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Square One Politics seeks out the most promising Democratic women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to run for Congress in long-overlooked red districts and states, and provides the high-impact, hands-on support they need to launch, run, and win their groundbreaking campaigns - against all the odds.Are you ready to join us?

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Square One seeks out the most promising Democratic women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to run for Congress in long-overlooked red districts and states, and provides the support they need to launch, run, and win their campaigns.

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“Spring of ‘17, did I think that we could win? Yes. I thought that we could win. Did I know how we were going to do it? I did not. Did I know how to run for Congress? Not necessarily.”Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, Illinois 14th, as told to Kara Swisher on Vox Media’s Recode Decode Podcast, August 5, 2019&nbsp;You’ve decided to run. You’ve raised some money. That’s great. Really exciting. Now you’ve really got to get all the practical matters into place. So let’s get down to brass tacks.

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Square One Politics seeks out the most promising Democratic women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to run for Congress in long-overlooked red districts and states, and provides the high-impact, hands-on support they need to launch, run, and win their groundbreaking campaigns - against all the odds.

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Square One takes risks and invests in red districts, identifies compelling and diverse candidates, and creates the infrastructure needed for them to win. By providing the necessary tools and resources to run for Congress, our candidates flip seats blue and expand the map for Democrats.

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Get updates on our candidates and campaigns, find out how our alumni are transforming Congress, receive special event invitations, and learn about meaningful opportunities to engage in our work with us.Our mission is simple: Square One identifies the most promising candidates for Congress in some of the toughest districts in the country and provides them with the hands-on, high-impact support they need to win — all without charging them a dime.Please enter your information to receive regular updates from our team.

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“Running for office is not for the faint of heart.”Allen Chen, campaign manager, Sri Preston Kulkarni, Texas 22nd, 2020You feel ready. You’ve straightened out your story. Now, it’s time to figure out whether your district is ready for you. Familiarize yourself with the key players. Meet the people who know other people; learn in detail about the needs of the community. And don’t get hung up if Democratic bigwigs won’t answer your calls.

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Do you know of any dynamic leaders thinking about running for Congress? Know someone in your community who has already announced and would be a great fit for Square One? Square One seeks out the most promising Democratic women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to run for Congress in long-overlooked red districts and states, and provides the high-impact, hands-on support they need to launch, run, and win their groundbreaking campaigns — against all the odds.Since 2017, we've worked with our incredible candidates to win tough Congressional races and expand the map for Democrats across the country.In past cycles, we've seen just how critical it is to begin recruiting and investing in key races as early as possible.

