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Progressive Group To Spend $35 Million More Targeting Democratic Base Voters

A woman opposed to Arizona's controversial immigration law protests at the state capitol in Phoenix in 2012. Arizona is a Sun Belt state that some progressives say deserves more attention from the Democratic Party. (Darryl Webb / Reuters)
A woman opposed to Arizona's controversial immigration law protests at the state capitol in Phoenix in 2012. Arizona is a Sun Belt state that some progressives say deserves more attention from the Democratic Party. (Darryl Webb / Reuters)

The progressive group Way to Win announced Wednesday that it is spending an additional $35 million to mobilize liberal voters in battleground states behind Democrats up and down the ballot in November.

The new funding adds to a $50-million investment that Way to Win unveiled in September 2019, bringing the group’s total spending this election to $85 million.

What distinguishes Way to Win from more traditional Democratic players is its focus on identifying, organizing and turning out what it calls “base” voters who agree with core Democratic Party ideals but may be less likely to vote on a regular basis.

While the party’s national leaders continue to focus on courting moderate “swing” voters in predominantly white industrial states, Way to Win’s “high potential” voters ― including young people, people of color and white liberals ― are more concentrated in the Sun Belt.

“The resources are really mobilized behind the goal of expanding the electorate, bringing that fraction of the nearly 100 million people that are estimated to have stayed home in 2016 out to vote in very critical emergent battlegrounds,” said Tory Gavito, the president and co-founder of Way to Win.

“Trump needs to be put on defense,” added Gavito, a Texas native. “I’d love to see upsets in Texas and Georgia and that’s what we’ve been working for.”

Way to Win, which Gavito co-founded with Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Jennifer Fernandez Ancona in 2017, is premised on the idea that Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 was as much about the Democratic Party’s inattention to a largely non-white body of non-voters as it was to Donald Trump’s gains among white, working-class voters who previously voted for Democrats.

It’s a theory championed by Steve Philips, author of “Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority.” Others promoting it include Democrat Stacey Abrams during her...

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