You should run for office in your 20s. This group wants to help.

Amanda Litman started her political career working on big-ticket Democratic campaigns. She fundraised for Barack Obama in 2012, served as the digital director for Charlie Crist’s campaign to unseat Florida Governor Rick Scott in 2014 and ran the email operation for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016.

When Clinton lost in 2016, Litman was devastated and confused about her career: Who should she work for? What was the best way to affect change? A week later, an old friend called her to say he was looking to run for office. He was a public school teacher and frustrated about budget cuts. He knew she worked in politics. Where should he go?

“At the time, if you were young, excited about politics and wanted to do more than volunteer and vote, there was no one who would take your call,” Litman says.

On Trump’s inauguration day, she and her cofounder Ross Morales Rocketto launched Run For Something, an organization dedicated to recruiting and supporting progressive candidates under 40 to run for down-ballot races — everything from school board to city council to state senate. One thousand people signed up on the first day. By the end of 2021, Run For Something had recruited 90,000 people to consider running for office, run over 1800 candidates and gotten over 600 young progressives elected.

“I got into campaigns because I believed that if you got good people into government, good things could happen,” says Litman. “I believe that more than ever now.”

Why are local elections so important? 

There are more than half a million elected offices in the United States. Most of them are not Congress or the governor. They’re what you call “down-ballot elections: state house, state senate, city council, school board, library board, coroner, American River Flood Control District, community college board, board of regents, boards of education — these roles are the building blocks of our democracy. People in these positions decide our curriculum, how clean our water is, how easy our streets are to drive on and how accessible public transit is. They make decisions on things as big as health care access, criminal justice reform and the legalization of drugs in any given state. And things as small as how easy it is to get a license for an outdoor cafe or restaurant. All of this is stuff that directly affects our quality of life.

There’s an expression, “the lower on the ballot, the closer to home.” The closer to your life. I think that’s beautiful and really true. Whether you're a candidate, a voter, a volunteer, a donor, an activist or whatever your role is in this ecosystem of local politics, you live the impact. When you show up at a city council meeting one week, and a year later, you walk down the sidewalk you helped get built or go to the community health center that you pushed for funding for, it is so personal and so empowering.

Why do you think local politics are so absent from the conversation? A lot of us don’t know how our towns and cities are even run. 

Part of it is the structure of the media. In many towns, there isn't a local paper anymore, so it’s hard to know what’s going on in your community. For young people, it just feels abstract. Paying attention to the president, Congress and the Supreme Court — that’s enough stress and chaos for one person. Often, national politics are really demoralizing to pay attention to, so we tune out anything related to politics.

But that's a mistake because, especially for young people, the decisions that local government is making will affect how easy or hard it is for you to get a driver's license, for you to access affordable education. lLike setting in-state tuition, or whether or not DREAMers can access in-state tuition, how well funded community colleges are — those are all state and local government decisions.

People talk about Gen Z as a generation of activists. But there’s also a lot of cynicism, especially around issues like climate change. What would you say to someone who doesn’t believe change can be made through electoral politics? 

It’s a totally legitimate position to start from. But my view is we need to use every possible tool in our toolbox. We need protests, we need activists, we need policy advocacy, we need media, we need a culture shift. Right now, the way we make policy changes is through electing officials who pass legislation or ordinances or write executive orders. For better or worse, it’s imperative that we have people on the inside who are aligned with the way the rest of us on the outside feel and think.

We have seen the impact of progressive leadership. Yesterday, a young leader, Jonathan Grieder, on the Waterloo City Council made Waterloo, Iowa, only the fourth American city to approve a resolution to commit to 24/7 carbon-free electricity in the next 13 years, by 2035. Because of him, Waterloo is only the second city in Iowa and the fourth in the U.S. to make this commitment. What a cool thing to do — what a meaningful action on climate change. Is it a substitute for federal government or corporate behavior? No, but these things add up. We've seen this over and over again, in city councils and school boards and state legislatures across the country, good people can govern for good outcomes. To say that the system is broken, and we can’t try to fix it from the inside is understandable. But it also kind of absolves us of the responsibility to try.

How do people decide what to run for?

We push people to ask three key questions, when thinking about a potential campaign. One, what is the problem you care about solving? What is the thing that gets you out of bed in the morning or keeps you up at night, or that makes you really mad or really happy?

Two, what office will let you solve that issue or take action on it? For most people, that answer is not Congress. Whether you're pissed about abortion or health care or arts funding or traffic, you can think about state house or senate or city council.

Question three, why should voters want you to win? Which is different than why do you want to win? You want to win because winning is great and losing is terrible. But voters want you to win because you are going to make their lives better in a meaningful, tangible, feasible way.

What kinds of issues are motivating young people right now? 

It’s all over the place. Some people are running because of representation, because of housing, because of opioids, health care, veterans issues, voting rights, abortion access, LGBT equality. That's one of the coolest things about working with so many candidates in so many places for so many different types of offices.

You mentioned it can be really lonely and hard. What do you tell someone who’s concerned about being attacked online or doxxed or smeared by Tucker Carlson? 

They're not wrong to be afraid. You've got to do it afraid. You gotta be the person who's afraid of flying and gets on the airplane anyway and holds the hand of the person in the seat next to you. It is a really hard thing. Running for office is not for everyone, which is why you need to be driven by that problem that you want to solve. There are going to be very hard days and demoralizing experiences. You are putting your presence into the public in a way that is really scary. We've had candidates get doxxed. Just last week, we had an alumni get torn to smithereens by Tucker Carlson and far-right-wing trolls.

Community helps. Knowing that it's not about you helps. It’s hard to remember when it’s happening in real time, but this race, this situation, is not about you. It's about change. It's about what you stand for.

What are the biggest challenges young candidates tend to face?

There are a lot of challenges. Nobody will make it easy for you. We're here to make it easier for you, but no one else is going to make it easy. Again, that's why you have to be driven by something bigger than yourself. A lot of our candidates go up against Democratic incumbents or are running a race where the Democratic establishment doesn’t think it’s worth caring about because we can’t win. I think that’s tautological. If we say we can't win, and we don't try, then definitely can’t win, and then we’ll never win. As we think about building long-term, sustainable power, that means competing in far-red places where Democrats haven’t in a long time. It also means competing in deep-blue places, to bring in leaders who are more reflective of the communities they serve and are ready to bring a fresh perspective on everything.

How do you feel about “young people or Gen Z will save us” rhetoric? A lot of people probably say that about your organization. But it feels off, like older people saying they can sit back. 

What gets to me is that older people want young people to save us but on their terms. On the status quo’s terms. That’s one of the things that I have been so inspired by is seeing young leaders, 18-40, who refuse to settle for the existing definition of leadership. Whether that means, you know, twerking through a campaign online or using TikTok to reach voters in a way that no 70-year-old Senate candidate ever could. I've been so inspired by that, by the creativity our candidates bring to governing. It's not that the young people will save us — it’s that we have to let them save us.

If you’re interested in getting involved with Run For Something, you can sign up online to get started. “You don't even need to know what you want to run for, you don't need to know why, you don’t have to be sure of anything except 'I'm interested and willing,’” Litman says.  You can explore what offices are available to you in your district in upcoming election cycles, and if you sign up, you’ll receive an email inviting you to a call with the organization’s staff.

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