Detrimental power grabs. Dismal economic outlooks. Widespread corruption.
It may seem that we are in the worst of times, but electorally, we still have the opportunity to fight back.
Yasmin Radjy, Executive Director of Swing Left, discusses the organization’s newly released gameplan The Big Swing with Tim Dickinson. Their strategy? To build on the “durable governing power in 2028 and beyond, alongside an expanded electoral map adding new House, Senate, and gubernatorial targets, and the Q1 findings from Ground Truth, our nationwide voter listening program.” The two also analyze the current political environment, 2028 election outlooks, and the 46 races to talk about.
Yasmin Radjy has served as Executive Director of Swing Left and its nonpartisan affiliate Vote Forward since 2022. Previously, she had leadership roles including Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the Biden-Harris administration, National Political Director and Organizing Director at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Virginia State Director at Mobilize.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
Hey, this is Tim Dickinson, Senior Editor here at The Contrarian. Our guest today is from Swing Left, it’s Yasmin Raji. Yasmin, how are you doing today?
Yasmin Radjy
I’m well! How are you, Tim?
Tim Dickinson
I’m doing great. Now, Yasmin, I’m sure most of our viewers, listeners know all about Swing Left, but for people who are, you know, new to the movement, what does Swing Left’s mission look like?
Yasmin Radjy
Yes, Swingleft was founded in 2017 on the eve of Donald Trump’s first inauguration, with a very simple mission of helping volunteers and donors at any level, get connected to the most competitive races to help win Democratic majorities. And back in the 2018 election cycle, we were singularly focused on the House as the first line of defense against Donald Trump. and the first way that we could collectively put our money and our time together to put a real check on his power. We’ve since expanded, right? We needed to focus in 2020, of course, on the presidential and on the Senate, as well as the House. We’ve also expanded to state races, governor’s races, state legislative races, occasionally state Supreme Court, AG&LG races. All with that same simple mission of where do we need to invest our time and our dollars in order to win the balance of power nationally. And for many of our volunteers, we’ve got a million members around the country, many of our volunteers affiliate through one of our 450 volunteer-led groups all across the country, and those are local communities where people come together Both online and offline, to take action together, whether they’re phone banking, whether they’re canvassing, whether they’re writing letters, whether they’re fundraising together, so that we are not entirely atomized in a moment that can feel really isolating and overwhelming. And since we were founded, we have collectively raised $140 million to elect Democrats, with the lion’s share of that going directly to Democratic campaigns, but also to state parties, to organizations that are helping, to elect those Democrats. And we’ve talked to 50 million voters, since our founding. That’s amazing. So, yes, we’re very proud of the scale of our impact.
Tim Dickinson
The current environment has been, at least in the last few days, pretty discouraging, all this news about the racist redistricting campaign in the South, and the evisceration of Black representation. But the overall environment that we find ourselves in for this upcoming midterm election still remains quite positive, and so you guys are gearing up. The last time I had checked, I think you had 33 House seats that you were targeting, and now you guys are going bigger, about 45, 46 seats in the House.
Yasmin Radjy
That’s right.
Tim Dickinson
And then also incorporating Senate seats and gubernatorial races. So can you talk a bit about, what is the lay of the land that you’re seeing that’s giving you, the encouragement to go for this big swing, as you’re calling it?
