We helped win the battle against a would-be tyrant in 2020 but we haven’t won the war. Yet. I am outraged that a man who actively tried to overthrow our democracy is not in prison! And his collaborators are plotting to steal the 2022 and 2024 elections. The only defense we pro-democracy supporters have is to win more Senate seats by true Democrats and increase the Democratic members in the House.
In 2020, we were not able to capture as many Senate seats as we needed and we lost some House seats. But we can’t give up now as the loss of either house of Congress in 2022 and a complicit Supreme Court dooms us to a resurgent Trumpist hell for many more years. And the loss of our democracy, perhaps permanently.
So, we must fight but with an even more strategic plan. Unlike 2020, rather than spread our donations too broadly, we feel targeting 4-5 Senate races and 5-8 House races would be a smarter use of funds, especially since we probably cannot raise as much as we did in 2020. We will need to invest in more selected races where APA’s can make a difference in toss up races. Contributions would prioritize effective APA ground operations and specific candidates in the targeted states and districts.
Specifically, we’re looking at these Senate races now:
- Georgia where Rafael Warnock barely won in 2020 and is running again;
- Arizona to support Mark Kelly;
- Nevada where Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 5%;
- Pennsylvania where incumbent Senator Pat Toomey is retiring so the seat will be open;
- Possibly Wisconsin, North Carolina, even New Hampshire.
For the House races, we are focusing on California first and if we raise enough money, we can direct more to other states. The House Democratic seats the Republicans are pursuing and that we need to preserve, are:
- Josh Harder
- Katie Porter
- Mike Levin
- John Garamendi
In addition, we will consider Jay Chen who is challenging Young Kim with an aggressive, smart strategy in Orange County.
Lastly, we will use some funds to support Attorney General Rob Bonta, and several APA state legislative races.
We are initiating a matching donation challenge of $100,000 and have received pledges for that total amount from Raymond L. Ocampo Jr. and Sandra O. Ocampo, Joan Haratani, Clement Kong, Kei-on Chan and Sonia Ng, Don Tamaki, Minami Tamaki LLP, Dianne Fukami and Ai Mori and me.
Many of you contributed to the existential battle of 2020 and we really don’t enjoy asking for donations again. What you gave in 2020 was so generous and allowed us to channel over $150,000 to Georgia that proved critical to our mission. In 2020, we started with a matching donation challenge of $125,000 and ended up raising $640,000 but, of course, we had Trump as a lightning rod during a presidential election.
So please help once again with whatever you can afford. Your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $100,000 in cumulative new donations.
CAPA21 