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Imagine this: You’re a newly elected member of Congress, sitting in your office on Capitol Hill, representing thousands of people back home in your Midwest district. Just 18 months ago, you’d never run for office, never launched a campaign, never led campaign rallies, or talked on live national TV — much less flipped your longtime Republican district from red to blue.And yet here you are. You did it.You pulled it off because, at some point, you had a feeling that you could. And then something — a desire for change; a dawning awareness that, when it came to the problems in your community, the cavalry wasn’t coming — tipped that feeling of could into should.We’ve seen it happen over and over again. In fact, the dream vision above is the story of one of our candidates, Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, a nurse with a pre-existing condition who in 2017 was so alarmed by the Trump Administration’s promise to take away affordable health care that she jumped into the ring. A Black woman who had served in the Obama Administration, she ran in Illinois’ 86% white, part-rural, part-suburban 14th District, and — with no prior experience and no meaningful party support when she began — defeated six white male primary opponents and then a four-term Tea Party Republican incumbent. In 2019, at age 32, she became the youngest black woman ever sworn in to the United States House of Representatives, occupying a seat formerly held by Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican House speaker.&nbsp;Lauren Underwood’s journey from everyday citizen to Congresswoman may seem daunting, even impossible for you to imagine.&nbsp; And yet, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’ve been bitten by the bug of what-if and why-not-me political daydreaming, too.&nbsp; You may be someone who’s considering a first run for office or is at the very beginning of their first campaign. Or someone with no experience in the campaign world who’s about to start helping a first-time candidate prepare a run for office and is wondering where to begin.We hear you. For the past three years, we’ve been working with people like you,&nbsp;&nbsp; accompanying them on every step of the journey from thinking about entering politics to running to winning to transitioning to office and governing. Or sometimes, to not-winning, and to going on to do other equally valuable things.“We” are Will Levitt and Miti Sathe, co-founders of Square One, a non-profit PAC we started in the early months of 2017 when, like many Democrats around the country, our shock and grief about Donald Trump’s election turned into a resolve to do something to create change. It was clear to us that the old political playbook wasn’t working for Democrats, who were out of power not just in the White House, but in the House and Senate and, around the country, in 34 state legislatures — the governing bodies that make the all-important decisions about how Congressional boundary lines are drawn. The problem wasn’t just that Democratic candidates weren’t winning; Democratic voters weren’t even turning out to the polls, because such a large portion of the electorate — Democratic-leaning young people and people of color above all — had come to feel that there was no point. Politicians didn’t seem to really understand or care about the challenges that most people were facing — and if they did care, they weren’t acting on the feeling. It was all the same old, same old.We knew we needed a new cohort of idealistic and deeply committed Democrats — people who weren’t part of the long-entrenched party machine — to take their seats in the rooms where big decisions are made in Washington. We were part of the huge, emerging, and unprecedentedly diverse generation that was starting to make its mark on American politics. And we suspected that we had a collective skill set that we could put to very good use in helping the sorts of insurgent candidates we wanted to see in elected office: a flexible, creative, and go-for-it startup mentality based on decades of combined experience in small business entrepreneurship, creative marketing, and working on political campaigns, with particular expertise in the rapidly-evolving world of digital communications and media. Above all, we shared a mission: To find and help elect new, bold, and highly effective Democratic leaders who look, think, and have experienced life like the full range of the people they represent. If we could find and support candidates who would really excite and mobilize voters and inspire them to turn out at the polls — diverse candidates who know all too well what it is to have to hustle for work, worry about health care, and bear the burden of crushing student loan debt — we believed we could permanently change the face of our country’s political leadership.&nbsp;From our previous professional lives in and out of politics, we knew that the structural barriers blocking opportunities for people of color were alive and well and powerful – even in the purportedly “post-racial” Obama era. And from early conversations we had with promising potential leaders who told us they couldn’t run for office because they didn’t have the time, the resources, the connections, or even the slightest clue of where to start, we saw that there were a set of very specific structural impediments that were keeping young people, non-wealthy people, women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community from running for office.We decided to work exclusively, hands-on and intensively, with those kinds of candidates, and to focus on getting them into Congress. We went right into their districts, helping them take down the barriers to entry that have consistently kept people like them out of office. We helped them understand how to find out which paperwork to file and how to fundraise, how to find office space and hire staff, how to conceive and carry out campaign strategy, deal with media, and navigate the inside-baseball world of Washington politics.We concentrated our efforts on flipping red districts blue — particularly those that were previously overlooked by the Democratic Party — and on making a long-term commitment to those districts so that we could help make sure that talented Democrats would be present on the ground in every single district in the United States. And we made it our mission to support people from underrepresented and underserved communities who lack personal or family wealth, powerful and wealthy connections, institutional backing and the sense of entitlement that helps launch so many political careers in the first place. In fact, our goal has been to make voters, donors and the candidates themselves see that those seeming disadvantages are actually great sources of strength.We’re proud of the work that we’ve done.&nbsp; We’ve learned a lot along the way. And we’ve written this guide so that we can share our accumulated knowledge with you.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is not (just) a tool kit. We won’t simply give you a list of bullet points to navigate at your own risk. We’ll show you what it feels like to run. What it costs – emotionally, financially, and in time away from work and family. We’ll demystify the world of paperwork, fundraising, communicating with voters, turning out voters, and navigating the dizzying world of paid campaign consultants who will offer to help you with all the above. We’ll show you how to run a campaign and we’ll tell you the stories of people like you who have done so successfully. We hope we’ll be able to help you see that it’s not only possible for someone like you to run for Congress (or for any office); it’s totally doable.Our candidates have accomplished great things: they’ve energized thousands of people to become politically active for the first time, flipped districts thought to be unflippable, successfully changed campaign finance law to help working parents run for office, and proven that diverse candidates can win in districts in every corner of America. When we first started in 2017, we picked eight candidates to back and we thought, if we can get one of our candidates past their primary, we’ll consider it a big success. All our candidates won their primaries in 2018. Three of them went on to win their general elections, flipping their seats from red to blue in the U.S. House of Representatives. All of our candidates, whether they won or lost, shifted their districts to the left by an average of 16 points. And in the extraordinarily difficult congressional elections of 2020, all of our incumbent candidates held their seats.Collectively, our candidates have created a blueprint for leading our country bravely into the future — whether or not they won their individual races. We’re going to show you how they did it. It wasn’t easy, for sure. (But then, as the saying goes, nothing worth having comes easy.) Great candidates do tend to have a kind of magic about them — a special something that makes people’s hearts sing when they speak — but there’s nothing magical about winning. All the things about politics that from the outside look glamorous — the parades, the public adoration, the glory, and the general fandom — actually take months and months of planning and hard, grueling work.But that’s okay. After all, hard work and careful planning have a big silver lining: unlike magic, they’re real. Anyone can successfully do them. Including someone like you.So let’s get started, so you can get started on running, (hopefully) winning, and transforming America.

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Square One seeks out the most promising Democratic women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to run for Congress in long-overlooked red districts and states, and provides the high-impact, hands-on support they need to launch, run, and win their groundbreaking campaigns — against all the odds.

