We just had our first general meeting, and despite a rocky start we have some exciting things that the club hopes to be involved in this year.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend here are the main points from this first meeting:

• NY Races
  • NY-Sen: Hillary Clinton, will be an easy win for her, not much help needed/requested from us
  • NY-Gov: Eliot Spitzer, another easy win, would like help but club will focus more on tighter races
  • NY-29: Eric Massa, the district that RIT is in, a tight race against a 1-term Republican incumbent, where we can make the most difference
  • NY-25: Dan Maffei, a district from Rochester to Syracuse, need to win nearby Irondequoit to win, could use some help from us
  • NY-26: Jack Davis, a district from Rochester to Buffalo, a tough race against an entrenched Republican, but high profile
• Voter Registration
  • Register people to vote is something we can do
  • Good to work with Republicans on this one if they want to help
  • club should try to register people in-district
    • will help Massa
    • they’re more likely to vote because this is where they will be on election day for a few years and where they are closer to issues
    • deadline is Oct. 13 in NY (around there in most states too)
    • James will be taking registrations to county office to save people the hassle of postage
• How the club will help with campaigns
  • Every weekend try to have people either phone banking or canvassing
  • register voters in-district (for Massa)
  • Develop dorm-captain system to get people to vote
• Other Notes
  • Operation Welcome Home - welcome home troops from overseas at airport
  • RIT Gay Alliance (RITga) is interested in a progressive-club carnival on quarter mile (details coming soon)
  • We want interests of members to guide club, so speak up if you want the club involved in an event
  • Need to start engaging fellow students, civilly and respectfully (work quarter mile on Friday)

We have tons of campaign materials for Spitzer and Massa, if anyone would like handbills, bumper stickers, stickers, or pins contact rit.dems@gmail.com

We also have NY State Voter Registration forms, if you’d like to reregister in NY please get in touch with us and we can help you do that.

That’s all for now, details on the next meeting will be posted soon.

Filed under: NY-29, NY-Gov