2022 Election Impact

2022 Holding the House for Climate

After launching our Hold the House for Climate program in September of 2022 focused on lean right and toss-up congressional districts CaPA granted $1.77 million to grassroots groups with a focus on direct voter engagement field programs. In total CaPA supported 65 organizations in 19 states. These investments contributed to narrow upset Democratic victories in: NM-02, CO-08, NC-13, OH-01, OH-13, and PA-07 and Toss-Ups victories in: NV-03, TX-32, and AK.

2022 Georgia Senate Runoff

As soon as it was clear there would be another runoff election in Georgia, CaPA started deploying resources to 27 grassroots organizations across the state that worked tirelessly to mobilize voters – mostly non-urban youth of color – to return to the polls and re-elect Reverend Raphael Warnock. Our early investment, totaling $1,306,323, meant that organizations didn’t have to skip a beat after the general election; they were able to retain their staff and continue knocking doors, making phone calls, and mobilizing their supporters to keep going.

The Road Ahead

The losses in CA-22, IA-03, NY-22, NY-19, OR-05, and NE-02 still sting, as all combined 15,569 votes could have swung the House to a +2 Democratic majority. At CaPA we know first hand that the grassroots capacity existed in key battlegrounds late in the cycle to turn-out those votes, but unfortunately went unfunded while $100’s of millions were simultaneously set on fire with expensive and ineffective TV ads. Failing to first saturate the grassroots needs on the ground in these key battlegrounds, which would have required far less money, left us with McCarthy leading the house, instead of Pelosi, and lobbyists and legislators playing defense at the Federal level rather than passing transformative voter protection, social justice, and climate action policies.

Going forward CaPA believes that more emphasis needs to be placed on saturating grassroots field gaps targeting a wide variety of demographics. We are excited about the new partnership with Movement Voter Project (MVP) and Rural Democracy Initiative (RDI) to form the Rural Youth Voter Fund and the work it will due to chip away at that supergap. But the reality is massive gaps exist across the entire grassroots organizing ecosystem. We need to make it easier, and more transparent, for late moving political donors focused on transactional electoral investments that there are better alternatives to move votes during the final days, weeks and months than shipping their money to candidate campaigns to buy more TV ads.