IDCCA President’s Message
by Kristina Zahorik, IDCCA President
@ILDCCA @McHenryDems

Dear County Chairs and Friends,

You’ll recall Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked at our Chairs’ Brunch for the rest of the nation to, “Be like Illinois” in reference to our Blue Wave. It is heartening to see other states following our lead.

We are under a year away from the 2020 election and while there is hope, we know the victories did not come easily. We still have work to do.

The IDCCA staff and I recently sat down to create our plans and goals for 2020. Some of those plans include continuing to build a better and more useful website, providing trainings throughout the state, refocusing our Candidate Boot Camp, engaging our Leadership Circle members, preparing election integrity teams, and creating targeted precinct programs.

I wanted to share a bit about the precinct program. Currently, we are all engaged in the first task of recruiting candidates and getting them on the ballot. It follows, the next job for County Parties is to identify Democratic voters, then get them out to vote. In contrast, a candidate role is to identify their voters and more importantly their persuadable voters and get them to vote. The candidate says vote for me. The Party says vote for all the Democrats. Simple in theory.

After petitions, our next step is to identify Democratic voters. Toward that end, the IDCCA is creating a precinct program for our counties to do just that, so come next November those precincts will have an expanded base to get out the vote.

For the precinct program to be successful, we need your help. It will take volunteers going door to door doing the grassroots work between now and next summer. The IDCCA will kick off the program with a statewide day of action. I hope you can join us.

This precinct program is important. While Illinois is blue, we aren’t blue everywhere. In addition, we have judges to retain and elect. We have Democrats just elected two years ago to return to office, including Congresswoman Underwood and Congressman Casten. We like to send them a couple of new colleagues as well. We have a host of county and General Assembly elections. We need to ensure the Fair Tax passes. We need to get Trump out. Finally, we need to return Senator Durbin to office to lead what we hope will be a Democratically controlled Senate.

If we do our work, then our nation can be like Illinois. The Administration, the Senate, and the House will be able to begin to correct the damage done.

Join us in our plans. Let’s continue working to keep Illinois blue and in protecting our democracy. Send me an email at kristina@ildcca.org and say you’re all in.

Best wishes,

Kristina