Ross Morales Rocketto 00:00
There was an article that came out in 2017 or 2016, that was we need a 1000 Obma's to run for office. And the answer to that is there aren't 1000 Obama's. There's one actually, there's one Barack Obama, he was the president, and we're not going to get another Barack Obama. And what we really need is 1000s of people who care deeply and who have problems that they want to solve in their communities.
Omkari Williams 00:47
Hello, and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where I talk with people about how we all get free. I'm your host, Omkari Williams, and I'm very happy that you're here with me today. One of the reasons I love doing this podcast so much is that I get to speak with people who are making a difference in their corner of the world, people who saw a problem and decided to do what they can to make things right. My guest today, Ross Morales Rocketto is one of those people. Ross is the co-founder and co-executive director of Run For Something, a piece of democratic infrastructure designed to recruit and support the next generation of young, diverse, and progressive political leaders. To date Run For Something has worked with more than 125,000 individuals who are interested in running for office. Run For Something as helped elect more than 650 new folks across the country. Before starting Run For Something Ross spent 20 years in electoral politics, having worked for candidates from school board to president. Ross lives in Washington DC with his partner, Jess, their dog, Nacho and cat, Baby Kitty. And it is my great pleasure to welcome Ross to the podcast. Hi, Ross, welcome to the podcast.
Ross Morales Rocketto 02:06
Thanks for having me.
Omkari Williams 02:07
I'm so pleased that you're here. A couple of years ago, I got to interview your co-founder, Amanda Litman. And interviewing two people from the same organization is not something I typically do. But when the opportunity came up to speak with you, I was so excited because I love what Run For Something is doing. And I've been watching you over the past few years. And you're now moving into your seventh year, which I kind of can't even believe. And I want to talk to you about what you've got on tap. But also to give people who aren't familiar with Run For Something background, let's start with what you do, and why you started Run For Something in the first place.
Ross Morales Rocketto 02:51
Oh, totally, I also can't believe that. It's been almost, that we're moving into our seventh year. Run For Something sort of like came out of the ashes of the 2016 election. For most of my career, I've been, you know, like a political operative in some way, shape, or form. I got my start in state and local politics and Texas, and then bounced around the Midwest for a number of years. In that time, I had the opportunity to work for a lot of people who had a D next to their name, I also had the opportunity to get to know a lot of those folks. Some of them were really lovely and amazing. And I'm still friends with today, but a lot of the folks I worked with, were not the kind of people I would have wanted to see an elected office after I got to know them. And that really stuck with me over the years.
Ross Morales Rocketto 03:42
And then came the opportunity after the 2016 election cycle. You know, that sort of idea and thought was at the forefront of my mind. And I thought what that meant was, I was going to bounce around the country working for progressive upstarts and primaries, maybe in statewide races and, you know, then around the same time, my wife connected me to my co-founder, Amanda, who they knew from the Hillary campaign in 2016. And we started talking, writing plans, you know, starting to dream about run for something could be we launched it on inauguration day in 2017 thinking that if we were really lucky, it would be a side hustle, maybe 100 people would sign up to run for office in the first year. After the first month we had over 1000 people tell us they were interested in running for office. After the first three or four months we had about 10,000 people. And as of today, we have almost 130,000 folks from every state who told us that they're interested in running for office. And so our core mission is we recruit and support young, diverse progressive folks who are running for state and local office and usually for the first second or third times. So, that's what we've been doing now, for the last six years. At the time, when we were first launching, we saw all of the incoming, and you know, Amanda and I looked at ourselves and said, we have to do right by these people. And so we got the party started,
Omkari Williams 05:17
I'm gonna say that your option of creating Run For Something is definitely better than my option after the 2016 election, which was to drink heavily. So you at least turned it into something good. And I'm so grateful, because that was just crushing. And it would have been really easy to just check out and say, I'm done with all of this.
