Hello,

 

My name is Haroon Atcha and a few days ago I had the privilege of being elected Chair of this organization alongside Jennifer Zordani and Ilse Messner who were elected Vice-Chair and Treasurer respectively. We’d like to take a moment to communicate our priorities as well as what we hope to accomplish with your help in the coming months.

 

But first, we’d like to take a moment to recognize our immediate predecessors: Ken Mejia-Beal, Kim Savage and Steve Seimer who served as Chair, Vice-Chair and Treasurer respectively. We thank them for their service and commitment to the Democratic Party.

 

With roughly six months until election day, our top priority is to build DPDC’s electioneering capacity. While we are lucky to have efficient and vibrant township parties, we believe an expanded and vigorous county party can play an important role as well. With more consistent fundraising, the county party can better assist our townships, PC’s and candidates organize and win races.

 

To that end, we’ll be focusing on three important short-term goals in the next two months.

 

Hire an Executive Director. The Executive Director fills a critically important role and DPDC has functioned without one for several months. We intend to update the job description of the Executive Director role, conduct an extensive search and hire a new Executive Director by June 1st.

 

Kick-off a recurring donor program. Our ability to materially contribute to Democrats’ success in November will require us to intensify our fundraising efforts. We believe a recurring donor program which targets strong democrats in DuPage County is a good place to start.

 

Reconnect with civic groups. As a brand new leadership team, we believe it’s important to maintain good relationships with new and existing civic partners. This includes elected officials, candidates, organized labor, religious organizations, advocacy groups and others. Partnerships make everyone’s work easy and we intend to be good partners to our local civic organizations.

 

These are important goals and meeting them will require work. We’re ready to put in the necessary effort but we need your help to get them done. If you have an interest in any of the above, or a general desire to help build the future of DPDC, please reach out to chair@dupagedemocrats.com. 

 

We’re excited to start this work with you. We hope you are too.

 

Sincerely,

 

Haroon Atcha

Jennifer Zordani

Ilse Messner