Let’s Do This: There’s a Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven, and Right Now It’s Time for Elections
Election Day is only 12 days away
The are a lot of big stories in politics right now about wars, the government shutdown, record protests, National Guard deployments, political violence and more.
We are also only 12 days from Election Day 2025. That means, at least for the next two weeks, elections are the main political business of the day.
Elections in odd numbered years are not as consequential as elections in even numbered years. That said, there is still a lot at stake. There are crucial judicial elections, governors races, mayoral campaigns, ballot questions, and myriad local elections around the country.
Last year, in an article titled Six Tips for Surviving the Coming Fundraising Barrage, I advised grassroots activists and concerned citizens like yourself to maintain a line item in your personal budget for political donations. If you have done so, now is the time to zero it out.
We have reached the point in election season where there is very little time left for you to make donations that can be spent by campaigns before Election Day. Any donation you make takes 1-2 business days to show up in the campaign’s account, then another 1-2 business days for the campaign to put it in the account of a vendor. That is already 2-4 business days, and there are only seven business days between now and November 4 (eight if you include today, and nine if you include today and Election Day itself).
Now that we have entered crunch time, I would like to make a pitch for the two elections that I think would be best served by your donations. Both of them are in swing states: the Georgia Public Service Commissioner elections, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court retention elections. You can read more about these elections in my articles Preserving a Liberal Majority on the Pennsylvania Court and How the Scales of the Universe Tilt in Your Favor in an Upcoming Georgia Election.
Here is my reasoning:
Winning swing states is incredibly important
In the 2024 election, there were only eight or nine real swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (and maybe Minnesota). Democrats flipping the two largest swing states—Pennsylvania and Georgia—just one year after Trump’s victory would be as clear a sign as could be that the country is rejecting the way Donald Trump and Republicans are running the country.
Both are less expensive compared to other, more visible campaigns
There are definitely other very important campaigns taking place right now. In fact, there are other more important campaigns taking place right now than the contests in Georgia and Pennsylvania. In particular, the governors races in New Jersey and Virginia, and Proposition 50 in California, probably have higher stakes. That said, those other campaigns are also a lot more expensive, with probably about $40-$50 million in total spending in the governors races, and over $100 million in California. By contrast, Pennsylvania is coming in at more like $10 million, and Georgia probably only about $1 million. So, an individual citizen like you can personally make a bigger difference in Pennsylvania and Georgia than in the other big statewide races.
Pennsylvania in particular is about safeguarding the integrity of elections themselves
After Democrats took control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court following the 2015 elections, two of the most consequential things they did were to overturn the egregious Republican gerrymander in the Keystone State and to reject all of Donald Trump’s lawsuits that aimed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania. Keeping Democrats in control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is very much about defending free and fair elections in one of the most crucial swing states in the country.
I created an ActBlue page that allows you to split a donation between the three Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices facing retention elections on November 4—Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht—and Bowers News Media PAC. On this ActBlue page, if you wish, you can adjust the amount that you would like to donate to each entity. You can also click the links with the names of the justices—Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht—to find out more about each of them, and to donate to them directly on their campaign websites. If you would like to write letters to help increase Democratic turnout in the election, you can do so here, with Vote Forward.
Also, to make supporting the Democratic candidates in the Georgia Public Service Commission election easy for you, I have created an ActBlue page with Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard on it, and Bowers News Media PAC. You can adjust the amount that you give to each candidate and to Bowers News Media PAC. To find out more about the Democratic candidates, you can visit the campaign websites of Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard by clicking on their names. You can also donate to them directly on their websites.
For more on the biggest 2025 elections, you should also read Matt Kerbel’s article from Monday, Building Momentum, and my article from Saturday, A Reader Asked Me to List the Most Critical Elections to Donate to in 2025: Here are my top five.
I just do not have the money to donate to political campaigns anymore. However, I can vote. I did vote yesterday in our gubernatorial election here in VA. I voted for every Democrat on the ballot and I just pray that Abigail Spanberger wins.