Ross Morales Rocketto 05:39
Well, I did for a period of time participate in the great Facebook wars of 2017, which you won't find on my Facebook page anymore, or Twitter account, because I went back and deleted it all. But you know, there was some unproductive energy there too.
Omkari Williams 05:55
Look, we're human right? It was, it was terrible. And you got to do what you got to do to be able to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And when I was preparing for this conversation, I went online and read your most recent strategic plan. And I absolutely loved it. First of all, it's not boring. It's actually exciting and inspiring. And watching the trajectory that Run For Something is on gives me so much hope for the future. And I'm gonna link to the plan in the Episode Notes so people can see where you all have been and where you're going. And the thing that well, among other things, one thing that struck me was y'all started in 2017, with a budget of $750,000, which is not an insignificant chunk of change. But your 2022 budget was $6.3 million, which is an astronomical leap in a really short period of time. And that is, in my mind, a testament to the success of your model. So would you talk about how you got from 2017 numbers to 2022? Numbers? And what's up for 2023?
Ross Morales Rocketto 07:11
Yes, so and actually, that number is a little old. We actually ended up raising a little over $15 million this year. So,
Omkari Williams 07:14
Holy Moly!
Ross Morales Rocketto 07:16
we did better than we thought we were going to do, which is great,
Omkari Williams 07:25
A little bit.
Ross Morales Rocketto 07:26
(laughter) A lot of the work that both Amanda and I have to do is fundraising, you know, having conversations with donors. And that ranges from people who are giving $100 to people who are giving a million dollars. And, you know, that's how the organization continues to exist, and it will probably for a while. But I think it was a lot about our consistency, our mission never changed. The work that we do has changed. And the way we have decided to do the work has shifted over the years as we figured out and learned lessons and things like that. But the mission itself stays the same. And I think people really respect and appreciate that we also didn't try to bite off more than we could really chew. Our mission is very specific. We don't often go outside of what we have said that we want to do. I think the thing we learned in the early days was even though we're one of those organizations that came out of the aftermath of the 2016 election, we were never really what folks would at the time called the resistance organization. Because we were never really about defeating Donald Trump, we were about all sorts of other things that was never our primary goal or mission. And that was a double edged sword. In some ways, it meant that we didn't grow as quickly as a lot of the other organizations that came around at that time, like the Swing Left and Indivisibles of the world.
Ross Morales Rocketto 08:53
What that gave us the ability to do though, was to like tinker with the model over the course of four or five years to like, really figure out what worked, what didn't, and then start to really build on top of the things that did work. So we were able to do a lot of experimenting, and we had a lot of space to do it. A lot of donors over the course of our existence have said that they care about down ballot work. They say it with their words, but they didn't always back that up with their money.
Omkari Williams 09:19
Yeah.
Ross Morales Rocketto 09:20
I think that started to shift over the last two years as people have started to realize the we don't win the presidency without also winning at the state and local level.
Omkari Williams 09:32
Yes.
Ross Morales Rocketto 09:33
Those things are intrinsically linked. And I think folks have started to see that. And then on top of that, I think folks have started to realize that the future of democracy is also linked to a lot of these local offices and abortion access is also linked in a lot of ways to these local offices, your city or town can decide whether they're going to allow abortion access, yeah. Or allow abortion providers to operate.
Omkari Williams 09:54
Yeah, and your local DA is the person who decides whether they're going to prosecute If so, someone is charged in a case of providing abortion services or not.
Ross Morales Rocketto 10:05
Yep. And then more than 50% of the states in the country, the people who actually run elections are elected in some way, shape or form. So the people who decide how long, how late polling locations are open, where drop boxes get located, all that stuff, a lot of those folks are elected. And we were starting to see in 2021, a lot of election deniers starting to run for those offices. And we said, we can't allow that to happen, and then launched a program early this year, specifically to recruit and help support folks who are running for election administration related positions on the ballot, honestly, to keep conspiracy theorists from running our elections.
