(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Downballot: How the Hispanic Caucus Defied Expectations with Victoria McGroary (transcript) [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-01-26 This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections, and this week I'm joined by a special guest, Joe Sudbay, who's pinch hitting for David Nir. Welcome, Joe. Joe Sudbay: Thanks for having me, David. It's always a pleasure to join you on The Downballot, one of my favorite podcasts of all time. David Beard: The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the mini elections that take place below the presidency from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to The Downballot wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. But let's dig into today's episode. So what are we going to be covering today, Joe? Joe Sudbay: Well, we're going to be talking about a major development in the Arizona Senate race. Congressman Ruben Gallego announced this week that in fact he is running for the Democratic nomination. Really important. That'll be a critically important race. The other thing we're going to be talking about, one of the other important races, is upcoming — February 28th, 2023 — for mayor of Chicago. Lori Lightfoot running for reelection; there are several other candidates in the race. And then we're going to wrap up talking about Virginia, a topic that you guys talk about a lot on this podcast and we're going to just dig into Virginia a little bit too. David Beard: And then for our interview this week we've got Victoria McGroary, the executive director of BOLD PAC from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. So, stick with us. So, despite it still being January, we've got some more big news as it comes to the 2024 Senate races where we had a big announcement in Arizona. So, tell us what's going on there. Joe Sudbay: Well, yeah, this week we learned officially that Congressman Ruben Gallego is running for the United States Senate as a Democrat. Now this is of course a really important seat. It's currently held by former Democrat, now independent, Kyrsten Sinema, who has really done as much as she can to aggravate and alienate the entire electorate of Arizona. And Gallego has been thinking about it for a while. He's been a very proud progressive, unabashedly, just brazen and ballsy. I just think he's terrific. And he launched this week with a video, and we've seen a lot of these campaign intro videos and they almost become formulaic, I have to say. I really was moved by his video this week. He did a great job, told his story growing up, single mother, how he got to Harvard, served in Iraq, really suffered some losses in his company, was honest about the struggles he's had. I just found it terrific. And he called out Sinema. One of the things he said, the rich and powerful, they don't need more advocates. And certainly if anyone has been an advocate for the rich and powerful, it's Senator Kyrsten Sinema who was in Davos last week with her good buddy, Joe Manchin. So, I think this is going to be really exciting. I think it does create a conundrum, David, for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Sinema currently sits as an independent but caucuses with the Democrats. Democrats tend to support incumbents. They support other independents like Angus King and Bernie Sanders. So, it's going to be a real challenge to see how this plays out for the DC Democrats. David Beard: We've already seen Chuck Schumer get asked who the Democrats will be supporting in 2024, and he's been able to put it off for now, and I think they'll be able to probably put it off for basically most of the year to be ... basically, there's no reason to need to decide now, to make any sort of steps right now. Sinema hasn't actually announced that she would be running for reelection. So for right now, there isn't actually an incumbent, questionable ‘Democratic’ incumbent, running right now, so there's no decisions that they have to make. But obviously eventually this decision will come to a head if Sinema does run for reelection. But there's going to be an enormous amount of pressure, I think, from the party writ large to support Gallego. That's where I think a lot of the outside groups are going to be. That's where I think the Democratic Party, in terms of the Arizona Democratic Party members, are going to be. They're going to be with Gallego. So, as awkward as it is for Senate leadership to potentially endorse against somebody who is caucusing with them, I'm not sure if they have a lot of good choices to try to do that. I think they're probably going to end up pushing Gallego if Sinema does in fact end up running, which is no guarantee. I'll also say I really like Gallego's social media presence. He has a very authentic style there. As you mentioned, he's a veteran, so I think he really provides a good personality that you see in his media, appearances and such. Different from maybe what people think of as a stereotypically progressive candidate. Joe Sudbay: He actually has no fucks to give and he gives a lot of fucks on Twitter. He got called out today by the Republican candidate for Attorney General who