Happy Friday, this is Richard filling in for Lily.
The biggest news this week is about the local library elections held on Tuesday. Let’s take a moment to talk about how the Ada Democrats helped win elections in local library board races.
Local Library Elections
We assisted both Destinie Hart and Mary Anne Saunders in launching their campaigns, and met regularly with them to answer questions, discuss strategies, and coordinate resources.
We helped build a list of targets for their mailers, so that they didn’t have any embarrassing mistakes like the Republicans, who mailed tons of people who weren’t in the correct library districts. Between that and proper targeting, we work hard to ensure that we use our limited resources better than our opponents!
Between the Ada Democrats and the Idaho Democrats, we sent four different text campaigns to target audiences in Ada. The texts concerned encouraging voters to request absentee ballots, “chasing” those absentee ballots, encouraging early voting, and finally promoting voting the day before the election. Between those four texts, we sent over 15,000 text messages!
We also operated the field program for the two candidates, freeing up their time and budgets so they could focus on other aspects of their campaigns. This included twenty different door knock launches and twelve phone banks.
We knocked 2,089 doors, 962 in the Ada Free Library District and 1127 in Meridian. We also made 825 phone calls, split almost evenly between the two districts. Between doors and phones, we had actual conversations with a total of 859 people.
These numbers are smaller than a November election, but they are so much more than the Ada Dems have ever been able to achieve before in a Library race!
We were honored to help these two strong candidates secure victories!
Destinie received over 68% of the vote for the Meridian Library Board, and Mary Anne received 51% of the votes cast, beating her nearest competitor by 766 votes.
Winning these races sent a strong message that Idaho supports free speech and doesn’t want book-banners operating our libraries.
Destinie credited the staff and Chair Berg as instrumental in her victory and said her race proved that Democrats can win in Meridian.
Statement from Mary Ann Saunders:
Mary Anne Saunders, our newly elected Ada County Free Library District 6-year trustee will take her oath of office and be seated at the June 20th meeting of the Board at the Lake Hazel Library at 8:30 AM.
The swearing in is a brief procedure but if any of you wish to observe/click a photo come join her and if possible stay to observe the meeting.
“This election is the culmination of so much dedicated work by the campaign committee. All supporters along with the high level of responsiveness of the communities surrounding the libraries at Lake Hazel, Victory, Hidden Springs and Star made this happen. Strong feedback from the supporters and voters centered on saving these critical libraries from censorship. Mary Anne pledges to resist such attempts.
She plans to work proactively with community leaders to avoid attacks on our treasured community hubs and skilled librarians. She will be actively communicating with all supporters on these efforts. If she does not have your email and you wish to receive email regarding these issues, please send that to her campaign manager, Ann Kuck or to Mary Anne directly.”
Ann’s email is iboutridn@gmail.com.
Mary Anne’s is saundersstar@aol.com.
Statement from Destinie Hart:
“I am thankful for the work of the Ada Co Dems staff, who helped make this campaign successful.
Meridian voters sent a strong message on Tuesday – we value our public libraries and reject censorship. Public libraries and free access to information are crucial to a healthy democracy.
I look forward to continuing to advocate for the Meridian Library DIstrict and to serving the citizens of Meridian.”
Wanna Run For Office?
Now we turn our focus to municipal elections coming up in November. Filing deadline for candidates is September 8th.
But if we want to be successful, we need to start launching campaigns in July. That means we only have a few weeks to recruit candidates and prepare them for raising money and talking to voters.
We are especially looking for candidates to run in Western Ada County: West Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Star, Kuna, and West Ada School District.
If you know anyone interested in taking the next step, the Idaho State Democratic Party is hosting a virtual Candidate Training on June 12th.
Events
D14 Young Dem Event
May 24th 6-9 p.m.
3401 S Old Wick Ave, Eagle
for more information, please email: district14@adademocrats.org
D17 Yard Sale
June 3rd 8am – 4pm
3612 W Tulara Drive Boise, ID 83706
to donate or for more information, please email: district17@adademocrats.org.
District Meetings & Other Event
Check out our events calendar for local district meetings and other events: adademocrats.org/calendar
Thanks for supporting local Democrats,
Richard Peebly,
Executive Director
Ada County Democrats