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This Privacy Policy explains how Square One Politics (“Square One Politics”, “we” or “us”) collects, uses, and discloses information about you when you access or use our websites, mobile sites, and mobile application that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Site”).We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the date at the top of the policy and, in some cases, we may provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to our website homepage or sending you a notification). We encourage you to review the Privacy Policy whenever you access the Site or otherwise interact with us to stay informed about our information practices and the choices available to you.COLLECTION OF INFORMATIONInformation You Provide to UsWe collect information you provide directly to us. For example, we collect information when you request information, make a donation, sign a petition, make a purchase, sign up to receive updates or alerts, fill out a form, connect through a social feed, sign up to be a volunteer, sign up to attend or host an event, submit a resume, create an account or profile, request support, communicate with us via third party social media sites, send us an email, or otherwise communicate with us. We also may collect any information you provide when you post comments or other content or participate in surveys, petitions, contests, or promotions. The types of information we may collect include your name, password, contact information (such as email address, postal address, and phone number), credit card and other payment information (which may be collected directly by a third-party processor), demographic information, and any other information you choose to provide.In addition, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may require us to collect certain personal information from donors. For example, the FEC requires us to collect (and disclose to them) the name, mailing address, occupation, and employer of all individuals whose donations to Square One Politics exceed $200 per calendar year.Automatically Collected InformationWhen you access or use our Site, we automatically collect information about you, including:<ul><li>Log and Usage Information: We collect information related to your access to and use of the Site, including the type of browser you use, app version, access times, pages viewed, your IP address, and the page you visited before navigating to our Site.</li><li>Device Information: We collect information about the computer or mobile device you use to access our Site, including the hardware model, operating system and version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information.</li><li>Transactional Information: If you make a donation or purchase, we may collect information about the transaction, such as donation amount, purchase price, product details, and date and location of the transaction.</li><li>Location Information: We may derive the approximate location of your device, such as from your IP address.</li><li>Information Collected by Cookies and Similar Tracking Technologies: We (and our service providers) use different technologies to collect information, including cookies and web beacons. Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive or in device memory that help us improve our Site and your experience, see which areas and features of our Site are popular, and count visits. Web beacons (also known as “pixel tags” or “clear GIFs”) are electronic images that may be used in our Site or emails and help deliver cookies, count visits, and understand usage and effectiveness. For more information about cookies and how to disable them, see “Your Choices” below.</li></ul>Information We Collect from Other SourcesWe and our service providers may also obtain information about you from other sources and combine that with information we collect about you. 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If you win your primary, a lot of good things will start to happen.The endorsements you tried to get early on will very likely start to come through. Some will come with no money, and some can come with quite a lot (often in the form of independent expenditures — money from Super PACs that don’t coordinate directly with your campaign) — and with a lot of technical support and visibility for your campaign, too. Whatever happens won’t necessarily occur all at once: you might, if you’re a longshot in a swing state, get just a little bit of funding at first, but then, if your candidacy really becomes promising, you could be picked for the DCCC’s coveted Red to Blue list of candidates running strong campaigns in swing districts who receive extra support for campaign strategy and funding.All of that is indisputably great. But there is one caveat: getting endorsements and funding from the DC establishment — for federal races — comes with some strings attached. And candidates in state or local races may face similar pressures from the state or local party and party establishment figures.Specifically, some of the endorsements will require you to sign contracts with consultants from a pre-approved list. Many of these consultants — also called “vendors” — are very smart and very skilled at the work that they do. But there’s a problem with the ecosystem in which they operate. While they all want their candidates to win, they also want to make money. (And at the top DC consultancies, they make a lot of money.) That leads to a lot of misaligned incentives, in terms of how the work is done and where the money goes and what’s in the best interest of individual candidates.Here’s how it works: Every time that one of these consultants provides a service for a candidate — buys a TV ad, or creates and sends out a piece of mail — they make a commission, and that commission is paid by the campaign. So, at the end of the day, whether or not their services are effective for a particular campaign (and for our candidates, it’s far from a given that traditional approaches to mail and advertising are beneficial), the consultant is incentivized to sell you as many TV ads or to get you to send out as many pieces of mail as possible. Usually, your general consultant handles all this for you, which can make it seem like you’re getting a good “package deal” as well as a convenience when you sign with them. But none of it is transparent: you don’t know, when your campaign writes the general consultant a check for a TV ad or a mailing, how much of what you’re paying is for the ad or mailer and how much is being pocketed by the consultant.And here’s where it gets more difficult still: In Washington, D.C., there’s essentially a revolving door that will take someone who has been working at one organization within the party establishment for a few years to a consulting firm (an advertising firm, or a mail firm, for example) for a couple of years, and the cycle continues. However nicely this works for the party and the consultancies, however, it means that individual