Special Session with Bryan Schott

Speaker 1: Democrats are screwed and the math proves it. The 2030 census will strip House seats from

Speaker 1: blue states like California and New York, while red states like Utah will pick up some

Speaker 1: representation in Congress. In fact, Utah's projected to get a fifth congressional seat

Speaker 1: in 2030. And here's the brutal math. Democrats will need to win the national vote by six or

Speaker 1: seven points just to have a prayer of controlling Congress. Amanda Littman, president of Run for

Speaker 1: Something, has a plan. Her organization is investing in Republican strongholds, including Utah,

Speaker 1: right now. Not in four years, not after Democrats figure out their messaging problem,

Speaker 1: Now, the pitch sounds insane at first.

Speaker 1: Utah, where the Democratic Party has a net favorability of negative 38%,

Speaker 1: where winning the Republican primary is basically winning the general election in many seats.

Speaker 1: But Lippman is betting on something the Democratic establishment abandoned 15 years ago.

Speaker 1: Building power from the ground up through local races,

Speaker 1: even if it means backing candidates who don't want the Democratic label anywhere near them.

Speaker 1: Today's conversation is about long-term strategy, candidate quality, and why the obsession with presidential battlegrounds has left Democrats with no bench and nowhere else to win.

Speaker 1: We'll get to our conversation with Amanda Littman in a moment, but first, I'd like to ask you to subscribe to this podcast, special session, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Speaker 1: And if you find this show worth your time, leave us a rating and review. That's how other people find us.

Speaker 1: joining me right now on the podcast is amanda litman she is the president of run for something

Speaker 1: and i really appreciate to have the opportunity to chat with you thank you for having me i'm

Speaker 2: delighted to have the conversation you and your organization sent out a memo this week arguing

Speaker 1: that the electoral map is going to shift in a way that is not advantageous to democrats after the

Speaker 1: 2030 election. And I've seen a number of projections that confirm that, showing that

Speaker 1: traditionally Democratic states like California and New York, they will be losing representation

Speaker 1: in the House of Representatives, while more red-leaning states will be gaining seats. And

Speaker 1: Utah's projected to gain a fifth seat in Congress. And in this memo, you've been arguing that Democrats

Speaker 1: and their supporters need to try to expand the map starting now by investing in states

Speaker 1: that are traditionally more Republican-leaning or Republican strongholds.

Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about that strategy?

Speaker 2: So Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse leaders running for local office

Speaker 2: all across the country.

Speaker 2: We've been around since 2017, and we've always worked in all 50 states, including Utah.

Speaker 2: We have a number of elected alum in Utah, Salt Lake County Clerk Lanny Chapman, the County Commissioner Natalie Pinckney, Wong Nguyen in the state legislature, Nate Bluen in the state senate, who've been really great leaders, who have shown what locally driven community leadership can look like.

Speaker 2: And we know that based on redistricting, based on population changes, based on the census, and based on honestly how the Republican Party has engaged in even mid-decade redistricting this year, we have to expand the map for the Democratic Party.

Speaker 2: We have to ensure that when we're looking ahead to 2030, we have many possible paths to victory, both for winning back a House majority or holding a House majority, should we have it then, for the Senate and for the Electoral College.

Speaker 2: Now, many of your listeners might be scoffing at me to be like, ha ha, blue Utah, good luck,

Speaker 2: godspeed. But what we are saying is that it is worth trying that based on the population changes

Speaker 2: and based on the way in which especially unaffiliated voters are shifting more in the state

Speaker 2: and based on the fact that Run for Something has had more than 2,000 young people raise their hands

Speaker 2: to say they want to run for office in Utah alone in the last eight years, most of them coming in

Speaker 2: just in the last eight months, there is opportunity here. And we should, at the very least,

Speaker 2: do the work now so that come 2030 and 2032, we can consider whether this is a place worth doing

Speaker 2: even deeper engagement in as one of our battleground states. That's a fascinating number that you've

Speaker 1: had a lot of young people step up and say that they want to run for something in the state.

Speaker 1: The Democratic brand here in Utah, for want of a better term, is not great.

Speaker 1: I just saw a poll that was done by Noble Predictive Insights and looking at the favorability of different groups.

Speaker 1: And the only group that they polled that had a negative net favorability was the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1: They came in at negative 38%.

Speaker 1: Where do you think the disconnect is between voters and the Democratic Party?

Speaker 1: Is it a messaging problem or is it just, as you said, a lack of trying, a lack of putting

Speaker 1: resources in, trying to get the message out about what the Democratic Party stands for

Speaker 1: and what these candidates would do if they won?