Yasmin Radjy
Yeah, I think you summarized, the complicated emotional state we’re all in, which is, I think we are in the worst of times in terms of what’s happening, in, you know, people’s material lives. the economy, the state of the world, and also, as you said, the power grabs that are happening on the other side that are the kind of worst-case scenario of what we imagine Trump 2.0 could look like. And we are also what we… what feels like in the best of times, in terms of how that’s translating to voters. And so there are very strong electoral wins blowing in our direction towards the midterms, because voters, whether they are Republican, Independents, or Democrats. are not buying what Trump sold them, in the last election cycle. They are angry about the war in Iran. They are angry about the state of our economy. The list goes on. I think your listeners know the state of things. And so what our perspective is at Swing Left is that Trump’s unpopularity is at a level where the winds are blowing so aggressively that if we don’t think big and take a really big swing in a midterm cycle where the combination of that reality, as well as the historical trends that we know follow in midterm races, midterms are not good for the sitting president, they’re very good for the competing party. All of those things combined make this a midterm. I think every time I look at the odds of winning the house, they’re somewhere between at 85 and 95%, so that is all really good. The big asterisk on the long list of things keeping me up at night is while everything is pointed squarely in our direction towards the midterms, and I think the odds, again, of winning the house are very, very high. Things get really tough when we look ahead to 2028 and beyond, and so what we are saying at Swing Left is we need to take a very big swing now, while everything is in our direction, and we need to think aggressively about the House. As you said, we started with a pretty conservative list of 33 races. We’ve expanded now to 46 races. Some of those are must-wins, those toss-up races that we really need to win pretty much 100% of those, but many of those are reach races, where we’re not gonna win all of them, but we’ve gotta compete both so that we can have a full-throated, large House majority that is not vulnerable to A House member dying, a House member retiring, a scandal. So much of our… the fragility of this moment has been how narrow our majorities are. And we also think it’s really important to try to compete for the Senate. And that’s something that we weren’t sure about in the sort of weeks and months immediately following the 2024 election. We feel like we need to take a big swing at the Senate map as well. Even though it is really tough. to aim for winning the Senate, and at minimum, win as many races as we can for the obvious reason of the Senate really matters for putting a check on Trump, but also because if we don’t do that work now, we are just not going to be able to compete in 2028. And so we’ve got to do that now, so that we have, as favorable of a map as possible, and as I hope we can talk about later in this conversation. So much of what we’re doing right now is not just thinking big about the map, but thinking expansively about the electorate, of not just talking to base Democrats, but also talking to the Democrats that are pretty disillusioned with the Democratic Party, and are moving away from us. We’ve gotta engage in persuasion conversations with those folks. We’ve also got to talk to Republicans and independents, and thinking big about, you know, how are we rebuilding trust, not just for the midterms, but setting a foundation that we can build on top of for 2028, and importantly, 2030 and 2032, Where the winds are gonna be blowing at us instead of, you know, the tailwinds that we currently have.
Tim Dickinson
And you’re talking about building that foundation. I think for the Senate, it’s really interesting, right? Because even if Democrats don’t win the Senate, you’re not going to get another cycle that’s going to be this favorable. So maybe you grab another couple seats that maybe you didn’t think you were going to get, and that helps raise the floor for the next race…
Yasmin Radjy
That’s exactly right.
Tim Dickinson
Right. Well, first, let… maybe we can… I mean, there’s 46 races to talk about in the House, and they’re not all national races, but maybe you could, you know, you have three categories, must flip, must hold, and a reach. Maybe you could give us one of each that are kind of interesting to you, and just real… Sure. …real bullet point detail?
Yasmin Radjy
Sure. I think on the, must-win, and this is a tricky must-win because it is a, a Senate race… sorry, you said just House, or House.
Tim Dickinson
Well, if we can go to the House, and we can maybe do the Senate, and maybe a gubernatorial race, too. Yeah.
Yasmin Radjy
Okay, great. So, in the category of the must-wins, one that we are, excited about, is… well, two that we’re excited about are the two Iowa races that have been on our map From the beginning. So that is Iowa District in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. These are two races, that we barely lost. We have two of the most vulnerable Republicans there. In Iowa 1, we have literally the most unpopular Republican in the House, who won, I think Marionette Miller-Meeks won by, if I’m not mistaken, 799 votes, so we can win both of these races. And in our analysis of the voters that we are engaging right now. there are a number of, not just Democratic voters, but Republican voters that are so upset at Trump, and also so upset at the incumbent Republicans, that if we can just peel off a quarter of those folks into a persuasion conversation.
Tim Dickinson
Right.
Yasmin Radjy
the math just immediately gets to a win. And so, I feel really, really bullish on those in Iowa up and down the ballot in general. And then as we move, into the tougher terrain, I’m really excited about, and this is some of my own, bias as someone who used to live in San Antonio, but Texas 23rd, is a race that I think, is, is very, zeitgeist-y right now, because this is… one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country. It goes from San Antonio all the way to El Paso. It is sort of a, you know, impossible district to think about, you know, walking from one end to the other. And the Republican won by a pretty large majority, I think it was 25 points, last cycle. But I think many folks have probably, seen that this is, the district where there’s been a very big scandal, where the Republican has stepped down, due to, some, sort of, some horrific missteps, and, an abuse of a, of a staff member. And the candidate that has won to come out of the primary is a San Antonio teacher, who is amazing, she’s inspiring, and the math is just a completely different landscape than we first put out our map. And so, Texas is tough, we’re not gonna lie about that. It is a multi-cycle investment, but this is a district that was on the map in its old form in 2018, It’s back on the map in a way that we think is really, really winnable, and that we’re really excited about.
