Blue Valentine's Day

A Special Election Flips a Red Seat Blue

Such good news to wake up to on a chilly Valentine’s Day! Tom Suozzi handily defeated his Republican opponent. A Democrat will fill George Santos’s seat after Santos was expelled from Congress for ethics violations.

Let’s just sit and savor that for a while.

And then let’s spread the word. Let’s cheer and congratulate ourselves and maybe even do a teeny bit of gloating. The old saying is true: Nothing succeeds like success. We won this special election, and the last one, too, and we’re going to keep on winning.

As long as we keep on working for those wins. Some useful lessons from this election:

EARLY VOTING MATTERS. Democrats, who trust the system, tend to vote early. Republicans, trained by Trump, vote the old-fashioned way, on Election Day. So when a snowstorm hits on Election Day, it hits Republicans a lot harder. We need to continue to inform, remind, and nag Democrats about early voting.

CONTACT MATTERS. You have to feel sorry for the voters of NY-3. The snowstorm was nothing compared to the blizzard of postcards that descended on them—Activate America volunteers, just one postcarding organization, sent 350,000 individual postcards to voters reminding them of dates for voting. (If a few of those 350,000 were yours, pat yourself on the back.) Indivisible volunteers sent 120,000 texts and made 15,000 calls.

TRUTH MATTERS. Voters were disgusted with Santos’s lies and deceptions. Dedicated journalists first reported them, but the journalists’ work was amplified by every blogger, social media poster, and letter-to-the-editor writer who repeated the facts of Santos’s criminal activities and ethical shortcomings. Finally, the weight of public opinion shoved Santos out the door.

So let’s enjoy this well-earned victory. And then work for ways we can celebrate more of them.