Speaker 2: I think it's a little bit all of the above.

Speaker 2: You know, in huge swaths of the country, most folks have never met a Democrat running for

Speaker 2: office before.

Speaker 2: Part of the Democratic Party's MO over really the last 15 years was a hyper focus on the

Speaker 2: presidential battlegrounds and occasionally gubernatorial senate or house battlegrounds.

Speaker 2: That's maybe seven or eight states, you could probably name off the top of your head, Pennsylvania,

Speaker 2: Wisconsin, Michigan, you know, maybe Georgia, maybe Arizona, maybe North Carolina, depending

Speaker 2: on what year you are, maybe New Hampshire, depending on the year, and then congressional

Speaker 2: races and a couple of these Senate races.

Speaker 2: Most of the rest of the country, the Democratic Party has not ceded deep investment into

Speaker 2: communication and organizing. And most of the state parties are also wildly under-resourced,

Speaker 2: so they have to allocate whatever money they've got to whatever seems to be the highest priority,

Speaker 2: usually a federal or statewide base. Local candidates, which is what Rum for Something

Speaker 2: Works with, have not had the support that they need to actually talk to voters about the issues

Speaker 2: they care about. So our theory of the case here is that one of the ways you can restore the

Speaker 2: Democratic Party's brand is gives them Democrats to vote for, who connect with them, who talk about

Speaker 2: the issues in the way that they can hear them, who are of the neighborhood, people you can really

Speaker 2: build a personal relationship with. And Run For Something knows that right now, given how toxic

Speaker 2: the brand is, we're moving into a place starting in 2026 where we're willing to work with values

Speaker 2: aligned independents, people who know that they just can't run as a Democrat where they are,

Speaker 2: but they broadly share our values. And they're willing to get on the ballot and navigate some of

Speaker 2: the bureaucratic hurdles that come with running as an independent to push forward on the issues

Speaker 2: there. So I'm really excited to see how this works out in 2026. It'll be the first cycle that we're

Speaker 2: doing so. But I think especially in a place like Utah, where there are so many unaffiliated voters,

Speaker 2: we can try and break through some of the challenges with having a D next to your name

Speaker 2: while still getting people who share our values into work. That's an interesting strategy because

Speaker 1: we actually tried that here in Utah when Senator Mike Lee ran for re-election back in 2022.

Speaker 1: The Democratic Party stood down to let independent Evan McMullin run unopposed. There was no Democrat

Speaker 1: in the race, and that led to the closest Senate election that we've had in the state in decades.

Speaker 1: It was within 10 points, which is still a loss, but still incredibly close. Does that tell you

Speaker 1: that there is an opportunity here.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 2: And we've seen this in other states as well,

Speaker 2: in Nebraska similarly.

Speaker 2: You know, I think for us,

Speaker 2: we're really mindful of when we endorse a candidate,

Speaker 2: we ask, do you want our endorsement to be public?

Speaker 2: Like, do you want us to put you in our press releases,

Speaker 2: put you on our social media,

Speaker 2: put you on our website?

Speaker 2: Or do you just want all the behind the scenes support

Speaker 2: and resources that come with our endorsement

Speaker 2: and none of the public credit taking?

Speaker 2: We know that our endorsement may be like a red flag

Speaker 2: in some of your places and may not be actively helpful. What we want is the impact. So this is

Speaker 2: one of those things where I'm going to talk about it now and you may never hear about it again.

Speaker 2: That doesn't mean it's not happening. Never hearing about it is actually part of the strategy.

Speaker 1: That's a fascinating approach. Can you talk a little bit about working at the local level?

Speaker 1: It's what political parties who are strong do. They build up a bench. They start people.

Speaker 1: people start running at the local level for maybe school board or city council or whatever.

Speaker 1: And then the ones who are capable tend to move up the ladder. We don't seem to have that structure

Speaker 1: here in Utah because there's not a lot of places where a Democrat traditionally can run and be

Speaker 1: successful. And then those places that are already have a Democrat in office who's kind of loath to

Speaker 2: give up that seat? Something we see all across the country. It's why Run for Something only works

Speaker 2: with candidates running for hyper-local office. Our pipeline, which has more than 230,000 young

Speaker 2: people across the country thinking about running at any given point, winnows down as we do

Speaker 2: endorsements to really engage with people running for local office or state legislature for the first

Speaker 2: or second time and exclusively young people. For us, that's 40 and under. We really try and make

Speaker 2: sure we're thinking about people who can have long careers in public service. So you could run for

Speaker 2: school board in your 20s and then maybe state ledge in your early 30s and then maybe Congress

