Washington dominates the headlines. Local volunteers win elections.

I met a group of Bay Area retirees who are spending their weekends driving two and a half hours to Fresno to campaign for a Congressional candidate in heat that hovers around 42º this time of year.

Why?

The answer says as much about American democracy as it does about this year’s midterm elections.

California’s Congressional District 22 (CD22) that lies in the state’s Central Valley is one of 18 “toss up” contests in November’s midterm elections. The winners of these elections will determine which party will control the 435-seat House of Representatives and if it will serve as a check on President Trump’s power or if his last two years in office continue to play out unfettered.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, and the Democratic Party should be flying high: Trump’s approval rating has reached a new low of 37% as he presides over a deeply unpopular war with Iran, and Americans continue to feel the pain of high gas and food prices. Instead, DNC headquarters in Washington is beset with money troubles and infighting.

These national woes get a lot of attention in the press, yet the real work of campaigning for the midterms happens at the local and state level.

I got a front row view of this when I attended a meeting organized by Swing Left, a grassroots political organization that works to elect Democrats along with a coalition of other progressive organizations.

Held at the United Church of Christ in Campbell, California in late July, it was much like the Republican meeting I attended: warm welcomes, nametags and a hearty spread of food and drinks. After loading up their plates, attendees moved into the church sanctuary to hear about ways to get involved and then Democratic congressional candidate for CD22, Randy Villegas, joined via Zoom.

A 31-year-old political science professor, auto-repair shop owner and son of Mexican immigrants, Villegas stunned the Democratic establishment by winning the June primary against Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains. Baines was backed by state and national Democratic party leaders while Villegas was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortes.

While the media is making hay of this fault line nationally, I’m finding that local activists want to see new, younger candidates with fresh ideas about how to solve everyday problems.

California isn’t simply a blue state. It’s generally blue along the coast and then gets purple and red as you head inland with some spots of blue. CD22 illustrates this complexity well. It stretches from the North end of Bakersfield to the Southern end Fresno. This was moderately redrawn after Governor Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50 passed in June in response to Trump’s push to redraw district lines in red states.

CD22 currently looks like a purple or on-the-fence district, yet Villegas asserts that his district has had a majority of Democratic voters for at least a decade. Either way, the problem is that no one has done the outreach required to get these mostly rural voters to the ballot box.

Villegas understands this phenomenon that political scientists have studied for decades: personal contact through door knocking and phone calls can raise voter turnout. This involves armies of volunteers knock on doors to speak with potential voters. Along with phone banking, these are the two pillars of “get out the vote” or GOTV efforts.

As you can imagine, it’s not easy to get volunteers to do this work. In fact, after Villegas wrapped up his talk, a volunteer leader stepped up to speak about how it seems daunting to go knock on a stranger’s door but how they will be given training, a script and work with an experienced partner until they feel ready to take the lead themselves.

Swing Left, has developed a persuasion model called “ground truth” that other left leaning groups like the Democratic Volunteer Center in Mountain View, are also putting into action. It is underpinned by the notion that “People aren’t just frustrated or tuned out of politics. They believe the system is broken, and that nobody is listening to them.”

In practice, this means open-ended scripts that allow for deep listening rather than preaching talking points. We all know from personal conversations how unpersuasive a list of facts is or worse, when an aggressive political fanatic wants to “debate” the issues. If you’d like to learn more, I recommend Anand Giridharadas’s book, The Persuaders, At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy.

Face-to-face conversations are much more likely than social media or TV commercials to persuade and more so if they touch on issues that are salient to voters. Healthcare is a key issue in Villagas’ district where there are more Medicaid recipients than in any other district in the country. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that provides free or low-cost health coverage to low-income people. Villagas’ opponent, Republican incumbent David Valadao voted for Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that included significant funding cuts to Medicaid.

Many voters in CD22 don’t know how this massive piece of legislation is affecting their ability to get healthcare and this is where canvassing and phone banking can make the difference. Volunteers might start a conversation by asking, “How have current frustrations or political drama affected you personally?” and then moving on to healthcare by asking “Do you or someone you know drive to Tijuana to get medicine or fix your teeth?”

Covering politics from the national or Washington perspective can lead us to conclude that these midterm elections will come down to television ads, fundraising and social media controversy. Or that it’s a battle between progressive and establishment Democrats.

Yet by spending time with grassroots activists, another picture emerges. People willing to spend a Tuesday evening in a community center or a Saturday knocking on strangers’ doors in 42-degree heat will make the greatest difference on November 3^rd.

This is the English version of my column, La Globalista, in El Español.