Part of the frustration I heard from people across Upstate New York after Tuesday was that the region didn’t have the caliber of candidates other parts of the country did. Democrats who watched what happened on the national stage wanted to know why they weren’t seeing more of that in their neck of the woods.
I think, at least partly, that’s due to Democrats not being very robust in a lot of rural counties where they’re accustomed to getting shellacked. Jackie and I talked about this on our post-election Debrief. Now’s an opportunity to get stronger, have more voices at the table, and make some decisions about future direction that could really change the dynamic going forward.
That requires more people getting involved.
For quite some time now, I’ve heard people say there’s no point in getting involved in local politics, or pretend local politics doesn’t matter. It matters. Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican.
If you’re a Democrat and you’re frustrated that you don’t see more of what you saw on the national stage happening in your neck of the woods, getting involved is the fastest way to fixing it. If you’re a Republican and you’re frustrated by any part of what you saw Tuesday, then getting involved is the fastest way to address that. Yelling into the void on social media will change absolutely nothing at the local level.
This matters to me because I’ve seen how low the bar is for engagement in local communities. Especially where things just appear to run on autopilot. These are often places where one party has a firm grip on local politics, and the out-of-power party is playing a perpetual game of catch-up or is disengaged entirely from the local issues.
I saw this in a community where I myself lived and became involved in local politics. Ideas were widely welcomed. Quite literally, the only thing I had to do was send an email and show up to a meeting. Once I got involved, my ideas and thoughts were more considered.
If you’re actually starting from nothing, it can start by reading—or even just scanning—through local board minutes, showing up to a local town or county meeting, or contacting your party committee leaders. It doesn’t have to be one single thing. And it doesn’t have to take hours and hours of your time.
Reaching out to find out what help your party needs can literally take less than three minutes. Everyone has three minutes.
Obviously, there’s lots of stuff going on here. In state legislative races, funding for campaigns will be less robust if the powers that be don’t see the seats as competitive. I think that played a role this most recent time around, because most didn’t realize how many seats could be competitive until a few weeks before Election Day—or, in some cases, until Election Night.
In purely local races, the folks who make up party leadership have been around for a long time. I’m certainly not criticizing them. They’ve been out there doing the work when no one else would. More people getting involved gives them an opportunity to have some help and make decisions about what comes next.
I think there would naturally be some pushback from people who’ve been leading for a long time when new voices come along. As much as that’s natural, it shouldn’t discourage anyone involved from embracing change or the work that lies ahead.
If you’re entering the local discourse for the first time and you experience pushback, don’t let it discourage you. If you’ve been in the fray for a long time and you feel like your expertise or experience are being ignored, don’t automatically throw the towel in and walk away or block new ideas.
For years now, I’ve watched both parties put up candidates who reflect national values or align on national issues that just don’t land with local voters. I think Democrats were successful across the country this most recent cycle because they ran candidates who made sense community by community.
It’s a wake-up call. Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, the issues on your plate matter.
And sometimes that means candidates who wouldn’t necessarily win or look like the candidates who run on the national stage. It’s like the trope of Democrats putting up candidates who feel highly academic and very refined. No shade to that type of candidate. There are plenty of places where those candidates can win. But you can’t seriously expect that kind of candidate to automatically connect with rural communities.
That’s an ultra-simplified example, and I’m not saying that kind of candidate can never win in those places. But on the whole, candidates need to reflect the community and issues they’re vying to represent and legislate on.
I think all of this is precisely why more people getting involved in party politics would greatly benefit them. They’d get better with more people engaged because they’d be a wider representation of the community at large.
The work doesn’t automatically translate to wins. Not in one cycle. In some cases, it takes time.
Democrats are making progress, as New York Focus recently reported in its look at the election results. The party improved its congressional margins over 2024 in all but two of the 25 districts with enough votes counted to compare. But neither party flipped control of a county legislature or board of supervisors. Democrats picked up at least 20 seats on those bodies, while Republicans flipped 11 of their own.
Here’s another thing: People think in local politics there’s a boogeyman lurking in the background, deciding what issues are important or what stuff actually happens and gets done.
The only boogeyman is time.
Quite often, the people who are currently involved in local politics are spread crazy thin. They’re doing four or five jobs, volunteering for the local committees, putting on events, and involved in just about everything there is to be involved in. Not because they’re power hungry, but because there isn’t anyone else around.
So when a new idea comes along from someone who isn’t involved, everyone who is involved looks at each other like, “Who’s gonna do that?”
Point being, a lot of ideas will be accepted in most communities if someone is willing to head it up.
So remember that, and get involved.
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