Speaker 2: in your 30s or 40s and still be a spring chicken in the grand scheme of things in Congress, but

Speaker 2: have roots in your community and really be building that bench. And we've seen this pay off. We already

Speaker 2: have five members of Congress who've come through our pipeline. And in 2026, we have five folks

Speaker 2: running for governor, four running for U.S. Senate, and a couple dozen running for House

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Speaker 1: One of the talking points that people use when they talk about how Democrats have an opportunity

Speaker 1: here is they see the demographics shifting in the state. And I've been hearing that argument for

Speaker 1: quite a long time and it's happening. But my question is, is it happening fast enough to

Speaker 1: present a real opportunity? Are you seeing numbers that are suggesting that the demographics here in

Speaker 1: Utah are shifting away from the traditional Republican base that has made it such a stronghold?

Speaker 2: You know, I think Utah, as you all know, is one of the fastest growing states in the country.

Speaker 2: It's also one of the youngest.

Speaker 2: And something like two-thirds or just about of the state's growth is happening in just two counties.

Speaker 2: That's telling us that there is a conglomeration, a unification of people.

Speaker 2: And I think the work that we're trying to do is hope to both speed up that change.

Speaker 2: And also we know that if we don't invest in local races, if we don't give people candidates to vote for over the next four or six years, it will never become a competitive battleground.

Speaker 2: We have seen this in other states across the country.

Speaker 2: You don't go from 70-30 or 60-40 overnight.

Speaker 2: You go from 70-30 to 68-32 to 65-35 to 60-40 to 55-45 to 50-50 over the course of a decade, ideally.

Speaker 2: But I think the Democratic Party historically has been so short-termist in the way that it does investments.

Speaker 2: Like, we're ready to do this.

Speaker 2: You know, Renfrewson has laid out a five-year plan.

Speaker 2: My hope is that we're able to both raise the money to do it and also sustain it far beyond that so that we can really make this happen over the course of the next 15 years.

Speaker 2: I think the Democratic Party, again, historically, has often tried to win the next election at the expense of setting themselves up to win the next 10.

Speaker 2: And that's what we're trying to solve for.

Speaker 1: Preaching patience seems like such a hard thing to do.

Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, especially for Democrats, I look at what happened in Florida.

Speaker 1: They're reported to not become a Republican stronghold in a year.

Speaker 1: That was a 20-year plan that the party had to stick to.

Speaker 1: How do you preach patience, especially when we live in a media culture like we do, where

Speaker 1: everything is such instant gratification and say to people, you're not going to see this

Speaker 1: pay off this cycle, but it might pay off three or four cycles down the road.

Speaker 2: Practice patience myself, like yelling at my toddler every day.

Speaker 2: It really is exhausting, I will say, because it feels so obvious.

Speaker 2: And it's so clearly what the Republican Party has been doing.

Speaker 2: But I hope that the more we can talk about this, the more we can also prove that it is

Speaker 2: working in real time.

Speaker 2: You know, we've helped elect more than 1,500 people across 49 states and D.C.

Speaker 2: We're only missing Idaho.

Speaker 2: to make sure that we can generate some short-term wins that give you the momentum,

Speaker 2: while also proving out that those short-term wins build us the muscle for long-term sustained power.

Speaker 2: It's hard. I'm not going to lie to you. It's really, really hard.

Speaker 2: And it is exhausting to be told over and over again, yes, your work is so important,

Speaker 2: but it's not as important as this race six months from now,

Speaker 2: or this super PAC that's going to spend a billion dollars on TV,

Speaker 2: which is, hand to God, a kind of thing we would hear throughout 2024.

Speaker 2: My hope is that we can finally convince enough of the big supporters and sustainers in the Democratic Party

Speaker 2: and really anyone who's pro-democracy and pro-values aligned, pro-truth, pro-science, pro-freedom,

Speaker 2: to understand that we didn't get here overnight and we're not going to get out of it overnight.

Speaker 1: How important does this long-term plan or this project that you're pitching become in light of the arguments we heard this week in front of the U.S. Supreme Court about the Voting Rights Act?

Speaker 1: And it seems like they are poised to gut the remaining enforcement mechanisms in the Voting Rights Act.

Speaker 1: And I've seen some analyses that show that this could lock in Republican control in a number of states in the South for decades and create a situation where Democrats would have to win the national vote by 6 or 7 percent just to have a chance at winning control of Congress.

Speaker 1: So I'm curious if this adds a little more urgency to your project.

Speaker 2: I think so.

