If we speak directly to voters who have lost faith in both political parties about the concerns in their daily lives, we can start to rebuild our democracy.
Every time I hear about the insane amounts of money billionaires like Elon Musk and dark-money super PACs pour into our elections to crush grassroots candidates, it’s hard not to feel our democracy is broken beyond repair. But then I hear about the victory, against all odds, of someone like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who the voters of Michigan just chose as their Democratic candidate for Senate.
Dr. El-Sayed is a physician and Rhodes Scholar, born and raised in Michigan, who ran the Detroit Health Department and just defeated a massive dark-money primary campaign against him, the largest in American history. Out-of-state groups spent nearly $70 million to crush his campaign, spreading divisive lies and outspending him by more than ten to one.
And yet despite all of the lies big money could buy, El-Sayed won. How did he do it? By running a truly people-powered campaign, one vote and one conversation at a time. With the help of groups on the ground like our affiliate, Michigan United Action, El-Sayed crisscrossed the state, visiting more than 150 congregations and hosting 500 campaign events. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers knocked on more than 200,000 doors for him, and made over a million phone calls to talk with voters, with his simple message about what Michiganders truly need: health care, homes, jobs and hope for the future.
El-Sayed’s victory reminds me of how I felt back in 2010, when the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision struck down the limits on spending in elections by wealthy donors, corporations and special interest groups. While the United States already allowed big money to play a greater role in politics than in most democracies, which strictly limit election spending and advertising, the Citizens United decision blew the doors off all pretenses of fairness in our elections.
I was a young organizer for People’s Action at that time, and it was hard not to feel discouraged. We had been working hard to develop a new vision for politics in this country, one fueled by people power, which supported candidates who come from our communities and who advance solutions to the material concerns in people’s lives.
It was our grassroots member-leaders who restored my faith in democracy at that moment. I clearly remember one leader at a meeting in Chicago who reminded me, “They have unlimited access to money now, but we still have each other, and our ability to organize.”
Since 2010, we have helped elect hundreds of officials to every level of government through grassroots campaigns, including to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. In doing so, we’ve created a pipeline for candidates to rise up from our communities, and develop as elected leaders.
People’s Action Power is proud to support Dr. El-Sayed in Michigan, along with Will Lawrence and Donavan McKinney, who are running for Congress. As the voters of Michigan have just shown, organized people have proven time and again that we can cut through propaganda to see the truth. And when we organize with our neighbors and communities, we can still beat greedy billionaires.
This people-powered approach is also alive and well in Wisconsin, where Citizen Action of Wisconsin (CAWI) just helped elect Judge Chris Taylor to the state’s Supreme Court, strengthening the liberal majority in a body that will play a key role in certifying election results. They are also supporting Francesca Hong, a State Representative who, like El-Sayed, faces massive spending by dark money groups to undermine her campaign.
“This movement is based on aspiration, on the idea that we can make democracy deliver for people,” says Robert Kraig, CAWI’s executive director, in this video. “That we can make healthcare a right, that we can address the climate crisis, that we don't need to build all these data centers everywhere in the worst possible way against public opinion just because big tech and the big fossil fuel utilities tell us so. So what I'm asking you to do is to lay aside all of these fuzzy retrospective arguments about what makes electable candidates, and lean into the way the public is. Lean into what the times demand, and lean into who represents best the values you have.”
Billionaires like Musk, who spent $291 million to elect Trump and Republican candidates in 2022, have already announced their intentions to spend even more this year to keep control of Congress. A campaign is also already underway to intimidate voters and question the outcome of elections, even before our votes are cast.
And as if Citizens United wasn’t enough, the Supreme Court just made it even easier for political parties to spend unlimited amounts to elect candidates, compounding the corrosive influence of big money in our political system.
How do we build a winning strategy to defeat big money?
We stay laser focused on issues that affect all of our households - the rising prices of energy and groceries, and our government’s failure to provide even basic health care to most Americans, while they cut childcare and food aid to pay for bombs overseas and Trump’s cruel deportation machine at home. This was the key to these candidates’ success. They share a common-sense message that cuts through all of the propaganda that big money can buy.
If we follow the example of candidates like these, and speak directly to voters who have lost faith in both political parties about the concerns in their daily lives, we can start to rebuild our democracy. That’s why People’s Action and our allies are working together to have more than a million conversations with potential voters about the issues that matter most to them before Election Day.
What is our most powerful tool to defend democracy? Believe it or not, it is - still - our votes. Because one in three eligible voters - an estimated 89 million people - did not vote at all in the 2024 general election. If even a fraction of these voters can be energized to step in from the sidelines, we can deliver the undeniable margins of victory we will need to keep the authoritarians in check, and start to hold them to account.
Democracy does not die on its own. It’s done by design and by the decisions we make as individuals, politicians and institutions.
We need to bring millions of new people to our electoral process, people like my youngest daughter. She has voted in every election since she’s been eligible, but this time she went even further and made sure that all of her friends got their votes in, and told them exactly who to vote for and why.
We must organize early, volunteer our time, give our money as much or as little as we can, we must do what we’ve never done before and we must do it all consistently until every one of our votes is counted.
Because it's going to take this and a lot more to keep our democracy alive, while we can still save it. If we allow our country to continue its slide into autocracy, it will take decades - or generations - to recover, if it ever does.
So from now until this November, organize to vote as if your family’s life and our country’s future depend on it, because they do.
