Come Canvass Saturday with Anne Holton!

This Saturday, August 18 starting at 1pm, the Virginia Coordinated Campaign will be launching Hunter Mill door-knocking efforts from the new coordinated campaign office at

150 Elden St., Suite 244, Herndon, VA

We anticipate that Anne Holton, former Virginia Education Secretary, will join us in our efforts to reach voters.

The Coordinated Campaign has been hosting canvass events every Saturday, so if you’ve been participating in those, note the change in time and location. If you haven’t had the chance to get out there yet, this is a great time to join up and help us elect Tim Kaine to the Senate, Jennifer Wexton to the 10th House District, and Gerry Connolly to the 11th House District.

For more information, contact

Maddy White, at maddy.white@virginiavictory.org or 571.299.9490

Jennifer Wexton plans to repeal and replace Comstock

By Karen Kirk:

“Good afternoon. I’m Jennifer Wexton and I’m going to repeal and replace Barbara Comstock,” the Virginia State senator told the audience at The Good Ole Girls brunch on Sunday at the Tysons Corner Marriott.

Jennifer Wexton greets a guest at The Good Ole Girls brunch (Photos by Karen Kirk)

Wexton, who is running for the CD-10 seat, said that like many of us after the 2016 election, she just wanted to pull the covers up over her head. “But I think most of us realized that we can’t just stay under the covers for the next 4 years so we ultimately came out and seeing what the administration has been doing — the attacks on the institutions that are here to keep us safe, institutions like the free press, institutions like our intelligence community, and attacks on civility, the rule of law, immigrants, women, the environment, I knew I had to step up again and run for Congress.”

“So this is going to be an election about contrasts because Barbara Comstock and I are both women and that’s about where the similarity ends.”

  • On women’s health:“Barbara Comstock has said more than once that she wants Roe vs Wade overturned, and with Donald Trump making appointments to the Supreme Court, she may get her wish so it’s more important now than ever that we have members of Congress who are pro-choice and fight to do things like fully fund Planned Parenthood. I will do those things in Congress.”
  • On health care: “Barbara Comstock has voted 6 times to repeal Affordable Care Act and rip health care coverage away from millions of Americans. She voted to eliminate the individual mandate which has spiked insurance premiums for everybody and thrown the individual markets into chaos. I on the other hand along with (Loudon, VA Delegate) Karrie Delaneyand my friends in the General Assembly have expanded access to affordable healthcare to 400,000 Virginians.
  • On guns: “Barbara Comstock is the top recipient in money from the NRA — bought and paid for by the gun lobby. I have been fighting for years for common sense gun violence prevention and gun safety legislation. I will do the same thing in Congress.”

Wexton then outlined the contrasts on how each candidate deals with this president, saying “because while drafting our Constitution, our forefathers foresaw that we could have a president like Trump, but what they didn’t see was that we could have a Congress that enabled him.”

Read the rest at The Blue View

Be ready for Comstock to use smear tactics in 10th district race against Wexton

By Rob Abbot:

As the race between Jennifer Wexton and Barbara Comstock to represent Virginia’s 10th district in Congress heats up, we need to be ready for Comstock to revert to her usual vicious and false campaign tactics.

To see her modus operandi clearly, you need look no farther than her last contest. Just last month, she faced a relative unknown, retired Air Force pilot Shak Hill, in the Republican primary for the seat. Apparently worried that her funding and name recognition advantages would not see her through, she unleashed a scurrilous attack on Hill two weeks before the election, using a puerile nickname (“Shady Shack”),  childish insults (“creepy”; “can’t win”) and insinuendos that her opponent was a pornographer.

This was business as usual for Comstock. In her five previous election contests –three for state delegate followed by two for Congress — she showed an aptitude for finding a small chink in her opponent’s armor and magnifying it to create a misleading, even slanderous narrative that portrays the opponent as personally dishonorable. Sadly, these reprehensible tactics have worked —  she has been successful in all these races.

Here are some examples:

— In her first campaign in 2009, for  Virginia House of Delegates, Comstock accused her opponent of abetting child molesters. In truth, the opponent had voted for an austerity budget that provided for early release of non-violent offenders.

— In 2011, running for re-election, she maintained that her opponent had supported raising taxes –even though the opponent had never held public office.

–In 2013, running for a third term in the Virginia house, she painted her opponent as a tax cheat. The reality is that the opponent’s spouse had been late paying a property tax bill.

Even before running for office herself, Comstock had become a veteran in using smear tactics against political enemies. As an investigator for a Republican Congress member  in the 1990s she spearheaded massive, coordinated efforts to bring down President Bill Clinton with fake “scandals” such as Filegate, Travelgate, and Whitewater.

