Saving Democracy From The Bottom Up

Quinn: [00:00:00] What are reverse coattails, and how might they slow climate change, prevent the next pandemic, and keep Nazis off of school boards? That's today's big question, and my returning guest is Amanda Litman. Amanda is one of my favorite people. She is the co-founder and co-executive director of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for down-ballot office, state, and local, and all those fun levels. Since launching in 2017, a thousand years ago, Run for Something has elected more than 1000 leaders across nearly all 50 states. Mostly women and people of color.

Politico named Run for Something and Amanda, 1 of the 50 ideas driving politics in 2018. Bloomberg called her 1 of the people to watch in 2019. Fortune named her to their annual 40 under 40 list in 2020. And in 2022, Amanda was one of the [00:01:00] Time Next 100, a list of 100 rising stars from around the world. And look, it's yet another election year in America because it's another year in America.

There is never a better time to invite Amanda back onto the show. Welcome to Important Not Important. My name is Quinn Emmett, and this is science for people who give a shit. In my weekly conversations, I take a deep dive with an incredible human who's working on the front lines of the future to build a radically better today and tomorrow, for everyone this time. Our mission is to understand and unfuck the future. Our goal is to help you answer the question, what can I do?

Amanda Litman, welcome back to the show. It's been 3 times or 5 times? I don't even know at this point. It's been so long.

Amanda Litman: I welcome my repeat jacket sent to my home address at any moment.

Quinn: Oh my god. That's a great idea. Alright. We gotta figure that out. I've really become a big Etsy fan.

I buy most of my gifts on Etsy.[00:02:00] So I'm gonna have to find somebody to make you a repeat jacket. Right? You're like the Steve Martin. Isn't he the one who's done all the SNL’s?

Amanda Litman: Or like Justin Timberlake or Emma Stone also.

Quinn: Mhmm. Feel like we could skip the middle one and go to Emma Stone. Yeah. That works. That works. This is great. I'm so into it. Wow. Has she done 5? Whatever it is. I don't know. I'm too old. My kids are always like, did you stay up to watch SNL?

Absolutely not. I was in bed at 8:12. Like, the second you went to bed, I went to bed. Yeah. Now the 11-year-old goes, you're putting me to bed, but, like, will you come and check on me?

I'm like, No, I'm going to I'm going to sleep right now. Like this is me checking on you. Whatever happens after now is on you. Best of luck.

Amanda Litman: None of my business.

Quinn: Yeah. Go get them, Tiger. Anyways, everything is going great. I would have thought you would have fixed democracy by now, but we use the growth mindset here and so we're just gonna keep having you on until the project's done.

It's gonna be great.

Amanda Litman: Thank you.

Quinn: Amanda, we usually ask this ridiculous question, why are you vital to the rival the species? I think we're past that now, you and me. So we [00:03:00] talked about this a bit offline, but let's talk about this.

How are you? How we doing?

Amanda Litman: I've been better, but I've also maybe a little bit been worse. Run for Something is such a beautiful enterprise and something I'm so deeply proud of, and the last month has been one of the hardest stretches for our organization.

Quinn: So these conversations are usually well, I would say 80 percent of them are, like, evergreen, because climate change isn't going anywhere and shit like that.

Sometimes pandemic specific. But we'll date this one. When is it? Apparently, it's February 2024? So just to give some context to what you were just alluding to how things are going.

We're ramping into get another election year? It's always election year. It's like gremlins. It's a presidential one, but as you have been the ringleader on, there's also 50000 other offices up every year and especially this year, and we're gonna get into why that's a good thing, hopefully, for the our presidential president and candidate, but let's talk about it. The past year, a lot of progressive get out the vote groups, recruitment groups, all these different things [00:04:00] have been talking about, hey, listen, we're kinda behind.

We're kinda behind here. And progressive funding's down, and some people have actually written some things saying, like, no. It's not just like the, ridiculous text messages and forward from my iPhone emails from, Jon Tester or whatever it might be, it's actually not going great. And recently, you guys at Run for Something had to really make that real. Had to say this is, like, my with my children, eventually, there is a consequence.

Do you wanna talk about that? How did we get here and what happened?

