POSTCARDING WORKS!!!
Published on April 30, 2025
Bask In The Success
LCI's postcarding effort last week was aimed at voters in the district of Republican Representative David Valadao, informing voters that their Representative had voted to cut MediCal [Medicare] funding in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires. Just a week
later, Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect published an article describing how effective the national effort has been. We thought you might enjoy basking in some of the glory while getting an understanding of the larger strategy. The following is an
excerpt from that article; the link to the full article is at the end.
Now at last, a group has put...together... a strategy [that] works. The pilot project is in California's heavily Latino 22nd Congressional District, a high-poverty, heavily agricultural district, where some 68 percent of people rely on Medicaid, now the target of deep Republican spending cuts. Farmers in the region are also threatened by Trump's tariff war, which is lethal
for agricultural exports.
The seat has gone back and forth between the parties. The incumbent is David Valadao, who lost the seat in 2018 and won it back in 2020. It occurred to two veteran organizers, Doug Linney and Marguerite Young, that this might be an ideal place to try out a strategy pressuring vulnerable Republicans to pressure Trump. Linney was a founder of Activate America, which was created in 2017 to flip House and Senate seats. They created a project called the Multiplier Project, directed by Young. The idea was to work
with local activists to flood Valadao's office with postcards, texts, and live encounters, demanding that he protect Medicaid and resist a Trump trade war that stood to kill local agriculture.
More than 173,000 local people were enlisted to send postcards to Valadao. Others sent countless texts and made phone calls. And it worked. Valadao opposed the proposed Medicaid cuts and was one of two House Republicans who abstained on the budget reconciliation. (Two other Republicans voted against it.) In his speech on the House floor, Valadao said that he'd "heard from countless constituents" opposing Medicaid cuts. "I will not support a final reconciliation bill that risks leaving them behind," he added. "I ask that leadership remains committed to working with my colleagues and I to produce a final product that strengthens critical programs like Medicaid and SNAP and ensures that our constituents are not left behind." Valadao also indicated that he was inclined to support legislation sponsored by Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska to take back Congress's authority over tariffs. Bacon is the most outspoken Republican Trump critic in the House.
