SAM (The Serve America Movement) has announced that former Congressman and current NBC News & MSNBC Political Contributor David Jolly has joined the organization and will take over as its Executive Chairman. Founded in 2016, SAM was established to advance greater competition and accountability in state and national politics, and to build cross-partisan consensus around common sense public policy.
“I’m very pleased to be joining the SAM team. We are Democrats, Republicans, and independents, some current and some former, who are committed to working together to change today’s politics by focusing on greater competition, accountability, and transparency,” said Jolly. “In some states and some races that means we may challenge the two major parties by running a candidate under the SAM party, but in others we may look to endorse a candidate from another party who reflects SAM’s principles.”
As Chairman, Jolly’s focus will be to help SAM expand its reach nationally and build on the organization’s momentum from the 2018 cycle.
- In 2018, SAM became 1 of only 8 official parties recognized by the State of New York after getting more than 50,000 votes for its nominee for Governor. SAM used its ballot line to run over 100 candidates in 2019, with 51 of those candidates winning their elections to offices in 21 counties across New York.
- In Connecticut, the SAM CT Task Force is headed by 2018 unaffiliated Gubernatorial candidate Oz Griebel (a former Republican) and his unaffiliated running mate Monte Frank (a former Democrat). SAM’s CT Task Force is currently working to reform Connecticut’s electoral system by opening the state’s closed primaries to all voters and establishing term limits for statewide offices.
- Nationally, SAM has an extensive democracy reform agenda, supporting initiatives to eliminate partisan gerrymandering, end public financing of closed partisan primaries, advance ranked choice voting, and expand vote by mail and vote from home for all registered voters.
“Today’s democracy has left many voters without a voice and has left all Americans with a government unprepared for our nation’s greatest challenges, including the current COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout. COVID-19 is a whole of government failure – a tragedy not of missed intelligence, but a tragedy of missed opportunity by an ill-prepared executive and a distracted Congress. We deserve better government and better leaders. I believe SAM can help fill that gap.”
SAM is based in Denver, Colorado with operations throughout the country.