Looking to 2022, People's Action Launches Game-Changing Electoral Strategy to Boost Progressive Power

People’s Action today launched a game-changing electoral strategy, Rise Up 2022, to boost progressive power in the U.S. Senate and House by organizing in competitive races to flip Republican-held swing seats in the 2022 elections. People’s Action will partner with its member organizations across the country to implement the Rise Up 2022 strategy, building on the power of its groundbreaking 2020 strategy centered around deep canvassing. The strategy aims to elect progressives in Democratic primaries and then win general elections in swing districts by using progressive policies to engage voters who are typically shut out of politics and ignored by the Democratic establishment.

“Democrats backed themselves into a corner a long time ago when they began sacrificing bold action for marginal wins,” People’s Action Movement Politics Director Brooke Adams said. “Our 2022 strategy will finally kick this habit. Using our innovative deep canvassing program, we’ll turnout our folks, persuade people not yet with us to support us, and help elect progressive champions by driving issue-oriented campaigns in competitive races. We’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves because to win next year, we need to organize everywhere and everyone.”

The strategy will include:

• Listening sessions with candidates to hear the concerns of their constituents;
• Deep canvassing campaigns to turnout midterm drop-off voters and move persuadable voters to vote for endorsed candidates; 
• Candidate-based and issue-oriented deep canvassing; and 
• Other candidate events and forums.

Candidate endorsement will begin in the fall. The full list of races where People’s Action plans to recruit and engage candidates may be found below:

• AR-2
• AZ-Gubernatorial
• AZ-6
• CA-25
• CO-8 (new district)
• IA-Senate
• IA-1
• IA-2
• IL-13
• IL 17
• MI-3
• MI- 6
• MO-Senate
• NC-Senate
• NC-8
• NC-11
• NC-13
• NH-Gubernatorial
• NJ-2
• NY-11
• NY-22
• PA-Senate
• PA-10
• TX-23
• WA-3
• WA-4
• WI-Senate

People's Action's Movement Politics program recruits, runs, and elects progressives into local and statewide offices across the country. Since 2016, People’s Action has helped elect over 380 movement politics candidates. The program focuses on electing women, people of color, and low-income people who are grounded in progressive movement building with our member organizations. From 2020-2021 People’s Action recruited 35,000 volunteers from all 50 states, sent 35 million text messages, and had hundreds of thousands of deep canvass conversations to defeat Donald Trump.