lost, Abe Hamadeh, and Diego just smacked him back and he's just got that fearlessness I think so many of us crave in Democratic leaders. So, I am excited about this and I have to say Sinema has been a thorn in our side for a long time. Many of us knew her back in the day when she used to be a progressive. I did videos with her when I used to write on a blog and she was a progressive champion. So, she no longer is of course, and she's very proud of that. But I think it really does create a situation, like you said. We don't even know if she's going to run again. I'm sure she's planning her next gig and who knows whether it'll be in the United States Senate or not. David Beard: We've talked obviously about Sinema before on the podcast. But truly one of the strangest paths, and I think ultimately the dangers of thinking you are smarter than everybody else in the room is my one-sentence summary of what happened to Kirsten Sinema. But there's nothing to do now, but make sure that a real Democrat is the next senator from Arizona. Joe Sudbay: Right. And later in the show we're going to be talking to BOLD PAC, which is the PAC of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He is the chair of BOLD PAC right now. There are currently four Latino senators in the United States Senate. He'd make the fifth. So, like I said, I'm very excited about this race. David Beard: And of course as he just announced on Monday, BOLD PAC hasn't endorsed him or anything yet, but I think we know what's probably going to happen there in an inevitable situation. Joe Sudbay: Yeah. So, what else are you looking at, David? I mean it is January, but there's still a lot happening. David Beard: There's always something. If there's one thing you can take away from this podcast, there is always an election to cover. So, coming up in just about a month is the Chicago Mayor's race, where current incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot is running for reelection and is facing some really tough challengers. There've been a few polls that have been released recently. Lightfoot herself has just released an internal that shows her in first place with 25% of the vote, former Chicago Public School CEO Paul Vallas in second place with 22%, and he is somebody who's maybe a little bit more on the conservadem side of things. And then a couple of progressive candidates a little bit behind, with Representative Chuy Garcia in third place with 18% and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson in fifth with 9%. Those are the two seen as the progressive candidates. And then sort of a wealthy perennial candidate, Willie Wilson, is actually in fourth between the two of them at 11%. Now that's Lightfoot's poll. We've seen a couple other polls with slightly different numbers. An internal from a lower-down candidate showed Garcia, one of the progressive candidates, in first with 21% and Lightfoot in second with 15%. And then a third poll from a neutral group put Vallas actually in front, the more conservative leaning Democrat, with 26%, and Garcia beating out Johnson for second place with Lori Lightfoot all the way in fourth place. So, it's really not clear. These polls are a little bit all over the place. We can see who some of the leading candidates are. Obviously Lightfoot, Vallas, Garcia are all getting some strong pockets of support from different places, but it's really not clear who may end up taking the top two spots in what's almost certainly going to go to a runoff. Now, Lightfoot has also claimed that she wants this outcome that she polled with her against Vallas, which makes sense, Vallas being a more conservative leaning Democrat. He accepted an endorsement from the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, which is a police union in Chicago led by a prominent Trump supporter. So, he's clearly angling for a more conservative leaning vote even though it's a very Democratic city. So, if Lightfoot were able to go up against him, she might be able to consolidate the progressive vote, even though progressives are largely very unhappy with Lightfoot's term in office and would much rather be able to vote for one of the two progressives in the runoff. Joe Sudbay: I always find Chicago politics fascinating. When I first started out in politics a long time ago, I worked on the Mondale campaign and did the general election in Chicago in 1984. And if you come from Portland, Maine and then you're in Chicago where politics is for real, and it was when Harold Washington was the mayor and fighting with Eddie Vrdolyak, who was the Cook County Democratic chair, and Rich Daley was the state's attorney. You couldn't make it up. It was really intense. And this mayor's race, just like you said, it's just a couple weeks away. Lori Lightfoot got 17.5% in 2019, which launched her into the runoff with Tony Periwinkle, and then she became the mayor. And so not overwhelmingly popular, as you mentioned, particularly with progressives. But it's really going to be a wild one, which Chicago politics always is. David, the other announcement we got this week was that Tim Kaine is running for election and it wasn't a big surprise, but oh my God, there was a frenzy