I’ve seen a lot of first-time candidates deliver kick-off speeches, or at least ones that came very early in their first campaign.
And of course I’ve done it myself. So I know how hard it can be.
In my case, every year for a number of years, I would often hear from people how much better I was than the last time they’d heard me speak. Projecting backward, I always thought I must’ve been really bad the first time.
It’s tough even for the most talented candidates.
Often crammed in the middle of long dinners or party meetings where people are hardly paying attention, awaiting food, tired of long speeches from more prominent political figures, and/or ready to leave, that first speech is a tough assignment. And you’re either facing complete strangers, or friends and family you don’t want to disappoint—and either one can be nerve-wracking.
For the most part, you’re winging it on the content. Little help. Little guidance.
Knowing these challenges is why I remember the best kick-off or early speeches to this day. And the candidates.
There was Rose Lounsbury, a state rep candidate from the Dayton area last cycle. She’s a former teacher and phenomenal communicator, and both showed in her opening tour de force. I hope she runs again.
Then there was Bob McCollister, jammed at the very end of a long dinner in Lawrence County when he kicked off his bid for county commissioner. The long-time football coach with a PhD in international affairs absolutely wowed me. We’ve been friends ever since.
And in the 2016 cycle, as a new party chair, I watched a young guy give a speech to a small party gathering in a rural red county (I believe it was Knox County) in central Ohio. He was in his 20s, had recently received a Bachelor of Science in agricultural studies from Cornell, and had returned home to start a farming business.
He was comfortable, confident and real. Disarmingly authentic. I don’t remember his words now—but I remember that, at one point, he took out his wallet, held it up high, and said something like: “I’m running because of this.” He basically told the group gathered that he was seeking office to fight for their economic well-being. And the way he presented it really worked. I believed him, as did everyone else. Later, I told my team I felt like I had just seen “The Natural” in person.
Like many candidates in Ohio, stuck in a gerrymandered district where few focus on statehouse races, this young candidate didn’t win. (One of the tragedies of gerrymandering is how it suppresses true talent and inspiration—in different circumstances, Rose and Bob would be leading statehouses or walking the halls of Congress, leading our state or nation to a better place).
But not surprisingly, that young candidate—whose name is John Russell—has stayed involved in public life ever since, forging a path in rural and progressive politics. He now does all sorts of good work on podcasts, a newsletter and social media, earning a national following.
I like to keep up with what John says and writes, and late last week John wrote something hard-hitting that’s been on my mind as well.
Blowing It?
He visited one of the big rallies (the one he covered was in Colorado), and summarized it with a post called: “They’re Fucking Blowing It.”
That’s right.
Huge rally. In a red area. Great speakers.
So what did John mean by blowing it?
Here’s what he wrote: “here’s the risk: we bottle all this protest and rally energy and hand it to 10 or so known progressives. That’s not a movement. That’s a hit list. There’s a great chance that right-wing PACs will label, lie, divide, and crush them. It’s what the money machine was built for.
What we need now is a cattle call.”
Absolutely right.
But the good news is there’s still time to fix it. Time to channel the energy from these rallies into the broadest and deepest pro-democracy and progressive direction possible.
How do you do that? As I wrote not long ago, the path for parties out of power has not been forged through endless speculation about who will make the best presidential candidate three years down the road.
But too often, every time a politician draws a big crowd, makes a splash, or does something else that cuts through, the conversation quickly becomes: “maybe he or she should run for president too.”
We then see stories on how much money they’re raising, or how they’re the next “rising star.” And maybe they will be.
But that reflex and pattern—of turning the story into political celebrity, national office and, specifically, 2028 presidential speculation—reveal the blind spot that’s helped dig the hole we’re in.
Because long before we elect the next president will come thousands of elections at the state house and local level. And it’s those elections that will shape (for good or for bad) our democracy going into the 2028 election—as well as before and after.
