Democrats have a lot of problems right now. Finding candidates eager to run for office isn’t one of them.
Since Donald Trump’s election, a groundswell of Democratic candidates has emerged to start campaigns for local, state and federal races, according to party operatives and a review of campaign announcements. It’s a level of engagement some Democratic strategists say reminds them of the wave of candidates that helped the party sweep to big victories in 2017 and 2018 during Trump’s first years in office.
In Virginia, for instance, Democratic candidates are running in more than 90 percent of all state delegate seats in the election later this year. In local races across the country, tens of thousands of Democrats have signaled interest in running. And many key House races are already drawing as many as a half-dozen candidates.
“We are definitely seeing the same type of enthusiasm numbers-wise that we saw in 2017,” said Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “A lot of people are raising their hands on their own rather than us having to go and sit down with them three or four times and convince them to run.”
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Public response to Trump’s second term has been markedly different from the reaction to his first stint in office — visible resistance to the president is more muted and many liberal voters have directed some of their anger at the Democratic Party. Even so, Democrats will at least be able to count on a new wave of candidates willing to run against Republicans during elections this and next year.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect, having done this since 2017, because you’re never quite sure how people will respond to a loss,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, a group that encourages young people to run for office. “But I’ve been pleasantly surprised — delighted, really — and I think it speaks to the seriousness of purpose that people all across the country are feeling at this moment.”
Litman said about 45,000 people have reached out to Run for Something to talk about seeking elected office since November of last year — as many as had engaged with the group in the first three years of its existence after its founding in 2017.
Despite the surge of candidates, she and Democratic strategists tempered some comparisons to Trump’s first term, saying there was no guarantee the party, facing record-low approval ratings, would enjoy the same level of electoral success that it did then. And even if candidates are turning out to run, the party and larger liberal political ecosystem isn’t benefiting from the same level of volunteer engagement or donor support that it did then.
The sheer number of candidates might also pose its own problem, if it leads to damaging multicandidate primaries where the strongest general election candidates don’t emerge as winners.
“From what I have seen thus far, there’s a lot of folks stepping up to run,” said Stephanie Schriock, former president of the Democratic group Emily’s List. “So that means there are going to be a lot of primaries.”
The sheer number of candidates expected to eventually start campaigns later this year, in fact, has some party operatives worried it could overwhelm the system. Privately, one strategist told NOTUS that they and other strategists — usually scraping to find work in the competitive field of political consulting — now joke about having too many clients to work for because so many candidates are running.
More seriously, Kleeb said she had spoken with Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin about setting up special candidate-training programs this year out of worry that so many of the new candidates won’t have the proper skillset to run good campaigns.
“That’s a problem we’re solving for,” the Nebraska party chair said.
Democrats are hoping to parlay a candidate surge into victories during next year’s midterm election. In the Senate, they would need to win a net of four seats in 2026 to earn a majority, a prospect generally regarded as unlikely because only one Republican incumbent up for reelection next year (Susan Collins in Maine) represents a state Trump lost last year.
But Republicans hold a much smaller edge in the House. And Democratic candidates are coming out of the woodwork to run in many key races, especially for those seats expected to be among the most competitive next year.
In Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, four Democratic candidates have already declared they will run for a seat held by Republican Rep. John James, who is running for governor in the state. Arizona’s 1st District, another swing district held by GOP Rep. David Schweikert, has drawn five Democratic candidates.
And in New York’s 17th Congressional District, a battleground district represented by Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, six candidates have filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.
Democratic Senate races in a trio of upper Midwest states — Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois — had all drawn at least three candidates. (One in Minnesota, Melisa López Franzen, last week dropped out of the race.)
The number of Democrats running for state legislative races is less clear at this early stage in the election cycle, according to an official with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, but early signs are positive. In Virginia, however, which has state legislative races later this year, candidates have already lined up to run in 91 of the 100 districts, an official with the Virginia Democratic caucus said.
Democrats described the wave of candidates who ran in 2018 as a movement that started the moment Trump won the 2016 election, constituted of many office seekers hoping to join the so-called “resistance” that opposed Trump and hoped to right an electoral outcome they saw as an aberration.
This time around, Democrats offer competing explanations for why and when candidate recruitment has surged, although many say resistance to Trump plays a lesser role now than it did eight years ago.
Litman said her groups received a surge of interest after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer conceded to a government-funding bill that angered many liberals, with many of the would-be candidates professing a belief that the party needed new blood more eager to take on Republicans.
Other party strategists say Trump’s tariff announcement in April sparked engagement from many recruits, with many of them concluding that they would have a better chance of winning a general election next year.
Other candidates might have also been inspired by a broader call to infuse the party with new leadership, especially in Congress. DNC vice chair David Hogg, for one, has said he plans to spend millions of dollars helping primary challengers to long-term Democratic incumbents.
Some Democratic lawmakers, like Rep. Stephen Lynch, have subsequently received primary challenges.
“The Democrat Party is in the middle of an all-out identity crisis, with incumbents retiring or racing to the left to avoid getting steamrolled by radical AOC and David Hogg-aligned challengers,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “This far-left hostile takeover is already creating chaos in safe blue seats and battleground districts alike, and it’s threatening Democrats’ slim chances of winning back the House.”
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Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS.
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