Omkari Williams 10:50
Yeah, I, personally am hugely grateful for that. Because the weeks ahead of this past election, I was staying up at night thinking, Please, God, don't let these nut jobs win, because they will take our democracy and just destroy it. I mean, I don't expect Democrats to win every election. I just expect our elections to be fair. And that should be the expectation of anyone who really considers themselves a citizen and a patriot. Just fair elections, you're never going to get your way 100% of the time. That's just not life.
Ross Morales Rocketto 11:26
And what we saw in this election cycle is that honestly, a majority of voters generally agree. It isn't to say that no election deniers won, some did for sure. But what we saw is that a vast majority, like over 60% of the races where we were running a candidate for an election administration related position, our folks ended up winning, and a lot of the reason for that, I think there's been a lot made of the democracy vote and people cared about democracy this cycle. I would like to believe that, but I don't think that's actually what was happening. I think what was actually happening is people were seeing some of the folks who were on their ballots, they were starting to hear what they actually had to say. And they got scared, because their views are so far out of the norm in the mainstream. And I think people started to think like, oh, wow, do I want these people to be in charge of how I vote, or any decision in my life, because I think a lot of people had an awakening when they saw what was on the ballot this year. And I think that scared a lot of people into caring about democracy in a way that they don't normally have to because they had candidates literally on the ballot, basically saying that they didn't think that democracy should exist. And yeah, that was disturbing. It's scary, because most people want what you just said, which is elections to be safe, and fair and open. And people don't want partisanship in the administration of their elections.
Omkari Williams 12:58
No.
Ross Morales Rocketto 12:58
I think that's why we're able to see a lot of wins this cycle.
Omkari Williams 13:02
Yeah, I agree. Would I have had the 2016 election, for instance, turnout differently? Absolutely. But it didn't. And so even as much as I hated it, and I hated it more than I could even begin to express. I just had to suck it up and deal. And that's just, that's what we're taught as children in school, little kids in school, it's like, you have to play fair. And that's what we want from our elected officials. And I think you're correct in that a lot of people were very disturbed by the outright statements of some of them that what they were going to do wasn't going to be playing fair. And I was like, You know what, I don't really want to go down that road, even if it gets me a short term win. I prefer the road of let's just do this the right way. And truthfully, the down ballot races, so races that are below the federal level, are hugely important, have been hugely important. And Democrats have been way slow on the uptake on this, whereas Republicans have been working on this for decades. As long as I can remember, Republicans have been looking at down ballot races and saying, if we get people into these positions we can get our agenda passed. And they proved it this year, when Roe got overturned. That was a 50 year project. They took the long view and at the moment they've won, how long that will last we'll see. But I think that it's really important to do what you all are doing. And I sort of think of it as planting seeds. I wonder if that's how you see it.
Ross Morales Rocketto 14:40
I do. Ultimately the folks that we're working with now are going to be the people who run for Congress and run for Senate governor, even hopefully president someday. That's hugely important. The other point that you made about the GOP just having done this for longer, you know, the thing that we often say is Republicans are in year 40 of a 40 year plan, we're in year 6 of a 40 year plan. And Karl Rove started talking about and investing in school board races in the 1970s. Yeah, we are way behind. There's a lot of room for us to catch up. I think the the sort of corollary to Run For Something on the right is an organization called the Leadership Institute. And they basically trained every single Republican elected official you've ever heard of when they were young, they have had an operating budget of over $30 million a year for over a decade. And so we're still, the left is going to be we're going to be catching up for a while. But I also think a lot of what you saw in the midterm elections and cycle was the result of infrastructure that has been really intentionally built over the last five or six years. That wasn't the sole reason for it. But the reason that infrastructure exists and infrastructure being state and local organizations, organizations like Run For Something who are working year in, year out, year round, doing the hard work that needs to happen. You know, the reason that you need that is because in really bad years, it means that the bad will be less bad. And in really good years, it means the good will be a little bit better, you're really like doing it because it helps you on the margins and make things less bad or more good than they would have been otherwise. And I think you saw some of that this elections cycle.
