Dear Fellow Change For Missouri/DFA Activists

Let me take this chance to thank you all personally for voting to endorse my campaign and inviting me to blog here. I'm thrilled about where my race is going. Our candidacy is starting to generate some serious buzz. The Post-Dispatch unofficially kicked off home stretch of the campaign by writing a great survey article about the race so far. Yours and Governor Dean's endorsement was prominently mentioned. Yesterday the pundits of St. Louis On The Air discussed the race and they mentioned your endorsement. However, they expressed some doubt about both how much help Change For Missouri would really offer my campaign and how much "shoe leather" would help any individual candidate. I can think of no greater way of demonstrating the power of the grassroots than to prove them wrong exactly two months from today on August 3rd.

Governor Dean didn't just run for President. He began a movement. His candidacy inspired like minded progressives from every walk of life and brought them together under a common cause of change for the better. We can take Governor Dean's movement one of two ways. We can prove the pundits and doubters right and disappear as a movement or we can commit to a lifetime of progressive advocacy and take our country back one school board seat, one state rep seat, and one Congressional seat at a time. I say we prove that out of Governor Dean's defeat in the Presidential primary a movement was born that put progressivism back into prominence. And we do that one way: hard work. It'll be one phone call, one door knock, and one voter at a time. It's up to us. As for me I don't want to let Governor Dean down. But I can't do it without you. As with Governor Dean's campaign, this race is about you. A candidate without an organization is an empty slogan. But a movement fronted by a candidate is a force to be reckoned with. Let's take out country back for true progressives and start with St. Louis. I look forward to your help.

But I need more than just volunteers to do the legwork, I need active campaigners who have ideas, creativity and initiative. My campaign staff and I are committing ourselves to maintaining a conversation on the Change for Missouri blog and my blog at JeffSmith2004.com We need every good idea you have and we'll do what we can to empower you to take this campaign to your friends and neighbors. You tell us what you need and we'll do our best to meet that need. Are we screwing up? Tell us. Are we missing an opportunity? Tell us. Are we doing a good job? We like to hear that too.

Jeff Smith