The Disconnect

Grief is a funny thing.

Out of the fog of our brokenness, oftentimes the greatest clarity can emerge. 

I’m finding that currently as I walk the journey of losing my precious niece Savanah.  She was 28 years old with her whole life ahead of her when she died. The emptiness of losing her is indescribable.

It’s been two months, and our family still awaits a final autopsy report that may or may not reveal the clinical cause of her untimely death. But I don’t need an autopsy report to confirm what I feel deep in my bones—that our broken politics played an outsized role in her poor health outcomes that ultimately killed her.

In the eulogy I wrote and delivered at her memorial service, I alluded to a political system that failed her and offered up the only solution I know powerful enough to end the division and disconnect between us—the power of love.

Here’s part of what I wrote:

I’m afraid my view on the broken politics of this country that ultimately failed my sweet niece isn’t going to bring comfort to those gathered today. To talk about the injustices she faced in her short life would just be too uncomfortable. To actually name those injustices would be unbearable right now and while ultimately, I believe it will be important to speak the truth about those injustices and the broken politics of our nation that would lead to this tragic ending, I want to focus on the only thing that will heal all of us here today--and that is love.

Savanah’s Christian faith taught her to place love above all else. She did that until the very end. If we are to honor her life moving forward, we will put love above all else in our own lives. 

We will use love to mend our broken hearts and move forward from this tragedy. 

And by the way, we must also use love to repair the broken politics that has divided this country. We must use love to rid the injustices in plain sight within our communities and we must use love to mend our families back together.

It’s the only way.

You might be thinking, “What does love have to do with fixing income inequality, economic disparity, racial injustice, access to healthcare, ending a pandemic, addressing our climate crisis, repairing our education system and investing in infrastructure that ensures clean drinking water, safe roads and bridges and internet connectivity?” 

Everything.

You don’t need to identify as a Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian or whatever else to agree that the way we talk about the people, politicians and organizations with which we disagree these days is dehumanizing, void of empathy and absent of love. There is a disconnect between us that only serves to further poison our politics and ruin the institutions that our vital for a democracy to survive.

Just this week I saw someone I love refer to the Speaker of the US House as an “evil witch”.  Some people are downright giddy over the fate of the insurrectionists who stormed the US capitol building, and fail to see and refuse to admit the pain and trauma in the insurrectionists' own lives that could lead to this sort of desperate behavior. And this morning, I read a final newspaper column from a journalist that is walking away from his trade—tired of the divisive nature hurled toward those in his chosen career and its impact on his own mental health and personal relationships.

Gone are the days where we disagree with someone’s personal politics and still see that person as human.

So how then, when we can’t see each other as humans or empathize with the pain that is behind the desperate language and behavior, can we forge a path of compromise that could lead to deeper conversations and better policy solutions? 

Without the ability to truly “love our neighbors as ourselves”, I just can’t see a way forward.

The clarity for a solution to this problem has been so hard for me to ignore that I’m currently working on a project that’s been on my heart and in my head for longer that I care to admit, but was both too scared and too distracted to launch.

Not any longer.

I feel a real calling to play a role in restoring civility among us so that better policy solutions can emerge and be passed into law.  I feel called to help remove the disconnect between us and show that the connections we share are greater and more powerful than what currently divides us. And I believe I owe it to my niece to bring this project to life.

I don’t have a complete picture of exactly how this project will happen. That’s okay.

The clarity of purpose is enough to keep it alive for now.

My beautiful Savanah Michelle

The Grandparent Test

“In 20 years when my grandchildren ask me what I did to change the election outcome in 2020, I don’t want to be in a position to say, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ “

I’ll never forget this conversation as long as I live. It was in late 2019, and a good friend was starting a new chapter in his life. Having made tremendous impact on the lives of poor and disadvantaged children throughout his career in Oklahoma, he was moving to Houston to be closer to his aging parents.

He called to wish me well in the Medicaid Expansion campaign, but he also called because he wanted to pick my brain about how to get involved at the grassroots level helping to change the outcome of the presidential election. He explained further that he was doing what he called “The Grandparent Test”. And when I asked him to elaborate, he eloquently told me how disturbed he was about what was happening in our country and how he had the luxury of time to work in a volunteer capacity to change the outcome of the presidential election. To him, it was a gut check moment in his own life. He didn’t want to get 20 years down the road and have his future grandchildren look him in the eye and ask him what he did to change the outcome of this election and have to tell them that he did nothing.

My friend’s “grandparent test” was his “why.” But just about everyone who gets involved in politics, either as an candidate who runs for office, a political professional who gets paid to work in this crazy business, or a grassroots volunteer, has their own “why.”

We’re 53 days out from one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime, and I want to challenge each of you to take my friend’s grandparent test.

What will you do to change the outcome of a candidate or issue race that is important to you?

