NPI at Netroots Nation 2022: Talking smart campaign strategies with Stephanie Taylor

Wel­come to the third install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh. NPI staff jour­neyed to Steel City this past week to par­tic­i­pate in the nation’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists.

As part of our con­fer­ence cov­er­age, we’re bring­ing you a series of con­ver­sa­tions with key move­ment lead­ers and elect­ed officials.

In this install­ment of NPI@NN, we’re hon­ored to be joined by Stephanie Tay­lor, co-founder of the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below.

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Read the transcript

(Note: this tran­script has been edit­ed light­ly for clarity) 

CAYA: Wel­come to NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia! I’m your host, Caya Berndt. We’re so glad to have you with us. For this install­ment, we are excit­ed to be joined by Stephanie Tay­lor, the Co-Founder of The Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. Welcome!

STEPHANIE: Thank you so much.

CAYA: Stephanie, just to start us out, would you mind telling us a lit­tle bit about your­self, your orga­ni­za­tion, and what you do?

STEPHANIE: Absolute­ly. So, the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, we have a mil­lion mem­bers nation­al­ly, and we sup­port can­di­dates who are run­ning for office. Our mantra is “change the world by chang­ing who holds power.”

We work with can­di­dates… mak­ing sure that they have every­thing they need to run a best-prac­tices cam­paign and win. So we do every­thing from fundrais­ing, to plug­ging in our mem­bers as vol­un­teers, to train­ings, to send­ing “Get Out the Vote” emails, to every­thing in between.

We actu­al­ly have tech­nol­o­gy that we’ve devel­oped, that’s a cam­paign in a box, that allows our can­di­dates to set up their own web­site, run their own email list, design their own direct mail…. basi­cal­ly mak­ing sure that these great activists who are run­ning for school board and state leg and city coun­cil can have a best-prac­tices cam­paign going from Day One.

So that’s very much the work of the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Committee.

CAYA: That’s fan­tas­tic. Do you seek out can­di­dates, or are they more like­ly to come to you?

STEPHANIE: It’s a lit­tle of both. We also have done… Pre-pan­dem­ic, we used to have four hun­dred can­di­dates at a time that we would bring togeth­er for four-day boot camps where we’d even do things like design their logos, take their head­shots. We can’t wait to get those back to those boot camps!

CAYA: You know, the pan­dem­ic has changed a lot about… I think it’s changed a lot about how can­di­dates are run­ning their cam­paigns. Like, for exam­ple, old fash­ioned meth­ods like door­belling became more fraught for some peo­ple. How has the pan­dem­ic changed how you’re able to sup­port can­di­dates on the ballot?

STEPHANIE: That’s a great question.

I think that you’ve def­i­nite­ly seen a rise in more vir­tu­al cam­paign­ing, more folks who are try­ing to reach out and con­nect with vot­ers through social media, through Insta­gram Live and through Zoom calls, and things like that.

But I also think it’s changed the sub­stance of our pol­i­tics, not always for the best. Now, you’ve seen a real rise in the right-wing dis­in­for­ma­tion sphere.

You’ve seen a huge rise in peo­ple being online all day and there­fore get­ting their pol­i­tics, and get­ting their polit­i­cal con­tent, through right wing memes and through a lot of the dis­in­for­ma­tion that’s circulating.

So I think that it’s been a two-edged sword that we’ve seen.

CAYA: It seems like you have to work — and with the Inter­net — work a lot faster to fig­ure out how to respond to some of those mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns. Has that been some­thing that you’ve found in your work?

STEPHANIE: Absolute­ly. I think that a lot of can­di­dates are now strug­gling to fig­ure out how they can respond in real time, how they can fight back against a lot of the lies that are being cir­cu­lat­ed around Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and pro­gres­sive can­di­dates. One thing that works real­ly well is for can­di­dates who have very deep com­mu­ni­ty roots, where folks know them, they know their work, they know what they stand for.

We saw this with Sum­mer Lee, who ran in a dis­trict right here in Pitts­burgh, and she was run­ning against mil­lions of dol­lars in attack ad spend­ing that was being spent against her on tele­vi­sion! In the pri­ma­ry, they were lying about her, lying about her record, and in the end, she still won because peo­ple knew her here.

She had a long track record of doing great work for her com­mu­ni­ty. So at the end of the day, the attack ads don’t work because peo­ple know her.

CAYA: Right. And I think that one of the biggest things about mis­in­for­ma­tion, I mean, I feel like this has been a thing in the media in gen­er­al, and I feel like it’s got­ten worse over the pan­dem­ic, is the ero­sion of peo­ple’s trust. And so, memes and the Inter­net, they feed right into that, because it allows peo­ple to cher­ry-pick their own truths. So it sounds like that in-per­son con­tact is the great­est thing to break­ing down and rebuild­ing that trust again.

