Boo and Vote Local!

In case you’ve been asleep or under a rock for the past six months, we need to let you know two things: First, Kendrick won his beef with Drake, and second, there is a presidential election coming up. Like any presidential election year, everyone’s so focused on the big showdown at the top of the ticket, but that means that a lot of the local and state races, congressional races, and referenda that will make up most of your ballot are getting ignored. Just because Anderson Cooper isn’t covering your city’s mayoral contest or your state’s Railroad Commissioner race doesn’t mean those elections aren’t critically important in determining the immediate future of your community and getting important issues like healthcare on the table! So for this episode, we’re going to leave the speculation about Donald and Kamala to Anderson and take our own 360 view of why we all need to get in on the down-ballot action and how we bring healthcare justice to the forefront of our election conversations. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY6SAa8LU9c

Show Notes

We have two guests who know their way around a Get Out the Vote Drive!

Jasmine Ruddy is the Assistant Director of Campaigns for National Nurses United. She helps lead NNU’s political campaigns from Medicare for All to electoral work and more! Her background is in the climate justice movement and campus/student organizing in her home state of North Carolina 

Jonathan Cohn is the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, which does multi-issue advocacy work. Jonathan wears many hats in the political space in Massachusetts and has been active in many progressive issue and electoral campaigns over the past little over a decade.

Jasmine describes the local campaign that got her hooked: as a campus organizer for climate justice she helped win ballot measures to pass a regional transit tax. It was a concrete and tangible way to make an impact on the climate justice movement.

Jonathan cut his political teeth on the Obama 2012 campaign, and got the local politics bug when Boston Mayor Tom Menino retired. Twelve candidates came forward for the first open mayoral race in 20 years. He was especially interested in public school policies and funding. He volunteered for mayoral candidate and City Council Member Felix Arroyo Jr.

Ben confesses that while he loves democracy, he hates elections (#relatable). But he does find more hopefulness at the local level. He also got started in a mayoral election in Boston, but the most exciting campaign he worked on was for state house. He lived in one of the most progressive districts in the state but their state representative was a powerful, well-funded right-leaning Democrat. Ben’s candidate, Nika Elugardo, a true progressive beat him despite all those advantages.

Picture it:

New Jersey, 1990s, tween Gillian lives in a suburb (North Plainfield) seeking to change its name to distance itself from the majority Black and Brown city of Plainfield. During a town-wide debate on the ballot measure, young Gillian spoke against renaming the city. She was quoted on the front page of the local paper: “North Plainfield shouldn’t change its name. Stonybrook is just a dirty brook that divides our town, just like this issue is doing right now.” The anti-name change side won and our star was born.

We discuss the additional influence a voter can have when working on a local election. When races can be won or lost by a few dozen votes, the candidates care a lot more about each individual. They may knock on your door or call you seeking support, which is a great opportunity to insert the issues you care about into the election. Once your candidate gets elected, they’ll remember the folks who helped them get there and you’ll have more influence when lobbying them on the issues you care about. (You may even end up with a job.)

Jonathan’s personal philosophy is “Boo and Vote.” He never liked Obama’s catchphrase “don’t boo; vote” because it implied the two are mutally exclusive; he believes activists have every right to boo, criticize, and protest failures, bad actions, and inactions of elected officials (both our enemies and friends). Yet he will also vote and get others out to vote. The work of democracy and making change has to include both booing and voting.

Booing our friends sounds counterintuitive, but is still important. Just because we supported a candidate’s election, we have to hold them accountable to do the right thing after they’re elected. Maybe we don’t criticize them as harshly as an opponent, but we have to demand they live up to the values of the people who put them in office. Elected officials are often most responsive to these demands during an election.

Organizing tactics and accountability look different during an election. Jasmine tells us about the Patients Over Profits Pledge, calling on candidates to reject campaign contributions from the corporate healthcare industry (inspired by the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge from the climate justice movement.) During peak times when candidates are seeking donations and support is the perfect time to make these demands.

Even with a federal issue campaign like Medicare for All, the Patients Over Profits Pledge has a role in local elections. It gives activists a great opportunity to remind candidates that healthcare is an important issue in their local area. Corporate healthcare already has too much influence over our democracy and elected officials, and this is our opportunity to toxify that relationship, making it unsavory for candidates to take their dirty money.

Local elections are also important as a pipeline: your city councillor today could be your Congressperson next cycle, with a lot of sway on healthcare policy. (Post-pod fact check: VP Candidate Tim Walz wasn’t a state legislator, but in his first race for Congress he was indeed funded by many individuals employed by Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN and by PACs representing the healthcare industry.) It’s really important that we not allow candidates’ views on healthcare to be shaped only by those in corporate healthcare. Supporting pro-M4A candidates or starting to talk about healthcare justice with candidates when they’re running for local office means that if they run for higher office you’ll already be an influence on how they perceive the healthcare industry.

Jasmine describes how activists use the Patients Over Profits Pledge to have conversations and build relationships with candidates up and down the ballot. Any voter can ask candidates in their community by asking them to sign the pledge. As more and more candidates sign on, our movement to toxify corporate healthcare grows stronger. Reach out to Jasmine’s team to get active yourself!

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This show is a project of the Healthcare NOW Education Fund! If you want to support our work, you can donate at our website, healthcare-now.org.