Q and a. We are incredibly thrilled to be back, and we are grateful to our hosts at Netroots Nation. Thank you tonetroo to Netroots Nation for Live Streaming this. We are taking questions. Well be taking questions online. You can tweet at us. This panel has been about interactivity. We dont do any speeches or presentations. I am just going to give a quick introduction about who we are and we will get to your questions. We think our main progressives with information about we are they need to be fighting in is going to make us the most effective into the 2018 midterms and beyond. My dame my name is david nir. Kosn the website, daily elections. We put out a newsletter every Morning Coffee morning digest that covers morning called the morning digest. It covers raises and more. Races and more. We are responsible for the daily kos candidate endorsement program, which i am sure will come up in the panel. The team here is all involved in helping us choose who we decide to support and who we feel we should ask our community to support. On the panel here starting from my left is david beard. David works for the afl. He has been writing with daily kos since 2015. His specialty is actually international elections. He is one of the main writers on our Monthly International elections digest. Which is a great tool if you want to learn what is going on in other democracies around the world. Just to my left is jeff singer. Jeff is a senior elections writer at daily kos elections. He has been with the team since 2013. Among other things jeff is the , guy responsible for calculating the president ial 2016 president ial Election Results for every Congressional District and we are in the process of calculating it for every legislative district. So every time you see something where Hillary Clinton got 58 in such and such district, the reason why you and we know that is because of jeffs efforts. [applause] yeah, i think that deserves a round of applause. Then we have Carolyn Fiddler. She joins us from the Democratic Legislative Campaign committee. Willlc, which david jarman introduce at the moment, he rockibed it as the indie band label because there are so many thousands of legislative races that knowing about them and knowing who to support and which seeks to target in which chambers to target, it is difficult information for normal civilians to come by. That is what the dlcc is created for. We will talk about that because the leaders who create the districts, the Congressional Districts affect the house. Those gerrymander is are a big reason why the republicans are in charge today. She is the legislative expert and rights are owned newsletter called this week in the state house action which covers exactly that, the cover of goings on in the legislature and the government threat the country. To her right is daniel donner. Daniel is from portland, oregon. And dan, dans focus is maps, charts, and graphs of all kinds. Dan just loves to visualize the data. Dan has been working on a lot of visualizations of the special elections we have seen since trump was elected where democrats have been far outperforming all of the trends. We will talk about that later today. Finally david jarman, who is an instructional designer from seattle, washington. David has been working with the daily kos Election Team since 2008. Among his many specialties, he loves to take deep dives into demographic big pictures and in particular, he has been looking at the role education plays in defining the electorate in 2016 and what that will mean Going Forward. So that is enough from us. Now we will turn it over to you. We have a microphone here. If you cannot get to the microphone, it is fine. Just stand up and speak loudly. I will repeat the questions for the audience on the livestream. I have a question about the topic. I am ashamed i do not look up very much or look up. I do not know a lot about the background, but omaha, what happened to the candidate in omaha . What was the situation there, the endorsement . David nir so the question was about the election in omaha. I presume that you are talking about the omaha mayoral race. It happened earlier this year. This was a difficult situation found itself in. We endorsed a candidate, hes mellow, who was a former state legislator heath mellow, who was a former state legislator running. We did not do the Due Diligence we should have. A turned out heath mellow had record on abortion rights that we felt was not accessible for progressive communities. To ask a Progressive Community like daily kos to support him. I want to be clear we did not say that we thought democrats should not support keith mellow, that he should not run. For daily kos, we have to begin choosing be selective about the endorsements we make. In this case, we were not as selective as we should of it. When we learned about his record on abortion, we chose to withdraw the endorsement. But you know, we did not attack him publicly. Restated our reasons we stated our reasons for the withdrawal. We moved on. He wound up losing to the republican candidate. There are folks who have said he lost because of what happened with the endorsement. Some other organizations and folks were unhappy about his abortion stance. Others were unhappy about people making an issue on his stance, but the math seemed to be fairly simple. It was a two round election. In the first round, the incumbent mayor was the republican. He and mellow were separated by about two or three points. So it looks like a close race. The problem was there was a third candidate running in the race that was also a republican. The problem was there was a the third candidate, the other republican endorsed the incumbent, and ultimately that was the margin that she prevailed by. So im sure it did not help mellows campaign in the controversy, but it turned out the electorate in 2017 was to o republican for him to overcome the incumbent mayor. Next question . I actually have two, so feel free to answer the if it is not first permissible. Alabamas