in the media. Was he or wasn't he? And just kind of became this thing on Twitter among the political reporters. And he announced he was, which was the biggest "no kidding" story. But Virginia politics are front and center again in 2023 and it's just so important. Right now, the legislatures in session and it just shows you how important state legislative races are. I know you've covered the Aaron Rouse win, which was so important a couple weeks ago in Virginia's 7th Senate district. But the Democrats control that Senate and they are blocking Glenn Youngkin's agenda. Glenn Youngkin... well, a couple weeks ago said he was, "Humbled by the idea that his name was mentioned under consideration for running for President." There was a poll, I think this week that showed he's at 0%, so he should be humbled by that. But he's really being humbled by the Senate Democrats in Virginia. All 40 of them are up for election in the Fall, as are all 100 seats in the House of Delegates. David Beard: And as a general rule, obviously we don't talk about presidential politics here, but I will say that the idea of Glenn Youngkin running for President is one of the funniest things in politics today to me, because 0% is exactly what I would expect him to get in any primary, and that's exactly what he is polling at. So I think that's par for the course there. There was some speculation that he might run against Tim Kaine, or run against whoever the Democrat was if Kaine, didn't run. Which probably would've been more likely because I think Republicans, at least, believe they might have had a shot in 2024 if Kaine had not run. But with Kaine, running for re-election, I would be shocked if Youngkin ran that longshot race when he would be a big, big underdog to Kaine. There has been a mention that Hung Cao, who ran in the 10th district, and actually did pretty respectably for a Republican in the 10th district, in 2022, has made some noises about running. So that would certainly be a respectable candidate for Republicans against Tim Kaine, but not one that I think would put it on anybody's radar as a serious Senate race. Joe Sudbay: I think also these midterm elections... the midterm for Youngkin will be instructive. As I mentioned, all 100 seats are up, in 2021 Republicans took control of the House of Delegates by a 52-48 margin. And two of those races were won by... one was won by 94 votes, one was won by 115 votes. So these are going to be very competitive. We know that same thing with the Senate, which Democrats currently control 22 to 18. And it is... I think we all were led to believe, a lot of us didn't believe it, that somehow Glenn Youngkin, was going to be this different kind of Republican in a red vest. The media bought that hook, line and sinker and he has turned out to be every bit as incendiary as most of the MAGA extremist Republicans. And so again, it's why these state led races, which I know everyone who listens to or watches this podcast understands, but these races in Virginia, again, are so important. David Beard: Absolutely, and we'll definitely be covering those Virginia races in depth, both leading up to the primary in June and to the general election that's going to be taking place in November. That's about it for our weekly hits, but stick with us. After the break, Victoria McGroary, the Executive Director of BOLD PAC from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, will be joining us. Joining us today is Victoria McGroary, the Executive Director of BOLD PAC, which is the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Thanks for joining us today, Victoria. Victoria McGroary: Thanks so much for having me. David Beard: So let's get started with explaining to our listeners what exactly BOLD PAC is and how it relates to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Congress, because nowadays, there's so many PACs, there's all different kinds. So tell us what exactly the BOLD PAC does? Victoria McGroary: Yeah, it's a great question. Love to start out there. So BOLD PAC, we are the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and CHC as we're also known, is made up of all the Democratic Latinos and Latinas in the house and in the Senate. So we are in both chambers. We're very proud that this Congress, the 118th Congress, we have 42 members. So that is actually the largest Democratic CHC in history. And we're really proud of that in particular because it is our job and our mission is to elect those folks. And so we spend every day thinking about how are we going to increase diversity in Congress by getting more Latinos and Latinas elected to the House and Senate. Joe Sudbay: Thanks for that description, Victoria, and it's great to talk with you today. Okay, so this past cycle, there was a ton of discussion around the Hispanic vote. It's been going on for the past couple years. A lot of handwringing among Democrats and a lot of pundits making bold predictions about how Republicans were going to actually "do really well" with Hispanic voters. But it seemed like Democrats actually ended up doing pretty well overall with Hispanics in 2022. Talk about that a little bit. Victoria McGroary: It's funny, as a campaigner, obviously