STEPHANIE: It def­i­nite­ly helps. We are in a real very hard time. As folks know in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, where you do have a real break­down in trust, you have a real break­down in how peo­ple are see­ing elect­ed offi­cials, period.

One of the things that we’ve been advo­cat­ing to our can­di­dates is that Democ­rats need to run and acknowl­edge that our insti­tu­tions are bro­ken. Right?

Peo­ple get that the sys­tem is rigged, our insti­tu­tions are bro­ken, and that we have cor­po­rate cap­ture of our democ­ra­cy. And so often, the estab­lish­ment Demo­c­ra­t­ic response is to sort of have this knee-jerk defense of our insti­tu­tions. And that’s what you see with the fil­i­buster debate right now, a lot of folks defend­ing the fil­i­buster because, “oh, it’s a norm, it’s our institution.”

Well, vot­ers get that insti­tu­tions are bro­ken. They don’t want you to defend the insti­tu­tion. And what you see with some of these insur­gent can­di­dates that I think have most cap­tured atten­tion and imag­i­na­tion and excite­ment this cycle, which you see with like, a Fet­ter­man, or a Man­dela Barnes, or Lucas Kunce – who unfor­tu­nate­ly did­n’t win his pri­ma­ry, but was a real­ly excit­ing, fan­tas­tic can­di­date in Mis­souri – are folks who get that you can’t run defend­ing the institution.

You actu­al­ly have to say: “the insti­tu­tion is bro­ken and I wan­na fix it. And I wan­na fight with you to fix it.” Because the Repub­li­cans are out there say­ing: The insti­tu­tions are bro­ken, I’m with you, let’s blow it all up.

And the answer to that can’t be to defend the institutions!

CAYA: No, that’s actu­al­ly a great point! I was just think­ing that was a huge part of Trump’s mobi­liza­tion. It was “let’s just shut it all down!” And any­body who actu­al­ly under­stands that we kind of do rely on some sort of sta­bil­i­ty says, No! Let’s not shut it down! Peo­ple are going to get hurt if you do that!

STEPHANIE: Right, right, no, exact­ly! And you can’t blow things up, but you do have to say, I get it. I get why you’re upset. I get that the sys­tem feels rigged because it is rigged. Right? And Trump absolute­ly tapped into that.

And you see indi­vid­ual Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates who are under­stand­ing how to respond to that, but I think there’s a lot to learn from the Democ­rats, for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty on the whole, on how to start speak­ing to this moment, and learn­ing, and under­stand­ing the depth of dis­trust that peo­ple have right now for our insti­tu­tions and our elect­ed bodies.

CAYA: How do you think that Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates can help bridge that gap?

STEPHANIE: Well, again, I think that they have to acknowl­edge that the sys­tem’s bro­ken. I think that they have to be will­ing to offer real plans. So, I live in cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia, and I talk to a lot of Repub­li­cans. I have Repub­li­cans in my life. I have, you know, I talk to a lot of rel­a­tives who are Repub­li­cans. And what I hear from them, over and over… they will agree with me on the issues.

They agree we should ban assault weapons.

They agree abor­tion should be legal.

They agree the min­i­mum wage should be higher.

They agree that we should be spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in good union jobs and build­ing green ener­gy. They agree with all of that. We agree, but where we break down is they say they just don’t trust any­body now.

And they say, “well, show me the plan. What’s the plan to make… to fix this very bro­ken sys­tem that we have, and make life bet­ter for me and the peo­ple that I care about? What is the plan? What are you doing to take on the cor­po­ra­tions? Tell me specif­i­cal­ly what you are doing.” And I keep hear­ing that over and over and over from the peo­ple that I talk to.

CAYA: That’s real­ly good insight. I think peo­ple are tired of hear­ing what they think is lip ser­vice. They want action that they can fol­low. And I think with that comes get­ting peo­ple engaged and will­ing to vote.

I know that there a lot of peo­ple who are strug­gling to remain engaged. I’ve heard dif­fer­ent datasets say­ing that younger peo­ple are less like­ly to vote, younger peo­ple are more like­ly to vote… What do you think a com­mon through line has been regard­ing get­ting peo­ple to remain engaged to vote?

STEPHANIE: I think show­ing peo­ple and telling peo­ple exact­ly what you’re going to do [is key]. And we saw this, I think it was very smart, fol­low­ing the Dobbs deci­sion from espe­cial­ly Eliz­a­beth War­ren and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, say­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic mes­sage needs to be: Give us two more sen­a­tors and we will cod­i­fy abor­tion rights into law.

That is a plan. Peo­ple want the plan. They want the specifics. So you can’t just say “Vote Blue in 2022.” You have to actu­al­ly explain to peo­ple: Here’s the plan. Here’s what we’re gonna do with pow­er. Here’s how we’re gonna make this bet­ter and rec­ti­fy the injus­tices that are cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing in your life.

CAYA: I kind of wan­na turn things over to you. I’m inter­est­ed to know, what were some of your own per­son­al expe­ri­ences, or what that drew you into this land of work?

