Accomplishments and Contributions This Past Election Cycle
Below is a list of various accomplishments and contributions in the past election cycle. I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting. I can’t thank all of our members enough for all the hard work they’ve done. We’ve accomplished a lot but there is still a lot of work ahead of us. I want to encourage everyone to participate as much as you can even with this past election being over. It’s time for us to regroup, relish in our accomplishments,learn from our mistakes, and continue to fight to turn this county Democrat Blue!
- We began a permanent presence at a monthly street party held in Melbourne in July of 2007. We wanted to raise awareness of the party and our organization. We started a trend as more and more political organizations and candidates began attending the festival and having booths of their own.
- BCYDs organized several phone banking sessions to help Suzan Franks for the special election in SD 3 in the summer of 2007.
- BCYD member Frank Grieco decided to run for Supervisor of Elections.
- Hosted a candidate forum in January of 2008 with Chairwoman Karen Thurman as our keynote speaker.
- Hosted a Florida Young Democrat summit in February 2008.
- In addition to the meetings held at the summit we also had YDs from across the state participate in canvassing for Tony Sasso during the special election for HD 32.
- BCYDs helped Tony Sasso win the special election for HD 32 in February 2008 by volunteering countless hours of gathering petitions, canvassing, and phone banking.
- BCYDs began volunteering countless hours in the spring of 2008 to canvassing and gathering petitions for Democratic candidates from the entire county. At one point that was 28 different candidates. In total we gathered over 1600 petitions.
- In addition to gathering petitions while canvassing we registered new voters, signed people up for absentee ballots, helped get voting rights restored, gave general voter education as well as encouragement in getting involved in the Democratic party.
- Past BCYD President Wes McCarville decided to run for HD 29 against Republican incumbent Ralph Poppell in April of 2008.
- Summer of 2008 was spent planning a YD club at Florida Tech along with canvassing for Democratic candidates, absentee ballots, etc.. This was especially a great feat with the sheer amount of candidates and the absurdly large size of our county (70 miles from end to end).
- Florida Tech YD club was established in August of 2008
- September and October of 2008 was spent mainly working with other organizations from around the county to register voters, encouraging them to get involved, absentee ballots, canvassing specifically to the young democrats in the highest populated precincts.
- Florida Tech YD club registered 250 new voters with their campus and local precinct efforts
- Florida Tech YD club hosted 2 candidate forums, one with Steven Blythe and one with Gary Young
- Our registration drive was the most successful at Florida Tech in decades, if not in the history of the school. Our efforts to raise political awareness on campus were unprecedented. I believe we are the first Democratic club at Florida Tech in recent history, until we started there were only the College Republicans.
- The Brevard County DEC awarded us the “Democratic Organization of the Year” for the all our efforts helping the party and the candidates at the annual banquet.
- We sent a slate card to all of the students at Florida Tech.
- We conducted 10000 robo calls on Sunday Nov 2nd specifically targeted to young democrats in the county who had not voted yet
- We provided office space, telephones, and man power on election day to make several hundred GOTV calls.