in the run-up to an election, you're just consuming all of the news and you're reading as much as you possibly can. And at some point, it felt like every day I was waking up and I was reading more articles and analysis and seeing interviews and all of this about how Democrats were losing Latinos. And the postmortems were written way before any voters even started casting ballots. And those of us who work on this side and who actually do the work to get our community engaged and voting, and to make sure that we have that diversity and that representation, we just knew that all of that was wrong. So BOLD PAC has been around since 2001, so we're coming up here on 22 years. That's a lot of time. We work with extremely seasoned campaign veterans. Folks who have been organizing their communities on the grounds for a long time. We work with lots of like-minded organizations, just doing everything we can. And there are a couple things that when you're doing this work day in and day out, rolling up your sleeves, that you get to know. One is that you've just got to pound the pavement. You've just got to run straight through the tape and don't get distracted by the noise. And so as we were reading all of these things, things that said, "The rise of the Latina conservative." And "Democrats have a Latino problem." All of these types of articles and pundit analysis, we just knew we couldn't get distracted, keep our eyes on the prize and just do the work. Continue mobilizing the community, continue making sure that our message was heard, continue making really, really key, large strategic investments. So one thing that BOLD PAC really focuses heavily on is making sure that we are recruiting really, really strong Latinos and Latinas across the country to run for Congress. And so that means finding folks that are engaged in their communities. Diverse, even from within our community. We're talking doctors, we're talking local representatives, veterans. And then after we engage in a recruitment effort and they decide, "Yeah, we're going to jump on in here." Making sure that they're just set up for success. Helping them put together a really strong campaign operation and then making sure that they have the resources that they need to win. One of the many ways we do that is we do independent expenditures. And so last cycle, BOLD PAC spent $6 million on behalf of Latino and Latina campaigns. And in doing that, that's the largest we've ever done in our history, and all that investment started very early in the campaign cycle and went straight to things like TV ads, and radio. In Spanish, in English, making sure we were connecting with Latino voters exactly where they were and in the way that is authentic to them. A really great example is Yadira Caraveo, who is the first Latina to represent Colorado at the federal level. She's a pediatrician. When she decided to run for office, we helped her set up a really strong campaign operation, gave her lots of strategic advice and just were in the weeds with her. And then also ran a program of sending mail to Hispanic voters in her district. And now she made history and she's in Congress. So that's the kind of work that we do. And when we see these types of arguments, and especially before the election, we just knew we had to drown out the noise, we had to keep the eyes on the prize and keep running through the tape, and it was really successful. Joe Sudbay: Well, it was successful. And two of the places that were very successful for Democrats in 2022 that fit into those states where the pundits were predicting doom, where Arizona and Nevada. They're part of, let's call it the Biden Coalition, both in terms of their electoral votes, but also in terms of the Senate. Catherine Cortez Masto, running for re-election, the first Latina United States Senator from Nevada. And in both Nevada and Arizona, Latino voters make up a huge part of the Democratic coalition. And there are a number of elected Latinos up and down the ballot in those states. Talk a little bit about the outreach and the work you did in those particular states, which was so vital this past cycle. Victoria McGroary: Yeah, absolutely. There's no question with such slim margins in both chambers and Democrats defending the majority in the Senate, but nonetheless having very slim margins, every single seat matters. And so we know that Latino voters are such a central part of the Democratic coalition nationwide. Nationwide, Latinos voted for Democrats two-to-one in the midterms. And so Arizona and Nevada, of course, are really, really important states for Democrats, for the Senate, for the White House, and certainly for the House as well. So, one thing that we were really proud of, Senator Cortez Masto, she actually is the first, and sadly the only, Latina in the Senate — hopefully not for too long — but she made history in 2016 when she was first elected to the Senate. So we were really excited when she came up for her reelection this past cycle to be very involved in that race. That race obviously was an incredibly close race. It was one of the most competitive Senate races on the map. So Bold PAC, we got involved in there as well. We ran radio ads