In the spring of 2018 the SRP board in AZ held elections. The SPR board is in charge of Arizona’s state power and water utility that sets rates and drives policy. The pool of voters for this election is weighted and limited only to landowners, which means that historically these are extremely low turn out races. The League of Conservation Voters and local solar advocates saw an opportunity to try and elect board members who could help promote clean, renewable energy. These organizations had done an amazing job organizing and educating eligible voters, but realized they needed some help with GOTV, so they reached out to TSG. We did standard round of GOTV live calls to a large pool of voters. We were primarily pushing the two at large candidates, but we were also able to promote district by district races where applicable. In addition to this we did a round of ballot chase calls. The groups on the ground had made a really big push for ballot requests. Until this election the record number of ballots returned was about 3,500, in 2018 more than 11,000 ballots were sent out. We called voters to make sure they had returned their ballot and to make sure they knew if they had not, they still had time to drop it off in person.
With the hard work on the ground and an aggressive GOTV programs, the SRP elected two new at large board members who campaigned on renewable energy. Both of these candidates, who are under 40, were able to oust long standing board members, one of the incumbents had spent 42 years on the board. As we did with the LCV, TSG can help you maximize all your field organizing and help you mobilize your people to the polls.