Spurred by the 2016 presidential election and subsequent, record-breaking protests against the new administration, a flood of first-time candidates across the nation—primarily women—are readying themselves to run for office “on local ballots, from school boards to town councils to state legislatures”:
Emily’s List, the national organization dedicated to advancing Democratic women in politics, has been contacted by more than 10,000 women saying they were going to run for local and state office in the four months since Election Day. In the two years leading up to the 2016 election, when the presidential election cycle was at its apex, the group said it had received less than 1,000 contacts. Emily’s List has tripled the resources devoted to state and local races to help meet the demand.
“What we’re seeing is not just in New Jersey but it’s happening all around the country,” said Debbie Walsh, the director at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “Women are looking for a way to have a voice. They’re feeling that in ways that we haven’t seen the general public experience, the real understanding that elections have consequences.”
Many of these candidates credit the Women’s March on Washington—the largest, single-day demonstration in U.S. history—for the inspiration. “It was the ride down on the New Jersey Turnpike, on a bus, watching all the buses heading to D.C.,” said Lacey Rzeszowski, who is “squaring off in a tough race against a local Republican for a seat in the New Jersey Assembly,” according to the Times. Programs helping other women who want to run for local office are seeing similar bursts of enrollees, donations, and energy.
Here at the “Ready to Run” program at Rutgers University — an annual event that features classes, conferences and training for women who want to run for office but are unsure of the next steps — attendance has climbed by nearly 300 percent compared to past averages, according to the event organizers.
Since Ready to Run, a national, nonpartisan training program, was founded 18 years ago, sister programs have popped up around the country, from Ohio State University to Oklahoma University to Chatham University in Pittsburgh. And at each event this year, attendance is soaring past previous records, often selling out for the first time in its history. New programs have popped up this year in Delaware, Mississippi and Connecticut.
ActBlue, the Democratic fund-raising software, has seen its users, who can be local or state or federal candidates and groups, raise $76 million in small dollar fund-raising since the election. In the same time frame in 2015, its users took in $16 million.
The interest, and the intent to actually take the big step and run for office, is so overwhelming that new groups are popping up across the country with the sole purpose of getting first-time candidates ready. Run for Something, a national group started after the election to recruit and train Democratic candidates, initially expected 100 or so to show interest. More than 7,500 have since put a hand up.
In Utah’s
3rd Congressional District,
first-time candidate Kathryn Allen saw a surge in donations and interest following her opponent Jason Chaffetz’s stupid claim that Americans may have to choose between health care and iPhones. “It’s only March, but it’s my interpretation that it’s more of a democratic surge in Utah because women don’t feel represented,” said a “Ready to Run” organizer in the state.
“I’ve had a few women email me and invite me just to come into their living rooms and say, ‘Teach us how to do this,’” said another program organizer in Connecticut. “They say ‘Hey, I’ll pay you, just come teach us how to run.’ And I’ve never seen this before.”