Friends,

Democrats have been breaking fundraising records all year. With elections just three weeks away you probably want to donate, but it’s hard to tell whether a candidate really needs your money. That’s why we want you to Give Smart.

Now, don’t get us wrong, the hundreds of thousands of small donors to candidates like Beto O’Rourke, Lauren Underwood, Sharice Davids and Amy McGrath are making a difference. But with only a month to go until the election they seem pretty set on the money front. The difference between $30,000,000 of TV ads and $30,000,020 of TV ads seems pretty miniscule.

So where can your money make a big difference? State legislative races. The Obama era saw massive policy regression at the state level, and if Democrats can start winning control back they can make a real difference in protecting women’s health, staving off climate change and stopping Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression.

And if we can get donors to unite behind just one candidate in eight of the most flippable state legislative bodies (The Senate in Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida New York and Arizona, the House in Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa) it’d have a massive knock-on effect. In some of those races the candidates only have around $20,000 to spend, so your dollars go a lot further than at the federal level. And not only would your donations help those individual candidates but it’d force Republicans to allocate resources to their opponents at the expense of other candidates across the state.

If Democrats take over these legislative chambers it can make a real difference in the lives of their citizens. Just look at what happened in Washington when Democrats flipped the State Senate there.

So here at Data For Progress we’re making a simple request - $80 to spend across these eight candidates. We’ve set up an ActBlue page for you to make those donations, and you can find more about each of the candidates below. We’re calling it our Give Smart initiative. No portion of the contributions to Give Smart goes to Data for Progress. All the money supports candidates.

Also, you can support Data for Progress here. These contributions will not support the Give Smart candidates, but rather general operating support for the think tank.

Best,

Bobby (@BobbyBigWheel) and Sean (@SeanMcElwee)