Part One: Are There Still “Off-Years”? (Spoiler: Hard no.)
Democrats Can't Afford the “Off-Year” Opportunity Cost
TL;DR
We must invest during off-years to build sustained power and train winning candidates.
Emerging candidates are the recent college graduates we must be willing to bet on.
Voters don’t just tolerate emerging candidates – they’re mobilized by them.
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 often find themselves unemployed, 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 Democrats 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.”
In our two-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. Jane knows many people that are also outraged, but she’s tired of waiting around for someone else to step up and challenge her Congressman. 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? (👋 Hi, it’s us! We run campaign trainings and courses every month of every year to prepare candidates just like this. Always for free.)
If we’re going to encourage folks like Jane to take the leap and run – and really believe in her 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 until 2026. It happens now or never.
Too often, Democrats self sabotage by clinging to yesterday’s status-quo (i.e. leaders who are out of tune with evolving priorities and a resistance to bold policies and messaging). And 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 just this summer, Zohran Mamdani defeated the ultimate New York insider Andrew Cuomo in his.
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. If we’re serious about making sweeping gains against MAGA next year, we need to start investing in those leaders today. We’ve seen this up close at NDTC with several learners who were unknowns – Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, to name just a few.
DNC Chair Ken Martin put it this way: "Heading into this next election cycle, building a bench of qualified and trained candidates should be our priority. I’m thrilled the NDTC has stepped in to help provide that training to folks across the country."
NDTC offers free training to Democrats all year long, and it takes less than a minute to create a learner account and enroll in a course with us. Our website is always stockpiled with more career and campaign resources for those looking to get involved.
We mentioned that our argument here is two-pronged. Subscribe to make sure you hear the second next week.
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