STEPHANIE: I was orig­i­nal­ly a union organizer.

CAYA: Real­ly?

STEPHANIE: Yeah. My mom was a long time union activist. I’m a third gen­er­a­tion union activist. My grand­ma was an orga­niz­er for the Team­sters when she worked food assem­bly. After I grad­u­at­ed col­lege, I became a union orga­niz­er in the SEIU 1199, West Vir­ginia, Ken­tucky, Ohio. I did orga­niz­ing in Appalachia, orga­niz­ing health­care and Head Start work­ers… and I had an epiphany.

One day, I was dri­ving back to my hotel after a vote count, and we had won a hard-fought Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board vote count by three votes. After four months of blood, sweat, and tears…and I was lis­ten­ing to the radio and a sto­ry came on. This was back in, it must have been 2003, 2004, some­where in there… a sto­ry came on the radio that George W. Bush had just signed the exec­u­tive order, strip­ping col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights from 17,000 TSA screeners.

And I real­ized, I could spend the rest of my life doing what I’m doing, adding work­ers to the union, fifty work­ers at a time, orga­niz­ing shop by shop, and I can nev­er undo what he just did with the stroke of a pen.

And it just was this real “Road to Dam­as­cus” moment for me, where I real­ized that every­thing that we work on and every­thing that we fight for, we need to be look­ing at who holds the pow­er and who makes the laws.

That’s who we need to orga­nize. That’s what we need to change. So I had this vision of orga­niz­ing Con­gress the way I orga­nize a nurs­ing home: mak­ing sure that you’ve got your sup­port­ers in there, fig­ur­ing out how you get them to vote the right way on the issues. That’ll make life bet­ter for all of us.

That’ll make it pos­si­ble for us to add mil­lions of work­ers back into the union and rebuild the labor move­ment, make it pos­si­ble for us to save the plan­et, and take rad­i­cal action, and climate.

So I moved to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. with two suit­cas­es and spent the next few years just learn­ing D.C., learn­ing pow­er, learn­ing how it oper­ates. Some­where along the way I met Adam Green, my co-founder, and we start­ed the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee with this idea that we were gonna change the world by chang­ing who holds pow­er, and try to tack­le change from that angle.

CAYA: Thank you for shar­ing that! Just a cou­ple more ques­tions before we wrap up. You know, we just had our pri­maries, and there’s been a lot of con­cern that we were going to see a big back­slide in blue can­di­dates, that peo­ple are going to turn around and vote red. But in coun­ty after coun­ty, state after state, it’s turn­ing out that actu­al­ly, no, that’s not the case. There’s actu­al­ly been a lot more blue wins than we were antic­i­pat­ing, which is great news.

The ques­tion, then is: what do pro­gres­sive and Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates need to do in order to main­tain that momen­tum into 2024?

STEPHANIE: I think we are see­ing some good momen­tum. I think peo­ple are real­ly angry about, espe­cial­ly, the attack on abor­tion rights. Peo­ple are very wor­ried about democ­ra­cy itself. And I think that again, we need can­di­dates who are out there, say­ing force­ful­ly, I will fight for change, and I will do these spe­cif­ic things to pro­tect our fun­da­men­tal rights. I will fight to expand the Supreme Court to get rid of the fil­i­buster, I will fight to make sure that our elec­tions mat­ter and count, and I will fight to cod­i­fy abor­tion rights. I will fight for rad­i­cal action on cli­mate. I will fight for labor rights and the Pro Act.

I mean, we wan­na see peo­ple who are out there actu­al­ly say­ing… again, I’m kind of a bro­ken record on this, but I keep com­ing back to it: the insti­tu­tions are bro­ken, it’s not work­ing. Who’s got the plan to do some­thing about it?

CAYA: No, that’s… I mean, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Same thing. If it’s a good mes­sage, if it’s a good strat­e­gy, it does bear repeat­ing because it’s some­thing that I think that we often for­get, espe­cial­ly as we try to make com­pro­mis­es in order to get our mes­sage across. One final ques­tion for you, this is kind of a strange one to end on a brighter note. Some­thing I like ask­ing every­body is: in these uncer­tain and some­times fright­en­ing times, what has been bring­ing you joy lately?

STEPHANIE: Oh, well, I’m here at the con­fer­ence with my five year old daughter.

CAYA: Who is very adorable.

STEPHANIE: Eleanor. She says she’s run­ning for may­or when she grows up.

CAYA: Yeah, she is!

STEPHANIE: And you know, it’s the future. It’s the next gen­er­a­tion and try­ing to plant those seeds so that the work can continue.

CAYA: Thank you very much. That was Stephanie Tay­lor, co-founder of the Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee! I will drop the web­site and their infor­ma­tion in our post on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Tune in next time for our next install­ment of NPI at Net­roots 22! For NPI I’m Caya Berndt.