Trying to Flip the House, ZIP Code by ZIP Code
By Sridhar Pappu at the N.Y. Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/business/swing-left-primary-campaigns.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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Swing Left’s mission of identifying 78 swing districts, 23 of which would have to be flipped in order to return the Democrats to power in the House, has found a receptive audience. The group has more than 400,000 members and has raised more than $9 million in donations so far.
Over the past year, Swing Left has drawn unsettled Democrats across the country, including a number of so-called influencers, to its ranks, even as more well-funded groups have entered the fray, including the one recently started by Michael R. Bloomberg and Tech for Campaigns, a volunteer network consisting of more than 4,500 tech workers at companies like Google, Facebook and Netflix. And it’s reinforced the notion, illustrated most starkly by the 2016 presidential election, that the traditional ways of running a campaign are increasingly irrelevant.
“I like the fact that they come from outside politics,” said Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor in chief and Condé Nast creative director, an early supporter of the group. (At one point, another attendee at the St. James event, the actor Mandy Patinkin, whirled around to take a picture of Ms. Wintour on his smartphone.) “There’s a lot of people who have very good hearts and are super smart, but they’ve been doing it in the same way for a long time.”
In some ways, Swing Left’s strategy is strictly a numbers game. The group did not vet or support specific candidates based on a set of issues. Instead, it decided to raise money earmarked for whoever won the Democratic primaries in targeted districts, keeping the contributions in escrow — in so-called district funds — until general election campaigns began. Mr. Todras-Whitehill wondered whether it was even possible to raise money if the group did not know the identities of the candidates it would ultimately support. Swing Left’s lawyers assured him it was.
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