Postcards from the Left Coast: How voters in blue Santa Cruz aim to swing the country Democratic

Perhaps Ben Franklin’s old adage needs an election year amendment: Nothing is certain except death, taxes and Kamala Harris winning California’s 54 electoral votes in November.

Because of a constitutional quirk known as the Electoral College, Americans who live in California (and many other states) are experiencing a tight and enormously consequential presidential election with a weird degree of separation. Any meaningful fight for votes is happening in other time zones. That means anyone who wants to participate in that fight on one side or the other has to do so long-distance. 

From their safely blue-state redoubt of Santa Cruz County, locals who want to make a difference in the election have to make choices. Some are making targeted donations to groups engaged in get-out-the-vote efforts in crucial swing states. Some are cold-calling registered voters. Some are writing letters and postcards to addresses of swing-state residents. And some are traveling to swing states to canvass neighborhoods and talk directly to Americans whose votes matter the most.

Every Wednesday night at Kathy Sherman’s house in Capitola, several locals gather around her kitchen table to write postcards on behalf of the Democratic Party ticket to registered voters in Nevada, one of those battleground states. Sherman has been hosting these postcarding parties since last fall when, of course, that Democratic candidate was President Joe Biden. Now it’s Harris, a California native daughter. 

On the Wednesday night of the Democratic National Convention, more than a dozen women sat around the kitchen table with Oprah Winfrey speaking at the Chicago convention on the TV in the other room. Their job was tedious, but, they felt, worthwhile. They filled out, in free hand, blank postcards with a pre-determined message, signing their own names at the bottom. The language they used was scripted, but they used colored markers to bring a bit of personality to each individual postcard.

Sherman said that since the postcarding campaign began at her house last October, she and her friends have filled out and mailed more than 3,200 postcards to swing-state voters. In the beginning of the effort, the volunteers showing up each week to write postcards were only three or four. Since Biden’s withdrawal from the race, that number has risen three- or fourfold. Now Sherman hosts postcarding get-togethers twice a week.

Their focus is on close races that might swing either the presidential race or control of Congress. Last week, they focused on a close House race in California’s Central Valley. Tonight, the job before them is convincing voters in Reno to vote the Democratic ticket, which not only includes Vice President Kamala Harris, but embattled incumbent senator Jacky Rosen. “We’re not trying to convert anybody,” said Kate Lehr. “We’re just trying to get Democrats out to vote.”

The women this Wednesday night are all roughly in the same demographic, many of them mothers and grandmothers. Some of them are long-time activists — or politically engaged voters; some resist the term “activists” — but others are first-timers. Some are comfortable with the label “progressive.” Others are more moderate in their inclinations.

Lynn Walton said she had participated in some political activism in past election seasons. But she’s stepping it up in 2024. “This is different,” she said. “We’ve all suffered enough these last handful of years, and we just cannot allow that to happen again. I’m feeling more much driven to do the work, and more consistently.”

The conversation riffs off of the convention, the latest campaign news, the remarks of Oprah and Bill Clinton on TV, the political differences in their respective families, the idea of a woman in the Oval Office, the mood shift since Biden’s withdrawal from the race, and, of course, the two candidates themselves. Much of the talk is of the difference in tone on the Democratic side from just a few weeks ago.

“They’ve got a sense of direction,” said Jill Russell, betraying a little bit of the passion that speakers at the convention have been displaying. “They believe in themselves, and that’s their North Star. And I think that leads to feeling the confidence we’re seeing from them.”

Of course, Harris is poised to become the nation’s first female president, a symbolic achievement in the long struggle for women’s equality. But to many of the women here tonight, that symbolism is really a secondary concern.

“If this were a man with all the same qualifications,” says Lynn Walton, “I would be doing this just the same. It’s not because she’s a woman, it’s who she is.”

Hillary Clinton’s name emerges, but so does the name of Shirley Chisholm, the trailblazing New Yorker who ran for president in 1972.

“She was probably my first vote,” said Tina Ansbro of Chisholm. “I’ve always believed women could be president.”

The supporting materials for the postcard parties is, in this case, provided by Activate America, one of a number of national get-out-the-vote organizations looking to channel the passions and energy of safe-state voters into swing-state races or other tight congressional races that also includes Vote Forward, Swing Left, Indivisible and Walk the Walk. These partisan groups are each engaged in nationwide campaigns to concentrate on swing-state presidential races and tight House or Senate races. Swing Left, for example, claims 400 local groups nationwide, with a million members and 46 million contacts with voters since its beginnings in 2017.

Andrew Goldenkranz, the chair of the Santa Cruz County Democratic Party, said that these partisan groups are not directly affiliated with the Democratic Party, but are “party-adjacent.” The party’s role, said Goldenkrantz, is to serve as a kind of “clearinghouse,” to share data with organizations, including some nonpartisan voter-activation organizations, to avoid redundant efforts and increase efficiency. Locally, these efforts are focused mainly on Nevada and Arizona (the swing states closest to California) and tightly contested California congressional Districts 13 and 22. 

Many of these groups are sponsoring people to travel to these contested areas to talk to voters directly. “We work with these organizations in these areas,” said Goldenkranz, “to make sure they’re going in with lists [of voters’ names] that are already vetted, so they’re not just going in freelance, but that they’re going into an established operation.”