candidates and their campaigns end up, once again, locked into a very closed system that really isn’t set up to accommodate — much less to embrace — people who have historically been outsiders.Very few of the companies that are on the list of “approved vendors” are headed by people of color. Very few employ many people of color. The vast majority of consultants themselves have never worked with a candidate of color before. And this can lead to some very bad advice.We’ve seen countless examples where an outsider candidate was given advice from DC experts to “tone themselves down.” Making themselves over into someone who’s more “like a candidate” — which really means more like who candidates and elected officials have always been. Black women have most frequently and most egregiously been on the receiving end of this. But, to a lesser extent, white women get it, too, if it’s assumed that they don’t conform to whatever the expectations are in the communities where they’re running. And men of color have their own indignities to deal with as well — particularly when it comes to what they wear, and whether or not it’s “acceptable” for a candidate.It’s hard enough, out on the campaign trail, to have people commenting on your hair and your clothes and your weight. To be asked, if you’re a young woman, if “you’re sure you know what you’re doing,” and if you’re a mother, “who’s at home taking care of your kids.” To have people asking you why you’re so ambitious, why in such a hurry; why you don’t scale down to something more “realistic,” like running for school board.&nbsp; (“The issues I care about are federal,” is a good answer for that.)When the comments come from your own side — as when Black women are told they need a “makeover” to appear more “professional” (i.e. more white) — it’s far more painful. It’s easy to internalize the negativity, especially if it reinforces messages that candidates have received all their lives. When that happens, very old and pernicious forms of self-doubt may start to re-emerge: “Maybe I shouldn’t run. Maybe I’m not the right person.”&nbsp; And besides being psychologically wounding, that kind of feedback can do real harm to a campaign. Unsurprisingly, when some candidates we’ve worked with have altered their messaging or self-presentation in ways that they’d been told would make them more “palatable,” the result was inauthentic, and it backfired.&nbsp;<h2>Keep the Faith</h2>This is another example of why, now and throughout your campaign, you’ll need to have your own validators: staffers and advisers, funders and voters. Your people. And it’s why you have to validate yourself by reminding yourself, over and over again, why you’re running — for change that can make a momentous difference for the people of your district. Believing profoundly in the utter necessity of your campaign and keeping focused on your larger mission will strengthen you, especially when things get tough and you need a thick skin.If and when the big-time consultants enter the scene, there are ramifications for staff that you’ll have to be aware of, too. If your senior staffers are young and relatively inexperienced, it’s likely to be very hard for them to stand up to the emissaries from D.C. and make themselves heard.&nbsp; Pushing back could really hurt them professionally, too, because the world of campaign hiring is a small one, and all roads lead back to a small number of organizations in D.C. “There’s a great pressure to please them,” a campaign manager told us, “because their organizations become an echo chamber of who’s good or bad to work with and ought to be hired.”As the campaign’s leader, it will be your responsibility to stand by your staff when appropriate, speak up for yourself when necessary, but also to judge when and how to pick your battles. Be willing to listen to outsider advice. And don’t burn any bridges. You’ll need, long-term, to keep up really good relations with the big consulting firms and the national endorsing groups in Washington. You don’t want to antagonize the establishment if you’re fortunate enough to have won its support as a first-time candidate. And if your race is receiving generous amounts of money from the party and its allies, your ability to go your own way is going to be pretty limited.If your campaign ultimately has enough money, you will be doing message testing and polling, and you’ll be advised to change your message and your self-presentation with the goal of ironing out whatever wrinkles or personality particularities bother some voters. But if your gut tells you that you’re being pushed in the wrong direction, you have to defend yourself, your team, and your district.It’s the authentic you, after all, who won your primary election. Who inspired whole teams of volunteers. Who raised enough money to stay in the game. And it’s your staff who know you, know your district and — if they’ve helped get you this far, know what it takes to reach your voters. The very best way you can stand up for them is by making sure they have the support they need to keep doing their jobs well. If possible, help your senior staff find mentors — experienced people who are outside of the immediate circle of your campaign, who can serve as a sounding board, give gut checks, and also be savvy about all the different incentives and motivations at play.In the end, what will be in your best interest is to find a way to navigate the distance between the party line and your own truth, to “meet them where they are and give them what they need,” as one former campaign manager likes to put it. And then finesse the result so that it’s real. That’s why those Post-It Notes from back in the mission statement exercise days are so helpful and worth keeping. When in doubt, go back to the clear and simple message that guided you from the start, and see if you’re still aligned with it.&nbsp;<h2>Managing Your Media</h2>At this point in your campaign, your relationship with the news media is going to be something of a tightrope walk, too.On the one hand, you’ll really need their attention. On the other, if your campaign is making news, they’re going to need access to you. To keep the relationship mutually beneficial, you will have to make smart choices.Counterintuitive though it may seem, it’s your local reporters who are likely to be the most important journalists for you to cultivate — for the very same reason that it was so important early on for you to sit down with anyone and everyone with their finger on the pulse of your district. Local reporters, editors, columnists and radio or TV personalities know your district and its residents. They know what issues matter locally, they know your opponent’s background, and they know what Democrats have attempted to run for your seat before. They’re the most likely to really take the time to get to know you — and theirs may well be the voice that your voters respect the most. (And their publication or station may well be the one that your voters actually read, watch or listen to.)Once you’re past your primary and are getting close to the general election, your campaign will, most likely, bring on either a full-time communications director or a consultant. That’s because national media attention is very tricky. It’s seductive and hard to turn down. It can make a major difference in your fundraising, giving you access to a vastly larger pool of potential donors. When Lauren Underwood made the cover of Time Magazine in January 2018, her fundraising numbers went through the roof. The headline on Liuba Grechen Shirley’s post-primary New York Times feature — “She’s Trying to Pull an Ocasio-Cortez. Her Target: Pete King” — wasn’t exactly on-message, but it was eye-catching, and in a summer when there was a lot of excitement around insurgent, outsider female candidates, it turned out to be a real turning point for her, too.You shouldn’t turn down all requests from national media (if you do, they’ll stop calling). You should just be thoughtful and judicious. If you grant interviews to the New York Times or the Washington Post or Politico or the big TV networks, you really have to be ready for your quotes to ricochet around the entire country for days or even weeks, months, or years on social media. In addition, you should be aware that, if the big news outlets are coming to you — a brand-new candidate — they’re probably putting you in a big national trend story, which may or may not be conceived with an angle that’s helpful for you in your district.&nbsp;<h2>Remember Who Matters – and Get Them Out to Vote</h2>The closer and closer you get to your election, the more intense the pressures and pace of campaigning will be. It’s easy to develop tunnel vision. But you’ve got to stay grounded. You have come so far, and you have just one major challenge that remains: getting out the vote.So do what you have to do to keep yourself healthy and well-resourced. Summon up all your energy. Take the time to rev up your staffers, volunteers and supporters — you’re going to need them to put everything they’ve got into going door-to-door, calling, texting, emailing, putting up signs, handing out literature, and helping people figure out where (their local polling place) and when (election day, or early voting info) and how (do they need a ride to the polls? can they vote by mail?) they can vote. And get yourself out in front of voters: canvassing, making public appearances, shaking hands, listening, making sure that people feel heard, and reminding them of their power to bring change by voting.Getting out the vote (GOTV) is a very distinct — and hugely important — stage of campaigning. Typically, it starts the first day of early voting, the day vote by mail starts, and/or the last four days of the campaign including election day. Everything you do in the earlier stages of the campaign is to build capacity for this ultimate end point. During GOTV, you’re no longer convincing people to vote for you. Instead, you’re focusing your efforts on the people you’ve already identified as your voters and putting everything you’ve got into physically getting them to cast their ballots.&nbsp;<h2>A Few Final Words Before Election Day&nbsp;</h2>With the finish line in view, we’re going to leave you with just a couple of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you head toward the finish line.&nbsp;Don’t make yourself or your staff crazy by measuring yourself against other candidates.You’re going to be anxious, and it will be a big temptation. For Congress, for example, with 435 elections for the US House in any one cycle, there’s always going to be someone who seems to be doing something better than you. For state and local races, you may face the same pressures. Maybe another candidate is actually someone you know. Maybe, out of a genuine desire to help, they give you advice, which you excitedly bring back to your nonplussed campaign manager.The problem is, as any parent of any school-age child has ever said: there’s no use in comparing yourself to others. You have to do you. Every race is different. Every candidate is different. And if you can’t do you for yourself — because your self-confidence is flagging with fatigue and constant stress — do it for your campaign staff. Because they’re down in the trenches, trying to move mountains for you day after day. Second-guessing their strategy at the eleventh hour will only create unnecessary pressure and strain, right when you need them at their best.&nbsp;Don’t over-spend.In the final days of a close campaign, your funders and advisors from D.C. are going to tell you to “spend every penny” and “leave it all on the field.” It’s true that it’s urgently important to get yourself and your name out there — and to get voters out to vote — but you’ve got to be careful as well not to spend money you don’t have. You’re going to need to have enough money left in the bank to pay staff salaries in the period when you wrap up after the election (and if you can afford to pay people through the end of the year, all the better), and you should also have some reserve to pay any legal fees in case you end up with a contested election.&nbsp;Do take the time to pause and remember how far you’ve come.We will always remember how it felt, near the end of Lauren Underwood’s first campaign, when she had picked up a lot of steam and was reaching the point where she posed a serious threat to her Republican opponent. The race had become so close, and had attracted so much attention from Washington, that Joe Biden came and did a rally for her a couple of weeks before the general election. Many local and national media outlets were in attendance. Right after Biden spoke, he got back into his car and left, and all the press immediately formed a gaggle around Underwood. She had dozens of microphones shoved into her face, and almost as many cameras behind them. Everyone was asking questions at the same time. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced; she had barely ever done an interview that was more than one-on-one before. And yet, in that moment, she stepped up, and grew into it. She managed the situation, answering those questions calmly, as though she had been doing it her entire life. She knew which questions to take and which to pivot away from, remained calm and collected, and gave great answers. She was ready for the moment — not cocky, but confident. And it all came off as completely real — because it was.We’ve kept a picture of that moment because it reminds us of the arc that we hope all our candidates will experience. And that growth is what learning to run for Congress is all about.&nbsp;Last but not least: do try to bear in mind on Election Day that winning is not a zero-sum game.Of course, after all you’ve done, you’ll want more than anything else to win your race. But there’s one last thing we want you to hear, and it comes from the heart: If you’re a new candidate, an insurgent who wasn’t born with a silver spoon and a ready-made bullhorn, and you’ve made it to this point, then — win or lose — you’ve already triumphed.

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From your self-reflection and conversations with friends, family and bosses, you should know whether it’s possible for you personally to run for office. After that, you’ll need to figure out whether it’s plausible politically.No matter what office you are running for, you should take the time to consider the feasibility of your campaign before committing. Check the applicable campaign finance rules to make sure you are not required to file any paperwork while in this exploratory phase. If you’re considering a run for federal office, federal law allows you to “test the waters."“Testing the waters” is an actual legal term. It refers to the period when you’ll “explore the feasibility of becoming a candidate,” as the <a href="https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/registering-candidate/testing-the-waters-possible-candidacy/#:~:text=An%20individual%20who%20spends%20money,the%20Act)%20limits%20and%20prohibitions.">Federal Elections Commission’s website</a> puts it.&nbsp; It’s a very important time — a sort of pause-to-think-it-over period — in which you can ask a lot of questions and get a great deal of information without filing the paperwork that will formally declare your candidacy and bring on all the legal restrictions that accompany running for Congress. That means it’s much easier to seek advice and get support from people like us than it will be — regulation-wise — once you do file your paperwork and officially start your campaign.While testing the waters as a federal candidate, you can talk to campaign advisors. You can travel in your district to gauge what kind of support you might expect. You can do polling, according to the FEC, though we’d advise against it at this point. You can even do some preliminary fundraising (generally among family and friends, if they can swing it), but – and this is a big “but” – as soon as you raise or spend $5,000, then you have to register as a candidate with the FEC. You can’t “test the waters” for an infinite amount of time or right before an election. You can’t, in this period, refer to yourself as a “candidate for Congress,” or run ads or do phone banking declaring your intent to run. You have to make it clear that you’re raising money for the [Your Name Here] Congressional Exploratory Committee or for the Friends of [Your Name Here], and not for the [Your Name Here] for Congress Campaign. You don’t have to open a bank account at this point, but it’s a good idea, just to make sure you won’t be commingling your personal and potential campaign funds. If you do want to open a bank account, you’ll need first to contact the IRS to request an employer ID number (you don’t want to use your own social security number). You also need, right from the start to keep really good records so you can accurately track how much you’ve raised or spent.What’s the point of all these fine distinctions? So that you don’t formally and fully commit yourself to a campaign before you’re quite sure that you’re ready to do so.Be aware that, if you do end up running, only some of your expenses from the testing the waters period will be eligible for reimbursement by your campaign afterward. You may be reimbursed for campaign-related travel, for example, or for paying for meals where the sole purpose is to explore the feasibility of your campaign.&nbsp; Other expenses, however necessary, will remain yours alone. (Campaign-trail-appropriate clothing, particularly for women, tends to be a big and glaring one. Men in politics have the privilege of getting by with a relatively budget-friendly uniform of regular pants and button-down shirts, but women are still ferociously scrutinized — and need an ever-changing wardrobe of event-ready attire. So, once again, be prepared. Watch your spending. And keep scrupulous records.)If you’re running for state or local office, most states don’t have a Testing the Waters that applies. Check your state’s campaign rules for guidance.And now, with all that squared away,&nbsp; you can move on to the good stuff.&nbsp;<h2>Take a Really Good Look at Where You Are Running</h2>Your number one most important job at this point in the campaign is to get to know your area — whether it’s a congressional district, city council seat, or school board district. Nine times out of ten, you’ll already have a pretty solid foundation, either from having grown up there, or from having spent enough years living there, and having been an active-enough citizen in the community, that you know people, and people know you, and know about your commitment to the issues they care about.You’ll have a big leg up if you’re already active in your community through your work or your union, or your children’s school, for example, particularly if people already think of you as a strong organizer or a leader. If that isn’t the case, it’s not fatal: you’ll just have to work harder to introduce yourself, and you’ll have to be rigorous about always remembering to ask for still more introductions. And if you haven’t lived in your community for very long — or if you grew up there and then moved away for many years and have just recently returned — you’ll need to find out if it has recently been changing, and if so, in what ways.For example, if you’re running in a red district that’s trending purple, check for indicators that, with the right candidate, it could potentially swing blue. For example: has it vacillated between Democrats and Republicans in recent elections?&nbsp; (The Ballotpedia website will tell you that.) Is there a steady increase in the proportion of its residents who are young, college-educated, women (especially college-educated women), and people of color — all groups known to favor Democrats (though not always and not in every district) and who may not yet have been registered to vote in the district at the time of the last elections?Individual voter data will have to be obtained by the state party or a vendor, for a cost that varies state to state (or, in some states, is free). To avoid that cost during the testing the waters there are some public sites that provide quality data.The Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services has a <a href="https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Marketplace-Products/2020-Marketplace-Open-Enrollment-Period-Public-Use-Files">page</a> on its website where you can find the number of people in a state, a county, and even a zip code who are participating in Obamacare, which we’ve found is a potential indicator of good will toward Democrats in general. Your county elections office or Secretary of State may also provide voter data for free, with basic information like party affiliation.You should also do some initial research to find out how strong or vulnerable your current representative appears to be.&nbsp; If that person is extremely popular and is doing a good job in meeting constituents’ needs, you probably don’t have an opening. But if their win-margin in recent elections was narrow — or if it was wide because their opponents were under-resourced, unknown, or simply unappealing — then that’s another story. If you’ve been living in your district for awhile, you’re likely to know at least some of that information. In addition, all the basic information about the win-margins, going back for years, as well as overall fundraising numbers are available online on sites like Ballotpedia.In other words, you don’t need to pay for fancy professional research at this point to get a solid sense of the lay of the land. Much of the information is out there, if you’re willing to dig. That said: There’s only so much you can and should do online and on your own, however. If you really want to get a feel for the district you hope to represent, you’ve got to get out into the community.&nbsp;<h2>Meet Your People</h2>Talk to the local leaders — school principals, PTA heads, or members of the clergy, for example — who have their finger on the pulse of their communities. Find out how they feel about the person currently representing them, and why. Hear in their own words what the big issues of concern are among different members of the community, and what they’d like to see changed. Find out what they want, what they hope for, what they lack and regret, what and who inspires them and makes them dream. What makes them laugh, what makes them nod, what makes them look doubtful, or maybe tune out. Listen for the words they use and the stories they tell, and the real-life examples of the way that policy — federal policy — makes their lives better or worse.You’ll need too to get a read on the political atmosphere, and on the climate of party politics that you’ll be entering. You’ll need to reach out to your district’s power brokers and organizers and political influencers, too: the Democratic Party county chair, for example, or the precinct captain, or a local Democrat who ran for the district’s congressional seat in the past (if that makes sense — not if they’re running again and there’s going to be a primary), or local mayors, county commissioners, members of the school board.You should meet for coffee or for lunch with local donors and people who have worked on campaigns in the district in the past — anyone and everyone who will sit down with you and give you the lay of the land. They’re going to be your people; see if you click with them. Find out what sorts of Democratic or progressive organizations exist outside the party proper. Get a sense about whether they’ll support you — and to what extent. Find out what kind of primary challenge is likely, what alliances are already in place, how much money and loyalty are already sewn up.These early getting-to-know you conversations are crucial, and when you’re having them you’ll see why it was so supremely important to find a way to tell your story well — both comfortably and convincingly — before you even made your first phone call. If you want people to support you, you’ve got to catch their interest and come across, right from the start, as a compelling and promising possible candidate. You can’t do that if you don’t really know, or can’t quite articulate, what you’re about. People will tune you out before you even get around to sharing with them what you have to say.In addition to calling your local Democratic officials, it’s time now as well to reach out to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) — if you’re running for Congress — and let them know that you’re considering a run. You may be able to have an initial conversation with someone there — or, more likely, they’ll say, call us back when you’ve raised some money. Don’t worry about that. The important thing is to give them the heads-up, as a matter of basic protocol and courtesy. Because the unfortunate truth is: if you’re a newcomer, and especially if you’re a non-traditional candidate, no one within the Democratic political establishment is going to open the door and say, here’s a seat at the table. This will make things harder than if you came to politics with your money and connections and pedigree all tied up in a bow, but it can also serve you well as a fire in the belly. As Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm used to say (and Hillary Clinton liked to remind us): “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”The early brushoff that you are likely to get from the Democratic establishment (at least until you can show them the big money) is why it’s going to be urgently important for you to cultivate a grassroots coalition — or build upon one that already exists. Nothing drove this home for us more clearly than Liuba Grechen Shirley’s experience testing the waters and as a Democratic candidate on Long Island in 2017 and 2018.She knew everyone in her local party hierarchy from the days and weeks and months after the 2016 presidential election. She’d wanted to volunteer for the party then, and to help rally other Democrats into a local resistance group. She’d met the county Democratic chair and all the party commissioners — and had ended up forming her own activist group, in large part, because the local Democratic establishment leaders had all been so unresponsive or unhelpful. That effort proved enormously valuable, however, once she became a candidate, because she knew the local power structure inside-out.&nbsp; She not only knew she knew every person who had any influence, she knew why they were motivated to act and make choices the way that they did; she knew the details of their history and their allegiances and their life stories. She had enough of a complex understanding of just how the system worked that she could figure out how to be an insurgent candidate within it. She also had amazing grassroots support already in place — hundreds of volunteers who could seamlessly start volunteering for her campaign. That’s why she was able to definitively win her primary — despite the party’s efforts to maintain the status quo by strenuously supporting her primary opponent, DuWayne Gregory, who had lost in 2016 to Republican incumbent Peter King by 24 points.If you encounter a similar lack of enthusiasm from the party at the outset of your campaign, don’t let it stop you. Despite all the high-profile wins in recent years by non-traditional candidates, old ideas about who’s “electable” die hard. We’ve seen or heard of any number of talented candidates who were discouraged from running because they were told they weren’t “right for the district” (because they didn’t look like the people there) or were “not ready” or “needed to wait their turn” (because there was someone with institutional support lined up before them).&nbsp; There have been times when we’ve been laughed out of powerful people’s offices because of the districts we were targeting and the kinds of candidates we were supporting. But when those candidates started winning their primaries, those skeptics took another look. They started sending endorsements. And, if our candidates were lucky, they provided funding as well. Bottom line: don’t listen to naysayers.The people you should listen to now are the ones who can be concretely helpful. If there’s an elected official (or former candidate) whom you particularly admire and feel an affinity with, see if you can get a half-hour of their time to pick their brain for your own potential run. Worst thing that can happen is that they’ll ignore you or direct an aide just to give you some cursory attention. But if there is indeed that affinity you suspected, they’re very likely to do more: share inside knowledge, perhaps, make introductions, and, if you’re really lucky – perhaps offer to serve as a mentor.This could also be a good time, if you haven’t done so before, to try one of the training programs offered by organizations such as Emerge America (for Democratic women), Higher Heights Leadership Fund (for Black women), Latino Victory (for Latinx candidates), EMILY’s List (for pro-choice Democratic women), and Arena. These are group programs, and as such, they aren’t perfect — every district, every candidate, and every race, after all, is different, and one-size-fits-all lessons can only go so far. But our candidates have found that they do offer great opportunities for networking and for finding like-minded friends. Lauren Underwood and Sarah Feldmann, a then-investment consultant who went on to become the Congresswoman’s first campaign manager, for example, met and became friends at a 2017 Arena training, bonding as they tried to get their heads around “the strange and relationship-based, and very opaque” world of politics, Feldmann recently told us.Once you’ve gathered the insights you need about your district, and have talked to enough people to see if you can count on your community for support, you should have a solid sense of whether your candidacy makes sense. If the answer is yes, then: hooray! It’s time to declare yourself a candidate and start campaigning.Before you move on, though, a couple of last words, just in case you start to get some pre-announcement jitters: Putting yourself out there authentically and putting your hopes and dreams in the hands of the electorate can be a terrifying prospect. Virtually every one of our candidates has called us the day before filing and asked, Am I making a mistake? And we always say no. Because we know that if they’ve worked with us, and have gone through all the steps we’ve laid out so far: the soul-searching and storytelling (and retelling); the examination of (and problem-solving around) the good, bad and ugly; the conversations with employers and family members; the accounting of time and lost income;&nbsp; the district research and analysis; the meetings with powerbrokers, grassroots leaders and “regular” people alike — if they’ve done all that, understand the uphill battle before them and still want to run, then we know that they’ve got what it takes to stay the course and have a good shot at winning.&nbsp;And if you do all that work, you will, too.

“I launched my campaign at the end of October, and I didn’t hire a campaign manager until January. There were many times during the first few months when I wanted to quit. Getting everything set up, figuring out what needed to be filed, how to find a lawyer, how to find a compliance firm and a treasurer, how to file your paperwork, how to hire staff — with two babies at home full-time — it was just so overwhelming. And once all of that was taken care of, and I had hired a campaign manager and raised enough money to hire staff, then I got to the good part. Once you get to the part where you get to talk policy, that’s when campaigning gets to be fun.”Liuba Grechen Shirley, 2018 candidate, New York 2nd

Step 4: Staffing

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“An effective campaign is being on the ground, boots on the ground, engaging with your communities. Going to the parts of the district where people feel left out, where people feel like their voice is not being heard. It’s not about the yard sign. It’s not about the buttons. It’s not about the things that you try to sell online. It’s about one-on-one relationship building. Letting people know what’s important to you and what you believe in. It might be old-fashioned, but it works great.”&nbsp;Congresswoman Lucy McBath, Georgia 6thIf you want people to vote for you, they have to know who you are. For that to happen, you’ve got to get out into the community. That means meeting voters where they are, and learning what’s on their minds, so that you can really and truly be able to speak their language.

Step 5: Getting Out There

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Election Day isn’t an endpoint.If you win, it will be a new beginning. After just a few days, you’ll make the shift from campaign to governing mode. If you ran for federal office, you’ll wrap up your campaign, say your grateful good-byes, start hiring Hill office staff and — believe it or not — start fundraising again for your first re-election campaign. You’ll have to start getting ready to move, at least part-time, to Washington, D.C. You’ll brush up on policy, and you’ll start to learn what you can about congressional procedure.All of this will happen very fast and is likely to be really overwhelming. Our advice: be sure to pause to register the moment and stay grounded. Carve out some time to revisit your mission statement. Reconnect with the values and priorities that brought you this far. Picture the people you met on the campaign trail — they will be your anchor.If you don’t win your election — and the vast majority of first-time candidates do not — you’ll be facing a new beginning too, albeit one that hurts a lot, at least for a while. The exhaustion you’ve kept at bay through sheer adrenaline will hit you all at once, along with a whole mess of unwelcome emotion.Our advice again: if you find yourself craving rest and family time, grab them. But don’t lay low for too long. Your campaign may have ended on election day, but your work — the drive for change that got you up and running in the first place — isn’t going to go away. That’s why you too need to take the time to reckon and reassess: what’s the best way now to continue what you’ve begun? What have you learned about the political landscape, about your district and yourself that needs to be taken into account as you figure out the way forward?We hope that, win or lose, when you look in the mirror post-election, you'll be able to see what we see in each of our candidates, no matter what the outcome of their particular race: someone who, simply by stepping up and being themselves, has changed the face of American politics. Someone who brought a different perspective to debates about policy — channeling the voices of thousands, if not millions, of people who previously felt like they weren’t heard at all. Someone who broke down barriers. Demonstrated new faith in American voters and new ways of reaching and connecting with them. Who chipped away at old party certainties about what “winnable” looks like and who the “right” candidate is and can be. In sum: someone who redefined the possible. And who, by opening the gates for others to follow, scored big wins that will reverberate far beyond the outcome of any individual election cycle.We can understand that all this might sound like so many nice words to you. But we’ve seen the scenario play out in real life, over and over again.Liuba Grechen Shirley lost her race to unseat Peter King in 2018, but her campaign nonetheless scored some very big wins: Grechen Shirley came so close to winning that King decided not to run for re-election the following cycle, depriving the Republican party of one of its most powerful and long-entrenched right-wing leaders. And, on an even larger scale, she changed the electoral landscape for working parents, breaking down the chief barrier that, in the past, blocked a great many from even trying to run for office: the sky-high cost of childcare. After she successfully petitioned the Federal Elections Commission to allow federal candidates to spend campaign funds on childcare, eight other candidates for Congress reported babysitting and childcare as campaign expenses, and a number of states began considering similar legislation, sometimes with bipartisan support. She then kept the momentum going by founding her own PAC, Vote Mama, which as of this writing had helped 43 mother-candidates win offices ranging from school boards to city councils, and state legislatures to the U.S. Congress.Desiree Tims and Candace Valenzuela lost their respective races for the Ohio 10th and the Texas 24th in 2020. Yet they also took districts formerly written off by national Democrats as “hopeless” to promising “Red to Blue” status.&nbsp; More important still: they smashed key political stereotypes.Tims, a Black woman running in a 77% white district, handily beat a white man, Eric Moyer,&nbsp; in her primary, receiving 70% of the vote with equal support from voters of all races. Valenzuela was part of a vanguard of high-profile Texas Democrats (along with our other Texas candidates Sri Preston Kulkarni and Gina Ortiz Jones) who aimed not just to win seats away from Republicans, but also to dismantle the long-held belief by leaders within their own party that “immigrants don’t vote.” By inspiring a groundswell of grassroots activity, their campaigns succeeded in changing the whole look, tone and operation of party organizing in their state. They engaged thousands of new people from communities of color that had never felt like they had a voice in Texas politics before, and they empowered those people to keep the work going long after Election Day. As a result, when the national party comes around again in 2022, Valenzuela told us in a conference call with supporters during the summer of 2020, they’ll find a freshly trained and invigorated force of Democratic political actors on the ground, ready to lead.“We’re training young people,” she explained. “We’re training them in campaign finance so that they know how to have their own campaigns later on, or if they’re thinking about becoming the next generation of campaign staff. We’re basically trying to make this process about teaching people in the community to organize. We’re trying to build a Democratic infrastructure, and it’s happening all over Texas.”&nbsp;<h2>Our Biggest Win: Empowering You</h2>Square One started with a simple belief: if we could discover and support young, diverse, bold candidates — real people running for the right reasons — then we could elect Democrats in every corner of the country and create a stronger, more representative democracy. Since day one, we’ve never swayed from that view, because with time we’ve only grown more certain that it’s true.In the coming years, we want to see more talented Democrats running for the right reasons in every single district all across the country. We want to see them daring to run in the most heavily Republican areas, even in utterly impossible-seeming places where Democrats haven’t won for many decades. We want them to have the means to take big chances and the support to hang in, even if it means running multiple times again.That’s because if your goal is to profoundly change the face — and the functioning — of America’s political leadership, you can’t do it in one election cycle. You have to take the long view. You have to name, face, and start to dismantle the sorts of structural impediments that keep regular people of all backgrounds and from all communities from running for office. And you have to build a pipeline so that those people can stay in the game long enough to make their way to Washington, D.C.For us, the biggest win of all would be for our work to one day become unnecessary. We’d love to see so many women, people of color, LGBTQ candidates and other now-non-traditional candidates running for and winning office that the whole question of fair representation would be a thing of the past. To see such a shake-up that candidates who weren’t rich and well-connected wouldn’t need us.That day — however distant — will come. Huge progress has already been made in recent years. But there’s a whole lot more work to be done. We’re doubling down.&nbsp;And we hope that, with this guide in hand, you’re feeling ready to get to work, too.

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Samantha Slaton

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Square One Politics seeks out the most promising Democratic women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to run for Congress in long-overlooked red districts and states, and provides the high-impact, hands-on support they need to launch, run, and win their groundbreaking campaigns — against all the odds.

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“Run with as pure a heart as you can. Run a campaign that you’d be proud of.”Ronnie Cho, 2018 campaign manager and 2020 senior advisor to Lauren Underwood, Illinois 14thIn some ways, the challenge of remaining you will only intensify the more successful you are in your campaign. That’s in part because, if you win your primary, you will encounter a level of personal scrutiny like never before. You may attract major media attention — a mixed blessing. You’ll also gain at least some recognition and support from the party powers-that-be. That support can be transformative. But it will also come with its own set of complications.

Step 6: Staying the Course

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"My campaign thrived thanks to Square One. Their model wins races. Period."- Congresswoman Lauren Underwood

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Everything you need to know to run and win.In this guide, you'll find comprehensive, nuts-and-bolts information on running for office, with stories from the campaign trail that highlight the experiences of some of Square One's Congressional candidates. This guide was designed primarily for political newcomers considering a run for office, those already running, and for campaign staff and advisors.This guide is free to read, download, and use. No portion may be reproduced for any reason without written permission from Square One Politics.

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<h2>Our Approach</h2>Square One seeks out long-overlooked red districts and states, identifies compelling and diverse candidates, and creates the infrastructure needed for them to win. Ushering in a new generation of political leadership is a long-term project, so we take risks and invest in places that may take more than one election cycle to flip blue.For far too long, women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community have been underestimated and excluded from the halls of power. By supporting them with the necessary tools to run for office, Square One is working to create a government that truly represents the people it serves.Square One is with our candidates from day one, providing the connections, resources, and on-the-ground support to launch, run, and win their campaigns. From hiring campaign staff, to brokering endorsements, to mapping out field plans, Square One is with our candidates every step of the way.

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How We Win in 2026: Square One Election Memo
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Power Brokers: An Analysis of Outside Spending in Close Congressional Races
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How We Win in 2026: Square One Election MemoNovember 2024

Power Brokers: An Analysis of Outside Spending in Close Congressional RacesSeptember 2023

How We Win in 2026: Square One Election Memo
^{November 2024}

Power Brokers: An Analysis of Outside Spending in Close Congressional Races
^{September 2023}