The Chair’s Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 6
Week of October 7-13, 2024
Herb Rubenstein, Chair
We are on the move. This past week we had 5 people canvassing one day this week and 9 people canvassing on Sunday, a record this year and maybe for some time. Our canvassers walked the streets of BV and throughout the area for Ken Mitchell, Tim Kaine and Kamala Harris. We owe many thanks to the great work of MaryAnn Maynard and Brenda McCanon who are heading up our canvassing effort. They are our Volunteer Coordinators and part of a new group of over thirty (30) volunteer coordinators as the LexRockBV Dems have reorganized into an energetic and more efficient and effective political organization compared to just last year when we still had three separate committees - the separate BV, Lexington and Rockbridge County committees. We will elect twenty-four additional members this month alone at our 6:00pm meeting on Monday October 14 at the Lexington First Baptist Church.
And speaking of being on the move, I mean that both meant literally and figuratively. We have over 40 people staffing our office each week. There are often are 6 people at one time in the office on phones making calls with our great phone banking effort, plus staffing the office, sending out post cards, handing out signs, selling buttons, and answering the questions and requests of all the people walking into our office each day. We have reorganized the physical space and will be putting a lot of stuff in storage that we do not use regularly because we need the room to keep doing what Democrats here want us to do.
Our landlord has told us he is planning major renovations and repairs to our current location in 2025. He says he will put on a new roof and fix all of the damage to the walls of our office and we don’t know when he will start this. I expect this project will take several months as I see the need to replace the ceiling and much of the drywall in the office. As you probably know for the first time ever six months rent in advance in August so we know we have the space until the end of February. We need to start looking for new office space in case we need to move. I will put together an Advisory Board of people who know real estate in this area and will keep you posted on all the possibilities we evaluate. Our office has served us Democrats very well in the past, but we are different, larger, more active and may well need more room and a more office like environment so we can accomplish all of the activities we envision doing in 2025 and beyond.
We are all in on the elections and that means canvassing, phone banking, passing out literature, handing out signs, raising and contributing money to our candidates, especially Ken Mitchell. We are talking with our fellow citizens about the true qualities of Ken Mitchell, Tim Kaine and both Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and telling the truth about the terrible voting record of Ben Cline, the utter and complete failure of the Hung Cao campaign, and the policies of Trump and Vance that will add five trillion dollars to the debt and increase inflation significantly. Think about it. The Republican Party, Trump endorsed policies, of high and indiscriminate tariffs plus tax cuts for the wealthy will violate everything the Republican party used to stand for which was low inflation and reducing the federal deficit. Goodbye Republican Party as we knew it. The monster now being created called the Republican Party makes gives me hope that the Liz/Dick Cheney, the George Bush/Alberto Gonzales (his Attorney General), Mitch Romney, the Collins/Murkowsky still standing Senators, Kinzinger, Georgia Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan, 17 members of Ronald Reagan’s staff, 200 members of George W. Bush’s staff, William Webster, former FBI Director, Former Senator Jeff Flake, Cassidy Hutchinson and thousands and thousands of other Republicans who now have endorsed the Harris/Walz ticket all get together right after November 5th and start a third party. Maybe Joe Manchin, some Democrats and some Independents will join that new party. But we Dems and the country will be in much better shape if we become a three or more party country as most democratic countries are today. Two parties divide America as one goes to the far right and the other one tries to hold together a coalition of everyone else. That is the state of politics today.
This week we have attended the Mountain Day Festival and the Monican Indian Nation Cultural Heritage Day in Buena Vista. Thanks to Gene for organizing this, Dorothy, Barbara and Brian McCanon, Allen and Jody Davis and others who volunteered for this great festival. Ken Mitchell attended the Mountain Day Festival and was well received.
We are also moving forward with our Buena Vista Membership and Get Out the Vote Drive. We have identified 50 people in BV who we know are either Dems or lean Dems. We are looking for more names of people you may know in BV we can invite to the meetings we are planning in BV mid to late October. Please send the names of people you think might be voting or considering voting Democratic who live in or near Buena Vista to herb@herbrubenstein.com.
The LexRockBV Dems are moving forward with our first ever Data Base Management Plan for our committee. In addition, I will be looking for software to help run every area where we operate so that we can move continuously toward using state of the art office management software, including Artificial Intelligence. I teach Office Management and Artificial Intelligence to lawyers and accounts via webinars and in person training. Our operations will vastly improve in every area before my term ends as Chair on December 31, 2025.
Finally, and this might be the most important thing I say in this newsletter, so a big bonus for those who are willing to read more than 1,000 words from me at a time. Early voting numbers in Virginia and our area NOT AS GOOD as I would like They are well behind 2020, the last Presidential race. Virginia typically has a 73% voter turnout in Presidential years, but this is far below the average 86% voter turnout in Colorado. We Dems have to turn out statewide, so call everyone you know in Virginia and get them to vote early. David Mayersky has been keeping track of this situation daily and we will discuss this at length at our monthly meeting this coming Monday. We can change this situation. Since I have been traveling, I have not even voted early, but will fix that this coming Monday. Please vote early. Take a friend with you to vote and spread the word. Who knows what kind of storm might hit us on election day with the Gulf of Mexico a full two degrees warmer in 2024 than it was in 1960, outpacing the average temperature rise of large bodies of water around the world. Expect more and more storms coming our way. Hurricane Camille was tough on our area and the next one that hits here could be much worse than Camille was on August 19th, 1969. Camille hit Virginia with 27 inches of rain in Nelson County and over ten inches of rain and high winds in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It killed 124 Virginians and caused over $116 million dollars of property damage. That figure of $116 milllion dollars in 1969 would be One Billion Dollars today. If you don’t believe me look at the inflation rates from 1969 to 1982 and the closing picture of this Chair’s Newsletter of a boat in the street in Buena Vista.
Buena Vista, August 19, 1969 - Hurricane Camille
To everyone while most of this Chair’s Newsletter has been very positive, let this Chair’s Newsletter be a wake-up call on early voting. We have to do better and right now. Thanks to the Biden Harris team for taming inflation. You can see inflation used to be much worse. Thanks to our great Democratic Candidates, our Volunteers in LexRockBV, the Sixth Congressional District and in the State of Virginia and the nation. I will close with this thought.
WE WILL WIN, IF…………
You know what you need to do. Talk to others and encourage them to participate in helping Dems by contributing, volunteering and voting for Dems. After November 5 we Dems will have many more friends who we thought were political opponents but were secret Democratic voters who will come out of the closet and will thank us for our victories which will also be their win.
In this election, we will take control of the House and Hakeem Jefferies, my wife’s former graduate student at the Public Policy School of Georgetown University, will become the first African American Speaker of the House getting rid of Mike Johnson from my hometown in Louisiana. We will hold the Senate to a 50/50 split with Vice-President Walz casting ty-breaking votes. We will watch the undemocratic filibuster in the Senate eliminated, and we will have more votes in Virginia for all Democratic Candidates running for office than we have had in elections for decades. We are on the move because of all the hard work you do! Thanks.