Amanda Litman: So I think it's worth stepping back for a moment to look at how political funding usually, for lack of a better word, works. More or less, this is true for most organizations, candidates have slightly a different cycle, but for most organizations, you have your odd numbered years, which are understood to be, like, off years, Even though, as we know, elections happen every year all the time but in odd numbered years, most of your funding will come in really in the fall and winter, so in Q3, Q4 as people, like, start to get ready for the even number year, [00:05:00] really think about what they're gonna do?

After Thanksgiving, they might a lot of their C3 giving. Most of the money comes in at the end of the year. In the even numbered year, most of it comes in the spring and summer leading up to the election day. Now this is not actually when the money is most needed. Money is most needed often in those odd numbered years when you're doing the work and early in even numbered years when you're doing the hiring and scaling of the program. So Run for Something grew exponentially in 2022. We were able to really expand our efforts to be able to work in more places, in more states with more local races. And 2023 programmatically, because of that expansion, was our best year yet. We crossed an incredible milestone, more than a thousand people we've helped elect in 7 years.

It was a really meaningful recruitment year. We innovated in a whole bunch of ways on how we can get people to think about running for office. And at the same time, it was our hardest fundraising year yet. We projected we would raise about 15 million. We ultimately brought in just under 8.

And I think it's worth noting, like, hundred thousand, 200000 dollars off of the projection is a skills issue, and that would be that, like, Ross, my co-founder, and I were bad at our [00:06:00] job. 50 percent of the projection is not a skills issue. 50 percent is an environmental sector wide problem. And it's what we're hearing from our partners and colleagues at nearly every other organization that 2023 was historically hard. And, ultimately, when we looked at the numbers and we looked at the plans we have, not just for 2024, but for 2025 and 2026 and what we would need to make sure we can financially and responsibly sustain this organization moving forward.

We had to reduce our staff. Like, we had to, or there was no choice but to possibly sunset the organization in early 2025, which is not a thing I wanna do and not a thing that I think is good for our democracy. So we ultimately had to lay off 14 incredible members of our team. We were able to give what I think is a really generous severance package and are supporting them in finding their next roles. But people think, like, when you ask for money for a political organization, like, oh, if they don't hit their goals, like, it's not a big deal.

It's, like, there's no secret money. There's no cow buoy. There's no little, like, pot of golden rainbow [00:07:00] at the end, like, for us to suck up resources from. If we don't get the money that we ask for, we can't run the program. Now I am still confident that the work we're being able to do in 2024 is going to be meaningful and impactful.

Is it as much as I thought we could do with the staff we had? No. But I do think it will be incredible what we're able to accomplish this year. But having to roll back our program even a little tiny bit in light of what's happening across the progressive ecosystem and across the election year is devastating. And I think it's such a huge problem for progressive organizations at large that so many folks are gonna have to scale back their program at a time when we need it the most.

Quinn: Well, thank you for sharing all that so candidly. I appreciate it. As frustrating and as heart wrenching as it is for the greater good and obviously for everything you all are trying to build, and those 14 people, let me work a little bit from the inside out. So those 14 folks without getting specific, you said you grew so exponentially in 2022.

How many of those 14 folks were newer? How much did the organization grow that [00:08:00] then you had to backslide a bit?

Amanda Litman: I don't wanna get into the specifics of any particular staff members. But I will say that we started you know, I had my daughter 14 months ago, in November 2022.

And when I left to go on maternity leave our staff was about 20. We were, as of, earlier this year prior to staff reductions, at about 65. So we grew exponentially. We're now at just under 50 which is still big and strong and will allow us to do meaningful work, but it is a step backwards.

Quinn: Yeah. Yeah. 50 is still a big organization. That's a lot.

Amanda Litman: Lot of work to do.

Quinn: Okay. So let's step a little further back. We said there's obviously other great organizations who are seeing the same deficits or have seen them and have now had to make adjustments and seemingly continue to see them. Have the ramifications been similar?

And then I guess the biggest step back is why? What do we feel like happened in 2023? Is it just burnout? Is it, post-inflation and all these things? Is it black magic?

What's the [00:09:00] story?

Amanda Litman: Yeah. I think it's all of the above. Some of it is folks tired. Which I get it. I'm tired too.

Yeah. Sucks. Some of it is people waiting for the presidential to shake out. Like, oh, no. Certainly, Biden's not gonna run again.

Trump's definitely not gonna be the nominee. Which I often have to be like, what world are you living in? It has shook. It has landed. It has been the same for a year now, and I do think there is, to a certain extent, a little bit of doomerism of feeling like the outcome of 2024 is already written.

And, like, how could anybody, either it's already written in, like, how could Trump win or it's already written in how could Biden win. Both of those things, I think, are false. We know it's going to be an incredibly close election and the only reason I would argue that Democrats have been able to both win in 2018, 2020, 2022, overcoming historical odds against us is because of the organizing work that we have done, because of the investment that people have made in everything from candidate recruitment to knocking doors, bringing people in and finding their new political homes, to really making the case to voters what the consequences [00:10:00] of electing Republicans at this moment in time could be. We cannot let our foot off the gas in this moment, the work is not done, and thinking that the work is done will mean that we have so much more of it to do.

Quinn: For your organization at least, would you say 2022 is probably an anomaly, or is 2023 an anomaly fundraising wise?

Amanda Litman: It's hard to say. I'm hopeful that we have accurately projected what this year will look like and that the conversations we're having with funders have been really positive. And that's, I think, the thing that's been the hardest about the last year is that all through 2023, our conversations were so positive. They just didn't come with checks. Hopefully, with it feeling real, with it being an election year, or, like, an even number the election year and with, I would hope, that the transparency and honesty that we've been approaching this experience from day one, but especially in this moment, really resonates with people and they understand when you make a contribution to Run for Something, You are directly affecting our ability to run the program of recruiting and supporting young diverse progressives to run for local office and build sustainable power. If you choose not to, then [00:11:00] we can't do the work.

Quinn: What is the breakdown in checks? At least, let's talk about, I don't know, 2022, but also 2021, 20, obviously, odd even for 7 years now. How does it break down small donors, medium donors, big donors, institutions, anything like that usually?

Amanda Litman: It's a mix of all 3. The thing that I found really interesting in 2023 is that all of our buckets, institutional, major donors, grassroots funders, they were all down to a certain extent. Usually, you would see maybe, like, major donors go up and grassroots donors go down. It's psychology that gets bigger donors excited often, like, depresses smaller donors and vice versa. But we saw it across every bucket.

Quinn: Do you have any sort of, hey, looks like you're not gonna write a check. Any sort of exit interview of why?

Amanda Litman: I find it really important to remind myself, like, I'm not entitled. Our organization is not entitled to anyone's support. We have to earn it, and I hope we have earned it. The proof of our impact is so clear and that people's relationship with their money is really messy and complicated and people's relationship with their political giving is really complicated. But I am always [00:12:00] happy to talk personally with anyone who wants to think more about how we can help accomplish their goals.

Quinn: Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing all that setting the stage. Again, if it's not clear enough, if it's gotta be a presidential year for you folks, fine. But, again, the best time to plant a tree etcetera is, 35 years ago.

The best example, of course, not the only example that I always tell folks is, like, Georgia didn't flip overnight. Those, 25 years of mostly black women just like building and building and building and building. And then we barely got it off the line, with a couple great candidates, and it's the same way with the states. And I hope that folks are listening, and usually the people who pay attention to this are at this point, because I never stopped talking about it is we can't just be reactive.

It's great to fund organizations, so the example I always use is, like, Feeding America. One of the greatest organizations we've got. Right? It's amazing what they do.

They feed people tonight. That's amazing. But we also [00:13:00] have to write local and state and national policies that expand SNAP, make it easier, child tax credits, all that kind of stuff, to fix it in the long term? So Feeding America is not so important. They don't wanna be.

That's the whole thing. And, going to your work, it's great to, like, win an election night and knock on a bunch of doors, but you gotta be able to do this stuff ahead of time. So, anyways, it applies everywhere from food to abortion to climate, whatever it is. Transmission lines don't hook themselves up.

Let's focus on the positive a little bit. 7 years you've been doing this, which is crazy. It feels like 300 to me. At this point, I have aged so much. Everything hurts all the time.

My youngest, the other day, goes, we were watching soccer game or something, and I got up, and he goes, why'd you make that noise? What are you talking about? He goes, every time you get up and down, you go, I was like, hey, bud. Listen.

