House. Throw the pre-vaccine COVID pandemic phase into the mix and it was a very unique situation; I knew that the 2022 midterms wouldn’t come close to $6M but had no idea how much I would end up raising.
It ended up being around $1.3 million, for over 600 candidates total.
For the 2023 — 2024 cycle, I’m at it again. I’m hoping to raise somewhere in between the two...perhaps $4 million overall?...but we’ll see.
I’ve therefore created a one-stop shop where you can easily find all of them at once.
I call it X for Z.
Why "X for Z?" Simple: I'm a member of Gen X who didn't become politically active until I was 30 years old...but I've been inspired by the amazing surge in Democratic/progressive political activism among Gen Z over the past few years, so I decided to name this fundraising clearinghouse accordingly.
I've also included Voters of Tomorrow on every page; VoT is a quickly-growing progressive political movement for young people by young people. I'm not affiliated with them; I just think they do damned good work.
The candidates listed will be filled in and/or may change over time as various filing deadlines and primaries pass, as well as changing circumstances like nominees having to be replaced, etc.
This isn't another PAC. It's just a one-stop link to make it easy for people to donate directly to hundreds of Democratic candidates running for federal, statewide and especially local (state legislative) offices.
XforZ.us has links to multiple ActBlue fundraising pages where you can donate to Democrats running for:
That's it. Seriously. All donations go directly to the campaign funds & organizations listed. I DON’T RECEIVE A DIME.
(Oh, and in case it isn’t clear, you don’t have to be a member of Gen X to use these pages...anyone eligible to donate to U.S. political candidates can do so.)
Pick a page and donate today (I strongly recommend focusing on VIRGINIA, NEW JERSEY, KENTUCKY, LOUISIANA & MISSISSIPPI this year, since they have statewide offices up in 2023:
XforZ.us
Here’s links to some of the individual fundraising pages: