Political Candidate Recruitment

Finding the right people to run for office is one of the hardest parts of building durable local power, and this course is a full guide to political candidate recruitment for local party activists and organizers who want to see more progressives on the ballot. Recruiting a candidate is never as simple as asking someone to run. It takes a process: knowing what to look for, knowing how to make the ask, and knowing how to keep that candidate supported once they've said yes. This course walks you through NDTC's proven candidate recruitment process step by step, so you're not reinventing the wheel every time a seat opens up in your community.

By the end of the course, you'll know how to spot a viable candidate before anyone else does, how to build a list of potential candidates in your own backyard, and how to have the conversation that turns a maybe into a yes. You'll also learn what happens after recruitment, since supporting a new candidate through their first few months is just as important as getting them to say yes in the first place. Whether you're a county party chair, a local organizer, or just someone who wants to see better candidates on your ballot, this course gives you a repeatable framework for candidate recruitment that you can use again and again.

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• • Recognize the key qualities that make a candidate viable

  • • Identify potential candidates already active in your community

    • Explore strategies for persuading potential candidates to run for office

    • Evaluate best practices for supporting newly recruited candidates through the process