across Nevada in Spanish. Her win was part of a very, very, very broad coalition of voices and organizers and organizations that advocate for our community that were involved in organizing on the ground, never giving up until the very last moment, until those polls closed. Latinos are a really critical part of the Democratic coalition, and in particular in those states. Both Arizona and Nevada will have Senate races this cycle as well, as well as of course, this being a presidential election, and that's going to remain true. David Beard: So while broadly, I think Democrats held up pretty well with Hispanic voters in 2022, there were a couple of specific locations where Democrats have been losing ground or had a pretty bad year in some very specific places. I want to point out south Texas and then Florida writ large, which was really obviously terrible for all Democrats of all races and ethnicities, ages, everything. Florida was just terrible. But how do you think Democrats can do better in those areas, can reach those voters that they may be losing in these specific areas, even as they're doing pretty well nationwide? Victoria McGroary: One really key lesson that we saw a lot coming out of the 2020 election, and a lot of folks talking about, is that Latino voters are not a monolith. A lot of times people will talk about the Latino vote, as if that is some sort of block that is completely homogeneous and has these sets of interests, 1, 2, 3, and we'll just prioritize those and vote accordingly. The reality that we at Bold PAC know and that people organizing our community from within our community, Latinos organizing ourselves know is Latino voters, we are not a monolith. It is not a homogenous group across the United States. We come from many different countries. We live in different places. So a Latino who lives in rural Texas, for example, is very different from one who might live in the middle of New York City. There are different experiences. We have obviously different ages, all kinds of rich diversity within our community. So what that means is Democrats and campaigns, we can't treat Latino voters as a monolith and we need to treat Latinos as ‘persuasion voters’ that need to be engaged with early, often and in an authentic way. In south Texas, before the election, folks were writing all kinds of, again, those same postmortems before the election that we were going to lose, Democrats were going to lose three seats in south Texas. That just did not materialize. And not only did it not materialize, and we defended our own incumbents in the region, but Democrats won by pretty wide margins. Another thing that was really, really important, I think in both places, Florida and south Texas, is disinformation campaigns and gerrymandering that particularly targeted our community as well as voters of color in general. We see so much disinformation targeting Latino voters in Florida, in southern Florida, in Spanish and English. And the thing that's very tricky about misinformation, especially when it targets our community, and it's being led by Republicans, these campaigns, is that misinformation is treated very differently in terms of fact checking across different digital platforms, especially when it's done in languages other than English. It's just harder. So when misinformation is targeting our community in Spanish, it's a lot harder for it to be stopped. The same algorithms and all of this stuff that can catch things automatically and are a really big, integral part of stopping misinformation campaigns in English, the same fact checking does not exist on the same level in Spanish. Another really, really important thing in both of these places is gerrymandering, especially in Florida. We saw the process of redistricting that happened last cycle was very, very partisan in Florida. Governor DeSantis decided that he wanted to draw these maps in a particular way, and he did. And in doing so, he deliberately tried to disenfranchise voters of color. So the resulting maps that came out of the redistricting process in Florida last cycle are just inherently not representative and tilted away from Democrats in a way that disenfranchises big groups of voters and people. Joe Sudbay: Victoria, just following up on your recent answer about disinformation, and particularly with Spanish language media, what are some of the tactics that you and your colleagues are using to counter some of that disinformation? I say this because keeping in mind, this week we saw new reporting that there's going to be an upstart media company that's basically going to be Fox News in Spanish, so this is only going to get worse. What are some of the approaches you're taking to deal with it? Victoria McGroary: Misinformation is not a new thing for our community. It's something that's been around. And I think after the 2020 election, there has been a very big focus, renewed attention on just how severe the problem is and how much it is targeting the Latino community. So this is something that our members felt really, really passionate about coming into the midterm election. What can we do? What can we do as an organization that centralizes ourselves in making sure that Latino