It doesn’t have to be the presidential race. Maybe it’s a ballot measure that is going to provide sick leave to families who don’t have it, or boost education funding in your home state. Maybe it’s the sentencing reform ballot measure in Oklahoma, or a county commissioner race in upstate New York that you care about.

If trying to figure out how to get involved in an issue you care about seems intimidating to you, you’re in luck. I recently discussed five simple steps to getting involved in an issue or candidate campaign with my friend Kerry Moll on her Podcast “Talk Bravely”. You can listen to that podcast below:

In the podcast, I not only share tips about how to get involved in politics at the grassroots level, I also share how I got involved in politics and how a failed campaign in 2016 led to transformative change in my own life.

If you don’t have time to listen to the entire podcast, Kerry was kind enough to create a fun and sharable graphic that sums up the tips I share on how to get involved in an issue you care about.

Enjoy, and hit me up with your personal results to “The Grandparent Test.” And let me know how it’s going out there!

-AE

How the 802 Campaign Passed Medicaid Expansion in Three Important Steps.

As I sit at my kitchen table a few days post-election day reading the national and local headlines about what happened in Oklahoma on Primary Election night, I can’t help but be a little disturbed by the narrative that has emerged surrounding the results of State Question 802— a narrative that forces us to pick sides and neatly places us into one camp or the other: 

Rural vs Urban

Red vs Blue

Conservative vs Progressive

Them vs Us

I’m particularly disturbed by the narrative pushed by the official Oklahoma State Democratic Party social media account and a few political pundits (you know who you are), who tried to shame rural Oklahomans for “voting against their own self-interests” after an oversimplified map published by the Tulsa World showed State Question 802 only winning 7 out of 77 counties.  

Here’s a map that tells a completely different story--it shows that we actually increased support in rural counties, particularly among Stitt supporters, in all but 8 counties statewide.  

The story neither the map above nor the Tulsa World map tells is just how hard it is to be on the prevailing side of a ballot measure. 

Ballot measure elections are hard and wildly complicated to maneuver. The “Yes” campaign usually always has the tougher road and the “No” campaign has a huge advantage--regardless of the amount of money spent on both sides. A “Yes” campaign must run a months, even years long, strategic and meticulous campaign free from unforced errors to prevail. The “No” side simply has to come in during the closing days of the campaign and plant a tiny seed of doubt in the minds of voters to knock off support. They can start later and spend less money to do real damage to the support the yes side has spent months building with voters.

Data we’ve seen so far from this race certainly bares that out.

A benchmark poll in late April showed Yes on 802 with a pretty commanding lead. After campaigning for nearly a year we saw a slight uptick in support from the initial viability polling conducted in March of 2019 that had us at 59 percent support. We started the final phase of the campaign with 66 percent support--with about 70 days until Election Day.

Regardless of what the polling showed, we approached every decision as if we were 20 points behind. From our perspective, we always knew we had a difficult path to victory and with a decently funded opposition, things could go south fast. 

We officially kicked off the final phase of the campaign the last week of May with a 21-city tour that covered every corner of the state. That very week we launched our paid television ads, dropped our first mail piece, continued our paid digital campaign and challenged our volunteers to increase the number of shifts they were already completing on the phones talking to voters.

The first track poll, a little more than three weeks out, showed our strategy was working. Our support had actually increased to 67 percent, but the research continued to show a paid opposition, even a small one, could erode support with key voters we knew we needed to retain to win.

What happened on the ground the last three weeks of the race is exactly what the polling predicted--only worse. 

With 11 days to go, we started tracking nightly with Change Research and watched our lead shrink in real time each night as the opposition attacks got decidedly more partisan as Election Day drew closer.

When we began tracking, the opposition had dropped one mail piece, had a small digital buy running across multiple online platforms and was engaging in what seemed to be a robust peer-to-peer texting campaign against the measure. 

The first night’s results were sobering, if not completely predictable. Our support dropped from 67 percent just 15 days prior to 59 percent with a little more than a week to go. And every night after, we continued to lose ground. Tuesday, June 30th couldn’t come fast enough.

The opposition ran a tough campaign--albeit one built on misinformation and fear--that had an impact. I’ll let the numbers in the graph below tell that story.

However, against all odds, in the middle of a pandemic, placed on a ballot designed for us to fail, when all the votes were counted, our campaign prevailed by 6500 votes statewide--by a “whisker” as many in the media reported.

So how did we do it?  How did we survive a coordinated attack from a popular incumbent governor, two ultra conservative Koch-brothers funded groups, along with popular legislative leaders and the rank and file members of Oklahoma’s supermajority legislature--all actively campaigning against the measure?

Here’s how.

1. We built a movement

From day one, we made this Oklahoma’s campaign. We built the campaign from the ground up--a true grassroots army of support that showed up every time it mattered.

• We had more than 150 events in 12 months time--that’s more than 10 events every  month.  

• We gathered signatures from every single county in the state--All 77 of them.

