By Leslie Price
Running for office always seemed like a thing that other people did, and I had no idea how they accomplished it. I always thought these people were to be lawyers, or from families where one or more of their parents were also politicians. But what about us normies? What is the best way to get your start, particularly if you are starting from scratch?
I phoned Adrienne Martini, a Gloria reader who ran for local office and won (and ended up writing a book about her experience), to ask her all the questions that I, a total beginner, want to know the answers to. The resulting interview is for fellow beginner types.
When you decide to run for elected office, how do you pick or find what you want to run for?
I have been on the Otsego County board for seven years. I ran right after the 2016 elections as a total newbie because I was just filled with rage. I called the Democratic party chair and said, What can I do? I expected the answer to be, You can give us money, you can make phone calls. But the answer was, You could run for office. With local offices, the barrier to entry is really, really low. It varies by state, but with New York, you just need to collect 20 signatures on a petition and your local party, whatever party you’re part of and reach out to, will walk you through what you need to do.
There are usually hundreds of local offices up for grabs and nobody runs for them. Like your county level, city level, village level.
So the first step, if you decide you want to run for something on a local level, is trying to find out who your local party representative is.
Yes, and usually they’re organized by county. They will help you figure out the bureaucratic hurdles.
If you don’t want to go that route, there are national groups. Amanda Litman runs one called Run for Something. She is all about getting people into local office and will get you started.
What else did you have to do, aside from the petition?
It varies by state, but in New York, to get on the ballot, I have to get a small number of signatures on a specific piece of paper, turn it in by the right time, and then I was on the ballot. Then you get to the actual campaigning.
That’s a matter of just getting in contact with voters and making sure they know who you are. It depends on the size of the district. Your party, or an organization like Run for Something, can help you through it.
I can walk my entire county board district and go door-to-door in two days or something like that. It’s very small.
If you’re in a city and running for a city-wide seat, that can be more challenging. But most of the time these are tiny offices.
What kind of events did you need to do?
For a local office, I went door-to-door. Now that I’ve been in office, people know who I am and it’s not as strenuous. Running for the New York State Assembly, which is a much larger district and a state-level seat, was a larger lift. I spent every waking hour for about seven months talking about myself, driving from place to place to talk more about myself, to talk about local government, to talk about what this district faces. An upstate district or a central New York district is a lot different from downstate or other places. By the end of it, I was very tired of myself, and just tired in general.
What resonated with people?
Housing in rural areas. We are facing a big crunch. Addiction issues. Rural healthcare systems – they’re kind of falling apart and that’s a big issue. It’s all the nitty-gritty stuff. And that’s also what’s happening with local offices. We’re the ones who make sure when it snows, your street gets plowed. That is not a partisan issue. Is your trash collected? That kind of stuff. I never thought I would know as much about culverts as I do now.
These are things I did not know going in. They are learnable. If you have the slightest amount of curiosity, you will learn this stuff.
You have to be willing to ask questions. And the guy who handles the culverts really wants to talk about culverts. Most people are more than happy to tell you what it is that they do.
I requested to sit on a committee that oversees the Board of Health because I understand infectious diseases and rabies. These are things I can wrap my head around quickly. But when they start talking about new snowplows and trucks, I can feel my eyes glaze over.
When you decided to run, did you know anyone who had done this before?
Nope. My first degree is in theater. I worked as a journalist for 10 years. My background is not this.
Women seem to have to be asked, whereas guys are just like, sure, I could do that. Women frequently have to be convinced. But I ran solely because I was so angry about what happened at the presidential level. It was a nice distraction.
This seat was held by a Republican at the time I ran. Nobody had run against him for years. It kept me from just sitting, watching the news, and feeling horrified. I won the seat by nine votes.
Nine votes is crazy.
Yes. But it is not unusual, especially for smaller offices. And when people say, well, my vote doesn’t matter, it really does.
Did you have to do fundraising?
For a local office I spent maybe 500 bucks total. [Ed note: In many local offices across the country, you have to raise moderate funds to be competitive.] [When I ran for] the assembly district, that was a whole other ball game. I raised a hundred and some thousand dollars. It’s a much larger area.
For almost any interest that you have, I bet you could find an office that matches it, like your library board. Regarding school boards: I admire the heck out of anyone who can do school board, because that can get spicy. Apparently in Texas, if you pay $500, you can run for Justice of the Peace – even if you don’t have a legal degree, they train you after the fact. A friend did that and then won the election.
What were the upsides of this process? Was there anything that was hard or scary that you didn’t anticipate?
Doing anything new where there’s a potential of failure was always the biggest risk. Then walking into the first real big board meeting where you’re making decisions. That’s terrifying, but you do it anyway. Knocking on doors isn’t my favorite. Sometimes, when you catch somebody, you have these great conversations that you never would’ve had. And these are your neighbors, these are people in your community. It’s not like you’re knocking on doors in a different state or country or anything. These are the people who live next to you.
That can be enjoyable sometimes. You have to find ways to kind of make it into a game, like I’m going to knock on 10 doors and then I get to reward myself with a coffee. Something like that. Or you just find something to be enraged about and you’re like, well, this gives me a way to channel that into something.
Do you have other employment?
Most local offices are a part-time gig. It depends on the season, but mostly it’s 15 hours a month, plus email. Then from April to October, I work at a place called the Fenimore Farm and Country Village. I am a textile historic interpreter. It’s not where I expected to be, but I absolutely love it.
But yes, it’s not a full-time gig. State office is. And definitely federal, but for local, most people are not aiming for higher office. This is your community and you want it to be functional.
Is there anything else that would be good for people to know going in?
Well first off, you should think about it, because if you’re unhappy with the way things are and have gone, there are a lot of external forces. But some of it is, we’ve gotten … “divorced” is the wrong word…
Complacent?
[You know that] Mr. Rogers quote about looking for the helpers? That’s for children. That’s great advice when you’re a kid. But if you’re an adult, you have to be the helper.
That’s your job. I’m sorry, I wish it were different, but this is where we are. And you can’t expect that it’s going to work out the way you want it to work out when you’re completely uninvolved in the system. I’m not saying that there aren’t external forces. When you start to move up into federal stuff, you have a lot less control than you think. But locally, you have a lot of control over this.
I wish somebody was going to swoop in, but we’re it.