voters are just integral to the political process? What can we do to help this problem? One thing that we know is where is this misinformation campaign, where is it happening? The thing that we know as we were thinking about this problem and trying to get a handle on it and how we were going to approach it is that misinformation campaigns are really, really, really targeting Latinos online. So Latino voters over-index, and the Latino community in general over-indexes, on YouTube. We use YouTube more than any other social media platform and get a lot of information and news from YouTube. We were seeing that Republicans were using that platform to really target our community with misinformation. So we took that knowledge and we said, "Okay, well, we need to be on YouTube as well. If Latinos are online, that's where Democrats need to be too. If they're on YouTube, that's where we need to be too." So we designed a YouTube channel that the main audience was going to be Latino voters, and we created this channel where our idea was let's do something really cutting edge, really different where we are trying to combat these political misinformation campaigns in real time on YouTube, but in an authentic way. Because sometimes what's really difficult is translating the political messaging and outreach into something that relates to the way people use their phones, the way people are on social media, the funny things that we're all looking at and sharing in our group chats, all of this. So this was our main premise, and we wanted to do it in a way that was really, really authentic, really culturally competent. So like everything we do at Bold PAC, we decided, okay, first and foremost, we need to find some really good Latino strategists out there to come up with this, and we're going to engage influencers because influencers make great content that we all consume in different ways. So we're going to engage influencers and we're going to create a show that's funny and light, but that feels funny and light in style, but we're going to address head-on these really big issues that are central to the election cycle, that everyone's talking about, these really important values and the things that Democrats are fighting for. And so we did. It was a very, very successful campaign. We ended up producing over a dozen videos. We tackled everything from the cost of gas to the economy and inflation to abortion, which as we know was just such a central thing that really energized voters in this midterm and will continue to be. So Lindsey Graham's bill, that would essentially create a nationwide abortion ban, when that came out, all of us got together, we hopped on the phone and we were like, we need to get at this now. We did all of our videos in English and Spanish — and in Spanglish, which is something that's a really important way that Latinos communicate on a daily basis. It's kind of a modern mix of both languages and it's how we talk in our homes, and it's a way that we were able to resonate with folks. And so we turned with the abortion ban and Lindsey Graham's bill, we turned around a script and turned around a video really, really quickly, sort of rapid response style. And it ended up being our main host talking with her cousin about this craziness and giving real information. And in that, we were also directly combating some misinformation. So at the time, certain misinformation that was happening around abortion in particular and abortion rights was that if you get an abortion, your immigration status will be affected, which is completely false. But that is something that folks were pushing around online in particular to target our community. So we needed to get out there very fast and say, that is not true, and say that in two languages. And so we did it. And so that YouTube channel, it was viewed by folks over 1.1 million times and ended up being a really, really integral part of our strategy to connect with Latinos and in particular with young Latinos in sort of a new and different way that hadn't been happening before. David Beard: So I want to take you back, let's say, about eight or ten months ago, back to the primary season of 2022 and a particularly contentious race that developed in a Democratic primary in Oregon's 6th District, which was a new district that was created after reapportionment, where now-Representative Andrea Salinas won the primary against an opponent in the primary who had some big Democratic super PAC help, including House Majority PAC, which is sort of the big PAC that is associated with the Democratic Caucus in the House. So take us through what happened there, why there was all this money on the opponent's side, why BOLD PAC decided to get involved, and then how you were able to pull it off. Victoria McGroary: Primary season is a fun time. This race, it was a lot of fun. It was just crazy. And Congresswoman Salinas, which it brings me great joy just saying that alone, but the Congresswoman is just wonderful. And it was a pleasure to work with her even throughout all of the craziness. It was very fun. This race is a really good example of what BOLD PAC is and what we do. We got involved with OR-06 very, very early on