The Capitol Riot Pissed Off These People So Much They're Running for Office
Mizeur was hardly the only person having that conversation at her kitchen table in the dark days after Jan. 6, however. The riot and its aftermath have sparked a prodigious boom of would-be candidates for office, from Congress to state legislatures and city councils, largely consisting of liberals channeling their anger and angst over a near-death experience for American democracy into action to try to help it.
Seasoned political operatives say they’ve never seen anything like it. Amanda Litman, a top fundraising aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, founded the nonprofit group Run For Something in 2017 to give first-time candidates for local office the tools they need to launch a campaign.
In the last two months, said Litman, roughly 11,000 people have registered with Run For Something to express an interest in a campaign for public office. “We saw January 2021 turn into our best candidate recruitment month yet since launching on inauguration day in 2017,” she said. Their registration total for the first two months of 2021 matched their total for the entirety of 2018—a midterm election year that saw a surge in participation nationwide.
“To me, that in the first two months of 2021, more than 10,000 young people said, ‘Fuck this, I’m going to run for office,’ is quite telling,” said Litman. “We did not think there’d be such a surge in interest, we thought it’d stay at the same scale we were at in 2020.”
Litman also said there’s been an uptick in interest in running for election administration positions, like county clerks, given the “big lie” of a stolen election that swirled around Jan. 6. “We ask folks, what’s your story,” said Litman, “and we’ve seen a substantial number point to election administration or democracy writ large as an issue.”
While Run For Something assists the thousands of young people now interested in local positions, on the congressional level, a wave of Democrats have emerged to challenge the GOP lawmakers most associated with Trump’s election conspiracies and Jan. 6.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-capitol-riot-pissed-off-these-people-so-much-theyre-running-for-office
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Least I can do to help the new generation of sane enthusiastic folks get involved in saving and strengthening Our Democracy.
It sure beats letting them take to the streets wearing horns and preaching stupidity.
I remember the cons doing this in the 70's, 80's and 90's - getting their young wanna be pols involved by running for dog catcher.
