It was the honor of my life to serve as the State Director for @BernieSanders in Nevada. While I’m heartbroken today, I’m immensely proud of the work we did in NV and our HUUUGE, historic win there. I want to share a bit about why we were able to pull that off.

First- demographics aren’t destiny. Bernie does well with Latinos, working class folks, and young people, and NV has a lot of those types of folks. BUT our organizing program was the difference between squeaking out a win on a built-in advantage and a MASSIVE 27-point landslide.

Here’s how we did it:
1. Excellent, enthusiastic staff who were representative of the communities they were organizing: our staff was 30% Latino, half People of Color, and overwhelming came from working class backgrounds. We hired locals whenever possible.

It gave me a lot of pride to hire organizers from the communities we were working to engage, and set them loose to organize their own neighbors in creative ways. We had high standards and hired the best of the best, while also giving people new to the field a chance.

2. An incredibly well-structured field campaign: Field Director @SusanaO4L built an incredible machine, that led us to knocking more than 500,000 doors- that involved running a super tight ship, pushing for high standards of accountability & performance, & focusing on the basics-

Quality conversations w/voters, in person, at scale. Every move @SusanaO4L made was in service of the highest quality program possible, and she poured herself into it for 18+ hours a day. She’s truly a hero of this campaign & a huge part of why we won.

Shout out to Deputy Field Directors @me_geleeto @alexandrakania_ @parkinsandrec for your hard work, creativity, attention to detail, high standards, and humor and grace with your staff. You are all excellent operatives and deserve all the credit in the world.

3. Constituency organizing: On top of our daily grind of doors, phones, & volunteer recruitment, we layered an extensive constituency program that focused on organizing communities of color, meeting them where they were, and bringing them in in ways campaigns typically don’t.

Our organizers integrated themselves into communities- getting into the Mosque WhatsApp groups, hanging out at soccer league practices and barbershops, and canvassing the Broad Acres swap meet.

We created spaces that were meant to be fun and culturally appealing, always with food and music. This brought people into the campaign that had never participated in politics before, and made them feel welcome.

4. Paid canvass: #unpopularopinion: to win, you need scale. We had a paid canvass at the end to add scale. Paid. Canvasses. Work. They also give a lot of dedicated working-class people who otherwise couldn’t dedicate themselves full time to campaign work a chance to do so.

Canvassing is hard work- if you need people to do it 40 hrs/week you need to pay them. Our incredible volunteers did the bulk of the work, but having staff to knock doors does help with a ramp. You can run a paid canvass ethically- it doesn’t have to be heartless. We proved that.

@AnnaKScanlon and Herrick Sullivan deserve the credit for that.

5. Sticking to what works: in organizing there are lots of shiny objects, new tools and tactics that are cool and innovative, but that are unproven. We tried all the cool, fun things, but we spent 95% of our time on the things that we KNOW work, and we know we can scale.

Our campaign innovated on relational organizing and the BERN app, but it was a small slice of all the conversations we ultimately had with voters. We didn’t skimp on the basics in favor of innovation, while allowing new ideas and tools to be tested and to add value.

6. Data: using all the analytics at our disposal to make good decisions and reach the right people was a huge focus of mine and the Nevada leadership team, and we also were disciplined about NOT overanalyzing or overthinking things. @PeterKoltak kept us honest on that one.

Our targeting invested big time in low-propensity voters of color, while also including higher-propensity, middle support targets. We tried not to get too lost in the numbers, and valued feedback from the ground and local knowledge as much as we valued models and polling.

7. Latinx Outreach: lots of folks have asked about our Latinx organizing magic, and all I can say is it isn’t magic, it’s the candidate, the message, and walking the walk. We worked to develop a deep constituency organizing program that showed our commitment to the community,

..hired Latinx staff at every level, and backed all that up with big investments in mail and paid media targeting Latinx voters specifically, in Spanish and English and Spanglish. We did a ton of bilingual calls and texts. We had @ChuckRocha on our team- that helps.

8. We took advantage of the progressive election structure put in place by @AlanaMounce and @NVDems. The early vote was a big advantage for us, because it made the election so much more accessible to working class people and People of Color, who happened to be our base.

We put a ton of emphasis on the early vote- to the point that some worried that there would no Bernie supporters left to show up to the caucus! (lol @KlarichChris) We know that when more voters have the opportunity to participate, we win. We capitalized on that.

9. The strip caucuses! This was the most fun thing ever. Kelvin Ho and his team of dedicated volunteer organizers from around the world put together an incredible program to organize strip-caucus eligible workers at their workplaces.

They used labor organizing tactics to develop leaders in record time and give workers who supported us the solidarity they needed to stand up for what they believed in, organize their co-workers, and win against big odds. We won 5 and tied 1 out of 7 strip caucuses.

10. Brillant comms/political/surrogates/trips strategy- thanks @PeterKoltak @KeenanKorth @MilesZCooper @BiancaRecto @MadeeMundy. Everything we did in this realm was meticulously crafted to telegraph our commitment to working class voters and voters of color, and it showed.

There’s so much more we did but those are some of the big themes and highlights. What really mattered was the people- our staffing choices were meticulous, sometimes agonized over, and in the end we had the best team on the planet, flexing their experience & building new skills.

A campaign is a like a sailboat, you build it with the faith that there will be wind. @BernieSanders and the movement he built were a gale force. We put all the pieces in place to make sure his message could reach the right voters, and inspire them to take action.

We were able to do that because of what he stands for- believing everyone deserves a dignified life, economic justice, and fighting for someone you don’t know. The movement will live forever, and I’m immensely proud of the work we did to build infrastructure for the future.

Just want to mention a few more superstars: @SpencerCarnes94 @KlarichChris @NotTheFakeJA @thealexistaylor @peavydaspeedy @CodyHoskinsNV @wmdekle @HudsonVill @MrZacharyKhan @Jaym_cruz @jspicer108

AND @MMScomm702 my god this woman saved my life so many times

Idk everyone’s twitter handles but damn we had the best team @yourboymatt @_trisha_marie @jacquelinesteps @MatthewFonken @MartinezNesler

Aahhhh two of our star RFDs: @alchan__ & @amandadigregory