And those are the races that we’ve overlooked for so long. (It certainly hasn’t been the presidential ones). To the point where even when we’ve had incredible, celebrity-style national candidates (and even when they’ve won!), our democracy has still backslid dramatically.
So as John argues, the beauty of rallies all over the country isn’t about the speaker they are drawn to at that moment. It’s about the people in the crowds themselves, and their potential to grow into the army for democracy that we so desperately need.
Don’t get me wrong: the great speakers are doing yeoman’s work to draw that army, and I applaud their critical decision to host these rallies all over the country, including in more conservative areas. We owe them huge thanks for it all.
But our core task is to channel those energized and packed crowds into something more lasting.
More structural.
Back to John.
Run Everywhere
What did he mean by wanting a “cattle call”?
“1,000 completely new and different candidates, called up from pockets of the country where they’re living through this mess. For Congress. For statehouse. For the thousand down-ballot seats Democrats lost during the Obama years. Take a lesson from the right’s political takeover and flood the zone. Force the billionaires to play defense in 1,000 places at once.
A decentralized, working-class wave is harder to squash than 10 polished progressives that everyone already knows.”
He gives an example.
Amber, a nurse he met: “[S]he’s the kind of person who belongs on the ballot. There are thousands more like her — in unions, in crowd lines, in church basements and break rooms across the country. The most talented people you’ve never heard of are sinking their time into jobs that increasingly benefit oligarchs.
They don’t need a consultant. They need a challenge, some support, and a shot at running things. That’s the whole idea behind this country. On paper, anyway.”
Exactly.
So, as these rallies and town halls take place, don’t simply look at the stage and think of these as the dress rehearsals of future presidential candidates. That’s too top-down to save democracy. That’s actually what we have been doing. And structurally, it’s too narrow and too short term.
Instead, look at the crowd, and all the people jamming the events. These are the perfect recruiting hubs of future legislative, local and school board candidates, and the U.S. House too. The ones who are best positioned—like Amber or John, when he got started—to battle against right wing extremists who are destroying democracy in states across this country, the damage from which flows upward into Congress and as high as Trump.
And know that recruiting in tougher red districts is key to bringing accountability to these often uncontested races—the very districts where most of the damage to American democracy and rights and values is currently being done.
(This is the reason I partnered with Every State Blue to create Blue Ohio—which raises dollars to support Ohio legislative candidates running in largely red, rural districts across Ohio; and it’s why I love working with Jess Piper and Blue Missouri, and Blue Tennessee. As John says about these candidates—“They need a challenge, some support, and a shot at running things.” That’s what this infrastructure is providing in places where they otherwise get little support.)
And along these same lines, also think of these events as recruiting hubs for all the volunteers who can support the candidates among them who step up.
And legions of precinct captains to engage voters all the time.
The Path Out Starts in States
Remember: it was the Howard Dean 50-state strategy that began the process of getting us out us out of the wilderness twenty years ago.
And it was the Karl Rove statehouse strategy that took the Obama victory from 2008 and, while we were still celebrating big-name politicians on big stages, focused on low-profile legislative races to sweep state houses in 2010.
If it worked then, let’s do it again now.
Bottom line:
The true potential of these rallies isn’t with the big names on the stage.
It’s with the crowds.
We’ve got to use their energy to inspire a new generation to bring accountability to politics all over America, and at the levels that shape democracy most directly—statehouses and local races.
And if we do our jobs, not too long from now, the folks from those crowds will be making their kick-off speeches just like John, Rose and Bob did.
And far more people will be there to support them—because we’ve all made clear that these are the true front-line races in the battle to save democracy.
Day 157—April 27, 2025
Donald Trump instructed GOP members of the House to eject constituents from their town hall meetings to erase any impression that there is “dissension in the Party.”
Of course, town hall meetings aren’t about “the Party”—they’re about the citizens of the district who are supposed to be represented by their Member.
Either way, dissent and speaking truth to power are as American as it gets.
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