31st Street Monthly Mtng - Feb 22 2026 - Nebraska - Strategy to Flip Senate Seat [29:28-34:33]

The other component of the program besides paid media will be our grassroots organizing and earned media program. And this will look like a couple of different components. One of those components is working with Nebraska's for medical marijuana and Christa Egeris who leads that organization on an organizing program specifically around the issue of medical marijuana that I raised earlier. So Christa is doing a statewide town hall. You'll see all the way across the state all the way from Lincoln to Scott's bluff talking about basically the impact of these elected officials interfering with the will of the voters on that issue. And she's specifically recruiting people who have signed the petition or who collected signatures to then inform that audience. And we know that these are people who are usually not quite as likely voters. So if we can turn them out on the basis of their dislike of Brickets, that we can add to the electorate in that way, which is going to be really beneficial. And we also are going to have a second component of our organizing program that's going to be informed by our research into what are the most salient issues when it comes to key regards. So components of that might look like storytellers or other validators who can speak to how specific issues impact them, their families, their communities. We'll have earned media events. So I saw this great earned media accountability in another state recently where it was a giant inflatable golden calf that someone brought in to demonstrate someone's corruption and prioritizing the ultra wealthy. So that's the type of big earned media thing that we would do to try to capture some like local TV coverage and things like that. Bird dogging is another thing that you may or may not be familiar with. It's essentially just bordering an elected official at one of their events, taking video of it, trying to boost that on social media, or trying to get a traditional media to observe that interaction and then boost it through their channels. So that can be an effective method as well. And then op-eds, other traditional ways of getting earned media. And when I say that we're going to be driven by the most salient issues, what that could look like is if we find out that Ricketts votes to undermine people's access to healthcare is one of the most effective messages, then we will recruit healthcare storytellers, people who are personally impacted by not being able to access Medicaid or who have other health issues that are implicated by Ricketts votes. If we find out that tariffs are one of the most important issues, maybe we will have farmers and ranchers speaking about that issue. So we're going to try to be very targeted about the way that we do this. I also want to talk a little bit about the actual vehicles that we're using for the program. And by vehicles, I mean like what are the entities that we're using for the program? So Jim already talked about this a little bit. We're fundraising now into the Nebraska donor alliance. And so for the program that I'm talking about specifically, the Nebraska donor alliance is a 501c4 organization. There's also another 501c3 organization that we're raising funds into for that component, that program. And then there will be another program, there will be another entity that actually runs the ads. So that will be the paid for by line. That won't be Nebraska donor alliance, but they'll be getting the funds from Nebraska donor alliance into these new entities. And so that'll be called the Better Nebraska. And then in terms of timeline, right now initial polling draft is happening. We are completing some research on Senator Ricketts right now that really goes into depth on what are investments that Ricketts has done into companies that may be really unpopular with Nebraska's examples of things like that that are a little less obvious, but things we really want to know to be able to persuade Nebraska's. In March, we'll be recruiting those grassroots organizers and doing creative production for the TV and digital and mail. April to May looks like early paid media. And then April through August, the grassroots organizers will be on the ground, executing these earned media and grassroots tactics. And then in June, we'll be basically reloading