Friends,

Half a million dollars. We still can’t believe it. You gave more than half a million dollars to strategically chosen state legislative candidates who could be the difference between Democratic and Republican control over the lives of millions of people.

Your money isn’t lining the pockets of consultants, or contributing to a television air war of attrition. Most of it goes to voter contact, or is the difference between a candidate running a radio/cable ad or not at all.

And while Sheldon Adelson is out here cutting $25 million checks to Mitch McConnell, we still haven’t seen any indication that Republicans know how to fight back against these sudden small infusions of grassroots donor money.

So we’re going put together a few more slates of amazing Democrats who could help flip state legislatures. Today, we’re going to focus on a group of eight progressive women who could decide control of Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa.

As with before, these races were carefully vetted to ensure your money goes as far as possible.

So here at Data For Progress we’re making a simple request - spend $80 across these eight progressive women. 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.

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.

Our goal is to hit $1,000,000 raised across all of the Give Smart campaigns. We’re more than halfway there. With your help we can do it.

Bobby (@BobbyBigWheel) and Sean (@SeanMcElwee)