Tim Dickinson
You were talking about sort of the persuadable audience in… or the voter pool in Iowa, and I think you guys have, with your Ground Truth program, like, a really interesting way to sort of pick up on the zeitgeist. And so, can you talk about that program and how it’s… how you’re interacting with voters, how you’re talking with people, and getting a sense of There’s actually a persuadable universe out there. Yes. That might be unexpected.
Yasmin Radjy
Yes, I mean, our standpoint is we can’t just take big swings when it comes to the map. We also need to take big swings when it comes to reimagining the ways that we are engaging voters. And our, sort of headline worry coming out of 2024 is that, we are not doing a lot to rebuild trust with voters, whether those are based Democrats, Republicans, or Independents, and so many of both the tactics that we are using are declining in efficacy, and also the technology and the data that we’re using is really old, and we know… any one of us who’s ever gone out to knock on doors, any one of us who’s worked on a campaign knows that. There are a lot of reasons why it’s challenging to fix those problems, so ground truth is our big swing to try to conquer the problems with voter contact head-on. And what the program does is start far earlier than how we typically begin direct voter contact. We started talking to voters door-to-door in September of last year, well over a year before the election. We are having much deeper conversations that are very open-ended. We’re calling them deep listening conversations, where we’re not just spewing out a long script of the reasons why someone should support the Democrat, we are starting the conversation saying, I’m a volunteer with Ground Truth, which is a program to help Democrats do a better job of listening. I’m curious if you can share how you’re feeling about the direction of our country. And what the volunteer is doing is asking probing questions that are non-judgmental to try to really understand that person. And importantly, the people that they are talking to are… are every voter. The literal sense and in the figurative sense, we’re knocking on the doors. We see a Trump sign on the, on the lawn, we are still knocking on that door. And we are having incredible conversations, even with the Republicans, not all of whom we’re gonna win over, but one in four of the strong Republicans, people whose… Democratic propensity score is the way we measure how unlikely, how likely it is someone might vote for a Democrat. These are folks with Democratic propensity scores that would have them on no canvassing lists in campaigns, typically. One in four of those folks is expressing strong anti-Trump sentiment, and, importantly, openness to voting for a Democrat. And so our take is, that’s not just, sort of, gonna happen magically. We have to listen to those folks, we need to take the insights from those conversations when our volunteers walk away from those conversations. They hit record on their canvassing app. and they record a voice memo of all the details of what they just talked about, non-judgmentally, the way a doctor would a patient visit. And what we’re doing on the back end is we’re using large language models and AI to aggregate those insights, not for our own interest, although they’re very interesting insights. But to be able to then summarize those insights at the individual and at the kind of general level for the district. For the candidate, for the state party, for folks that we need to be strong as a party, not just as an outside organization, so that the candidates get a report every week on, this is how many people we talked to, this is what they were like. These are the things that are coming up, the themes. The top theme that comes up is a feeling like the system is broken. Far and above affordability, far and above any other theme, and of course, that connects to affordability. It connects to the Epstein files, it connects to everything like that, but we share those themes, and also. how are things shifting over time? And this is really, really important because When we’ve got boots on the ground, there’s a really important kind of, like, texture and vibe check that volunteers are often feeling, and it doesn’t make it up to a campaign. And a campaign has enough budget to maybe do one or two focus groups at best, over the course of an election cycle. They only have so many dollars to do polling. So they’re relying on a lot of anecdote to fill in gaps over time. So, for example. the landscape around immigration has changed dramatically in what we’re hearing on the doors since Minneapolis. We were first hearing about immigration only from really strong Republicans. They were only talking about the border. Now it’s a much more complicated conversation, including with those Republicans, but also Democrats are talking about immigration. That’s important for a campaign to know to inform their polling, to inform how they might talk at a town hall, etc, and the list goes on and on. You can guess… you can guess how things have changed around national security and foreign policy. We were, I think it was 2% of conversations touched on that at all, even superficially. Now a lot of people are bringing it up. I think it’s up, in many districts, it’s up 54% in how much people are bringing up the topic proactively. All things that feel obvious, but our campaign infrastructure doesn’t have a way to absorb that and then make the really important investment and messaging decisions. So we see this as a way for our volunteers to be essentially a social listening arm of a campaign, and that is, fundamental to how the future of voter contact could look.