Here's the deal. One, everything hurts all the time. Two, like, it's coming, not soon, but lay off, I got a lot going on.

Amanda Litman: I watch my toddler do squats, and I'm like, ugh, mobility, man. Use it or lose it. Happening in real time.

Quinn: No. My knees [00:14:00] sound like firecrackers when I squat down. Anyways, alright.

7 years. Do you feel like obviously, I could imagine, but you're a better person than I am, that it could be hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes, but do you ever take a step back and go like, oh, there's definitely been an increase in both volume and variety of people who are, one, running for and volunteering for state and local offices, and two just general awareness among voters of, quote-unquote, down-ballot races and literally that those offices even exist or how their school board works. Do you feel like there has been a measurable change on that front in the past 7 years?

Amanda Litman: Yes. On both.

And it's a really helpful reminder of how far we've come. The fact that we have nearly a hundred and fifty thousand young people who've raised their hands to say they wanna run for office in the last 7 years. And we know based on benchmarking that at any given point, about 10 percent of them are actually on the ballot. That is, as far as we know, the biggest candidate pipeline on the left, full stop. [00:15:00] We are one of the biggest recruiters for candidates in democratic politics, like, what a gift and what a privilege and also what a damning statement for Democrats, but also something I'm really proud that we've been able to do.

And I think even right now, we're hearing in focus groups and in polling, like, especially among young voters of color in particular and young women, they are not amped about the presidential, but they are very fired up about state and local. They intimately understand that these races matter for their quality of life, and we are hearing that and seeing that bear out in data in a way that I think gives me hope that we have done a really good job educating the electorate or at least some portions a bit over the last 7 years.

Quinn: Yeah. I think it's very difficult from all the work that you and all of your partner organizations have done over the past 7 years, coming after a decade where we really took our foot off the pedal from on states and local, while the other side went after it incredibly transparently and aggressively. But at the same time, again, like, I think it's really hard for, after Dobbs, at least, with the wetlands, whatever [00:16:00] your fancy or both or all of them to not look and go, oh, state and local, it's everything.

Like, that's it. Because overnight, it changes. That's how federalism works, unfortunately and fortunately, that's where it's at. So when you say we've got this amazing pipeline, like, thank God.

Amanda Litman: Yeah.

And I think it's, like, really telling on basically every issue that is really front and center for folks right now, not all, but almost every, housing determined by state and local governments, reproductive health care determined by state and local governments, voting rights determined by state and local governments, transportation, state and local governments, even the cost of higher education to a certain extent, child care, K through 12 education, book bans, freedom to learn, marriage equality. So much of this is happening in state and local governments in a way that is both terrifying and also gives us a clear sense of where we need to engage in order to win power, build power, and do really good things for people. Like, the path is so clear. It could be easy to get distracted from it, but the path itself [00:17:00] is quite clear.

Quinn: I remember in, I was just talking to my wife about this in, like, it was 2009, when there were, seems incredible now in some ways, these long arguments about whether coverage for preexisting conditions should make its way into whatever we ended up managing to do with health care obviously, which has been so positive and complicated and messy and imperfect, but amazing, game-changing. And I just sit there and remember thinking to myself, if you are not in support of this, either you don't have a preexisting condition, which definitely makes you a minority in America, and or you just don't have someone you love who has one? Because if you do in any way, how could you possibly fight against this? Again, that's a federal level, that you just listed 400 different things that, where essentially the construction of this country and the states within it, the point is for the national decided to go like, no, you figure it out in 50 different ways from the IRA funding to whatever it is.

And that's the deal. Like, it affects your day-to-day life more than ever because we're handing it that way and we've [00:18:00] been behind the 8 ball, but I don't know how you could miss that at this point. In Virginia, we thankfully, we took back both sides of the state congress. We've still got Glenn Youngkin who doesn't really do much. We are 22nd in teacher pay.

Like, that we're not even close. It's a nightmare. How do we get it higher? How do we, like, change how we account for school funding? All these different things.

And, yeah, that's it. Like, do you wanna know why there's no bus drivers and no teachers and all this? It's because we've just decided at the state and local level, like, not to pay them basically.

