Lara Putnam
@lara_putnam
Followers
6K
Following
24K
Media
3K
Statuses
8K
Historian. Mom. Knocks on doors and talks politics. https://t.co/lPAqXtA1qm
Joined May 2017
Also appreciate this evidence of how locked in plain old Dem volunteers in every corner of PA are on the upcoming judicial retentions.
1
0
5
Life in America in Summer 2025 is a weird split screen with fawning titans of industry & media in big blue cities on one side. and clear & insistent weekly protests in Trump+38 Fayette County PA on the other
1
5
12
The opinion most likely to get me cancelled is that groups in the IE/IVE ecosystem are not very impactful in short-term voter mobilization or long-term voter "engagement" but quite impactful in local policymaking: so we shld worry more about whether the policies they promote work.
Many sad such cases: A fact-free progressive monocause (unfunded IZ without real upzoning) is distracting Pittsburgh's transit advocates from the destruction of their transit agency.
0
1
10
@steveschale Anyway if I have the Georgia story wrong someone please tell me. My expertise on voter registration data, to the extent that I have any expertise, goes no further south than Bedford PA, I am well aware!
0
0
1
@steveschale the data is pretty clear that changes in registration rates were basically driven by AVR? Seems unhelpful to build up hero tales that suggest misleading lessons—unfair to those framed as heroes, & especially unhelpful to those seeking lessons to implement?
2
1
1
w/r/t the point @steveschale raises here: there was so much press given in 2020 to the idea that Stacey Abrams had cracked the code & created the perfect model to emulate for how 501c3/4s could transform an electorate. It's my understanding though that
As folks who follow me know, I have many of opinions on this, and there is a lot of challenges out there (younger people not associating with traditional groups, the band of the party, etc.). But. the decisions to turn VR over to C3/C4s over the years has not worked. 1/.
1
0
1
Post-primary 2025 so far looks a little like 2017, when both Dems & GOP were losing ground & only Indep growing. Of course, there's lots of time yet to go btwn now & Nov. Bottom line: since 2019 Dems have lost huge ground: & attempts to dig out of that hole still not working
1
2
2
Circled in purple are the only three stretches since 2015 when Dem have surpassed GOP gains: In the lead up to the 2018 midterm & 2019 general election, and in 2022, in between the Dobbs announcement and the Nov midterm election
1
1
2
In honor of the new NYT piece on Dems' voter registration woes, I bring you the much-bigger picture of PA trends to conclude: yeah, it's pretty much just as bad as they say it is. Although fwiw, currently both GOP growth & Dem free-fall seem more or less on pause?
1
2
4
Link below. If you are familiar with the evolution of the born-as-anti-Trump grassroots over the past 9 ys, everything described will be zero % surprising, of course.
0
0
1
If your mental model of the most passionate Democratic activists does not include "happily made two million phone calls to elect Tom Suozzi," you may need to do some updating
1
2
8
Hot tip for journalists about to descend on Scranton: a quinceñera photo shoot in the Lackawanna Railroad Station Hotel is, in fact, the distilled essence of northeast PA
0
1
7
ok I'm not gonna say I made this happen single-handedly* but I arrived in Scranton yesterday, for the first time in my life: seems hard to believe it's just a coincidence. *I had nothing to do with this.
“Mayor of Scranton Paige Cognetti is expected to challenge Bresnahan, according to a person familiar with her plans … expect Mr. Bresnahan’s stock trading to be a core part of the case they continue to make against him.” . LFG @PaigeGCognetti
2
1
12
county-chair I have met, which is crazy because people in that category (of which I know personally like, a dozen?) are routinely among the most impressive people I've ever met. It's a hard category to compete in!.Anyway. If you think you've never been to Bedford County.
0
0
8
Also, can we talk about Bedford County? Net GOP presidential votes rose by ~4,000 from 2012-16, & almost 3,000 from 2016-20, but less than 700 from 2020-24. By chance today I interviewed the Dem county party chair, who is hands down the most impressive Resistance-lady-turned-Dem-
1
1
12
The opposite end of the table is also 👀. This is where Kamala's net vote totals (D-R) fell the furthest from Hilary's. Philly, grim but not surprising. But Fayette, Cambria, Clearfield, Franklin. small counties where 2016 was brutal, yet there was still so much further to fall
2
2
5
Also related news
axios.com
Democrats generally like experienced candidates, even if they lost last cycle.
1
2
10
In related news.
politicspa.com
Lehigh County Controller becomes fourth entry in LV congressional contest
1
0
6