How a county party recruits candidates for every empty line on the ballot

Imagine a football team that forfeits twenty-three games a season and then holds a press conference to complain that the other side keeps winning. You would suggest that the coach look at the schedule. That is the situation in a surprising number of counties, where the real contest is not Republican against Democrat but somebody against nobody, and nobody wins by walkover.

Uncontested seats are a failure of organization, not of voters. Voters cannot choose a candidate who is not on the ballot. A county party can fix that, and a county chair who does it will do more for the cause than any number of angry posts about what is wrong in the capital. Here is the playbook.

This one is a step-by-step guide, so the steps are plain and numbered. The rules differ by state, and I note where you have to look up your own.

Step 1: Pull the ballot and audit it

Before you can recruit, you have to know what is empty. Get the sample ballots or certified results from the last two comparable elections from your county election office, and a list of offices that will be on the next ballot. Many election offices post both. Ask for the list of offices by election year, since terms differ: a sheriff may be up this cycle and the school board next.

Build a one-page table with a row for every office and four columns: the office, the number of seats, the year it is next on the ballot, and whether a Republican (or, for non-partisan seats, a conservative the party would support) filed last time. Include everything:

• County offices: sheriff, clerk, treasurer, assessor, commissioners, coroner, judges, constable, surveyor, depending on your state.
• School board seats.
• Municipal offices: mayor, council, city clerk.
• Township and special-district seats: fire, water, library, soil and conservation, park districts.
• State legislative seats that include your county.
• Party seats: precinct committee positions, delegates, convention roles. how to become a precinct committeeman and take over your county party explains why these matter.

Here is a hypothetical audit for an imaginary county.

Seats up: 6 + 5 + 14 + 8 + 3 = 36. Filled: 3 + 2 + 4 + 1 + 3 = 13. Empty: 36 − 13 = 23. The fill rate is 13 ÷ 36, a little over a third. Look at where the empties are: not at the top of the ticket, where the money and the attention go, but at the bottom, where a person with a free weekend can win. Of the 23 empty seats, 17 are municipal, township or special district (10 + 7 = 17). It is no accident that the empty line is the cheap line.

Step 2: Set a goal and do the arithmetic backwards

A goal that can be measured is a goal that gets met. Suppose the county chair decides to cut the 23 empty seats roughly in half. 23 ÷ 2 = 11.5, so call it 12 new candidates.

Now work out how many people you must ask. Recruiting is a funnel. Suppose, as a working assumption, that one in five people you ask says yes (your county's rate will differ; keep a count and replace my guess with yours). To land 12 yeses you need 12 × 5 = 60 asks. If the filing deadline is 20 weeks away, that is 60 ÷ 20 = 3 asks a week. Three phone calls a week is not a heroic burden. It is a habit, and it is the entire difference between a county with a bench and one without.

Step 3: Find out the rules before you ask anyone

Nothing sours a recruit faster than learning in week nine that she cannot run. For every office on your list, write down:

1. The filing deadline. Dates differ by state and sometimes by office. Use the secretary of state's or county's published calendar.
2. What it takes to get on the ballot. A filing fee, a petition with a number of signatures, or both. ballot access explained, petitions, fees and the deadlines that kill campaigns covers how ballot access works and how deadlines kill campaigns.
3. Residency and qualification rules. How long must a candidate have lived in the district? Is a party affiliation required, and for how long? Are there age or registered-voter rules?
4. Whether the office is partisan. In many states school boards and municipal offices are nonpartisan, so no party label appears on the ballot. A party can still recruit and support candidates in those races in most places, but the rules for how openly are set by state law and party rules. Read them. nonpartisan on the ballot does not mean nonideological in the council chamber makes the argument for why these seats matter anyway.
5. Employment restrictions. Some government employees face limits on running for partisan office; federal employees are covered by the Hatch Act, and some state and local employees by comparable rules. Ask a prospect to check with her employer's ethics office.

Put all of it on a single sheet per office. When you call, you will be able to say: "The deadline is March first, it takes fifty signatures, and the pay is a few hundred dollars a month. Will you do it?" That is a different conversation from "We were hoping somebody might step forward."

Step 4: Build the prospect list

Candidates are not found by waiting. They come from places, and the chair's job is to go to the places.

• The people who already do things. PTA officers, booster-club presidents, Rotary and Lions members, fire-company volunteers, church council members, small-business owners, retired teachers, veterans' post leaders.
• The people who already show up. Look at who comes to public comment at the school board, the planning commission and the county commission. Someone willing to stand in a gymnasium at 8 p.m. for three minutes about a boundary change is already halfway to a candidate.
• The people already in your party's orbit. Precinct committee members, delegates, volunteers from past campaigns, donors, and the people who put up signs.
• The people who have been asked before. The one who said "not this year" three years ago might say yes now. Keep a list.
• The people the other side has not noticed. A good prospect is often someone who has never been to a party meeting.

Write at least 120 names. At one in five, 120 names yield 24 yes answers, double your goal of 12 (120 ÷ 5 = 24), a margin for the people who say yes and then change their minds.