Amanda Litman: I think about a lot in terms of housing, which is, like, when people talk about how they're feeling about the economy, a lot of those vibes about the economy come from often people trying to enter the rental market or thinking about buying or selling a home, which is, like, tough to do right now. And especially if you're younger and don't have access to wealth, not easy. There's not a ton the federal government can do around housing.

There's programs they can do. There's some kind of incentives that they can provide, but mostly, it's a state and local government issue. And even more than that, it's really a local issue. It's, what is zoning? [00:19:00] How many multifamily units can you build, and what can you do around public transit?

And it is something that is so personal. And I think a really good issue in which that illustrates the importance of having especially young people in leadership. Because your experience right now as a 20 or 30 something entering the housing market versus that of a 60 or 70 year old, wildly different and in many ways incomprehensible.

Quinn: Incomprehensible. There's a large portion of people older and younger who are part of this thing everyone's going the great wealth transfer.

Right? And then there's a very large segment of people who are like, that could not be farther from my reality in a world where real estate has created so much of our wealth. It's wild, and you have to have those representative people. And that really matters in education again. I've got 3 kids.

They're all in the same public school. It's fantastic. It's imperfect. Of course, it's public school. All the teachers, they try so hard.

They did so great. I wanna talk about one of my favorite things that you all and anyone did announce last year, is your school board strategy. Where did it come from? Why now? How do you feel like it's gonna be most effective?[00:20:00]

I think it's so exciting. It's great. All I wanna do is take over school boards.

Amanda Litman: Same. So the school board strategy, we really, you know, we've always worked with school board candidates.

We've helped a lot more than 350, I believe, over the last years or have worked with more than 350. And in 2021, in the Virginia gubernatorial elections, we really saw the way that conversation around K through 12 education changed the tenor of that race, between Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe down in Virginia. Like, the conversations about Critical Race Theory and diversity in schools, it really became obvious that this was a driver, especially on the right, to get people who might not otherwise be about Glenn Youngkin. And in 2022, we heard from a lot of the candidates we work with, especially running for school board, that they were having conversations at the doors that were very different than some of the ones our other candidates were having and that there just wasn't enough resources for them. Throughout 2023, we put together a bunch of plans that ultimately landed into a bucket that we called our 50 state school board stragedy, which is [00:21:00] a long term 5 year program at least to recruit and support candidates for school board anywhere and everywhere that public education is under attack, which, unfortunately, at this point, is basically everywhere.

And I think it might surprise people to really understand the scope of this. There are about 80000 school board races across the country, 20 to 25000 of them any given year. Half of those happen in November. Half happen throughout the rest of the calendar, which is to say, you need an always on, always running recruitment and support program in order to support them, and we really wanna make sure that we are able to find folks to run in these races before the problems pop up. Because a lot of people think about, like, okay well, we all need to really target our efforts where Moms for Liberty is being bad. And it's like, they're everywhere. And if we wait until it’s a problem, it's gonna be too late to find a candidate. So I'm really cautious optimistic that this program is gonna be able to run for at least the next 5 years and beyond because I think, as a parent myself, it is the most important thing we could do both for our kids and more broadly for our democracy. [00:22:00]

Quinn: You're leaving out the fact that haven't you throttled Moms for Liberty basically everywhere your candidates have been? Can we talk about that?

Amanda Litman: I'm so glad you asked that, Quinn. We have. In 2023 in November, Moms for Liberty had a 32ish percent win rate among their candidates across the country, Run for Something candidates at a 72 percent win rate. And we have folks beating Moms for Liberty all across the country.

Quinn: It really brings, it sparks joy.

It really sparks joy. It's like, why wouldn't you wanna beat them everywhere you possibly can to just shove them back in that hole? How is it shaping up this year? Do you feel like you've got the same level of attention since you announced that and since you started having that access for people signing up to run throughout the year and for November?

Amanda Litman: We have, and we've been able to run some really exciting programs in state to get folks thinking about running for school board.

We're launching some really exciting programs down in Florida this year in particular to help begin to scale this work, and hopefully, we'll have the resources to keep running it for the foreseeable future.

Quinn: How do you reach out to folks? How do you start with [00:23:00] awareness for people who might not even know that they can run for a school board? And then how do you get the hook in them?

Amanda Litman: Big part of it was for something we did earlier this month.