Media accounts of her pulling all-nighters poring over thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents somehow paint this behavior as endearing. In truth, Comstock built her career and reputation by trying to tear down Democratic opponents, not on the basis of policy disagreements but by suggesting that the opponent is morally repugnant and unfit to serve.

Read the rest at The Blue View

When we knock, the House is a lock

The primaries are over, summer is here, and it’s time to buckle down and take back the House and Senate. There are lots of opportunities to volunteer, and one of the most important things you can do is get out there and canvass. This means pounding the pavement and knocking on your neighbors’ doors to make sure everyone knows how critical their votes are in 2018.

Taking back the House starts with taking the 10th, as Virginia’s 10th Congressional District has two precincts right here in Hunter Mill. If we want Barbara Comstock out, canvassing for Sen. Jennifer Wexton will get it done.

Taking back the Senate means reelecting Tim Kaine, which takes everyone across all of Virginia. As we learned in 2016, we can take nothing for granted, and beating neo-Confederate Corey Stewart requires running up the score right here in Hunter Mill. Knocking doors helps us do that.

There are several canvassing events already scheduled (here are sign up links for Saturday and Sunday), and more are coming throughout the summer. Keep your eyes on the Hunter Mill calendar for these opportunities, and contact Maddy White at maddy.white@virginiavictory.org or 571-299-9490 if you have any questions or concerns about participating.

We look forward to seeing you out there!

You voted. Now participate in V.O.T.E.D.

V.O.T.E.D.

What does this mean?

Volunteer Onboarding, Training, Engagement, and Deployment

Susan Johnson, Precinct Ops, and her task force have spent many hours talking through the fine points of welcoming new volunteers in an efficient, consistent, and timely fashion. They are seeking at least 15 members, representing all districts, to join in this effort in welcoming new volunteers. We know Hunter Mill can supply some!

If interested, please contact Susan at

precinctoperations@fairfaxdemocrats.org

Come Knock Doors With Us!

The closer we get to election day, the more opportunities will arise for you to take part in canvassing—knocking on doors to talk to potential voters. Hunter Mill is already doing canvassing events on May 5 and May 19. These are part of a Voter ID project in which we are trying to learn more about how voters in those precincts vote in elections, and lay the groundwork for more effective candidate campaigns in the fall.

Canvassing is one of the most powerful tools in the electoral toolbox. While political campaigns work hard to get their messages out to voters through television, radio, mailers, email, text messages, and phone calls, there is really nothing as potent as a face-to-face conversation. It really shows your neighbors how important you think voting is, and how passionately you feel about the issues at stake. It is easy to dislike or dismiss a faceless group of people, but a canvasser’s knock on a door helps a neighbor realize that parties are made of people who care enough to talk to them, person to person.

And voters are just that: your neighbors. Canvassing is a great way to meet the people who live in your community. We all tend to walk our normal paths and stick to our usual friends and acquaintances, but we are part of a larger community. Canvassing can help you build your own understanding of the individuals who form that community.

Canvassing also helps the party better understand the community. That, in turn, facilitates more effective engagement with the community’s priorities. Effective engagement with communities is how grass roots become blue waves.

And, of course, who among us couldn’t use a little sunshine and exercise?

So, as you see canvassing opportunities arise throughout the summer and fall, right up through election day, consider participating and deepening your and your party’s ties to the community, and building the momentum that will set Hunter Mill District, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Washington on the path to a brighter future. Don’t hesitate to reach out to Hunter Mill’s Vice Chair for Precinct Operations, Joanne Collins at collinsjoanne@yahoo.com or 585-703-1121 if you have questions.

Hunter Mill District Voter ID Project

HMDDC Precinct Operations launches a Voter ID Project starting April 22, 2018.

The Voter ID Project will attempt to identify unknown voters within Hunter Mill District. We will contact neighbors who are registered to vote, but it is unknown to us how they identify themselves. Do they consider themselves a Democrat, Republican or Independent and how are they likely to vote?

Join us in South Reston/Herndon for our first Voter ID Canvass where we will be walking Dogwood & McNair Precincts to listen and build relationships with neighborhood voters to lay the groundwork for our candidates to campaign more effectively and increase the turnout in our favor on Election Day in November.

South Reston/Herndon Voter ID Canvass

2429 Freetown Dr, Reston

April 22 at 12pm & 3pm

Contact: Joanne Collins, HMDDC Vice Chair of Precinct Operations

at collinsjoanne@yahoo.com or 585-703-1121 with any questions.