MAYDAY, MAYDAY: Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) is in a hotly contested race to keep his congressional seat. Rep. Jones is the ONLY Republican in Congress who co-sponsored the Government by the People Act -- we can't afford to lose a crucial ally like him. If you live in NC, go VOTE. If you don't share this post with your family and friends to remind them to vote in tomorrow's primary.
The Congressional district Walter Jones is running in is the North Carolina 3rd Congressional district. The Twitter hashtag for this Congressional race is #nc03. Go to #nc03 and take a look at the tweets there.
After you look at #nc03, then go to #fightbigmoney, and/or #getmoneyout, and/or #democracyspring, and/or #democracyawakens. These are where campaign finance reform warriors hang out, and you could say they do a lot of hoo-hahing there.
There is nothing wrong per se with campaign finance reform warriors hoo-hahing on their hashtags, but they need to appreicate that such hoo-hahing on #fightbigmoney, #getmoneyout, #democracyspring, and #democracyawakens is largely being heard only by other campaign finance reform warriors. In other words, these hashtags are echo chambers.
Is that all campaign finance reform warriors want, to live in echo chambers?
You'd have to ask Walter Jones to find out for sure, but I think he would have appreciated campaign finance reform warriors to have found ways to tweet for him on #nc03.
Hopefully Walter Jones will win his primary today in the North Carolina 3rd Congressional district, and campaign finance reform warriors who failed to tweet for him on #nc03 for the primary election can have an opportunity to tweet for him on #nc03 in the general election.
In the California 12th Congressional district, Preston Picus said yes to #DeclareForDemocracy. See CA12 tweeting bank. I see tweeting for Preston under #CAPolitics, and there may be other hashtags that provided exposure of Preston to voters in CA12 but #fightbigmoney, #getmoneyout, #democracyspring, and #democracyawakens are not among them. I have no idea what Preston's chances are today, but you can't say campaign finance reform warriors have done much for him.
For Zephyr Teachout in the New York 19th Congressional district, the primary election day is June 28th. See https://ballotpedia.org/New_York%27s_19th_Congressional_District_election,_2016.
The Twitter hashtag for Zephyr Teachout's race is #NY19.
What will campaign finance reform warriors do for Zephyr Teachout? Will they tweet on #NY19? Or will they stay in their echo chambers of #fightbigmoney, #getmoneyout, #democracyspring, and #democracyawakens, and be isolated from voters in NY19?
There are many 2016 Congressional races for which the same questions can be asked of campaign finance reform warriors. Will those races be identified and will campaign finance reform warriors tweet using relevant hashtags?
Right now the campaign finance reform organizations do not appear to be providing leadership about this for their grassroots warriors. We can all hope that will change.
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