Well, last month, last or something we did earlier this year, which was National Run for Office Day, which was a big effort to try and get folks thinking about running for office. We were able to get more than, I think at least more than 800 people raising their hands just in a couple days to think about running, which is huge, especially in January 2024. And we are constantly running ads. We're doing outreach. We're having events.

We're doing press. I do, podcasts like this, talking to folks about why they should think about running for school board. We did a partnership with a couple of amazing influencers, Emily in your phone and Mrs. Frazzled, if you're on Instagram, both are excellent, to get people think about making school boards boring again, Which they should be. They should be really boring. It's kinda boring work.

And the fact that the right has made them so controversial is a detriment to our kids. Its distracting from the things that we actually care about.

Quinn: I love it. I think it's great. The more the merrier.

When we were at Disney World a couple weeks ago, someone, I do not know who the influencer Mrs. Frazzled is, but I remember who [00:24:00] Ms. Frizzle is. And a Disney employee came up to my wife and just said, I just want you to know you remind me of Ms. Frizzle and it brings me joy. My wife was like, that's it. I've nailed it. Like, this is as high as it possibly gets.

It's amazing. I love the Magic School Bus. So talk to me about you guys released a bunch of really cool research. I can't remember with who, about the reverse coattails strategy. So let's talk about that because that is you have been doing this for this long, and now the plan is this is how we're gonna execute it in 2024.

If you're ambivalent about Biden or the Senate or the House, whatever it might be, this is where we go because it works. Talk to me about what you came up with.

Amanda Litman: So reverse coattails has been one of the operating theories of change of Run for Something since day one. The idea being that local candidates who were knocking doors and talking to voters, doing the kind of organizing that we know is really meaningful, can help drive turnout for the entire ticket. Really grateful that in 2020 or after 2020, we were able to put our math where our mouths are and do some research into this.

And we worked with For Our Future, just an incredible partner in [00:25:00] this work with a company called Blue Labs, which is one of, like, renowned data firms in the Democratic space to identify the fact that if in state legislative districts where you're fielding competitive state legislative candidates, so local races, compared to places where we didn't previously have candidates, who don't usually have candidates, increased turnout for the entire ticket anywhere between 0.3 and 2.3 percent. That's huge. That could be the margin of victory in a place like Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania or Georgia, which tells us something really powerful. Investing and recruiting and supporting local candidates can help Joe Biden win. It can help John Tester hold the Senate seat in Montana.

It can help Sherrod Brown in Ohio. All of this can help us win at the top of the ticket.

Quinn: Besides, again, just winning on the local level, which is so essential, 2 and a half points? Again, that seems to be the max.

But, Biden swung [00:26:00] a few of those states by 3 and a half. Like, 2 and a half goes a very long way.

Amanda Litman: You know, you think about I think in Arizona, the margin of victory was 10000 votes, 11000 votes. In Michigan, it was similar.

In Wisconsin, it was under 10 or 11000 votes, these are nothing margins. So if we field full slate of candidates and we do it not just on the state legislative level, but at every level, let's say each of those candidates gets a few more people to show up at the polls who maybe weren't going to because they're not super pumped about the top of the ticket, which is a real problem we’re going to have this year, that can be it. That can be the full ball game. And even more importantly or even more relevantly, relevantly? Yeah. We'll go with it.

When you think about where the Biden campaign practically is going to be doing their campaigning and their advertising, it is, and I think correct of them to be thinking about where their money can go the furthest. What does it mean to run ads in Milwaukee and Madison? And, like, yeah, the rest of Wisconsin also important, but for them, their responsibility is to drive up turnout in [00:27:00] the population centers in order to achieve their goals. The Biden campaign might not have organizers in the ground across all these states.

They're definitely not gonna have organizers on the ground in Montana. In Ohio.

Quinn: Probably why would you?

Amanda Litman: Right. Yeah.

It's like not their job. Yeah. Their job is to win the electoral college. What we can do by investing in these local races is run up the score.

So even if, say, our local candidate running for a county race in, a rural part of Wisconsin maybe loses, if they're able to make that race feel competitive for a few more Democrats in that area who show up when they otherwise wouldn't have because the Biden campaign didn't talk to them, that's meaningful for the overall margin.

Quinn: And for a voter, if you feel increasingly, understandably disconnected from politics and the power systems and things like that. There's no better feeling than getting to know the people who run your city or your county or your school board or getting to know the people who really want to do those things, and why? Because your kids have class together, or they're in a sports team or ballet or math club [00:28:00] or whatever together. That is an incredible feeling and no better way to feel connected because not only do you have that connection with that person and then they can drive out the ticket, if you're talking about issues that affect both of you and, like, for, us whenever people are come to us and understandably feel impotent about public health or climate change, and they go, like, I read the jet stream is slowing down. What can I do? And I'm like, you can't fucking do anything about that. But you can petition for solar over all of the parking lots in your county and over all your big box stores and your educational schools. Educational schools.

Boy, we're really batting a thousand here. That will drive down costs and that will have cleaner air and you can fight for cleaner air inside your schools and offices. That is all state and local. It's the things you can touch and feel and breathe and that you all mutually depend on because you're drinking from the same wastewater plant.

Amanda Litman: I think about it emotionally.

Like, Joe Biden doesn't really care if I'm mad at him. Like, he doesn't care. He's never gonna hear it. He's not gonna see the tweets. He's not gonna, like, notice when [00:29:00] I'm pissed.

But man, when my city counselor sees me in the grocery store, and I go up to him or her and say, hey, you haven't fixed the crossing, like, the crosswalk or the traffic light at that intersection, and a car keeps almost hitting me and my kid in the stroller. I'm pissed at you. Fix it. Oh, they're gonna hear, and that's really satisfying.

Like, engaging in local politics on a very practical and feels like a joke, but very practical level gives you someone you can personally yell at when things are wrong. And that can feel really good.

Quinn: On that note, before we get I don't wanna take too much of your time here and I wanna get to the our favorite question, which is what can I do? How can we most specifically support you all and the organizations you love? But I know you have been just harping on New York for what a disaster the mayor is, and you have said repeatedly, which I couldn't agree with more, if someone stepped up with a family first campaign, they would do incredibly well.

What does that actually look like? We [00:30:00] don't have to talk about why he's a disaster. Like, that is very clear. Like, the fact libraries are fucking closed on Sundays now is, like, number 200 on the list. But what is a family forward campaign look like in a very difficult place to actually be a mayor or a city counsellor of?

Amanda Litman:

Yeah. That's such a good question. Actually, I was just talking this morning with Rebecca Balen who runs the New Yorkers United for Child Care campaign in an effort to make sure that we're able to protect and expand pre-K and more broadly universal child care across the city. And I think it's like childcare is part of it, housing is part of it, parks and recreation funding, swim lessons, swim classes, library funding, public transit, making the subways more accessible, more education funding for schools, thinking more about how we can better integrate our school system because New York City is one of the most segregated school systems in the country. All of this is in service of making it a city where families of all race, all class, all backgrounds can stay, can grow, can thrive.

The fact for a lot of folks, the choice is between expanding their family or moving out [00:31:00] of the city is a real one because of costs and, the financial prohibitions. That's devastating and it's not healthy for the broader city, and it's not good for those people who, like, really wanna stay here because it's great here. I love it here, and I want this to be a place personally, I want this real place that I can stay with my family for a really long time, and there are real tangible things that the government the city government can do to make that possible if they approach it from a lens of what can we do to make this a place for people to, like, to live?

Quinn: And it can be such a model for other places as well.

Like, truly, if you what is it? If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. If you can run a family first campaign in New York, holy shit. It'll be so much easier everywhere, maybe not LA. That's a nightmare.

But you get the point.

Amanda Litman: On a political messaging level, appealing to people from their position as a member of a family and especially as a parent is so powerful because it cuts across race and class and gender lines. Like, we might not see eye to eye on everything, but we can agree that this is a place where we should be able to raise our kids with clean air, clean water, good [00:32:00] schools, good parks, accessible books, public transit they can ride on, care that they need, all of that. Like, we don't have to agree on everything else, but we can agree that matters.

Quinn: It's truly the same argument, but from the opposite perspective of what broke Virginia in 2021 and everyone saw it coming, besides not having the greatest candidate up top. They just said, yeah. We're going for the same thing, and we're gonna argue from the opposite perspective, and it worked. And we've been it's been a shit show, and we're just barely pulling it back together. But I would love to see that.