Step 5: Make the ask

Most people say no to a general appeal and yes to a specific person asking for a specific job. Use a short script and use it in person or by phone, not by mass email.

1. Start with why them. "You've run the booster club for six years and everyone in town trusts how you handle money."
2. Name the office and the stake. "The water district board sets your rates and has not had a contested election in a decade."
3. State the time. "Two meetings a month and a packet to read. About ten hours a month." Check this with someone who has held the seat; do not guess.
4. Name the deadline. "The filing deadline is March first. Can I come back to you by the fifteenth of this month?"
5. Say what the party will do. Training, a mentor, a sample petition, a coffee with a former officeholder, a volunteer or two for the doors.
6. Be quiet and let her answer. Then write down what she said and when you promised to call back.

Be honest about the job. A candidate who is surprised by the workload in March quits in June. A candidate who was told the truth in October will come to the first meeting early.

What to do with a no

Most answers will be no, and a no is information. Ask one follow-up question: "What would have to be different for you to say yes?" The answer is usually one of four things: time, money, fear of the attention, or a worry about a job. Time can be answered with the real schedule. Money can be answered with the actual budget for a race of that size, which for the smallest offices is often a few hundred dollars. Fear can be answered by a coffee with someone who has done it. The job worry has to be answered by the person's employer or the ethics rules, not by you. Then ask: "Who else should I be talking to?" A person who turns the job down will often name the person who should take it, and that second name is usually a better prospect than the first.

Step 6: Train them

A new candidate does not need a law degree. She needs five things: a calendar of deadlines, a one-page message, a basic idea of how many votes the race takes, a way to raise or spend a small amount, and a treasurer who knows the reporting rules. Hold a candidate night once a year, in the fall before the filing season, with a handful of experienced people as speakers: a county commissioner, a school board member, a clerk who explains filing, a treasurer who explains the finance report. State parties and the national party also run candidate trainings, so ask yours what is on the calendar.

Give every candidate a copy of running for local office, the first thirty days, step by step and the budget worksheet in three first-time candidates, three races, and how each spends the first year. If it makes the race look like homework, good. The candidates who do the homework are the ones who win.

Step 7: Support them without crossing the line

County chairs are tempted to pick favourites. Many state and county party rules require party officers to stay neutral in a contested primary, and a chair who breaks that rule can hand a losing candidate a grievance and the party a lawsuit. Read your own party's bylaws. Where the rules bar a chair from taking sides, the chair can still do plenty:

• recruit every qualified person who wants to run, not just the one the chair likes;
• hold a forum open to all primary candidates, with the same time and the same questions for everyone;
• offer the same training, the same rules briefing and the same access to the party's public tools to each;
• keep the party's data and mailing list rules even-handed;
• save the endorsement and the volunteers for the nominee after the primary.

Caucus, primary or convention, how Republicans actually pick a nominee explains the different ways nominees get picked, and Why every Republican owes the primary election a vote, every time makes the case for why the primary matters. The principle is the same: the voters choose, the party serves.

Step 8: Keep a bench

The best recruiting is done after the election, not before the deadline. Every candidate who ran, win or lose, is a prospect for the next cycle. Keep a spreadsheet: name, office, year, result, what they liked, what they hated, and the next office they might consider. A school board member who served well is a council prospect. A council member is a state house prospect. A candidate who lost by 40 votes has already done the hardest part of the job, which is the first race.

A bench also protects you from the empty line you cannot foresee. A death, a move, or a withdrawal can open a slot after the filing deadline. In some states the party's committee fills a vacancy on the ballot; the rules are set by state law and the party's rules, so find out how it works before you need it, not after.

Answering the doubter

The doubter in the room says: "Why spend scarce hours recruiting for seats we can't win? Put the money in the races that matter." There is an honest case in that, and it deserves a fair statement. Volunteers and dollars are finite, and a county that puts a hundred volunteers behind a township fire district race and none behind the sheriff's office has its priorities backwards.

But the argument misses three things. One, a candidate costs the party very little: the candidate is the main resource, and she brings her own friends. Two, an uncontested seat costs the other side nothing, while a contested seat makes them spend time, money and attention they would rather use elsewhere. Three, the bench is made from these races. Nobody becomes a legislator without having first been something smaller. A party that never fields a school board candidate has no one to run for Congress except the people who were already planning to.

Also: some of the seats in the empty column are not unwinnable. A water district or township board election, with a few hundred votes, is often decided by a handful of people. The empty line is empty because nobody asked.

The bottom line

• Audit the ballot first. List every office, every seat, and who filled it last time. The empty lines are your work order.
• Set a number and do the arithmetic backwards. In the hypothetical county, 12 new candidates take roughly 60 asks, which is three calls a week over 20 weeks.
• Know the filing deadline, fee, signature and residency rules before you make a single call, and be honest about the time the job takes.
• Support candidates without picking sides where your party's rules forbid it: the same training, forum and information for everyone, and the full team for the nominee.
• Keep a bench. Every candidate, win or lose, is next cycle's recruit, and a county party with a bench is a county party that never has to say "nobody ran."