special senate thetion, any update with mysterious Robert Kennedy . The real candidate, who i think is done jones, might have some outside shot for the republicans. And a separate question candidate recruitment in new , york 11 in the Staten Island district. I thought it was on the triple target list this year. The first few announcements seem ed dudish. Any possible more reputable people . If im only allowed, stick with alabama. David nir the questions are about what is going on in the Alabama Senate special election and what is going on with the 11th district based on Staten Island. Any takers . So for the Alabama Senate race the primary is this , tuesday. If nobody gets you percent or takes the majority, there will be a runoff between the top two candidates. Is alabama. It is going to be a very tough race. We have a former democrat jeff , jones. He has connections. If lightning strikes and then some, maybe he will be in the right place. The problem is he has a few people running against him including robert f. Kennedy jr. He is not related to the kennedy family. There is no law saying you cannot run if you are not a real kennedy. [laughter] but the issue is, it is a pretty low energy race. The worry is that democratic voters will vote for the name they recognize, even if he is not the robert f. Kennedy jr. Or anything like that. The last two days, we have seen some democratic luminaries endorse jones. Doug lewis, alabamas only congresswoman. Nobody is spending much money. Jones is not airing any tv ads, so we will see how things look on maybe well have a runoff. Tuesday. Hopefully, kennedy will not win outright. But we will just have to see how that goes. The democrats are aware it is a problem. We are putting some effort into it. David nir new york 11 . You want to grab new york 11 too . Jeff singer sure. So that is Staten Island, it has a piece of brooklyn. It is the only part of york city that trump won. He is well on Staten Island. He won from a district that obama did pretty well there. They supported trump by double digits. The incumbent republican dan , ottoman, he is the former Staten Island district attorney. He did not indict the Police Officers who killed eric garner. That was a big controversy. He won easily. It is a really tough district. Staten island for a lot of reasons is protrump territory. It is always good to feel people. We had a candidate who stepped up. He is a former he is an army , veteran. His name escapes me at the moment, but he is a purple heart veteran. He has got a good profile, but it is a really, really tough district. New york is the new york city is the most expensive that he to air tv ads in, except for parts of new jersey. It is one of those districts where we should compete. If a year from now we are talking about this district, it is probably a really good sign for democratic hope. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is kathleen allen, and i am running for the house of representatives in georgia seven district. [applause] i am a progressive and my platform is prohealth. We need to move to single payer. I would lose my job and i am ok with that. Prolife. By that i mean a respecting the life of the mother as well as the baby in her while. Womb. We need to make progress on issues in our nation. We need more congress to be braver and honest about them. And we are willing to do the work in their communities for the get to vote on issues. My question to you is, how early in the process do you endorse a progressive candidate . Do you wait until after qualifying . Do you wait until after the primary . Or do you do first come, first serve . Koshe question is how daily goes about the endorsement process. I think it is a good question. I am in the works of a lengthier post explaining this. I will try to answer in brief. Generally speaking, daily kos avoids endorsing in the primaries. It is not a hard and fast rule. We usually do, and the reason why is we do not want to be perceived as a big National Group telling people who to vote for when local folks can do an excellent job of picking their own candidates. Typically, we wait until after filinges or until a deadline if there is only one candidate who is when it who is running. In that sentiment we will probably wait on both of our endorsements until 2018. That gets to the question of timing. Other questions i could go on for far too long on this question. There are so many criteria and so many factors. One that i would mention is generally speaking, we tried to get involved in races we are not going to get huge amount of attention from d. C. Organizations. The reason we do that is because is if you are a toptier candidate running in a race, the dccc will come in with millions of dollars for you. Even if we could raise 100,000 from small donations, which is a lot of money the bang for the , buck is going to be smaller there then it will be for a lower tier race are there is less money involved. In the event there is a big wave that we have a chance to capitalize on, we can help expand that playing field. If the dccc is playing in seats one through 20 or the next dozen seats, we want to play the next after that to increase chances of folks who would not have chances. We can afford to take the risks. Our community is very open to backing candidates who are longer shots. I have always been very proud of that. Sometimes some of those longer shots have won. Thank you. Really short, sorry. I am that midler. Thattte midler, but not one. The be surprised. I do work with the dmo. I am looking anyone on any hot races. Those of you do not know, most seats are up this year, and they are mostly nonpartisan. So we have like 22,000 municipals up this year. That is not big city stuff that we should be aware of, that we should get in to the bench is to . System . [applause] david nir the question is about which municipal races are below the radar since they are so many of them that progressives should get involved in this year. Well, one that was in the past, that i