During an activist work session, WI Faith and Freedom State Director, and EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, Spencer LaVerde, made the case that the most effective way to turn out many of the 207,000 faith-based voters is to sign up to let us pay you to get literature to targeted households while you walk near your neighborhood.
Anyone who wants to take advantage of that opportunity can start the process by emailing to info@wisconsinffc.com or click or share our link: https://wisconsinffc.com/paid-faith-voter-educator/
Amidst our ever-growing efforts across Wisconsin, President John Pudner introduced State Director Spencer LaVerde in our favorite kind of meeting as LaVerde spoke while local grassroots activists in Milwaukee’s North Shore suburbs addressed postcards to help turn out the vote. and outline not only our efforts to educate faith-based voters, but also the importance for those in attendance to be involved in their communities.
While Pudner opened with the history behind our strategies, he spent the majority of his time introducing newly-appointed State Director LaVerde, who answered numerous questions on door-to-door knocking and noted some of the shocking thoughts he’s heard while out in the field – how many faith-based voters have told him they feel alienated by today’s politics, think their elected leadership doesn’t stand by the issues important to them, and how they think their vote isn’t important anymore. This is reflected in some of the notable statistics he outlined, with only around 52% of those faith-based voters turning out in Wisconsin during the 2020 election, a race decided by a mere 20,000 votes.
As both Pudner and LaVerde point out, however, it’s more important than ever to not be sitting on the sidelines, with real, salient, stark differences between both sides of the ticket on the key issues important to faith-based voters, including on immigration, Israel, inflation, and men in women’s sports. Both note how critical it is for grassroots activists across Wisconsin to affect real, lasting change in their communities by getting involved in efforts such as ours to elect sound, principled, faith-based leadership up and down the ballot this November.
The speeches culminated a week in which Wisconsin Faith and Freedom distributed 165,000 candidate comparisons (see below) throughout Wisconsin and Nate Silver, who ESPN once compared to John Pudner (pictured with him at MIT event) shifted to predict a narrow win for Trump in Wisconsin and thus a 278-260 election (if Harris won Wisconsin she would win 270-268).
Below the images is the transcript of the speeches presented with minor edits:
WIFFC President John Pudner
I’m going to give you a few minutes of an intro, I don’t want to be one of those old political guys who goes into a bunch of war stories that aren’t relevant. But, I want to give you a little history on why these pieces, which I left around your table, have worked so well over the years. We came up with this format back in Bush 2000 and we wanted to get these to people who go to churches and don’t vote. At one point in the South, there was about a 13% faith-based voter turnout in the 70’s. That’s why this all started. There was the feeling that politics is so dirty that, as a Christian, you couldn’t be involved in something that’s so dirty. That’s when a group called the “Moral Majority” got going to get fundamentalist Christians to vote, but then, the turnout was still low among evangelical Christians, which is a different group, the media doesn’t understand that, and that’s why a group called the “Christian Coalition” to increase turnout and convince Evangelicals. The comparison pieces we hand out today came from those organizers all those years ago, who then lead an effort in 2000, that I was hired on, to run nationwide turnout for Bush 2000, and then out of that, Faith and Freedom came to make a non-partisan appeal to all faith-based voters. All this was really the kind of brainstorming moment that led us to say, “No, these are the reasons you have to be involved.”
We want to focus campaigns on issues. It’s very rare that one side, in an election, has four issues on which 70% of people agree with them, but that’s what we have this year. We have immigration, Israel, inflation, and we have men in women’s sports. Those are really all 70% issues, and that’s how we get about half the people who go to a conservative church to vote. So, that is the easiest voting block for this. You cut that little bit and you easily make up your 20-30,000 votes that can decide these elections. So, those are a few of the things we actually do and we’re always looking to build the field, as it’s called. They’d be reporting to someone like Spencer, who’s out there every day.
Spencer is one of these young wiper-snappers who comes up with things. Spencer sometimes doubles my total of doors knocked, I think he’s cheating because he’s using a bike to get to his doors, but I want Spencer to come up and say a couple of things he’s seen at doors before and talk about a few things that we’ve found effective…
WIFFC State Director Spencer LaVerde
First of all, I want to address the fact that using my bike is not cheating, it’s fair game! But, from my…
Audience Member
How old are you?
WIFFC State Director Spencer LaVerde
I’m 23.
Audience Members
Thank you. Wow. That’s awesome!
WIFFC State Director Spencer LaVerde
My experience of door knocking and talking to voters, from the northern border of Wisconsin…part of Wisconsin…or part of Michigan that should be part of Wisconsin….all the way down to the Illinois border, I’ve had a lot of interesting experiences. I’ve talked to a lot of voters, and this piece here with all these issues, I’ve been able to effectively communicate our concerns over these different issues.
But, it’s very important that we get out and turn out the vote in areas where people don’t usually vote. I’ve talked to a lot of people who don’t want to vote. They feel like it’s hopeless, they feel like voting is not important anymore, and that’s something that I think is a shame. I used to live in a state where your vote didn’t really change the outcome all that much – Arkansas. I believe the state went to Trump by, what, 20 to 30 points? We live in the third-closest, third-most competitive state in the entire country, so that vote is very important. I’d really like to encourage people to get out to vote, regardless if they agree with us or not.
Audience Member
Anybody here have a question for our speakers?
Audience Member
I do! When did you decide that you were going to be a conservative? At what age?
WIFFC State Director Spencer LaVerde
Well, I was raised in a conservative household, but it was really just one thing after another, after another, after another. And, as of right now, I don’t know how many of you guys are aware of this, but California recently announced they would allow biological men into women’s prisons, which is probably the most absurd issue I’ve seen in my lifetime. I have a 5’1 fiancé, and if she goes to the women’s restroom, and there’s a man in there, which has happened multiple times, I have a problem with that. So, yeah, people like me have to stand up and actually do our part.
Audience Member
What was your most interesting or funny door knock?
WIFFC State Director Spencer LaVerde
Ok….so, I was knocking up in Appleton, and this guy jerks open the door, and he call tell by the literature in my hand that I had the slightest possibility of possibly being conservative, and immediately started to just berate me, “I HATE TRUMP, GET OUT OF HERE!” And, I was just like, “Woah, could we just have an honest conversation here?” We actually ended up having a really good conversation at the end of the day…
But, when you walk neighborhoods, you see all these political signs…this is actually another good one. I saw, and I have pictures of this to this day, one house just covered in Biden signs, BLM flags, Gay pride signs, and then the house right next door was just covered in Trump signs and stuff like that. It was ridiculous!
Audience Member
So, would you then knock the door of the person who had all the Biden signs?
WIFFC State Director Spencer LaVerde
I would gladly knock on that door and have a conversation with them, I have been able to work with people regardless of what they believe in, but yeah, hope that answers all of your questions!
Audience Members
Thank you for all that you are doing! Thank you!
