State & Local Government Action Team

The State and Local Government Action Team seeks to foster a strong democracy and a healthy and civil community by supporting state and local candidates who reflect Indivisible’s values and monitoring and advocating for key issues. We will collaborate with organizations that share overlapping interests to drive success. We hope to rely on our fellow Indivisible CS Action Teams to magnify the impact of our work.

Goals

Top Priority: Fall School Board Elections

Longer Term:

Coordinate with like-minded groups to MOVE elections our way – candidates and issues
Eliminate Dark Money in local elections– ID it, Expose it, Fight it and explore ways to outlaw it
Develop a pipeline of qualified and competitive candidates who reflect the overall values of Indivisible

Involvement: City Council Elections

Researched city council candidates and identified other info sources
Reviewed responses to questionnaires:
- Citizens’ Project (citizensproject.org – Resources tab OR in Pikes Peak Bulletin)
- COS Reads – (https://saverockrimmonlibrary.com/)
- Posts and comments on social media
- Interviewed 2 D1 candidates
Researched smear campaigns in Districts 3, 5 and 6 Against:
- Rick Gillit – D. 3 – negative ads grossly mischaracterized
- Nancy Henjum – D. 5 – negative ads grossly mischaracterized
- Roland Rainey – D. 6
Source – DARK MONEY – local lobbying firm with ambulance company and developer clients.
- What we know:
  - Rick Gillit refused a large donation from a developer.
  - Nancy Henjum favors allowing our fire department to take over emergency medical response services because the for-profit company that has the current contract has unacceptably slow response times.
  - Both Rick and Nancy are endorsed by The Forward Party – www.forwardparty.com

Current Projects

Action Team Development
- Develop strong, effective communication system to inform Indivisible members about local elections, appointments and issues
- Educate ourselves about:
  - Potential partner groups
  - Strategies to achieve our goals
  - Technology/communication tools to help
- Develop processes
- Identify action team members to take chunks of the work
School Board Elections (esp. D11, D20 and D49)
- Identify organizations with whom we can work to (already underway):
  - Contribute to developing competitive slates
  - Investigate candidates’ qualifications
  - Determine how to discourage vote-splitters from entering race
- Fundraise for the slates
- Work with wider Indivisible CS to GET OUT THE VOTE for candidates who support true public education
  - Last D11 school board election… 30% of registered Democrats voted, 70% of registered Republicans voted
Pikes Peak Library District
- Encourage increased funding, better qualified board appointments
- Defend against book banning