• We turned in a record number of signatures--313,000, in less than 90 days.

• Our volunteers made more than 275,000 phone calls to voters from May 1st until June 30th.

• We knocked more than 66,000 doors in the final week of the campaign.

We empowered our volunteers to be the backbone of our movement. We provided the training and the tools, but they persisted. They never gave up and they never doubted a win was possible. It was their determination that drove every decision in this campaign and what made our entire team committed to running a positive, aspirational campaign, built on facts. Our entire team wanted to win it for them.

2. We relied upon research and gut

We always knew our path to victory would be narrow.  It became even more narrow when Governor Stitt placed us on a June Primary in the middle of a pandemic, with 70 days until Election Day.

We employed a ton of research to help us craft the right messaging. We coupled that with an aggressive field strategy and strong coalition-building. By doing so, we used both our heads (the research) and our hearts (the gut) to convince enough rural folks to come with us. Like my dad--a likely Trump supporter, who told everyone who would listen to “Do it for your grandkids. It’s the right thing to do for them.” And the residents of Waurika, in Jefferson County who nearly lost their hospital. They took the fight to save rural hospitals personally. 

We earned the trust of Republican voters and convinced them to stick with us--even when party bosses told them to leave. We never took our support for our natural base on this issue,  Democrats, for granted. The opposition tried to come hard at Democrats with a message of public school funding cuts, but we did our homework early and made sure voters were armed with information to combat that false narrative when the attacks started. We listened to the concerns of Independents and then made sure they had what they needed to stay with us. 

At the end of the day, regardless of party, it came down to trust. We were able to convince enough Oklahomans to trust us over the politicians who’d been promising better access to healthcare for years, but hadn’t yet delivered.

3. We were innovative

We never allowed the pandemic to slow us down or be an excuse for why we couldn’t do something. When the pandemic made its way here and shut the state down in mid-March, we were in the middle of a 30 events in 30 days push. It was grueling. We got about half way through those events before we had to quickly shift everything to online. We did Zoom Healthcare Happy Hours every Thursday evening and soon our volunteers were doing them on their own. 

We ran an aggressive absentee ballot program that allowed us to bank a lot of support early before the opposition began paid communication. And we partnered with Change Research, to track support for the ballot measure in the closing days which allowed us to shift our field program to ensure we were talking to the right voters and turning them out to vote. 

The polling project also allowed us to go back to voters after the race was over and ask Oklahomans why they voted yes on State Question 802. Here is what they told us, in their own words. 

In conclusion, Oklahomans came together. In the middle of a pandemic, when politicians failed us, we stepped up to deliver healthcare to the people of Oklahoma.  

Now it’s up to all of us to make certain that politicians hold up the will of Oklahoma voters. Implementation can and should begin immediately. There is simply no reason to delay the will of voters any longer. 

Medicaid Expansion must be funded and fully implemented by July 2021. Politicians can do that without raising taxes on the very people the law is intended to help and without cutting core services that Oklahoma families rely on now more than ever.

It will take politicians doing exactly what Oklahomans did throughout this entire campaign--resisting the dangerously crafted narrative about Oklahomans being divided. Instead, work to uphold the will of Oklahoma voters by coming together.

Grassroots in Action

When I entered the world of politics in the early 2000s, I’m sure I had heard the phrase “grassroots,”  but I damn sure didn’t know what it meant. Sadly, it didn’t take me long to realize “grassroots” actually was more like “astroturf” and was merely a buzzword that politicians threw around to make people think their idea had a ton of support behind it. 

Most of the laws I saw change while working on staff at the Oklahoma State Legislature happened not because of true grassroots support, but by lawmakers and staff working with lobbyists and their clients to tweak a regulation to improve the bottom line of private companies. I say most because from time to time big ideas that were for the greater good made their way through the process. And when they did, it felt really good to be part of that work. 

But more often than not, political courage to pass big bold ideas was simply lacking among the political class. Being an idealist and believing first and foremost in the power of people to change the world, working in that world day in and day out was soul-crushing at times. 

So imagine how exciting it’s been since leaving that insider world to experience and witness first hand what true grassroots support looks like to move an issue from idea to law.

From the teacher walk-outs in 2018 that spurred a national conversation about teacher pay and the under-funding of our public schools, to expanding Medicaid to 200,000 people right here in my home state, I’ve had a front row seat to watching grassroots support turn moments into movements that create deep impact in the lives of ordinary people.

Here are some of my favorite movement building moments from the last few years.

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Tulsa teachers were greeted by a sea of supporters when they completed their 110 mile trek from Tulsa to OKC. Such an emotional moment...I legit lost it and bawled my eyes out. #okwalk4kids

A post shared by Amber England (@arengland) on Apr 10, 2018 at 2:27pm PDT

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#OKC #womensmarch

A post shared by Amber England (@arengland) on Jan 21, 2017 at 11:09am PST