RFS feel-good update (11/6): What happened & what's next

Hi all -

This election was gutting. Four more years of a Trump presidency seems crushing — exhausting, terrifying, numbing, all of the above and then some. People will suffer. This will be hard.

I say this to myself as much as to you: It is okay — good, even — to have been hopeful yesterday, even as we are devastated today. Optimism is never foolish. Working in politics depends on it: To get up and do the work, we have to believe change is possible.

The point of this email, which some of you have been getting for nearly 8 years, is to provide some news to make you feel good, in spite of the darkness, and to give you hope when all feels lost. While that feels nearly impossible today, somehow I do have some bright spots to share.

Even in all the losses, the Run for Something community notched some deeply meaningful wins. We had 444 candidates up — while results are still coming in for hundreds of those races, we have dozens of winners so far that we can look to for hope.

• Adam Moore flipped an open Kentucky state house seat, beating an extreme GOP candidate.

• Matt Blake, a veteran and attorney, flipped an Iowa state senate seat against a Republican incumbent in one of the most expensive state legislative races in the state — Blake’s opponent, among other things, voted for the state’s six week abortion ban.

• Dante Pittman flipped a state house seat in North Carolina, breaking the GOP’s supermajority and ensuring Republicans can’t overturn the Democratic governor’s veto. This is critical.

• Bryce Berry won his seat in the GA state house — at 23 years old, he’s one of the first gen Z members of the chamber and brings his experience as a public school teacher with him.

• Emma Curtis won her race for Urban County Council in Lexington, KY — she’ll be only the second openly trans person elected in the state of Kentucky. She campaigned avidly on road safety and housing; she’ll be one of only two renters on the council.

• In Maryland, Natalie Zimmerman won a seat on the Montgomery County school board, beating an extremist opponent.

• The RFS caucus in Congress is growing: Suhas Subramanyam in VA, Yassamin Ansari in AZ, and Sarah McBride in Delaware all officially won their elections; Sarah made history as the first trans member of Congress.

There will be more wins to share in the weeks to come as all votes are counted -- wins that were only possible because of the work of this community.

These leaders and the 1000+ you’ve helped elect over the last eight years will be on the frontlines of protecting our rights and our democracy across the country.

In a second Trump presidency, we will need strong state and local leadership more than ever.

The fight is once again returning to cities, counties, and states.

We will need principled school board members willing to protect public education. We will require strong municipal leaders who will fight for their communities in the face of an adversarial federal government. State legislators will be asked to do it all — protect the right to vote, expand access to abortion care where they can, advance climate legislation and more. 

In the short term, our work with state and local leaders will be instrumental to stopping Trump and the MAGA federal government from the absolute worst they can do. We’ll need to mitigate harm in the red states and fight for progress in the blue ones.

2025 is not an off-year. We are already recruiting candidates for school board and municipal elections — the Wisconsin filing deadline is right around the corner — and we’ll keep building a pipeline for the 2026 midterms.

Long-term, we are doing the hard but necessary work of rebuilding the party from the ground up. We have to keep filling our bench and make sure our candidates can win at every level, in every kind of community.

When you are ready, we will need you with us — as a potential candidate, a sustaining donor, a loud cheerleader, or however else you can get involved.

Once again, the present is bleak. Ever the optimist, I believe that if we are willing to fight for it, the future — even if it’s the far-away future — can be bright.

Is that cope? Maybe. But I spent election night with my newborn daughter in my arms, knowing that for her, for my toddler, and for everyone’s kids, we have no choice but to make it true.

Thanks for being part of this community.

- Amanda