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John --
Imagine
you want to run for office. (Please, actually imagine it - and shoot
us an email if you decide you want to!) But you just can’t stand the
thought of running as a Republican or Democrat. Or you
can’t run in either party, because they’ve already
hand-picked their candidate of choice. Or, like most Americans, you
have a mix of views from across the political spectrum, and you don’t
pass their litmus tests.
What do
you do now?
Well, if
you were running as a member of a legacy party, you would reach out to
your state or county chair, and they would walk you through it
all.
If you’re
an independent, you’re on your own.
Immediately, you’re faced with a huge list of questions and few
ways to answer them:
- For
which office should I run?
- How do I
file?
- Do I
need signatures? How many? By when?
- How do I
set up a website?
- What do
I use to get donations?
- How do I
build a volunteer base?
- What
legal requirements do I have to follow?
- What
software do I use to organize my volunteers?
- How do I
figure out what key issues I should run on are?
- Are
there debates? How do I get included in them?
This is
just a small subset of the questions you might have, and the answer
will likely lead you to even more questions! For instance, the two
biggest donation processors out there - ActBlue and WinRed - likely
won’t work with you, since you’re running as an
independent.
You’ll
also find that there are very few people out there with campaign
experience you can hire, as working with an Independent is a surefire
way for a campaign professional to get blacklisted by the legacy
parties.
Moving
past that, the legacy parties have aggregated data from hundreds of
thousands of campaigns, representing millions of hours of volunteer
work making calls, sending texts, and knocking on doors. Candidates
running outside of these parties start with, at best, a voter file
from the state, and maybe some purchased data from an organization
that’ll sell to independents.
All of
these hurdles make it so most people don’t even bother
throwing their hat in the ring (let alone knowing the attacks
they’re likely to face if they gain traction). Those that do file to
run quickly feel overwhelmed, often effectively dropping out of the
race. And those that fight through election day rarely end up winning.
Even if they do, the infrastructure they built and the data they
accumulated doesn’t go anywhere to help the next round of independent
candidates.
This problem is what Forward is working to
fix.
We’re
creating training sessions for people interested in running. We’re
building systems they can use, and volunteer and donor bases they can
appeal to. We’re creating databases to store information about
independent voters that persists between election cycles. We’re
ensuring there’s a market out there for campaign professionals to make
a living working with independent candidates.
We’re not
freezing people out based on increasingly narrow policy platforms or
litmus tests. Rather, we ask our candidates to pledge to live up to
our values, largely around protecting our democracy, listening to
their constituents, and acting with ethics and compassion.
This
approach shouldn’t be radical; it should be table stakes for anyone or
any party wanting people to vote for them.
But, in
2024, it isn’t, so we’re building it.
Thank you
for joining us. We’re looking forward to taking huge steps forward
with you in 2025,
Lindsey Williams Drath,
CEO
Matt Shinners, CSOO
https://home.forwardparty.com/
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