Make running for office your New Year’s resolution

The polling numbers of first-time candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson have led many pundits to declare this presidential campaign cycle “The Year of the Outsider.”

Why should you care? It means that you—yes, you—have a real chance of being elected to office in 2016!

{mosads}We know what you’re thinking. “Me? Sure, I’ve daydreamed about fixing the government but I’ve never run for anything. How could I win?”

Well, it’s not just on the national level that citizen candidates are capitalizing off the public’s widespread disdain for professional politicians to upend the existing power structure.

Take Matt Bevin, a businessman whose first foray into electoral politics was a U.S. Senate run in 2014. Last month, he was elected governor of Kentucky over the well-known and favored sitting attorney general. Or political novice Andrea Campbell, a 33-year-old lawyer who challenged the longest-serving member of the Boston City Council and defeated him.

In 2016, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and thousands of state and local offices are up for grabs. While most of us don’t have the means to jump right into a bid for Congress, anyone can try for the town council or local school board.

If you’ve ever entertained the idea of being a citizen candidate, we urge you to make becoming an elected official your New Year’s resolution and offer these five tips to help you keep it:

1. Answer this question: Why am I running?

It’s amazing how many candidates reach Election Day and never come up with a legitimate answer to this question. Politics being a field dominated by narcissists (sorry guys!), most candidates’ reason for running boils down to “I’m the best for the job” and/or “I’m needed.” The truth is if you can’t come up with a better reason why you’re uniquely fit for the office you’re seeking and be able to clearly and succinctly communicate that rationale to the voters, media, donors and everyone else who matters, you’re neither needed, nor the best person for the job.

2. It’s not about you. It’s about us.

One of the differences between professional politicians and fringe candidates is the issues they choose to focus on. Newbies tend to assume that everyone else shares their passions. This assumption is usually wrong. There’s a reason why many pros start their races by commissioning a poll: to find out what actually interests voters. But polls are expensive and you’re a citizen candidate that needs to conserve funds. A less scientific strategy is to go on your own listening tour: knock on your neighbors’ doors and ask them.

3. Pick the right race to run.

Every potential race poses different challenges and if you don’t think through them from the outset, you’re going to dramatically diminish your chances of performing respectably, let alone winning. Is the race for an open seat or against an incumbent? Is the incumbent vulnerable? How do you measure up against your potential opponents? Are the demographics of the district favorable to your candidacy? How much money will you have to raise to be taken seriously and by what date? Analyzing the previous races for the seat you are considering is a good start. If you don’t know how to do that, find someone who does and who will be brutally honest.

4. It takes an army.

No one can win an election without a base of support. How many friends and family members do you have who will write you as big a check as they can afford before your campaign even starts? Do you belong to an organization whose members will volunteer? Are you already popular in your community, or will your name not register even with your neighbors? Take a hint: If you can’t get anyone to rally behind your candidacy, the problem isn’t everyone else, it’s you.

Unfortunately for you, laying the groundwork for a race takes time. The smartest politicians treat their network like a plant: they fertilize, feed, grow and maintain it. Bill Clinton famously had FOB—“Friends of Bill”—a legion of allies and associates he’d been cultivating since childhood. He kept lists of these folks and checked in with them constantly, not to talk about himself, but to ask how they were. Inept politicians only call you when they need something—usually cash. Winning candidates understand that it’s often less important what you do for your supporters that how you make them feel.

One last warning: Be wary of mistaking oodles of Facebook friends and Twitter followers for a real world campaign army. Only a miniscule percentage of candidates are successful when it comes to online fundraising and most of your cyber peeps probably don’t live in your district, so their high opinion of you is largely worthless because they’re not eligible to vote in your race.

5. Experience (actually) counts.

While a citizen candidate can have success as a newcomer, the odds of winning are far worse if your whole team is green. Campaigning is a fine art that is practically impossible to master the first time out. That doesn’t mean you have to hire a cadre of professional political consultants (many of whom are selling snake oil), but it does mean that you need people with real campaign experience giving you battle-tested advice.

What’s the best way to know if consultants are as good as they claim? Find out what races they’ve worked on and reach out to their previous candidates for references. Just because they were on a winning campaign doesn’t mean they were responsible for the outcome. Maybe the race was a gimme. Maybe they lost but outperformed expectations. Get into specifics and don’t be afraid to grill them in advance. Better you ask the tough questions now, then after it’s too late.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to take the plunge. A healthy democracy depends on capable, concerned citizens putting themselves out there as candidates. If you’re unsatisfied with the quality of your elected officials, here’s your chance to take the matter into your own hands and be the solution. We wish you good luck and hope that 2016 is your year!

Konst is a political analyst and commentator, who appears regularly on CNN and FOX News. Pehme is the co-host of Effective Radio on AM970 in New York City and former editor-in-chief of the politics magazine City & State.