Details:

We welcomed several new people who attended the meeting: Ana Canales, Susan Hering, Doug Gibson, and Jack King.  DPBC 1st Vice Chair Chase Jacques-Maynes made a guest appearance and attended most of the meeting.

Heather reported that her primary went well with good advice and strong support.  She provided her phone number and a message on a sticky note attached to her campaign literature.  Many constituents reached out to her with questions and comments. She gave a shout out to her campaign manager, Neri Holguin.

Claudia led the discussion of the successes and challenges faced during the May 17 event.  The successes included: 

• 68 attendees, all candidates attended except 2 who had family obligations, 
• the food was great and included a vegan option, 
• the check-in process was pretty good because we had printed nametags for all who had RSVPed, 
• thank you notes were sent to the candidates and 
• DPBC resources were important including chairs and other equipment. 

The challenges included: 

• the PA system was too soft, 
• the speakers needed more shade, 
• we needed less food and more drinks, 
• the flyers were perhaps less effective than emailed invitations, and 
• we needed printed a sign-in sheet to speed the check-in process and so we don’t have to interpret handwriting.  
• Some of the attendees were part of the candidates’ teams so we can ask them to identify those who are coming with them.  
• In planning these events we should avoid plastic such as water bottles and plastic ware, using instead a water dispenser, paper cups and bamboo utensils.

We conducted a survey which listed a number of ways a person could volunteer.  We found that doing the survey on-line was more effective than having people fill out paper surveys. However, we need to think about how to make doing the survey on-line easier, particularly on a cell phone.  We could send the survey link out with the invitations.  Also we could now meet with a few people to see how to improve the survey.  We could add serving as a precinct chair to the survey.  

We need to assess the current responses to see what people are willing to do and think about how to get them to do other things the candidates need.  Panaiotis plans to send the list of volunteers in a ward to the ward chair for outreach. We must offer these volunteers useful activities with clear direction. We need to figure out what needs to be done and schedule the tasks so we can mobilize the volunteers.  Then we could have a house party for the volunteers of a particular task to line out the plan in August and conduct some engagement training.

We need to figure out how to find more interested people such as reviewing candidate petitions and talking to Dems in the precincts. Indivisable does a Neighbor-to-Neighbor outreach in which members are assigned 10 people to talk to and activate.  Doug talked about conducting a relational text campaign which involves texting people you know – like a phone tree.

We need to look at the numbers of people who voted in each precinct.  Some of the candidates have that data.  Karl has forwarded his precinct information to Panaiotis.  This data will help us determine upon whom to focus our efforts. We could have ward meetings and invite people who did not vote, particularly people younger than 45 years.

We discussed planning volunteer engagement and outreach activities, including coordinating with precinct chairs and ward chairs, scheduling activities, and offering specific opportunities to attract volunteers. Cristina discussed some of the challenges with engaging young people including where they live vs. where they are registered.  She has a group of interns looking at why young people don’t vote so that that challenge can be addressed.  The interns have suggested registering people to vote at high schools and colleges and allowing people to opt out of registering rather than opting in.  Some of these ideas will be presented as bills during the next legislative session.

Doug will get information from the campaigns that involve voters in HD 25 about what they need.  The State Senate Dem Caucus and House Caucus have met to work on a coordinated strategy.  Sam Bregman is unchallenged and has offered to help other candidates.  Formal canvassing starts the first weekend after Labor Day.

Panaiotis led a discussion on the effectiveness of the HD 25 website and the potential domain name and hosting changes. The group discussed the development of a dedicated website for HD25, including the types of information to be included such as volunteer surveys, meeting agendas, contact information, and political district details. Cristina Parajon volunteered to pay for hosting a website.  Panaiotis will put together a group to help with the website.

We addressed the appointment of a new ward chair for 25B, and Ana Canales agreed to take on that role.  Panaiotis will send her a list of voters in that ward.  Heather will see if she has names of people in 25 B.  We also talked about the need to get more precinct chairs throughout the wards.

Claudia agreed to continue doing the newsletter as appropriate things come up.  It gets about 300 opens, although not all of those are by people within the ward cluster.  We could highlight the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and bookmark Joyce Vance’s really good legal blog, but perhaps those is best left to DP national, DPNM, or DPBC and we stick to HD 25 issues/information. 

The group decided that a follow up meeting was needed soon and June 28 was proposed and accepted.