Red Wine and Blue
Launched in 2019 in Ohio, Red Wine and Blue (RWB) has become a national leader in suburban organizing. It was founded with a goal of engaging women to get more politically engaged and organize them into a potent force to combat right-wing extremism and help elect Democrats. Its work in suburban areas in five states includes trainings, organized political conversations with neighbors, voter mobilization and advocacy campaigns on issues like book bans, gun violence and reproductive rights.
Why This Work is Important
Republican culture war attacks require a response. What started as clickbait hand-wringing about critical race theory and gender-neutral bathrooms from conservatives has turned into a coordinated attack on school districts around the country, including book bans, restrictions on curriculum, and attacks on protections for LGBTQ youth. Suburban communities are a key arena for this culture war assault, led by Moms for Liberty and other groups, and have helped to fuel GOP electoral gains in some places, such as Virginia in 2021. It’s essential that progressive donors invest in countering these attacks.
Democrats can make larger gains among suburban women. Many progressive women were shocked and spurred to action after seeing how many white women voted for Trump in 2016, including Red Wine and Blue founder Katie Paris. But since then, white women — especially those with a college degree — have shifted left, increasing their vote share for Democrats in 2018, 2020 and 2022, as part of a larger swing of suburban voters away from a MAGA-dominated GOP. With continued organizing on the ground to keep women engaged, this trend can continue and could be especially crucial for improving Democratic performance in competitive U.S. House and state legislative districts, which are often in suburban areas.
Why Donors Should Consider Red Wine and Blue
RWB is engaging an important group at a key moment. Of the many organizing groups that sprouted up in the Trump era, RWB takes a unique approach to engage women voters. Through conversations over wine and prioritizing issues important to both families and progressives, the group seeks to activate women who weren’t previously political, growing its membership numbers to over 300,000. Suburban women are an increasingly important voting bloc for Democrats, and RWB is one of the few national groups working creatively to engage these women and mobilize them to vote Democratic, cycle after cycle.
RWB is highly strategic in how it approaches its work and focuses its resources. To engage suburban women politically and expand the Democratic coalition, RWB mainly operates in mostly white purple areas where a large share of voters have college degrees and incomes over $50,000. It relies heavily on a relational organizing model and in training people to organize in their own communities. It takes a long-term approach to its work, working to build the deep ties and trust that are an important precondition to effective voter mobilization at election time. But it’s also very focused on urgent political battles. For example, its Freedom to Parent project, a direct response to Moms for Liberty, hosts trainings to combat disinformation from the right and offers ways volunteers can engage other parents in productive conversation.
RWB is focused on persuading white voters to become better allies. Suburban families are not as white today as the stereotype might evoke, but they’re still less diverse than the cities. RWB actively works to support marginalized groups like LGBTQ youth and people of color, resisting the right’s attacks on teaching America’s history of racism and oppression.
Conclusion
Red Wine and Blue has created a valuable network that engages women politically and takes a sophisticated approach to countering right-wing extremism and expanding the Democratic coalition through persuasion efforts. Recent election cycles at both the local and national levels have demonstrated the power of winning the suburbs, and RWB is laser-focused on building progressive power in these key areas.