think was a positive sign was in san antonio where there were a number of democratic victories i think in the spring. They included a piece that was seen as the most republican part of san antonio that the democrats were able to win, which certainly points towards positive results Going Forward. Those places that were urban or suburban that were historically republican. In terms of the 22,000 races, it is difficult for us to cover those races, just as a reality of the number of people who are involved and the number of races out there. I think there are some great blogs. They do a great work. They can really drill down onto a lower level than those of us who are looking statewide and nationally can do. David nir and i will talk about one specific race which is the detroit city race that has come across our radar. Did he get through . David nir garland gilchrist. Did he get through . David nir yes. In detroit, there have been various sorts of voting problems for a number of years. The clerk there is being challenged by kind of a young rising star sort of in gilchrist. That is a race that has come across our radar because of the importance of election administration. These are races that tend to get ignored. Also on a bigger level, secretary of state races. These are also important. On the municipal level, we probably need 10 times as many people up on this panel to really hit those, but we try to Pay Attention to the nuts and bolts, secretaries general and such. We do look at things that affect people on a daily basis but not as thoroughly day today. Not necessarily day today. To day. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to add the level of excitement i have seen on the state legislative level, under most people radar, a Record Number of candidates are running in virginia. Candidates are sucking up to run all over the country. We will see the level of excitement manifest itself. I am really excited. I am jesse bacon. Sounds like im trying to stop you, but i am not sure what is going on in these races. There is a state election in mississippi, but candidates do not run with party labels in special elections, so i have not been able to even determine with certainty who the democrat is. And less obscurely, i have been really heartened by the virginia races. Amazing candidates. I did see dropped out. One i was wondering if you had any insight if there is a replacement in the race . David nir so the question is, there is a virginia legislative race where the democrat recently dropped out. Do we have any insight to a replacement . The answer is yes. Carolyn fiddler actually yes, there was a local caucus to replace that. Zach. It brings the total of women running in seats that Hillary Clinton won from 10 to 11 she won 17 of the current seats. There are actually four seats held by republicans in the house of delegates in virginia. I am really excited about what is happening in virginia this year. Mississippi, you make a good point in terms of the special elections and the nonpartisan nature. Mississippi is a really special animal when it comes to state legislative elections. Did you know the state legislature can overturn result like they did a year ago . They are difficult to track because of the special nature of who is what down there for their specials. It is a unique system. We are keeping an eye on it. David nir for the folks leaving watching on the livestream, you can tweet us. Next question. Big question on my former childhood icon dana robacher. And other Orange County folks. Because we have this system, would that change your mind trying to endorse, because the multiple democrats screw us over and have two republicans advance. David nir the question is about dana rohrabacher. Very proputin republican in california. The 39th district . 48th. It is where arrested development is set. [laughter] david nir so the question is about if democrats are concerned about not being able to get to the november general election and also would daily kos endorse in that race early as a result . It would probably require really remarkable circumstances of the republican candidate is eluding meame right now. We dont know if he has anything going for the ability to self fund. We have the San Bernardino seat where republicans are sharing the thing down the middle, then democratic split almost equally as well. You have 2520 five, 181818. It is possible, but i would not overly sweat it. And i cant really speak to the endorsement process. I dont think we will endorse until after the primary, which again might be too late. There is a sorting process that one of the democrats developed a stronger profile whether it is through beating the other ones through fundraising or natural campaign talents. We will wait and see unfortunately. David nir next question . Good morning. Mine is jim. I am running for congress in new jerseys fourth district. [applause] thank you. So you may recall about 2. 5 years ago when governor christie screamed at that guy to sit down and shut up. That was me. [laughter] [applause] so that, that is my political calling card in new jersey. Most people know me as the sit down and shut up guy. What they dont know is i am the unapologetic progressive. I was for bernie sanders, and i am running on a very progressive campaign. I appreciate the fact you hold on not endorsing until primaries are over. I understand the difficult nature of that. Given that i have 11 months until that happens what would , your top suggestions to three someone like myself to engage the community, Daily Kos Community . I write somewhat regularly. Are there things you would say this, and this, to help raise my profile within the community and get the support im going to need to win the race . David nir that is an excellent question. What should a candidate who is interested in an endorsement to get an endorsement from daily kos . You mentioned you wrote on the site. That is the number one way to do it. Campaigns reach out to us often. I say, if you have not already, create