Big Congratulations to the winners of the primary. Even though I personally voted for Edwards, I am excited to have Susan Wild as our first female Congresswoman. She is going to be a fantastic representative for district 7. I am looking forward to working with her and helping her campaign grow to be able to reassure supporters of other candidates will unite.
I want to caution you everyone about pushing for unity right now. There are some extremely effected supporters that need some space to breath and go through and feel the grief process. This has become an issue in many spaces particularly online. It will take weeks before some supporters are ready to have a less than heated conversation about unity. I urge you to leave these conversations alone for now and if you think you can talk to someone…. you should be the one listening – not talking. It can be hard for some to understand the difference between Edward’s and Wild’s policies and platforms, but I assure you there is a difference and the difference is what impassioned folks to knock on 80,000 doors. Please let the dust settle.
East Penn Democratic Club put out sample ballots to 8,500 doors. Volunteers could choose the additional candidates they wanted to hand literature out for and that in itself is beautiful. We are the Democratic party and we care about every elected official on that ballot not just our favorites and we respect the differences of opinions that some of us have had on a candidate. If you didn’t put out literature with us this time I humbly encourage you to do it in the general. One of the reasons we put sample ballots out is to get more voters voting. We target people who are particularly not super voters, but they think they are good voters because they vote for presidents. We saw an increase over 2014 which was our comparable year; in some precincts there was twice the turn out.
April 30th there was a fantastic Lt. Governor’s Forum put on by the New Americans Caucus at Moravian College.
Applewood democrats held a forum for congress that was very well attended and made the Huffington Post. Congrats to Melissa Sundahl, Rosanna Krick, and Carol Front for their excellent event. The new Upper Lehigh group also had a forum that was well attended. This group is off to an awesome start. I have a call from Bill Leiner, who is the president of Coplay Dems, and he is going to be creating a Whitehall Coplay Progressive Democratic group, which he says he is modeling after East Penn Dems.
East Penn Dems is inspiring groups – and that it is fantastic!
Chairman of Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, Jack Hanna, came to town earlier in the month to let us know a coordinated campaign effort is starting for Wolf, Casey, Fetterman, and the rest of the ballot. We will be working with them on their efforts and we will be letting them take the lead but we will still have input.
There are 2 positions opening for the East Penn School Board. We know of a few of our East Penn Dems members that are going to apply, but I still want you to spread the word because we want to make sure there are plenty of democrats to choose from.