Welcome back to The Political Spectrum! We are officially one month in since I was laid off from The Independent and decided to start off this newsletter.
Setting out on my own was in many ways the scariest thing I’ve done. Losing my job less than a month before the election punched me in the gut as a total newshound. In truth, it might have been the best blessing to happen to me.
I was burning myself out while working at The Independent and was not able to travel as much for reporting trips despite the inklings of a massive blue wave.
But at probably one of the most terrifying and depressing moments in my life, you stepped up. And I have to especially thank Andrew Donaldson for helping edit some of the first pieces.
With only a month in of starting this newsletter, here are some statistics:
We now have $8,126 of gross annualized revenue. While that’s not enough to make a living and I’ve had to supplement my income with freelancing, this is an incredible amount of money for being one month in.
Of our 458 total subscribers, 135 of them are paid subscribers. That’s a little less than a third. If you are ready to make a commitment to sustain this, please hit the subscribe button below.
We have also had 37 people contribute to the Ko-Fi.
So once again, I am truly grateful for you. I pinch pennies, make sure I find the best travel deals and wisely spend the resources I receive from you. As I said when I started, the readers of this newsletter are my shareholders. This means finding cheap hotels, taking Amtraks or Greyhound buses when need be and only flying when it is cheaper than the alternative.
Thanks to you, the readers, I made trips to the Greensboro, N.C. to cover students at North Carolina A&T State University who cast their ballot early despite being no early voting polling place at their campus. I was able to head to Georgia to cover Barack Obama’s rally with Sen. Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms. And I spent Election Day at North Carolina Central University, another HBCU to cover young Black voters angry about the Supreme Court killing the Voting Rights Act.
All of this reporting turned out to be incredibly important since Black youth voter turnout surged, Georgia ran the table on every statewide race.
And thanks to your contributions, I was able to report out a story about Virginia voters passing a constitutional amendment to restore the right to vote for people with disabilities who are under guardianship as well as formerly incarcerated people. And on Election Night, as the results poured in, we chatted with Mike Madrid about the Latino vote as Democrats cleaned house in Texas, Arizona, Nevada and elsewhere. You, our readers and viewers got to see the live reaction we had when James Talarico had his race called.
So now comes the next step.
In the name of transparency, I will admit I am still applying for other jobs to have a stable source of income. I will continue doing work on the side for freelance gigs. But for now, this will be my main base.
And as a new Congress begins today, I see this as a chance to step up genuine independent reporting accountable only to my readers.
One of the most encouraging moments of this new venture was how many people shared our piece on Virginia’s amendment. It’s a sign that people want to read original disability policy.
But with the exception of my good friend Sara Luterman at The 19th News, there are not that many people covering disability policy as a beat. Joe Shapiro, the author of the seminal book No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, recently took a buyout from NPR. As fewer reporters cover the ongoing developments of disability policy as they are being legislated and discussed, I want to ramp up (no pun intended) disability policy.
Frequently, during my past jobs, I had to put disability policy on the backburner. Under The Political Spectrum, I plan to make it a staple of this newsletter. And the only way to cover it properly is on Capitol Hill, especially as numerous champions of disability rights or candidates who have worked on the policy come to Washington.
That does not mean that I will be scaling back coverage of politics. Far from it. I am a Congress nerd. Rather, this will be an opportunity to cover the topics that others might miss. I still plan to do the same type of observational reporting and analysis on the Hill while also breaking news.
And, with the 2028 presidential campaign beginning soon, I plan to continue traveling around the country and resume the coverage along the lines of what you have read so far. At its core, it will be about talking to voters about what matters most to them in hopes of lawmakers and leaders reading.
In addition, I plan to make some additional goodies for paid subscribers, such as Substack Live chats like we did with Madrid. We will continue doing subscriber mailbags on Friday as well. And hopefully, we can move up to doing live chats with elected officials using the same relationships we’ve built here.
If any of this interests you and you have not already become a paid subscriber, I am humbly asking for you to take that leap to become a paid subscriber. Subscribers will continue to receive these emails so people can know what we do with your attention and your cash.
With that, let’s get to work. I hope you join me in this next chapter.
Your Morning Bam Bam post:
That does it for The Political Spectrum. Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe below.
Way to go Eric! Keep it up!
Sounds more sustainable to concentrate on Capitol Hill and accommodating disabilities in public life.