Doug Jones isn’t Black. Here’s Why We Supported Him Anyway

The political world has been shaken as a democrat has won statewide in Alabama. Doug Jones, a longtime attorney and former prosecutor who fought against the KKK throughout his career, will replace Jeff Sessions in the United States Senate.

As the nation’s largest PAC focused on electing black candidates on the local, state and federal level, many may wonder why we invested over $50,000 in helping Doug Jones, a white candidate win.

First, we critically wanted to stop a white supremacist from joining Donald Trump in Washington. Roy Moore has repeatedly relished on the days of slavery and believes the constitutional amendments that ended slavery and gave African Americans the right to vote, were not good for the nation. And how can we forget that he is an accused child molester and sexual predator.

Second, our mission is to build black political power and in Tuesday’s election, black voters made the difference. Although black people make up 27% of Alabama’s population, through exit polls we saw that black voters made up 30% of the voters in Tuesday’s contest. What this means is that black voters actually out-voted other groups of voters in the race, with black women leading all voters in their support of Doug Jones at 98%, which is incredible.

Lastly, we know that no matter how much work we do nor, how much money we raise, we must work in coalition to win. And although we’ll never endorse a white candidate as an organization, that doesn’t mean we won’t support them when there is a critical need to ensure black voters are thoroughly engaged in the political process. And that’s exactly what we did in Alabama.

We are extremely grateful for our partnership with Opro by Open Progress and Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels. In partnership with these phenomenal leaders, we were able to:

• Produce video ads featuring members of the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and local black community leaders, which garnered 1.4 million Facebook ad impressions, targeting 650,000 African American voters in every county in Alabama
• Send over 288,000 person-to-person text messages encouraging black voters to vote, and an additional 40,000 follow up messages featuring polling location information and answers to critical questions
• Secure 150 black radio spots featuring Spike Lee, Jenifer Lewis, U.S. Representative Terri Sewell and Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels

We’re extremely proud of this work and the opportunity to work alongside other dynamic organizations that worked tirelessly to turn out black voters across the state. Organizations like Woke Vote and their founder DeJuana Thompson who is a major Collective PAC supporter and overall unsung hero in Doug Jones’ victory. BlackPAC, who knocked on tens of thousands of doors targeting black voters and Pine Street Strategies, the team behind Randall Woodfin’s historic mayoral win in Birmingham. On behalf of all of us who are celebrating this win, thank you!

But most importantly, Tuesday’s win solidifies that the roadmap for democrats and progressives to win back control in 2018 must include significant investment in mobilizing black voters and uplifting black issues and candidates that matter to our communities. When we have a racist, misogynist occupying the White House, we should heavily invest in frontline communities who are not only directly impacted by white supremacist words and policy, but who will also lead the resistance to bring our nation together.

We need your support now to give black people the best chance at winning in 2018. Please donate to The Collective at https://collectivepac.org/donate and to The Collective Super PAC at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/the-collective-super-pac-1 and work with us to build black political power and increase representative democracy in our country.