I know it's a big ask, but I think it would be pretty incredible. Alright, Amanda. How can we help? Give us all the specifics. Okay.

Amanda Litman: So let's call this 3 things you can do. One, you can run for office. It is probably not too late wherever you are. Filing deadlines are starting to come up. But in many places, they don't hit until June or even as late as August.

So if you got a run for something dot net, you can enter your information. You can learn more about offices are available to run for, including the deadlines. And if maybe the deadline has already [00:33:00] passed, it is absolutely not too early to start thinking about 2025. So if you're the kind of person that listens to this podcast, you're the kind of person that should think about running for office. Two, you can volunteer for a Run for Something candidate.

Go to our website, you'll see a directory, you'll see a map. You can find someone near you. We're gonna work with people in basically every state that has an election this year. We are likely to engage more than 800 candidates throughout the cycle. So there is almost certainly someone with an hour or 2 drive of you that you can go knock doors, make calls, and engage with them in a meaningful way that will help build power and win elections.

Three, obviously, you can make a donation. If you go to run for something dot net, you can chip in 5 dollars, 500 dollars, 5 million dollars. I will take all of it. All of it goes in service of this work of really building sustainable power where we need it.

Quinn: I love it.

That is so specific. You do have 2 ways people can donate. There is a c3 in there. How are those differentiated just for people who that might be important to?

Amanda Litman: Yeah.

So we actually have a bunch of different organizations you can give to that take on different pieces of our work. So Run for Something Civics which you could [00:34:00] go to run for something civics dot net to learn more about. It does broader education about how young people can take charge in leadership and engage in local government and then run for something dot net is the home for our PAC and some of our other work, political work. But if there's another way you wanna make a donation, if you wanna give us stock, if you wanna have your company do a match, you should always just email us hello at run for something dot net and we can make it happen.

Quinn: Rock and roll. Seems easy enough. Seems easy enough. Amanda, I feel like I've always gotten amazing book recommendations from you, and so that's the last question I'm gonna ask, is what's a couple books you've read, I don't know, man, in the past year or two?

I usually ask a guest, has changed your thinking in some way or made you consider some perspective you hadn't considered before. But you can literally answer however you want because, again, you're getting the returning guest jacket, so you get to do whatever you want here.

Amanda Litman: Such a stressful question. You know what's so interesting? I'm reading a mix of, like, real trash.

Just like pure romance trash. [00:35:00] And, I'm working on writing a new book about leadership. So I'm reading just, like, dozens of leadership books. Oh, many of which are also kind of trash. I will say that one of my favorite books I read recently was Northwoods By Daniel Mason, I think, is what it's called.

Okay. Yeah. Daniel Mason. It's this gorgeously written novel about a plot of land in New England. It's a fiction, told through, like, the different residences of the residents of the home on that plot of land from before the United States was a country all the way through to modern day, there's, like, some found mixed media like letters and maps and, like, there's ghosts, and there's romance, and there's poetry, and it's just it's really beautiful.

And otherwise, you can find me on Instagram for whatever else I'm currently reading.

Quinn: Great. Because by the way, the trash is so important. All I do. There isn't a single book, like, I have 2 Kindles. I have the work one, which is the dark place, and I've got my home one, and the only thing allowed on the home one is, like, truly, like, fantasy stuff that's either thousands of [00:36:00] years in the future, the past and or in an entirely different galaxy or like hand drawn map from some it's just like, can't do it. You gotta have it. It's so important.

Amanda Litman: I was reading the new Crescent City novel, if you know, you know, which my husband looked over at my Kindle and was like, river fairies. What is going on over there? Like, this is none of your business. What's going on over here is between me and my god. It's none of your business.

Quinn: I am such a firm believer. I'm gonna later send you a link to the Etsy sticker I gave everyone in my family for Christmas. It's amazing. This is great. I'm so appreciative of you and your work.

I can't believe it's only been 7 years. It's still been 7 years. All those different things. We have so many to go. Hopefully, there are more years, period, not just for Run for Something.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yeah. And we'll do our best to step up and help.

Amanda Litman: For all you've done, Quinn, and thanks for your entire community.

Quinn: A hundred percent.