The MainStream Coalition has had a tremendous year and we owe it to you, our members and supporters. Your generosity, energy, and involvement has helped us to secure significant wins for Kansas, and to lay the groundwork for next year. MainStream's influence, our ability to make a difference for all Kansans, has never been about our Board or our small staff. It's about you, and the difference we can make when we pull together.
We asked you to do more than vote, and you delivered. More than fifty of you organized teams, and brought over 500 people to our inaugural Walk the Vote event, raising $30,000 for 2018 election activity. More than eighty of you hosted tables at our annual Stand Up, Speak Out awards dinner, bringing together 850 active, engaged Kansans—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—to celebrate shared values and a commitment to work together.
On the heels of significant legislative wins in 2016, you stayed informed by sharing articles, attending forums, and visiting with your elected officials. You got engaged at postcard pop-ups, and calling and emailing your representatives in Topeka and Washington DC. Together we pushed Kansas in the right direction, reforming school finance law, halting runaway gun legislation, coming close to expanding health care for those in the gap, and finally ending the Brownback tax experiment.
And even more telling, 200 of you attended our candidate training workshops, and many of you ran for office, and won! Eighty percent of the candidates endorsed by MainPAC, our political action committee, won this past November.
Thank you.
This next year is a crucial one for Kansas. Our schools remain underfunded, but rather than working together with moderates and Democrats to find solutions, our legislative leadership is grandstanding about a Constitutional Amendment to remove language that guarantees Kansas children a "suitable" education. We will fight for Kansas schoolchildren, we will continue to push to expand health care coverage, we will work to protect voting rights, and we will keep you informed of these and other issues, and what you can do to help. We will be championing an innovative grassroots voter engagement initiative to ensure that each of us have the tools and opportunities to be informed, active voters.
This past year, you have donated to these education and advocacy efforts, thank you. But no amount of advocacy will move an ultra partisan legislator.
We need to elect, and re-elect, those legislators who will champion good government, strong public schools, healthy communities and sustainable fiscal policies. As a result, we will be involved in elections at every level in 2018—county, legislative, statewide and congressional. We have already seen Americans for Prosperity spend millions of dollars on postcards, over a year before the 2018 elections!
Please consider making a donation directly to candidates that share your values, then, please make a contribution to MainPAC to help ensure those candidates are elected.
Thank you again for all you have done this year. We look forward to your help in 2018. The movement starts with you. It starts here.
Brandi Fisher
Executive Director, MainStream Coalition
