The opponent’s talking points:

- She’s an establishment politician. (She’s been in office for 4 years, and that was her first run for office.) Opponent is a straight-shooting outsider.

- She’s corrupt and in the pocket of big developers. (Our city has a drastic housing shortage due to a large number of “no growth” voters.)

- She’s an out-of-touch elite. (She’s been low-income most of her life and is now solidly middle class.)

If this all sounds familiar, it should.

I won’t include the racist attacks on her.

The wife of a respected local Latino leader recounted racist experiences with the opponent on social media and was, predictably, attacked for being “the real racist.”

It was gross. It was also difficult to counter in a city with a clear majority of white voters. Many of those voters were simply not familiar enough with non-slur racism to recognize what was obvious to non-white residents.

Here’s what I noticed:

- NextDoor was ground zero for the attacks. Why? The opponent’s supporters had been kicked out of several Facebook groups over the years for being persistently obnoxious and abusive. NextDoor, on the other hand, has few rules and inexperienced moderators, and bad actors run roughshod over the whole damn platform.

- The opponent had zero accomplishments, so attacks were all the supporters had to go with. The whattaboutism was rampant.

- People who had claimed to be “liberals” for years supported the opponent because he agreed with their no-growth agenda. They went along with the racism. I don’t know what kind of unholy alliance they decided to make with a pro-Trump GOP candidate, but apparently it was worth it to them.

The campaign was a horrid grind. It took a toll on all of us, and obviously most of all on my friend.

Because my friend and all her supporters pride themselves on having integrity and not stooping to such levels, the opponent has not had his character attacked, and I have seen no evidence of consequences for his actions.

The community has been damaged by the vitriolic campaign. The opponent is doing nothing to repair the damage he caused.

The final count of the election came in today. My friend received 60% of the vote, and her opponent 40%.

Given her incredibly strong record and longstanding community ties, my friend’s reelection would never have been in doubt if she were a white man. I assume she was targeted because she is a brown woman in possibly the most conservative district in our city. And the opponent’s tactics worked to a certain extent.

I’m sure this play is being run by GOP-backed candidates all over the US.

We won because we are local, deeply involved in our community, and relentless workers. We took nothing for granted. We fought for every vote. We had to work 10 times harder to prevail.

I’m deeply concerned about this fight being replicated in small, local communities all over the US: neighborhood councils, school boards, county supervisor races.

More people need to be informed about these patterns and be alerted when they pop up in their own communities.

Please boost this thread so more people can learn about and understand how the GOP is trying to gain power in any small corner they can. This is how they fill their pipeline. This is how they control voter perceptions from the local to the national level.

We need more education and more resources to thwart them. We need more support. Where is the equivalent investment to defend our democracy at these micro levels? We needed this problem solved yesterday. Our nation may depend on it.