From the Daily Kos a few days ago, via Facebook:
Just got off of Robby Mook’s conference call for Hillary Clinton volunteers, and he mentioned in passing that all of the voter data that the campaign is collecting for Clinton is being shared with state parties.
Mook explicitly stated that they are doing this to directly combat midterm voting dropoffs, to avoid a repeat of 2014.
So I did some googling, and found this from Bloomberg.
The Clinton campaign now has deals in place with the Democratic parties in Florida, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas, among other states and Puerto Rico, to create “victory funds.” Contributions to those funds will be divided between the respective state parties and Clinton’s primary campaign war chest. Clinton has stressed that she wants her campaign and candidacy to boost other Democrats all the way down the ticket. Helping channel donors’ support for her into state parties is one way to leverage her fundraising power on behalf of other candidates—and to link the success of other Democrats to her own.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced a fundraising agreement in late August, making it possible for donors to give to her campaign and to the party’s general election fund with one check. Clinton would only benefit from the money if she becomes the Democratic nominee.
Nobody seems to be talking about this, but it seems like a BFD to me.
This is good news, but how B a BFD it is depends on some details. We have heard of this before, and we know there is at least one Team Hillary staffer in Texas, but beyond that it gets less clear. I haven’t seen any particulars about this as it pertains to Texas – the TDP hasn’t sent out an announcement about it that I have received, and a Google search didn’t yield any further information. The main question is what does this mean beyond the primary? I strongly suspect the Clinton campaign will have its eyes on other states for next November, though perhaps they will put some resources into CD23. I’d like to be optimistic about this, because there’s a lot of good that can be done, and just recognizing the need to engage with and build up the infrastructures of the state parties is encouraging. I just want to see what it means in practice before I get my hopes up too much.
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