COLUMBUS — In an election year where traditional campaign tactics are reportedly losing their impact, a progressive group with roots in Northeast Ohio is betting on a personal touch. Red, Wine & Blue, a national organization, is asking thousands of women to leverage their existing relationships to encourage voting and political engagement, a strategy known as relational organizing.
According to Katie Paris, founder of Red, Wine & Blue, voters are bombarded by campaign messages from various sources, but these tactics are losing their punch. Texts get deleted, unknown numbers are screened, mailers go straight to the trash, and doorbell cameras allow people to screen visitors without leaving their homes. Paris noted that a casual message from someone already saved in a person's phone feels "completely different" from the constant flow of messages and advertisements "screaming in your face."
Democratic groups have tested relational organizing for years, a method Republicans have not widely adopted. However, the Center for Campaign Innovation, a research group on the political right, studied the approach in March 2025 and concluded that "Conservative campaigns that continue to ignore this powerful tool do so at their competitive peril." In Ohio, Democrats view this strategy as an opportunity to gain an advantage.
Ohio politics have been dominated by Republicans for the past two decades, and President Donald Trump won Ohio by 11 percentage points in 2024, according to the source material. However, concerns about the economy, inflation, and fuel prices have led to a plummet in Trump’s approval rating. Polling for Ohio's governor and U.S. Senate races has shown extremely tight contests, leading Red, Wine & Blue to believe that the voters who will decide these races are within people's existing phone contacts.
Katie Paris's journey to building Red, Wine & Blue began after the 2012 election, when she moved to the Cleveland area with her husband and sought work closer to home after years in Washington politics. After the 2018 election, Paris felt a strong desire to act locally, expressing "mama bear energy." She started visiting communities across Ohio, meeting with small groups of suburban women who had begun organizing after the 2016 election. These women often shared a similar sentiment, telling Paris they felt "really alone" and regretted not doing more than just voting.
Paris realized she could help by "helping them to be helpful," responding to their impulse to get involved. This became the model for Red, Wine & Blue: providing women with ways to get involved, connecting them with others, and making actions feel manageable. Paris stated that having hope is a choice, and taking action within a community fosters that hope.
The group built a resource library offering training on requesting public records or speaking at school board meetings, hosting Zoom calls on topics like data centers, reproductive rights, and immigration, and organizing fundraisers for local causes. The network expanded naturally, with women inviting their friends to participate. Today, Red, Wine & Blue operates more than 800 local groups across all 50 states, with approximately 65 groups located in Ohio.
At election time, Red, Wine & Blue activates these relationships, asking members to engage their friends, relatives, and neighbors in conversations about voting. TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, tracked the outcomes of this strategy. CEO Liz Walters reported that nationally, turnout for individuals contacted by Red, Wine & Blue was 2.5 to 4 percentage points higher than a comparison group of similar voters the organization didn't reach. Among suburban women, this increase was even more significant, ranging from 5.5 to 6 points, with the effect holding across various demographic lines.
The largest turnout gap occurred in 2023, when Ohioans voted on abortion rights and recreational marijuana. Turnout among people contacted by Red, Wine & Blue was 10.1 points higher than the comparison group. Paris attributed this partly to the quieter nature of an off-year election, which allowed the group's message to stand out. Abortion rights also garnered crossover support, with women backing the amendment 60% to 40%, along with 64% of independents and 18% of Republicans. This crossover support was significant because about 20% of Red, Wine & Blue’s contacts that year were Republicans or unaffiliated voters.
Looking ahead to 2026, Red, Wine & Blue plans to scale its personal conversation program further. The group is targeting 350 races nationally, including 62 in Ohio, which encompass five congressional races, dozens of state and local contests, and 67 school levies. Paris stated their goal is to have 20,000 women reach out to at least 20 friends, relatives, neighbors, or coworkers about voting, aiming to contact at least 400,000 voters. Paris emphasized, "That’s where our leverage is."
Not all political groups are adopting this strategy. Donovan O’Neil, Director for Americans for Prosperity-Ohio, stated that his organization is "not doing relational text messaging as part of our strategy." Instead, AFP uses voter data to identify target individuals, reinforcing its door-to-door conversations with mail and digital advertising. AFP identified approximately 2 million Ohio voters in 1.5 million households at the start of the current campaign, with a goal to knock on 1 million doors and a stretch goal of 1.5 million. O’Neil believes that "face-to-face conversations, in an environment where people are bombarded with messaging efforts, just work better," adding that "The doors are the key for that impact." While Walters of TargetSmart agreed that door conversations remain effective, she noted, "The problem is people aren’t answering their doors."
For Paris, relational organizing through texting offers a way for Ohio Democrats to compete against a better-funded Republican political operation without requiring the extensive money and manpower needed for widespread door-knocking. The key question now is whether thousands of friendly text conversations can meaningfully impact outcomes in a state where Republicans have been dominant and voters chose Trump in three straight presidential elections, including his 2024 Ohio win.
