County Dems Awarded Big Grant

 This week's entry is a follow-up to last week's piece on Tom Steyer's visit to Visalia. It didn't take long for Tulare County's whirlwind effort to bear fruit. County Democratic Chairwoman Ruth McKee announced at the party Central Committee meeting on Thursday, August 18 that Mr. Steyer's Nextgen California Foundation is awarding the Tulare County Democratic Central Committee $34,700 for voter registration and get out the vote efforts. As far as extant records or anyone's memory can say, that is more money than the local party has ever had at one time. 

The time line went like this. Ruth says, "I heard about the grant from Martha Gamez of the state party on July 29. She e-mailed the pertinent information to me on that date. The grant deadline was July 30. I called Katelyn Haley (a Steyer assistant) anyway on Monday 8/1/16 and asked if they would extend the deadline. She agreed and encouraged me to submit our proposal. I submitted the proposal on Wednesday, 8/3/16. Two days later, on  Friday 8/5/16, Katelyn called me and asked me to put together a round table on 8/13/16 as Mr. Steyer was going to be in Visalia. The amount of $34,700.00 was a number that I calculated, after eight hours of number crunching. Knowing what these funds could mean to our Committee, I jumped on it."

 

I was interested in learning how the funds will specifically be used. Ruth reports, "We are currently forming a committee to manage the funds and to run the project. At this point, Nextgen is in the process of drawing up the contact for me to sign. We do have plans to locate an office to train the canvassers we plan to hire. I anticipate a major percent of the grant funds will be spend on canvassing."

 

The Louie Campos for Congress campaign recently sent out information from the County Registrar of Voters showing that Democratic registration had gained about three percent on the Republican total in the past three months. The present totals find the Dems with 45,754 and the GOP at 62,009. That's a difference of 16,255. The two-party ratio stands at 42.5% Democratic and 57.5% Republican. Indeed, the historical county records show that Democratic registration has grown by 3,000 and Republican by only 500 since August of 2014. The fact that the county is over 60% Latino and that Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee offers Democrats a strong opportunity to improve those numbers further. Local Democrats have always been massively outspent by the Republicans, with their ties to agribusiness and industry in the area. This grant may well prove to be a crucial element in the effort to turn the county from red to blue.