Tim Dickinson
It’s interesting to look at your map of 46 races. It really… you get a big swath, sort of, from Southern California, up to, you know, Maine, and through Texas, and up to even Oregon, where I am. So there’s lots of places to plug in. And then on top of that, you’ve also got these Senate races. So I hope you could talk about… I think you have nine Senate races, is it, that you guys are looking at? Just give us a little bit of the texture there of which… what are you seeing as must-wins or must-flips, and other must-holds or reaches? What’s your assessment of the Senate landscape?
Yasmin Radjy
Yeah, so, folks will notice if they go take a look at our map that the must-win category for the House is basically all toss-up races. The must-win category for the Senate is a mix of toss-up races and lean Republican races because It’s a really tough Senate map, and so we’ve got to get to a Senate majority. We must win some Lee Republican races, and that includes my favorite race of the moment, which is the Alaska Senate race. A lot of folks have seen Mary Peltola, famous for her, Family Fish, and Freedom, slogan, that really resonates with Alaskans. I think what many folks don’t know is, in Alaska, we don’t just have a chance to win because of an amazing candidate that is likely to be coming out on top there, but also because there’s been a serious investment in infrastructure in Alaska. The Alaska Dems are, in our assessment, one of the parties that is thinking, the most, kind of, like, boldly and structurally about what’s ahead. They are going to be investing $20 million in rural organizing. They are thinking an incredibly innovative way about not just how to integrate ground truth, but all of these kind of new ways of engaging voters into a layered program. And I say that because Alaska, you know, I think a lot of folks are really surprised Alaska’s even on the map. But Alaskans are, you know, strong Republicans, but with a really strong libertarian bent. What’s happening in this country is not good for libertarians. So there is, in the same way that reproductive freedom is incredibly popular in Alaska, we think there’s a really clear path, even in a lean Republican state, through the combination of a great candidate and a Democratic Party that has been rebuilt in an incredibly strong So we’re really excited about them. And then, on the more… on the tougher map of the reach races, so these are likely Republican races, so they’re gonna be really, really tough, and we don’t expect to win all of them, but again, we want to compete. Of course, this is not a very original answer, but I, our eyes are very squarely on Texas there. James Tallarico is, of course, an incredible candidate. I think every one of your listeners is probably I’ve seen how great of a communicator he is. But also, importantly, in Texas, there’s been a long investment in deep infrastructure building. We’re really excited about a partner on the ground there called Texas Majority PAC, which is actually the organization that filed the FEC complaint that led to, this is wonky but important, a shift in general, excuse me, in federal election rules that allows us to run the Ground Truth program as a way of building outside infrastructures… outside infrastructure, excuse me, that can be coordinated directly with campaigns. So we see them as an incredible complement to the incredible candidate that is James Tallarico, as an organization that’s doing year-round, long-term, really innovative infrastructure and organizing building. Really excited about both of those places, but again. we can’t just depend on the winds magically turning states like Alaska and Texas. These are tough places that we’ve got to be investing in early, and that’s why the work starts now.
Tim Dickinson
Can you talk a little bit about how some of this stuff layers on? I see Iowa’s also on your REACH Senate races, and we talked about both Texas and Iowa in terms of House races, and so there’s a synergistic effect, I imagine, of having people in these districts campaigning hard and building a bigger statewide momentum. Is that…
Yasmin Radjy
That’s exactly right, and I think, sometimes what folks assume… so in like a, you know, a state like a Pennsylvania, the House races are incredibly important, but when you have a statewide, or you have a presidential, so much of what the presidential is relying on is big turnout in big cities like Philadelphia. In Iowa, those two competitive House races. Touch. parts of the big metro areas, two of the big metro areas of Des Moines and in Iowa City, and a number of college campuses also sort of layer in there. And so, what is really exciting about the possibilities in Iowa you know, and we also have the governor’s race is a really important one as well, is by organizing deeply in the House races that are nested within key targets for the Senate, we are doing two things at once, and we’re able to sort of layer those things in in a coordinated way. And importantly, there’s competitive state legislative races, there’s an important governor’s race. All of these things are winnable if we are thinking about really building strong infrastructure, going out and talking to people, and if we are playing all on the same team. And that’s what I’m also very excited about in Iowa, is There is a strong team attitude in the campaigns. They are different. We don’t know who’s gonna come out on top in some of those primaries still, so we’ll see. But we’re just really excited about what’s possible there, so that when we’re knocking on a door within a competitive House race, as you said, we are also making sure that we are helping the Senate race, and, you know, tactically, the data that we are collecting in a conversation can go to the House race and also to the Senate race, so that both are benefiting, from the rich texture and information that we’re getting. And the non-textured, but also important things like cell phone numbers. Is the person leaning Democrat or Republican? Etc, et cetera.