There are many locals in Santa Cruz County who are taking the step to venture out to the Central Valley, where the tight House races are, or even to Nevada. Rene Bloch, the leader of the local Swing Left chapter, said, “The most impactful action we do is canvassing.” His group sent representatives on the five-hour drive to Reno/Sparks 10 times during the 2022 off-year election cycle, and is spearheading even more trips this year. The organization will arrange carpooling, and can help in finding short-term lodging (though it’s most helpful if volunteers use their own resources on accommodations). The trips are usually over the weekend, with daytime shifts Saturday and Sunday.

So, what’s it like to drive to Nevada (in the middle of summer) and go door to door talking about what might be the most politically contentious election of the past 50 years?

Robert Baertsch of Santa Cruz took the trip a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time he had ever done anything like it. “I just wanted to be able to say that I tried, if Trump won,” he said. 

He rode in a carpool with a couple of other volunteers, armed with a list of names and addresses of people who had registered as Democrats or independents who had not voted in 2020. Riding up, he said, he was worried that he would have to interact with people hostile to his message. But with such a strategy, confrontations with people on the other side of the political divide are rare. His first day, which included about five to six hours of canvassing, the high was 99 degrees; the second day, the 94-degree high felt like a relief.

“A lot of times, no one is home,” he said. “But when you get someone at home, most of the time they actually want to talk. Sometimes, they’re a little bit cynical — ‘My vote doesn’t matter,’ etc. And what you say to those people is, ‘Well, what are the issues important to you?’ And once you find that out, you can really focus on what they feel is important, and why it makes sense to vote.”

The experience opened Baertsch’s eyes about political information in modern-day America. In his world in Santa Cruz, many people are awash in political news, information, even entertainment. But in other places, many people are living their lives much more unaware of the day-to-day soap opera of American politics. 

“Some people, they’re just trying to work and survive. They don’t necessarily have the time to read up on all the issues, but they would really appreciate talking to someone.”

The experience was rewarding enough to convince him to return to Nevada. He’ll be making another canvassing trip in September: “I’ve got a couple of friends who want to join me this time.”

Ken Smith of Soquel also traveled to Reno this summer. But unlike Baertsch, Smith took the trip when Biden was still the Democratic nominee. “I went as a way to deal with my anxiety about the race after the debate performance of Joe Biden,” he said. Smith, who had done this type of door-to-door work several times before, found on his trip that, despite the post-debate media coverage, the Democratic voters he spoke to were still very much behind Biden. 

Such conversations, he said, are crucial in democracy. “There’s no reason why we can’t talk to people about politics. Politics is nothing more than deciding how we’re going to handle building the world that we all want to live in. And canvassing is just a small step that everybody can take to to bridge those gaps and to have those conversations. And I think it’s really rewarding. I enjoy it.”

Smith’s canvassing weekend was cut short, however. He was in the midst of walking the neighborhoods when word came down that there had been an assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump. The Biden campaign, in response, decided to halt all political activity. He came home to Santa Cruz feeling, as many Democrats did, despondent. 

“It was probably one of the low points of [my political life],” he said. “I mean, I was extremely pessimistic. I thought we were cooked, and I was very depressed about it.”

Of course, not everyone can take a weekend to travel to another state. Others might find it ineffective to canvas a neighborhood that they know nothing about. For those folks, the most effective means to influence a political race is to give money to allow other more experienced people to do that kind of work.

One such fundraising group that has recently formed local alliances is Walk the Walk, an organization founded in the East Bay in 2018. This year, the organization is joining forces with the Santa Cruz-based Artists Respond and Resist Together (AART) for a big event Sept. 8 at M.K. Contemporary Art in downtown Santa Cruz to sell hand-painted Harris/Walz campaign signs and to raise money for voter-outreach efforts.

“[Walk the Walk] finds the organizations that are already working in these communities,” said AART’s Sara Friedlander, a prominent Santa Cruz artist and photographer. “And instead of thinking only about the presidential election per se, they’re thinking about all the elections up and down the ballot. People who are disenfranchised, they are often more worried about housing, and things on the bottom of the ballot — the sheriff, the school district.”

Fundraising efforts like the Sept. 8 event are likely to increase in the two months before the election. Andrew Goldenkranz of the Democratic Party said that plans are being made for a big trip to Reno — “we’re thinking of a busload of maybe 50 to 60 people” — in late September or early October. 

Meanwhile, Kathy Sherman’s postcarding evenings will continue into the fall, as will other postcard, letter-writing and phone banking campaigns, as Santa Cruz County residents work to influence the election by reaching far outside their own communities, even if it means boots on the ground in another state.

“One of the things I’ve learned over the years,” said veteran canvasser Kenneth Smith, “is that face-to-face meetings with voters are the most determinative factor in turnout. It’s not mail, phoning, texting, television ads, all that is not nearly as effective as face-to-face conversations and touches with voters. So even though people are enthusiastic, they are busy. And on Election Day, you want them to remember that somebody came by and reminded them how important this was and thanked them for their vote.”

Next week: What are Santa Cruz County Republicans doing to ensure success for their candidates in November?

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