Omkari Williams 16:35
There were definitely elections that I thought were way too close, including the Georgia run off, it's like really, there that many people who are going to vote for someone who clearly has issues from brain injuries. But that's a separate subject. But I do think that it speaks to a challenge for Run For Something, which is that we are a really partisan country at the moment. And I mean, I am a progressive, and I will tell anybody who asks, I will even tell people who don't ask. But I like to think that I am willing to have conversations and listen to people who have opposing views. And I'm wondering how in your work, how you and Amanda engage with people who have different views, although I'm sure they're not writing you checks. But how you get your candidates to be able to engage with constituents on the other side, a lot of your candidates, as you said, are first time, some second, some third, but mostly really new to the whole running for something game. And in this atmosphere, it's tough.
Ross Morales Rocketto 17:53
Something that we tell our folks and is just generally true is like, especially at the state and local level, when elections get nationalized, we tend to lose. We do a lot better when our folks are out there talking about local issues that matter to people's daily life. And whenever we talk to candidates, wherever they are sort of like on the progressive spectrum, the thing we say is don't talk about the big national issues. And if you do, you need to make it relatable to your community. So like, if you're going to talk about the Green New Deal, how does that actually relate to what's going on right now, and the neighborhoods that were the people you're going to be talking to are. And I think that's one of the most important things that folks can really do. Because the right has built a really sophisticated messaging apparatus at the national level. And they're really good at deploying it. And their candidates are really good at staying on message or they have been in the past, I guess this cycle is a little bit of an aberration for them. But for the most part they have been and the way we combat that is by bringing everything back to what's going on at the state and local level. And we win elections when they become about state and local issues. We lose them when we're talking about the big federal stuff.
Ross Morales Rocketto 19:15
And the exception to that rule right now is around abortion. But I don't know if you saw the reports, but like, right before the election, there were a lot of reports and a lot of folks that I was talking to who were like voters are tired of hearing about abortion don't talk about abortion anymore.
Omkari Williams 19:32
Yeah, I saw that.
Ross Morales Rocketto 19:34
And we don't have all of the data back yet to say this definitively, but what it's starting to look like is that abortion did mobilize some Democratic voters but what it actually did, largely was scare a lot of Republican voters into voting for Democrats because actually, abortion is not that controversial. It's controversial, but it's not also not that controversial anymore. Almost every, you know like a huge percentage of the population more than 50%, I think into the 60s, think it should be available. The questions in the places where I think there folks had more controversy around them is timing and that kind of stuff. But making them illegal is not popular. People do not like that. It scares them, it makes them start to think like what other things are just gonna get banned. And you know, like, the messaging around the Republican Party trying to like ban contraception isn't hyperbole, they're doing it, they're trying to do it in a bunch of states. And so I think that's the one place where I would say that there's been a little bit of an exception to that. But I think that we also saw is, you know, abortion is up to the states. And so it's also a state issue. Now,
Omkari Williams 20:47
Yes.
Ross Morales Rocketto 20:48
In a way that it hasn't been, you know, since like the 1960s. So…
Omkari Williams 20:53
It's interesting to me, because, as you've said, Republicans are typically really good at staying on message and that they went so far off the rails on this one, surprised me and surprises me still. And I think that when you talk about making sure that your candidates stay on issues that are local, or in this case, just personal, that's a really powerful position to come from, because it doesn't matter where you live in this country. If you are over the age of 20, there's no way you don't know someone who's had an abortion, the numbers just speak to that you absolutely know someone who's had an abortion. And taking a big issue like that, and being able to personalize it is a really good model for taking issues that are smaller, but still maybe have a somewhat bigger scope and personalizing them. So you referenced the Green New Deal. And taking a piece out of that and saying, okay, so what piece of that really makes sense in my community. And so much of the work that I do, which is all around micro activism, and people taking tiny, little actions, I feel like this is so important, because it gives us not only a roadmap for people to take action, but it makes it sustainable. And I think that there's something in the Run For Something model that makes this really sustainable, because it does keep it small in the sense of local, I'm kind of wondering when you look at what you've accomplished with that model of keeping it local, keeping it small. What you think there is for the larger party to learn? What do you think there is for activists across the spectrum to learn?
