Hello fellow Democrats! What a week for the Democratic Party we had!

Biden’s 100 Days: Thursday, April 29th was President Joe Biden’s 100th day in office. In that time, President Biden and the Democratic Congress have acted decisively to respond to the COVID pandemic and help our economy recover.

• Over half of U.S. adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, meeting the goal of delivering more than 200 million vaccine doses in the first 100 days.

• 160 million stimulus checks have been delivered.

• More than a million jobs have been created since President Biden took office. 

• Last week, weekly unemployment claims fell to the lowest level since March of last year, when the pandemic began.

In Biden’s speech to the American people and a joint session of Congress Wednesday evening, the President outlined the next steps of his agenda: how to build our country back better with massive and transformative investments in infrastructure, jobs, and clean energy, while helping to support families and communities with critical social programs like paid family leave, early learning and pre-school for kids, free community college and more financial aid for students in our higher education system, lowering health care costs by making the American Rescue Plan’s health insurance premium reductions permanent, and much more.

The American people have responded - polls show that Americans loved his address and the positive, progressive agenda that he’s putting forth. Did you have a chance to watch the speech? If you missed it, you can watch it on Youtube here and read his remarks here. If you did watch it, make sure that your local party has shared the speech with your members over social media and/or email! This was a great speech and we want to be sure that our grassroots Democrats are hearing the message that Biden has presented. 

End of Washington’s Legislative Session:The 2021 legislative session was one of the most historic and consequential ever in Washington state. On issue after issue, Democratic legislators stepped up to deliver real results and pass powerful legislation to address the needs and concerns of the people of Washington. Amid a global pandemic and an economic crisis, Washington state Democrats led the way: from addressing immediate emergencies like economic recovery and public health needs to tackling long-term challenges like combating climate change, balancing our state’s upside-down tax code, and addressing institutional racism in our criminal justice system. We couldn’t be more proud of the work done and the wins achieved by our Democratic legislators this year.

Republicans are already working to overturn the major progressive tax reform we passed by filing lawsuits against the capital gains tax. This is a policy that our party’s advocacy committee has been pushing for years and will be a real change for making our tax system fairer and helping us make the investments we need in early learning and education. We need to work hard to defend this progress, but let’s celebrate the wins we’ve had. More details about some of the issue areas that you, our PCOs, told us were important, can be found here. Please spread the word!

Filing Week Coming Up:We are now 17 days away from the start of local candidate filing week and 21 days away from the deadline to file for office in 2021! Has your local party been talking to candidates in your local area about the races they can run for? We know 54 local candidate recruitment meetings have already happened - were you able to participate? Our Rise & Run page has information for our potential candidates; sign up there to get a package of information on running for office that can help you or candidates you know run and win! It’s important that we are contesting as many local races as we can across the state this year. We need the help of our PCOs and local parties to get people to step up and run. And be on the lookout for our three-week June candidate training that will help us win in ALL these races!

Something To Look Into: Follow the money! It’s important for us all to keep up on what our local Republican counterparts are doing. The Public Disclosure Commission makes it convenient and easy to see what committees are raising and spending money. Have you looked at what your local Republicans are doing? You can see filings for all of the LD and county parties on the PDC website here. 

The information there is updated monthly as treasurers submit their reports, but please always keep an eye on what your GOP counterparts are doing! I make it my goal for our state party to raise more money than the Republicans do every month, and we want local parties to try for the same. If your local Republicans have far more money than you, maybe it’s time for a new fundraising plan? We can help via the state party Finance Committee, chairs or vice chairs should contact us at questions@wa-democrats.org with “FINANCE” at the start of the subject line. 

Something To Watch: This weekend is our spring Washington State Democratic Central Committee meeting! All of the state committee members from our legislative districts and counties will be assembling virtually to pass resolutions, report on work from the Democratic National Committee, and our own state committees, and more. The proceedings start at 9 AM, and we’ll be streaming them live on Youtube here!

Build The Blue Gala May 11th @ 4:30 PM

 

We want to make sure everyone knows about our “Build The Blue” gala coming up on May 11th with special LIVE guests DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and Georgia’s Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock, along with our own Senator Patty Murray and Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland! And just today, we confirmed that Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth will also be making an appearance! This is going to be a great event and you can sign up or learn more atwa-democrats.org/buildtheblue.

 

We’d love you to consider signing up as a Table Captain, or, if you want to help spread the word, we havea toolkit of social media graphics that you or your local party organization can share to help let people know about this fun upcoming event!

And on one last note - for everyone who’s eligible to get one of the vaccines for COVID-19, I hope you’ve had a chance to receive at least your first shot by now. It’s really important that we all do our part to help stop the spread of the virus and vaccination is an important part of that effort. Some vaccine locations aren’t even requiring an appointment anymore -- you can just walk up and get vaccinated at a time that’s convenient for you. Folks can find a vaccine site nearby at the WA Department of Health website. We care about you, your family, and your community. Get vaccinated and stay masked up!

Thank you all, stay happy and healthy, and I’m looking forward to seeing our state committee members tomorrow!

Tina Podlodowski