Tim Dickinson
Right, right. And I don’t want to give the governors a short shrift here, so can you… and this does… is this a new program going for governors, or is that something that you’ve done in the past?
Yasmin Radjy
We’ve done governors’ races in the past, also state legislative races, which we haven’t announced yet, but those are to come later this summer. And governors, I think, you know, I don’t think folks need a reminder of just how important state power is right now as a real blocker to damage that Trump wants to wreak all across the country. We need state power. I think we all saw just how quickly state power, can manifest and change in the election of Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey. It’s really, really important. And so the governor’s map is essential, again, as a block for Donald Trump. State power broadly, and this includes governors’ races and the state legislative map to come, is essential also in that kind of long-term arc. And I think the piece that I really want to make sure folks are paying attention to is we are all so focused on 2026, and then we’re all going to be so focused on 2028, for obvious reasons. But if we don’t start competing more aggressively and locking in governor’s power and state legislative power, when it comes to 2030, when there is a U.S. Census, and also when whatever party is in power in the states is going to determine who draws the district lines for Congress. we are going to be in real trouble. And so, electing governors is important in the immediate. We’ll have immediate effects of, of being able to be on defense, and in some places on offense. But also, it’s really important that we have more muscle in building state power and investing national dollars and getting national attention on those state races, so that when it comes to 2030, we are not caught flat-footed the way that we have been in the past as Democrats, in terms of determining, you know, what the lines… what the rules of the game are gonna be. And the final piece there that’s also really important for folks is, the census is also going to determine reapportionment as it relates to the presidential map. What that means is places like California and California and New York, blue states are losing population, so we’re going to lose the number of votes that we have in the Electoral college. Huge implications for the presidential. Texas and Florida are going to… are gaining population, so they’re going to gain votes in the electoral College. That means our presidential map is gonna get way, way, way harder. Starting, after the 2030 Census. And so all of that means, if we are not learning to multitask, our investments, our time, excuse me. Our energy, getting too worked up about the senses. We are not figuring out… hold on one second. We’ll do. Alright, we’re back. So if we are not figuring out how to multitask, building state and federal power, we have not learned the lessons of what the right has taught us very clearly, which is they’re playing a long-term game and a structural game We are often playing a tactical and an immediate game. State power is an essential building block for our long-term power building.
Tim Dickinson
This has been a deep and textured conversation. I really appreciate sort of wonking out with you here. I think what I want to leave our listeners with is a sense of how they can engage in this work, because I think we have a lot of people who are just incredibly passionate about democracy and about wanting to do something. So, and you guys, I think, from the beginning, have had a local focus, right? Get to your closest district, figure out how you can plug in. So, what is the avenue for people who are wanting to get involved in the kind of work that Swingleft does?
Yasmin Radjy
Yes, I’d say any listener who has any amount of time or any amount of money is perfect, to come and join us at Swing Left. And we truly mean any amount, and so folks go to swingleft.org, they will find the closest volunteer opportunities to them, whether that’s a ground truth canvas, a phone bank, joining a local group to be in community with other like-minded folks nearby, and take actions together. And they’ll also be able to give to the most competitive races, either a fund that goes to all of the competitive races collectively. a $5 gift, a $500 gift, a $5,000 gift can get split evenly, or if folks are really excited about the race closest to them, maybe they live in California and they didn’t realize there’s really competitive house races there, they can select those races and invest accordingly. So, I hope, and I think the kind of broader message that I would say for folks looking to get involved is, I think, a message that I am hearing over and over in a moment where I think we feel collectively far less agency than we did in 2018. These are, you know, election cycles that rhyme, but are so different. I think a lot of folks feel pretty beaten down, and feeling like… I’m not sure that there’s anything I can do, given just how weighty this moment is, and just how big the damages that Trump is doing, is we’ve got to be intentional about reminding ourselves of our own agency, and every single fight to dismantle authoritarian power has required strong grassroots power and infrastructure. And it has required, you know, all of us, recognizing our own agency in whatever small way that might be. And so I hope that folks, sort of, you know, are not in the mode of waiting for someone to determine the Democratic brand and determine the strategy as they win the Democratic nomination for president in, you know, ahead of the 2028 election cycle, but that we all… We all can see, just how much work we all can do, to set the right stage for the critical fights ahead.
Tim Dickinson
Well, thank you so much, it’s been great talking with you.
Yasmin Radjy
Thank you so much, Tim!