Ross Morales Rocketto 22:45
Yeah, I think the biggest lesson that we've learned is that actually, a thing that has been really, really surprising to us is that in every survey that we do, have people who have run for office of our candidates that we worked with, one thing keeps coming up really consistently, which is that by simply existing, we have made people feel like somebody had their back and gave them help give them the courage to say that they wanted to actually run for office. And I think the thing that we found is, more people have thought about running for office than I think most people would assume I don't have any data to back it up. It feels like about half the people you talk to, will tell you, if you really dig in and ask like, Yeah, I thought about it. And then you know, what you hear from most people is that's not for me, that's where like a rich white dude, lawyer or business owner, or someone who's retired to do and I think, a huge part of what we've been trying to do. And I think what we need to continue to do is break down the stigma that's attached to it, because we need more people that look like every day folks to be running for office.
Ross Morales Rocketto 23:54
Something that I really appreciate about what you all do is for those people who really aren't interested in running for something you make available to them, the possibility of being volunteers and mentors, to people who are actually running for something. Would you talk about how you use volunteers and mentors in your organization?
Ross Morales Rocketto 23:54
And for us, we operate under the idea that all communities have the things they need to succeed, it's not our job to impose things on folks, our job is to help surface what's already there. So the person who runs an after school program, or an EMT, or a teacher who has really good relationships with their parents and the community. These are the types of people we're really trying to surface and look for, because they're the people who ultimately look like, reflect, feel like the community itself. And those are the people who are going to have the most success. There was an article that came out in 2017 or 2016. That was we need 1000 Obama's to run for office. And the answer to that is there aren't 1000 Obama's there's one actually there's one Barack Obama, he was the president and we're not going to get another Barack Obama and what we really need as 1000s of people who care deeply and who have problems that they want to solve in their communities. That's what we really need those are the people we really need to be looking for. And I think I don't begrudge the party sort of like the broader party apparatus. There's structural and institutional problems that exist in the party that make it hard for them to do this work in the way that we do it. We would gladly if there was going to be a real significant investment to do this work from the party, we would say, okay, great, you guys take it. But like, there's a lot of reasons why that won't happen. And I think that's why it's going to be important for like this work to continue. And honestly, like, we're very open about the lessons that we learn, the things that we think went well, the things that we didn't think, the things that didn't go as well. And our general hope is, oh, everyone can sort of learn with us like as we keep growing and doing more of the work.
Ross Morales Rocketto 26:17
Yeah, so we use folks on a couple of ways. The first is normal things that you'd expect. We endorsed 690 people this year, we try to help connect our volunteers to campaigns that they might be interested in. But another thing that we do, and I think this is probably what you're getting at is, anyone who comes in through our pipeline has the opportunity to have a one on one conversation with a trained volunteer, to help one get more information about some of these candidates and surface that people who are really amazing. But then also to provide like a little bit of first level support to a lot of these folks who don't really know where to start. It's really hard to figure out, it's a really opaque system and set of processes. So I'd say we have a lot of really incredible dedicated volunteers who spend a lot of time having one on one conversations with our candidates are with people who are at the very beginning of their candidate journey. So still trying to figure out what to run for what's in their community, all that stuff. And I think giving people that touch point with another human being really early in the process is super important. And it's something that we've been doing this now for almost six years, this is one of the first things we ever did as an organization and have allowing people to have some kind of human interaction will always be a part of the model, because otherwise it just sort of a faceless, nameless entity, and that doesn't feel inviting for people.
