RFS feel-good update (4/17): Our 2023 strategic plan!
It's here, it's comprehensive, it's inspiring - dig in.
Hi all -
It’s here! Our 2023 strategic plan!
For those of you who’ve been around a while, you know: We put out a public strategic plan every single year — in it, we debrief what we did the year past, what we’ve learned, and what’s next. Transparency is a core value for us; putting out this plan is one way we live that out.
Here’s the TL;DR of what you’ll read: 2023 is not an off-year! There are more elections in this year than in 2022. We’ll be endorsing 650 candidates, recruiting tens of thousands, piloting awesome programs, and refining our pipeline & alumni community work (among many other things.)
In 2022, quick recap:
We endorsed 690 candidates (and another 20 for 2023 elections) - of those, 52% identified as women, 50% as candidates of color, and 27% as LGBTQIA+. 490 made it to the November elections and 259 won, an amazing 53% election day win rate, our best yet.
Last year was also our best recruitment year yet, with nearly 38k young people signing up to run — the biggest moments happened around the Dobbs decision.
Our volunteer network grew by 1,500+ people. One volunteer explained why she does it:
“For years I’ve felt Democrats need to put more energy into down ballot races throughout the country. When I heard about RFS, and learned they needed volunteers to speak with candidates, I knew it was something I wanted to do. It often feels like a dark time now but I have hope when I talk to optimistic young people who want to improve their communities.”We debriefed with our 2021+2022 candidates, learning some really interesting things about their campaign budgets, staff sizes, and what was most helpful.
We launched Clerk Work, our ambitious program to save democracy from the ground up. In 2022, we helped recruit 233 clerk candidates across 17 states; we gave out 32 Democracy Defender designations. Of those 32, 20 won, 10 of those winners were against election deniers. Yikes/great.
We also re-organized internally, a hard and scary process, but all in service of preparing ourselves to grow. That included a ton of hiring (literally: the staff nearly doubled in size while I was on maternity leave!). We’re now more than half people of color, more than half women, and located across 18 states + counting.
In 2023, we’re already hard at work:
We’ve endorsed 143 candidates so far, on our way to our ultimate goal of a record odd-year number of 650.
We’re continuing to prioritize endorsements for local elections - city councils, school boards, election officials, library boards, and the like.
We’re sustaining and deepening our relationships with 400+ state and local organizations, building on our network of 200+ state and local leads who give us on-the-ground intel, and hope to collectively host 100+ joint recruitment events.
We’re piloting some very cool programs including (1) training folks in Northwest Arkansas on how to recruit people to run and (2) working with partners in PA specifically around school boards.
We’ve already completed some Clerk Work cycles, including our recruitment program in Wisconsin, where a ton of layered tactics (including nearly 100k+ calls and text messages sent in just a few weeks) yielded 118 candidates filing, 50% of whom went on to win — 16 of those winners were against insurrectionists.
Our staff continues to grow across all our teams to do & support all this work! Can’t stop won’t stop.
Our budget this year is $17.8 million. That's ambitious! It's also necessary. As the right loses power nationally & gains power locally, this work has never been more important.
A lot of folks will be all-in on holding the White House in 2024 -- and don't get me wrong, that's important — but it's also not enough.
We have to win the small races, and win them everywhere, in order to build sustainable power and meaningfully make people's lives better.
If you have any questions at all about this plan or want to chat more, just reply to this email. Here to help.
Do you need some hope?
The week surrounding the protests and ultimate expulsion of two young Black leaders in the Tennessee state house yielded our biggest candidate recruitment period of the year, and the biggest since the Dobbs decision last year.
Even more thrilling: Nearly 10% of the candidates were coming to us from Tennessee specifically. Half were from red states. Of those who told us their age, 21% were born after 1995.
This matters. As the NYT explains: in 2022, 60 of the 99 state house races in Tennessee went uncontested.
The Daily Beast explains how the broader progressive response to this moment should give us hope that we’re correcting for past mistakes.
The 19th explains how this is just the beginning of what needs to be sustained investment in Tennessee and states like it.
And reporter Rachel Janfaza dug in on the generaitonal aspect of this: Young people aren’t waiting to be given permission to lead.
The proof is in the pudding, so to speak: RFS alum we’ve elected are leading the fight forward.
The reactionary turn underway in many red states is beginning to shape a new generation of young Democratic officials, many of whom will one day be the party’s leaders.
In these red states, young Democrats are entering local politics and developing public presences in response to the far-right culture-warring unleashed by GOP majorities. New restrictions on abortion and the growing right-wing backlash to LGBTQ rights are radicalizing a wave of Democratic public servants who mostly hail from the Gen Z and millennial generations.
“We’re seeing this across the country,” said Amanda Litman, a co-founder of Run For Something, which recruits progressive candidates for state and local office. “It’s no coincidence that some of the loudest voices pushing back are young leaders in red states, often from urban environments, often people of color, often LGBTQ themselves.”
