Cue Willie Nelson, as Arlington Democrats will be on the road again for the final weekends of campaign season.
The Arlington County Democratic Committee is dispatching volunteers to both North Carolina and Pennsylvania, two battleground states that remain tossups in the presidential race.
Their combined 35 electoral votes could tip the balance, said Kip Malinosky, who runs the committee’s “Beyond Arlington” effort.
“In this room is the power to win this election,” Malinosky said at the Wednesday, Oct. 9 monthly meeting of the Democratic committee.
He encouraged the rank-and-file to “stretch a little bit — do something you’re a little uncomfortable with.” That includes driving north or south to canvass on behalf of the party, an effort focused on that small but key group that has not yet made up its mind.
“It’s shocking to me that people can be undecided. It’s up to us to frame the choice,” said Malinosky, a former party chair in Arlington.
A contingent of 14 Arlington Democrats traveled to Bucks County, Pa., last weekend for canvassing efforts. It is a key suburban battleground in the suburbs of Philadelphia. In 2020, Joe Biden won the Bucks County vote by a relatively narrow 17,000 votes.
The political consensus at the moment seems to be that Pennsylvania leans slightly toward Democrat Kamala Harris, while North Carolina is in the camp of Republican Donald Trump by a narrow margin, Malinosky told Democrats.
Since the 2020 race, North Carolina has picked up one additional vote in the Electoral College, rising to 16, based on population growth. Pennsylvania lost an Electoral College vote, dropping to 19. Like nearly all states, both allocate electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes nationally to win the presidency.
Volunteers from Arlington will engage in door-knocking efforts in the Tar Heel and Keystone states in coming weeks, while those staying at home are making phone calls into those two states, which also have tight governor’s races on the ballot.
“We are joyful warriors,” Arlington County Democratic Committee chairman Steve Baker said. “Keep knocking on doors … keep making phone calls. There is no time to spare.”
In 2020, Trump won North Carolina by a margin of just 28 votes per precinct, Malinosky said. Democrat Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by a mere nine votes per precinct.
Arlington Democrats can afford the road-tripping because the county almost assuredly will be a rock-solid Democratic bastion on Nov. 5, and Virginia seems to be trending Democratic at the presidential and U.S. Senate levels.
Matthew Hurtt, who chairs the Arlington County Republican Committee, said if local Democrats want to spend time campaigning outside Arlington, have at it.
“Arlington Democrats have diverted efforts outside the county, and that gives Republicans a significant opportunity to make inroads in Arlington we haven’t made in years,” he told ARLnow. “This is a new day for Arlington Republicans, and we are seizing on this opportunity.”
Democrats counter that they are leaving nothing to chance in Arlington.
“We have to run up the score in Northern Virginia,” said Austin Locke, who represents the Arlington Young Democrats on the party’s Joint Campaign Committee, which coordinates local Democratic election efforts.
Locke said the county party already had hit 150,000 “voter engagements” in the election cycle, and was aiming for 100,000 more.