Omkari Williams 27:46
Yeah, especially when you're talking about putting yourself out there in such a huge way. I mean, running for office, even a local office is an undertaking, and it requires people to step up in ways they probably have never had to do before. So I appreciate that there is that support available. Because full disclosure, I did some mentoring for a candidate of yours a few years ago, and I loved it, it was such a great experience for me. And when she won, I was over the moon, you'd have thought I was running. It was like I was so excited. So there's a lot to gain on both sides of that experience, I think and I'm really grateful that you guys have that program in place. So in the time we have left, I have a couple more questions. My first one is, what are you all gearing up for ahead of 2024? Because it's going to be here so quickly.
Ross Morales Rocketto 28:50
Yeah, we're really digging in, especially around local races. So we have programs now running around school boards. And we have programs now around democracy and election administration. And those are really the places where we're going to focus a lot of time energy resources over the next couple of years and probably beyond the next two years, because those are just such a vital places. And they're places where not a lot of other people are doing work right now.
Omkari Williams 29:18
Yeah, I'm going to be very curious to see how these things shake out. Because I think as you had mentioned earlier, there has been a lot more attention now on how important those local races are. And people are seeing that for themselves in their own communities. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with some of those school board racism, city council racism, things that make a difference really on the ground for people in their everyday lives. Before I asked you to share three actions that people can take to support the work of Ron for something I want to ask you, is there anything you want us to know that I haven't asked you about that you think is important?
Ross Morales Rocketto 29:59
I love that question actually, I this time I got everything in that I was looking to get it, but I actually feel really good.
Omkari Williams 30:06
Oh, yay. Thank you. I'm so glad to hear that. That's wonderful. So then, okay, so what are three things that people can do to support Run For Something?
Ross Morales Rocketto 30:16
The first thing is you can run. So you can go to runforwhat.net and get more information about the offices that are available in your community. The second thing you can do is volunteer, as we talked about either for a candidate or just to like have one on one conversations and be a mentor for somebody who's thinking about running for office or currently running for office. And you can go to runforsomething.net to find those opportunities. And then the last thing is you can make a contribution, the work is expensive, it's hard. We're not an organization that does TV ads, or direct mail or like pays for big media programming for candidates, like all of our work is based on people having one on one interactions with candidates, which is means that the work is a little bit more expensive. So yeah, and you can go to runforsomething.net/build for that.
Omkari Williams 31:08
That's wonderful. Yeah, and I am a small donor to Run For Something every month. It's just like, a few bucks here nd there really, really helps. And I'm not going to
Ross Morales Rocketto 31:20
Thank you!
Omkari Williams 31:20
Oh, you're welcome. Of course, I mean, I'm not going to miss the coffee that I'm not drinking because of that money, right. And it makes a difference to organizations like yours. I really am so glad we got to talk. I just, I truly love what you all are doing. It's so important. And I think that if nothing else, no matter what the outcome of an election is just that feeling of knowing that you did everything you can, will keep you going even when you don't get the result that you would like. So I really encourage everyone listening to investigate Run For Something. If you're under 40 and progressive, think about running for something, and also just support them. So Ross, thank you, again, so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Ross Morales Rocketto 31:40
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And thank you for your support.
Omkari Williams 32:15
Oh, forever, forever. Take care. Thank you.
Omkari Williams 32:20
Something that can be really challenging in our culture of instant gratification is to take the long view. But that's exactly what Run For Something does. They recognize how important it is to build a strong base of progressive elected officials. And that happens when you have strong candidates and structures that help them put in the work over time to build relationships with the communities that they're tasked with serving. If you're under 40 and thinking of running for office, Run For Something may be able to help. If you're over 40 or just not interested in running for office, please do check out the ways that you can support the important work that they're doing. And you can find them at runforsomething.net. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon. And until then, remember that change starts with story. So keep sharing yours.