in the election cycle in a redistricting year. We got new maps. This was a brand-new district that was created in redistricting, and we recruited Andrea to run for this seat. She was an accomplished state legislator, really, really just an amazing advocate, has been fighting for progressive causes for decades. She helped pass one of the most comprehensive and progressive reproductive rights bills in the country. And so when we found a candidate like that, it’s sort of gold for BOLD PAC. And so we recruited her, we found her, we said, you really need to run for Congress. You would be incredible. Your voice would is really, really needed in the halls of Congress. She decided to run. So we were super excited. So as soon as she sort of gave that yes and kind of jumped in, we were all in with her. We helped her set up a campaign team, fully Hispanic-led campaign team, from the campaign manager to all of the consultants and everything on the race. BOLD PAC. We were her first formal endorsement in that race, which feels very, very long time ago. But we were excited to be that. We sort of just got to work day in, day out, helping guide the campaign through all manner of strategic decisions that had to be made on a campaign. And then the money started flowing in. And so we started seeing outside spending coming in for one of her opponents in the primary, another Democrat. And it kept coming and it kept coming and it kept coming. And in any race, outside spending can be really important. And as we were seeing this, it was strange because the candidate didn't really have much experience or a record certainly in comparison to our candidate. And so we were with Andrea and this is our mission here is to increase diversity in Congress. And so we just kind of kept our head down. And then HMP decided that they were going to spend on behalf of this other candidate as well. They ended up putting in a million dollars in television ads in this district. That's not something that had ever happened before, not in a Democratic Primary. And we are a member-led organization. So the members of BOLD PAC are an incredibly, incredibly passionate group of members who really are so passionate about growing the ranks and increasing diversity. And so when they saw this happening, I mean they were ... Andrea, again, we recruited her to run. This was a candidate that we were just so incredibly invested in our mission, in our task to increase our ranks in Congress. And so they decided we are here for Andrea. We have to put our foot down and kind of our flag down in this race. And so they doubled down. They decided to put in a million dollars. So BOLD PAC made a million dollar investment in that race in that primary. That's the biggest single investment that BOLD PAC has ever made in our history was made in that race for Andrea Salinas. And I think it just speaks to the passion and the commitment that our organization has to our mission to really ensuring that we get good Latinos and Latinas to run, and that we help them make sure they have the resources to win. And Primary Day came, and on Primary Day, Andrea had been outspent literally by 12 to one. $12 million came flooding in on behalf of her primary opponent in a primary. It was one of the most expensive primaries of the entire election cycle last year. It's an insane amount of money for our primary, but we were there with her, BOLD PAC and she won. She doubled that opponent's vote share that night. And I think that just speaks to what an amazing voice she is and how much voters just really, really connected with her. And it speaks to sort of all manner of things, and it's really a race that we're really proud of at BOLD PAC, and we're really, really proud of our role in helping her get elected. Then she turned around and had a really, really competitive general election. She ran against a self-funder who dumped in a couple million dollars of his own money as well, and she won that one too. And now we're really excited. Before she won, Oregon had never had a Latino represent it at the federal level. And now Andrea is doing her good work in Congress and we're so proud of the role we played in helping her get there. Joe Sudbay: That was a terrific win. David Beard: Absolutely. So thank you so much for joining us, Victoria. Where can listeners find out more about BOLD PAC and stay connected and up to date on what you all are doing? Victoria McGroary: Yeah, so they can visit our website is boldpac.com, B-O-L-D-P-A-C.com. Please, we would appreciate any support you can offer in helping us diversify Congress and you can also follow us online. We're on Twitter and Instagram at BOLD Dems. David Beard: Great. Well, yeah, thanks for coming on. Victoria McGroary: Thank you. David Beard: That's all from us this week. Thanks to Joe Sudbay for pinch hitting as a co-host this week. And to Victoria McGroary for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing the downballot@dailycos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five star rating and review. Thanks also to our producer Cara Zelaya, and editor Trever Jones. We'll be back next week with a new episode. 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