I have wanted to be an organizer pretty much my whole life. Starting with local neighborhood issues in West Philly when I was 15, I have had a chance to pursue my life’s passion. I also love Philadelphia (crazy, obsessive, stalker love). And, I hate money-grubbing souless Republicans.

So, when I started to think about how important the 2006 race to beat Rick Santorum would be, and what a crucial role Philadelphia itself would play, and how much damage Santorum and his cronies have done to our city, well I decided to do whatever I could to organize Philadelphia to help defeating Santorum and his radical right-wing agenda.

So, YoungPhillyPolitics, meet Philadelphians Against Santorum.

Click “read more” below to find out how Philadelphians Against Santorum will help kick Santorum’s ass statewide and help build progressive power in Philly.

Philadelphia has suffered mightily over the past six years as George Bush and one of his top cronies, Santorum, have weakened our economy, tried to destroy Social Security, worked to eliminate reproductive rights, taken us into an endless war in Iraq, and stacked the Supreme Court with their friends.

Philadelphians Against Santorum is a grassroots campaign with a strategic and fun plan to increase turnout in order to beat Rick Santorum in 2006. The campaign will give volunteers the tools they need to turn out neighbors, family, friends and co-workers who don't normally vote.

One-third or more of the votes needed to beat Santorum statewide will come from Philadelphia alone. Yet, in most elections, not even half of all Philadelphians come out to vote.

Why is turnout normally so low?

Well in 1994, when Santorum was first elected, he ran against Harris Wofford. Wofford won a special election after Senator Heinz was killed in a helicopter crash over Lower Merion Elementary. Wofford was a good guy but it was a non-presidential year election with an open Governor’s race and Philadelphians just were not that into it.

In 2000, there was a presidential race and turnout for Gore was a full 4 percentage points more than for Ron Klink who ran against Santorum that time. Klink was a no-name, anti-gay, pro-gun western PA congressman. His moderate to conservative stances caused over 50,000 Gore voters to sit the race out altogether or vote for Santorum.

More important, in both 1994 and 2000, the Democratic party nor the Left were doing very much to turnout the vote using field operations or engaging the grassroots.

With campaign finance reform and the anger of the left at George Bush, that began to change.

In 2004, MoveOn, the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, the AFL, SEIU and a lot of others also did a great job getting out the vote. In fact, turnout in Philadelphia set a record high at 64% beating the 1996 57% for Clinton (but not toppling the 72% voter turnout Clinton brought out in 1992).

I was the Philadelphia Lead Organizer for MoveOn and we got over 50,000 votes in Philadelphia alone and 119,000 statewide. Statewide, John Kerry won by 140,000 votes. MoveOn did not do it alone, but combined the efforts of non-party affiliated GOTV efforts clearly won the race for John Kerry.

So, what about 2006?

Despite the gains we made in 2004--getting real people out on the streets to talk to other real people about voting--real people, average voters still do not have ownership of the Democratic party. An example of this is the primary race going on this year.

Sandals and Pennachio are both working very hard to beat out Bob Casey for the Democratic nomination. This is an important internal battle. But the truth is Casey has a huge money advatage going into this primary. Why? Because the party's leaders did not want to have a primary battle where people like Hoeffel and Hafer would get a chance to take on Casey.

However, regardless of who is selected in the primary we have to beat Santorum.

Why should we work to beat Santorum at any cost?

Because Santorum is the most powerful Republican in the state. He has the most access to dollars to fund conservative state house and senate races. He is also one of the most powerful republicans in the entire country. He is a clear and present danger to all the values progressives should hold dear.

His victory or defeat in the fall is going to send a message to the electorate in this country. His loss could mean that we begin to turn the tide on the past 6 years of Republican hell.

At the local level, Santorum's positions on important issues like Social Security, the minimum wage, LGBT rights, gun control, healthcare, public transportation funding, education, reproductive rights, and many others have hurt our city-- Rick Santorum's values are not Philadelphia's values.

We are a city founded by activists and, as such, we have a historical obligation to work against everything that Santorum stands for. Philadelphians Against Santorum will honor this history by working hard to turn out 60% or more Philadelphians to vote against Rick Santorum in the 2006 election.

However, a lot of us don’t feel comfortable working for candidates. Being a candidate for statewide office means you have to do and say a lot of things that don’t always settle well with the more liberal tendencies of Philadelphians. This is especially true if Bob Casey wins the nomination.

Why Does Philly Matter
Beyond the working-for-a-candidate-problem, candidates, no matter who they are, spend a lot more time raising money for TV and making speeches than they do organizing field campaigns. It is hard work recruiting and organizing volunteers to talk to every new and infrequent voter who is currently likely to sit this race out. That work could be done a lot more effectively by an organization that only focuses on Philadelphia and only focuses on the Senate race.

The reality is too many Philadelphians think of our county like it’s a member of some state-based electoral college. People seem to think that if a supermajority of Philadelphia votes Democratic than it won’t matter how many actual Philadelphians vote.

This attitude is best exemplified in the way many of us talk about Ed Rendell. Rendell got something like 85% of the Philadelphia vote in the 2002 general election. However, turnout in that race was only 39%. Yea, Rendell has Philly locked down, but he doesn’t draw out as many voters here as we need to beat Santorum statewide.

Knocking on the doors of new and infrequent voters and dragging them to the polls can have a real impact. Especially when the people who come knocking are neighbors, friends and family--people who can best relate to the reaons why somebody not be able to or want to vote on the first place.

So, to make a long post short, Philadelphians Against Santorum will help beat Santorum by pulling out every possible vote against him here in Philadelphia by running a strategic and fun grassroots campaign.

Check out our website to learn how you can beat Rick Santorum in 2006. On our site, you can learn more about how we plan to beat Santorum, read more about why Santorum is a threat and more.

I also want to point your attention to our ever-growing Advisory Council in the “About PAS” section that includes a lot of folks who have been active in progressive Philly politics. Connecting Philadelphians Against Santorum to the existing progressive leadership and organizing attempts in our city will hopefully make the 2006 Senate race a much more useful cause for our long-term goals of building a more progressive Philadelphia and state government.

Because, beyond the need to beat Santorum in 2006, it is also really important that we use every election to build our long-term progressive infrastructure.

I loved working for MoveOn but the truth is nationally-based organizations can only do so much to build our capacity to win local and state-wide elections. And the fact that Bob Casey was selected by the party's leadership without the consent of the progressive donors and volunteers who win races is proof of the fact that grassroots, person-to-voter contact is not yet valued or seen as formidbale force within the party.

We can should win races, we can win races and we will win races based on the power pf people talking to each other rather than allowing our political system to be controlled by the party elite, big donors and corporate interests. In the process of building this new reality we can also beat down the racist, homophobic, sexist, greedy, buck-shootin’ Bush-Cheyney agenda by using Philadelphia to kick Santourm out of office in 2006.