Faith-Based Organizing: Hillsborough County
In 2016, Dr. Clark directed field operations for a multi-faith community effort to educate voters about the record of the Hillsborough County State Attorney — a 16-year incumbent who had never faced a serious challenge. By organizing across congregations, building trust within communities, and showing up consistently over months of work, the campaign helped elect Andrew Warren by a narrow margin.
It was a reminder that organized communities change outcomes. On the night Donald Trump carried Florida and much of the nation went red, a research-driven, faith-rooted, community-centered campaign unseated a long-entrenched incumbent by fewer than 5,000 votes out of more than 570,000 cast — one of the most stunning local upsets of the election cycle.
By the numbers
Faith communities have always been at the center of social change movements in America — not as bystanders, but as organizers, as truth-tellers, and as the connective tissue that holds communities together when systems fail them. This campaign was built on that tradition. It proved that when research meets relationship, when data meets dignity, and when communities are trusted to act on their own behalf, they win — even on the hardest nights, even against the longest odds.