FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: Courage Campaign launches #CaliforniaCounts — The liberal advocacy group Courage Campaign today will kick off its new effort, #CaliforniaCounts, going up with its first digital ad in its effort to wade into the seven Republican-held House seats in California that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. The group expects to spend $800,000 on the campaign through November.
— Touting “the historic role that California will play in the 2018 election,” the ad includes this admonition often overlooked in a heavily Democratic state: “Right now, we send more Republicans to Congress than every state except Texas and Florida.” View the ad here
— Courage Campaign said the initiative will include phone banking targeting infrequent or lapsed Democratic voters, as well as newly registered Democrats. It also includes peer-to-peer text messaging and email platforms.
— Eddie Kurtz, president and executive director of the group, said the campaign will initially focus most heavily in CA-39, CA-48, CA-49 — the three districts where he considers Democrats most at risk of failing to advance a candidate to the general election in California’s top-two primaries. Of the messaging, he said, “It’s a positive frame: You count, California counts … You’re being misrepresented” by Republicans in the House. For Democrats in districts represented by Republicans, he said, the message is, “If we rise up and are counted, we can give this guy the boot.”
— Campaign website here: https://cacounts.org/