G-PAC IL is committed to supporting and electing public officials who are committed to tackling gun violence. In early 2018, the Illinois legislature was poised to vote on legislation that would require gun dealers obtain a license with the state. For 16 years Gun Dealer Licensing legislation died in the IL General Assembly. In 2018, thanks to a comprehensive campaign, GPAC-IL was able to pass this legislation not once, but twice in one session. Once out of the House and Senate, and then again to override the Governor’s veto. The GPAC team knew that they were going to need a comprehensive campaign to move this bill forward, a strategy that included a lot of individual direct engagement to legislators.

One of the main focuses of the campaign was for legislators to hear directly from constituents. We helped them launch a large patch project, connecting constituents’ voices directly to these legislator’s offices. We started this project by running a few rounds of ID calls into the target legislator’s districts. A few days later, we added these IDs plus other supporters GPAC had gathered into a large patch through universe. By doing a round of IDs, we were able to reach our pass goals quickly, as we not only had supporters but we knew we had working numbers for folks.

While the campaign engaged in five primary forms of constituent contact, phone connects ended up being 45% of the total contacts they had with legislators. We patched through 19,595 voters directly to their elected officials.

With our help, and the voices of constituents, GPAC flipped ten members in the House (8 Rs and 2Ds) and four Rs in the Senate.