Last week, after the GOP-controlled state legislature in Tennessee expelled two young Black lawmakers for protesting gun violence, and after a Texas judge invalidated federal approval of abortion medication, Run For Something’s candidate recruitment spiked. Litman says more than half the new candidates are from red states.
What binds these lawmakers and candidates together is an acute sense that the character of the country is on the line and it could determine their own futures. “For them, every part of this conversation is personal,” Litman says.
The present feels a little bleak but the future is bright!
A quick reminder of why Clerk Work matters: “The threat to democracy has gone local.”
… [T]hough it has receded from the headlines, election denialism has not died. It has just gone down ballot.
In some state and local offices across the country, election denialism is still recasting how elections are conducted, in ways big and small.
With far less effort than it would take on a national level, Republican officials are gumming up the mechanics of local election administration, making it harder to cast a vote, harder to tally votes and harder to get results in a timely fashion. Officials are policing elections, establishing task forces and election police units that are supposedly there to root out fraud but could have the effect of intimidating voters from exercising their civic right.
Every little bit of friction that’s added to the election process makes it that much harder for it to function. Through the typical channels of government bureaucracy and under the pretense of merely asking questions, these conspiracy-theory-influenced Republicans are often creating this friction for their own voters. Their actions might seem like inconsequential outliers, but it’s there at this grass-roots level that our voting system is most vulnerable. Which means these obscure election boards aren’t where denialism goes to die; it’s where it takes root and starts to grow.
In more uplifting RFS community updates:
CO Rep. David Ortiz, who uses a wheelchair after being injured in combat serving in the military, successfully sponsored legislation helping people with disabilities who are discriminated against in public spaces. One Republican colleague pushed back, “likening people with disabilities to people who get hurt during the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.” Yikes.
FL Democrats are using every possible tactic to delay a six-week abortion ban (which practically amounts to a full ban on abortions) — Rep. Anna Eskamani added amendments that would call it a “Forced Pregnancy Act” and would require anyone denied an abortion to be provided with the list of the names of lawmakers who voted for it along with the name of the governor who signed it.
MN Sen. Zaynab Mohamed is leading on legislation to improve the reporting and tracking of bias incidents, allowing trusted community groups to collect info from people who might not feel comfortable talking the police and therefore leave things unreported. For her, this is personal: When Zaynab worked at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, she and a colleague once found a pile of car tires soaked in gasoline outside their office, ready to set it all on fire.
Reps. Ian Mackey and Keri Ingle, along with other RFS alum in the chamber including Ashley Aune and Emily Weber, are pushing back on dangerous legislation that would hurt trans kids.
Carlsbad City Councilmember Priya Bhat-Patel is helping bring young people into local government.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee has made addressing pollution a top priority for his office — they’re taking legal action on issues from petrochemical emissions to toxic contamination to the impacts of a major highway expansion. They’re being creative about how they can check the oil & gas industry.
NE Sen. John Frederickson, the first-ever openly gay person to serve in the legislature, speaks out on the state’s proposed legislation to ban gender-affirming care for minors.
GA Sen. Nabilah Islam is sponsoring legislation to make pads, tampons, and other period supplies exempt from sales tax.
IL Sen. Rachel Ventura is leading on legislation that would ensure the smell of pot in someone’s car can’t be used solely as probable cause for searching the vehicle.
TX Rep. James Talarico’s bill lowering the cost of prescription drugs in Texas passed through the state house, which will help the 42% of Texans who skip or ration doses of their medication due to high costs.
Ronnie Mosley officially won his race and will be the youngest member of the Chicago City Council. Huge!
NY Sen. Michelle Hinchey makes a powerful argument for funding free healthy school meals for every NY student.
AAPI history is barely covered in Wisconsin schools - Rep. Francesca Hong, the state’s first Asian American legislator, is hoping to bring important light to this and find ways to fix it.
NV Assemblywoman Selena Torres is moving forward on legislation to protect Nevadans’ right to contraception.
Colorado has passed Rep. Brianna Titone’s legislation making it the first state with farmers’ right to repair their own equipment — a huge deal for the industry in the state.
NM Rep. Andrea Romero’s legislation allowing young immigrants to seek lawful residence in the state so they can’t be forced into harm’s way has been signed into law.
UT Sen. Nate Blouin explains with all the facts how a set of recent gun laws passed in the state could actually increase gun violence.
Minority Leader Rep. Fentrice Driskell was awarded EMILY’s List Rising Star Award - we love to see our alum shine!
Some related reading:
A terrifying but important overview of all the ways the right is defunding public libraries.
The NYT columnist Thomas Edsall has a compelling column on how the GOP has been planning and building for this multi-pronged multi-issue assault for decades. They didn’t do this overnight, and we’re not going to win overnight.
Save the date: We’re partnering with the Asian American Power Network to host See Yourself Running: Asian American Candidates — a free conversation for Asian Americans thinking about running for office. Three RFS alum will talk about their experiences, answer questions, and inspire folks to step up themselves.
Thanks for making all this possible. We’re so lucky to have you as part of this team, and so excited for the work to come.
- Amanda
Incredible work by your organization.