(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . OK, fellow Gen X'ers: It's time to step up & help Gen Z save democracy & decency! [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-24 As some dKos folks may know, back in 2018 I decided to dip my toe into online fundraising for Democratic candidates by whipping up a few ActBlue pages and posting them to Twitter. One of the great features of ActBlue is that it allows you to take any two (or three, or twenty) Democratic candidates and lump them together onto the same fundraising page. By default, donations are split evenly among them (although you also have the option of picking & choosing which candidates to support if you prefer). For the 2018 cycle, I think I raised around $40,000 or so, mostly for candidates from my home state of Michigan. For 2020, I decided to take things to the next level. I created fundraising pages for hundreds of candidates running around the country at the federal, statewide and local (state legislative) levels. I set a personal target for myself of $250,000, which I thought was ambitious. When the dust settled, I ended up raising over $6 million. For 2022, I did it again, this time doing more research into state legislative races to focus more on the most competitive races. While there’s plenty of political wonk sites which track competitiveness for U.S. Senate, U.S. House & Gubernatorial races such as Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Real Clear Politics etc., there are far fewer sites which track that sort of thing for state legislatures. I’ve found Dave’s Redistricting to be the most comprehensive & reliable source for this. I knew that 2020’s $6M was a fluke; not only was it a Presidential year, but it was a Presidential year with Trump in the White House. Throw the pre-vaccine COVID pandemic phase into the mix and it was a very unique situation; I knew that the 2022 midterms wouldn’t come close to $6M but had no idea how much I would end up raising. It ended up being around $1.3 million, for over 600 candidates total. For the 2023 — 2024 cycle, I’m at it again. I’m hoping to raise somewhere in between the two...perhaps $4 million overall?...but we’ll see. As such, not only have I created fundraising pages for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Statewide races (Gov/Lt. Gov/SoS/AG) and 26 state legislatures (with more to come), I’ve also created a one-stop shop where you can easily find all of them at once. I call it X for Z. Why "X for Z?" Simple: I'm a member of Gen X (52 years old as of spring 2023) who didn't become politically active until I was 30 years old...but I've been inspired by the amazing surge in Democratic/progressive political activism among Gen Z over the past few years, so I decided to name this fundraising clearinghouse accordingly. I've also included Voters of Tomorrow on every page; VoT is a quickly-growing progressive political movement for young people by young people. I'm not affiliated with them; I just think they do damned good work. More pages for state legislative races are on the way soon, and of course the candidates included will change over time as various filing deadlines and primaries pass, as well as changing circumstances like nominees having to be replaced, etc. This isn't another PAC. It's just a one-stop link to make it easy for people to donate directly to hundreds of Democratic candidates running for federal, statewide and especially local (state legislative) offices. XforZ.us has links to multiple ActBlue fundraising pages where you can donate to Democrats running for: That's it. Seriously. All donations go directly to the campaign funds & organizations listed. I don't receive a dime. (Oh, and in case it isn’t clear, you don’t have to be a member of Gen X to use these pages...anyone eligible to donate to U.S. political candidates can do so.) Pick a page and donate today (I strongly recommend focusing on VIRGINIA and NEW JERSEY this year, since both of their state legislatures are up in 2023: P.S. I was also “inspired” by Elon Musk’s deranged obsession with getting people to pay him $8/month for his stupid Twitter Blue service. Instead of doing that, I’ve included an option to donate $8/month to the candidates of your choice... Here’s links to some of the individual fundraising pages: x 📣 Today would be a good day to help flip #VirginiaBlueIn23. Donate today!https://t.co/z0EMD6hVfO — Charles Gaba isn't paying for this account. (@charles_gaba) February 20, 2023 x 📣 New Jersey may be considered a safe blue state, but Dems underperformed last cycle; we can't take it for granted! Donate to keep #NJBlueIn23 today!https://t.co/9Ib3s4BHCt — Charles Gaba isn't paying for this account. (@charles_gaba) February 7, 2023 x 📣 I know Virginia gets all the "odd-numbered year election" attention, but KENTUCKY, LOUISIANA and MISSISSIPPI all have elections in 2023 as well. Donate to help shore up Dems in red states TODAY!https://t.co/o6XGhck8nQ — Charles Gaba isn't paying for this account. (@charles_gaba) February 23, 2023 x 📣 Today would be a good day to help keep #MIBlueIn24. Donate today:https://t.co/dot1DxabgK — Charles Gaba isn't paying for this account. (@charles_gaba) March 8, 2023 x 📣 Today would be a good day to help flip the #HouseBlueIn24. Donate today: https://t.co/YWOq0kA82E — Charles Gaba isn't paying for this account. (@charles_gaba) February 8, 2023 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/24/2165576/-OK-fellow-Gen-X-ers-It-s-time-to-step-up-help-Gen-Z-save-democracy-decency Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/