New Engagement PAC is committed to building the working-class coalition of the future in Georgia. To do so, Democrats must reach voters early, listen to them, and use trusted messengers. We must make working class Americans interested in voting for Democrats again.
Americans’ levels of trust in institutions – the media, advertising, government – is the lowest it’s ever been. As a result they increasingly tune out of politics, unsure where to turn for trusted sources and more-susceptible to mis- and disinformation. This makes these voters less-likely to turn out for the party promising government solutions and more-likely to vote for the party that promises to tear down those institutions. Voters increasingly say they only trust friends and family for their political information. In 2024 voters’ news consumption correlated directly with their vote choice: Harris won voters attuned “a great deal” or “a lot” to the news; Trump won everyone else. Erza Klein: “The hardest divide to cross isn’t left vs. right. It’s interested vs. uninterested.”
New Engagement PAC believes in order to regain the working class voters Democrats need for a long-term governing coalition we must change how we communicate.
It’s time to change our approach.
We must think bigger than the typical communication channels deployed late in election cycles. As voters increasingly view Democrats as the party of the elite, we must show voters we care about the lives of working people – which means listening rather than just prescribing policy solutions. And we must communicate with trusted messengers, moving beyond the institutional media ecosystem to tap into sources (particularly personal relationships) that voters tell us they trust. Ahead of one of the most-important midterm elections in American history, particularly in the key state of Georgia, that’s what New Engagement PAC is doing.
Why us?
New Engagement PAC is run by experienced political professionals who have dedicated our professional lives to finding new and effective ways of communicating to voters and winning key races for Democrats, including in Georgia.
Alex Edelman launched his career running mobilization programs turning out Atlanta Democrats, managed the DCCC’s national field department, and ran Jon Ossoff’s massive get out the vote program in his congressional and senate campaigns, and was one of the architects of Senator Ossoff’s groundbreaking relational organizing program. Danny Kazin managed the first paid media program supporting Senator Warnock in his 2022 runoff election, and has managed campaigns like Jacky Rosen’s US Senate race and mobilization programs across the country. And Katie Penland helped Senator Warnock break fundraising records in the US Senate race, and has overseen the southern region for the DSCC. Our detailed biographies are included below.
In 2020, after the presidential election was settled, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock entered into a runoff election in the state of Georgia. Using groundbreaking, relational tactics, Ossoff’s voter contact team turned out voters in that runoff that hadn’t voted in the general election just two months before, ushering two new Democratic Senators into office. Relational organizing takes traditional organizing a step further; while traditional voter contact programs use paid staffers and volunteers to contact targeted strangers to persuade them to vote, relational programs tap into supporters’ existing networks. In these programs, voters and potential voters hear from people already in their personal networks, getting a more-trusted and more-effective mobilization message.
Early relational organizing programs have shown strong mobilization effects, but the Ossoff campaign was the first to scale the program and field testing exhibiting consistent positive results. A study done by the Analyst Institute found that the Ossoff organizing program increased turnout by 3.8 percentage points. Additionally, it had an even-stronger effect among more-sporadic and first-time voters than it did with the higher propensity voters targeted by traditional voter contact programs. In fact, it had twice the impact on voters who turned out for the first time in the runoff election than it did among November voters.
Our program will build on the success of this project, using additional tactics such as paid digital and trusted micro-influencers, to build trust over a longer period of time, to have an impact on the upcoming midterm election and maintain higher voting races for cycles to come.
Why now?
The 2026 midterm elections in Georgia are some of the most important in the country, featuring a US Senate race that could determine control of the US Senate and an open seat gubernatorial race. Georgia is a critical state for Democrats and the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections will determine the trajectory of the state for many cycles to come. Georgia also features several local and municipal elections in November 2025 that present registration and mobilization opportunities ahead of 2026.
Winning the 2026 elections means engaging voters early and often – starting now.
Traditionally, mobilization programs exit the field after each election and don’t return to the field until the summer or fall before the next election takes place. Research with less-engaged Georgians shows that they feel left out of the political process when they only hear from Democrats close to Election Day. They are fatigued from the Trump era and from repeated nationally-targeted elections. And they feel tuned out of the political process, particularly when it comes to state and local elections. Time and again, particularly voters of color tell us in qualitative research that they “only hear from Democrats when they ask for our vote,” and that politicians only care about their opinions in the fall of presidential election years. But the research is clear – earlier, more consistent engagement with voters builds a long-term habit and cements Democratic gains for elections to come.
New Engagement PAC will use a mix of tactics that persuade voters and increase turnout, tactics that have all been proven and tested separately but never before used together and at scale. Our program consists of early gratitude expression, social-pressure, multimodal relational organizing. Simply put: using trusted messengers in people’s existing networks to deliver effective, honest messaging and make voting a habit and being a voter an identity.
With Tump back in the white house, all eyes will be on Georgia as one of the few nationally competitive battlegrounds states with state-wide races in 2026. Therefore, Georgia has a unique opportunity to create a roadmap for how democrats can rebuild an effective voting coalition for many election cycles to come.