Message on Candidate Recruitment from Rep. Rusche

Posted on Jul 18, 2011 in call to action

Everyone knows how hard it is to win an election without a candidate.  This has been a big problem for us Democrats over the last few cycles. 90% of winning is showing up.

The Legislative leadership and the IDP staff have been working a plan to try to identify and attract more candidates.  With the help of local party leaders, IDP field workers and community leaders, we intend on discussing who would be a good as a candidate.  We will then contact these people directly, discuss what campaigning and serving means, and inviting their participation as a candidate. For those not interested, we will talk about other ways they can serve their community through citizen boards, campaign activity, or policy advocacy.  Our hope is that by making the effort to reach out and contact these individuals identified by their communities as potentially good elected officials, we will have more good people running.

This effort means that IDP, legislative leaders and local party officials need to work together.  In the case of legislative abdicates, the Legislative district chairman could head this effort.

The redistricting process will change our districts, but it isn’t redistricting that will change our legislature’s make-up.  It is good candidates working hard with their local Democratic organization on a great campaign effort.

This sounds like a lot of work, and it probably will be.  But I do not see any other way to make electoral progress.

John Rusche

Tags: