Are There Still “Off-Years”? (Spoiler: Hard no.)

Table of contents

1. Years, Not Months

2. Fresh Faces Win

3. Thousands of Elections Happen in the “Off-Years”

4. Local Races Launch Future Leaders 

Once upon a time, folks assumed that off-years – that is, every other year without major federal elections – are for resetting, not doing. That’s definitely the reality as lots of committees and organizations size down their staff only to replace those same personnel in a matter of months. Campaign staffers are certainly out of their own jobs, and many wait months for the right opportunities to open up. All in all, there is a “foot off the gas” feeling that washes over political spaces in the aftermath of national elections.

Except, there is no such thing as an off-year anymore. 

Treating the off-year as downtime is a mistake if we want to build long-term power and achieve sustained progress. If we’re going to build winning campaign infrastructure for elections to come, that training, investment, and growth happens in the so-called “off-years.”

Years, Not Months

In our three-pronged rebuttal to “off-years”, the first is that building winning campaign infrastructure takes years of preparation, not months.

Let’s look at this through the eyes of a hypothetical first-time candidate.

Jane Blue lives in a red district, and she’s infuriated by how her representatives have enabled the Trump administration and abandoned her community. She’s tired of waiting around for someone else to step up and challenge her Representative. She knows she can do it.

Here’s the problem: Come 2026, the window is already closing on candidates to emerge with a fighting chance to win. The question is who in the Democratic party will be there to invest in Jane while she has the time to build a viable campaign from the ground up?

If we’re going to encourage folks like Jane to take the leap and run – and really believe in their potential for change – we have to be ready to invest in candidates like her with resources and support when it counts. That can’t wait for “on-years”. It happens now or never.

Fresh Faces Win

Too often, Democrats self sabotage by clinging to yesterday’s status-quo. At least a portion of the reason we can’t seem to all get on board a train that’s leaving the station is that we fall back on the same old excuses with emerging candidates: “They have no political experience. They don’t have the money or support to run the campaign it would take to win.”

Here’s where we ask the age-old question of recent college graduates: How are they supposed to get any experience if we don’t give them real opportunities to do so? 

Voters are tired of the same old, same old. Trump’s re-election should be the most glaringly obvious proof, but it’s true of Democrats, too. In 2024, three Democratic incumbents lost their Senate races in what was an awful night for Democrats. Yet four won as first-time Senators, including two in swing states that Trump carried. In Maryland, now-Senator Angela Alsobrooks dusted the “safe” establishment candidate (who spent $60 million of his own fortune) in her primary. And Zohran Mamdani defeated the ultimate New York insider Andrew Cuomo in his primary.

That should tell us something if we’re willing to learn the lesson: fresh faces win when given a fair chance. Voters don’t just tolerate them – they’re mobilized by them. The off-years are when we must recruit and invest in those candidates to build a bench that’s ready to run and win. We’ve seen this up close at NDTC with several learners who started as unknowns – Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, to name just a few.

Thousands of Elections Happen in the “Off-Years”

We’ve laid the groundwork for why “off-year” investments in Democratic candidates and campaign infrastructure are so critical — but there’s a whole other piece of this pie we haven’t told you yet.

Which is that plenty of elections happen in “off-years”. We’re talking in the range of thousands. Fun fact, there are more elections – and open seats on the ballot – in 2025 than there were in 2024. 

Sure, even-numbered years are indisputably more election-heavy because they include federal races (like Congress and President) and many state elections (like state legislatures and governors). But local races – like school boards, city councils, and even mayors’ offices – are always in-cycle and happen every month of every year.

While it’d be difficult to track every election across the country, we can get a sense of the scale we’re looking at with some basic numbers.

In 2024, PoliEngine reported that 96.2% of elected officials hold local offices, including 135,531 city council members and mayors, 95,000 school board members (which Ballotpedia says are majority off-year elections), and 58,818 county officers. No matter how those are spliced and diced throughout the federal election cycle, that volume alone proves we’re never in the off-season of local elections.

That means there’s constant opportunity for investment and growth, and constant risk for ceding ground. In any given month, we could secure hundreds of seats for progressive candidates, or lose them to MAGA enablers. That sentiment should be enough to convince us all of the importance of off-year investments and sustained, hard work.

We’ve talked about how many of these local seats act as a safety net before. When Trump cuts the Department of Education, school boards are the last line of defense to save children's curriculum and school funding. When Trump targets cities in crisis like Los Angeles, mayors step in to deliver necessary resources.

Federal races might set the national tone and dictate some sweeping decisions, but we can’t undervalue what local leaders can deliver to their communities and protect them from. 

Local Races Launch Future Leaders

Now that the impact is clear, here’s another reason off-year races matter so much: They’re the launching pad for breakout political stars and our future party leaders. I’m sure you’ve at one point found yourself rolling your eyes at a claim of discovery of the “next Obama”, but this is still a proven strategy for building our political talent pipeline – 45% of our current Congress previously served on state legislatures. That’s the talent pool we’re willfully evaporating when we don’t invest in local races every year. Developing star political figures that also have a deep understanding of governing and legislating starts with those who step up to serve their communities at the local level.

The path forward isn’t complicated: invest in recruiting and training down-ballot candidates every year for long-term results. It just requires a sustained effort and commitment. We must develop budding leaders early, pour resources into local races year round, and be patient enough for the payoffs down the road.

We’re always doing that work here at NDTC by training Democrats to run for any office in the country. One Democratic leader in Montana said, "[We] did not have the budget to provide an in-depth training to this new crop of candidates and all of our grassroots supporters. In stepped the NDTC to help teach those A-Z basics of how to run a good campaign at any level. Thanks to this partnership our bench is growing."

If you’re ready to get to work with us, we’d love to see you at one of our live trainings or asynchronous courses. Our website is always stockpiled with more free resources.