# Run for Something Founded on **January 20, 2017** — inauguration day — by **Amanda Litman** (email director of Clinton's 2016 campaign) and **Ross Morales Rocketto** (a veteran of political campaigns), Run for Something recruits, trains, and supports young progressive candidates running for **state and local office**. The founding date was deliberate: the organization was built on the premise that the progressive movement's deepest structural weakness was not presidential politics but the **empty pipeline** of candidates for the 7,000+ state legislative seats, school boards, city councils, and county commissions where policy is actually made and future leaders are developed. ## The Pipeline Problem Run for Something addresses a specific structural asymmetry documented throughout this vault: the right invested decades building a **candidate pipeline** from school boards to statehouses to Congress (see [[ALEC]], [[State Policy Network]], [[Americans for Prosperity]]), while progressives focused disproportionately on federal races. The result: by 2017, Republicans controlled **32 state legislatures** and held trifectas in 25 states, giving them control over redistricting, voting rules, education policy, and the farm team for federal office. RFS is the progressive response — a systematic effort to fill the pipeline from the bottom up. ## Track Record Since 2017, Run for Something has: - Identified **75,000+ young people** who want to run for office - Endorsed **3,200+ candidates** - Helped elect **1,650+ candidates** to state and local office across 46 states — mostly women and people of color - Achieved a **40%+ win rate** for endorsed candidates in the 2017 Virginia elections (nearly four times the average for first-time candidates) ## 2025-2026 Surge Trump's re-election produced a recruitment spike that dwarfs previous cycles: - **40,000+ people** signed up to attend candidate information calls since November 2024 - February 2026: Endorsed **70 candidates** across 25 states and DC - May 2026: Endorsed **51 candidates** across 27 states, surpassing the goal of 300+ endorsements for the 2026 cycle - Races range from school boards to state legislatures to judicial seats - 2025 cycle: Helped elect **43 candidates** in red-to-blue seats ## The Strategic Significance Run for Something's contribution to the resistance ecosystem is **temporal** — it operates on a longer timeline than organizations focused on the next federal election. A school board member elected in 2026 might be a state legislator by 2030 and a congressional candidate by 2036. The organization is building the progressive equivalent of the talent pipeline that the [[Federalist Society]] built for the judiciary and [[ALEC]] built for state legislatures. The limitation is that state and local races attract less donor attention, media coverage, and volunteer energy than federal races. RFS must constantly compete for progressive resources against the urgency of the current crisis — a problem the right-wing pipeline infrastructure, funded by [[Koch Network]] and [[Bradley Foundation]] money, does not face to the same degree. ## See Also - [[Resistance Hub]] - [[Pro-Democracy Movement]] - [[Swing Left]] — the federal electoral complement - [[Indivisible]] — the constituent-pressure complement - [[ALEC]] — the right-wing state-level counterpart this pipeline competes against - [[Future Forum]] — the young House Democrats' caucus, which is the same generational project at the congressional level - [[Community Organizing]]