Speaker 2: I think we're going to see what happens with the Supreme Court case. But it is why it is more

Speaker 2: important than ever that we have deep roots and deep political ties everywhere. Because, yeah,

Speaker 2: they're going to try and redraw the map such that they block out Democrats everywhere, especially

Speaker 2: in states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and other folks and places across the

Speaker 2: South. And I think some of that could could. What is the word I'm looking for? Backfire.

Speaker 2: Backfire. Thank you. I was saying backlash, but that wasn't. It could backfire by a professional writer. I think it could backfire because, you know, think about it. If you're going to take a Democratic plus 20 district and disperse it across three Republican plus 10 districts, some of those are going to get watered down a little bit. It's going to become a bunch more R plus six, R plus seven, which still means we have to win by a lot.

Speaker 2: But really good candidates, really, really good candidates with local ties who know how to communicate with their voters, especially those who people have experience electing before, whether they've been on the school board or city council, can make a long shot race competitive.

Speaker 2: You can close the margin.

Speaker 2: A good field campaign, a good ads campaign can get you one or two or even maybe three points out.

Speaker 2: A good candidate can get you the final three or four points over.

Speaker 2: So what I hope is that, well, I wish this wasn't happening.

Speaker 2: I wish we didn't have to be in this circumstance in the first place, that we have been able to lay

Speaker 2: out the vision for what is possible if we are investing. Along with Utah, we've got in this

Speaker 2: plan states like Louisiana and Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, as well as places like Ohio,

Speaker 2: Idaho, North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere to really hammer home. We've got to prepare

Speaker 2: for many paths to victory because the hyper focus on the blue wall has gotten us to a point where

Speaker 2: And not only are we not winning it, we also can't win anywhere else.

Speaker 1: You brought up a point, and this is the last thing I want to ask you about.

Speaker 1: You brought up a point in your last answer about candidate quality, which I think is one

Speaker 1: thing that a lot of people discount when they're trying to look at how winnable a race is.

Speaker 1: It comes down to candidate quality, unless you're running in a district that's R plus

Speaker 1: 20 or D plus 20, and whoever wins the nomination is going to win.

Speaker 1: That's how we are here in Utah.

Speaker 1: whoever wins the Republican nomination in our congressional districts, depending on what happens

Speaker 1: with our gerrymandering case in court. But as it stands right now, if you win the Republican

Speaker 1: nomination, you're going to win the election. And that's how it is in a lot of districts.

Speaker 1: But in these competitive seats, it's not good enough to have a bunch of money behind you. It's

Speaker 1: not good enough to have a good mechanism behind you. The candidate, it ultimately comes down to

Speaker 1: the candidates. What kind of things does Run for Something look for when you're deciding which

Speaker 2: candidates to get behind? I think for deep community ties, for reflective of the community.

Speaker 2: I, a New York City mom of two, I don't need to agree with every candidate on every issue.

Speaker 2: Their voters need to agree with them. Their voters need to be connected with them.

Speaker 2: We try to be values aligned, but policy flexible, knowing that what it means to be, say,

Speaker 2: a gun safety candidate in Utah is going to be a little different than a gun safety candidate in

Speaker 2: Alaska or New York or Florida. But we can all agree that you shouldn't be killing kindergartners

Speaker 2: in schools with guns. We look for candidates who are really willing to do the work, are willing to

Speaker 2: knock doors, talk to voters, make calls to communicate where they want to be receiving

Speaker 2: information. And the most important thing we really look for is candidates who can articulate

Speaker 2: an answer to the question, why should voters want you to win? Which is different than why do you

Speaker 2: want to win? You want to win because winning is great and losing sucks. Voters want you to win

Speaker 2: because you're going to do something for them because they're going to be able to feel a change

Speaker 2: in their life if you win. If you can answer that, everything else about a campaign is logistics.

Speaker 2: And what Run for Something does is help you work through those logistics. We can teach you that.

Speaker 2: We can't teach you how to care. We can't teach you how to listen. We can't teach you how to work,

Speaker 2: but we can teach you how to fill out paperwork and how to set up a campaign plan and how to raise

Speaker 2: that stuff it's not rocket science it's hard work but it's not rocket science where can people find

Speaker 1: more from run for something and where can they find you online if they want more in information

Speaker 2: you can learn more about run for something at run for something.net and i am perpetually yapping

Speaker 2: my mouth on all kinds of social media platforms at either amanda litman or amanda litm depending on

Speaker 1: where you are and lid litman president of run for something thank you so much for your time it's

Speaker 2: been a pleasure thank you brian for this really thoughtful questions

Speaker 1: and that will do it for this episode of special session thank you so much for listening

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Speaker 3: We'll be right back.

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