This commentary is by Sianay Chase Clifford, a progressive who was running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives. She announced today she’s dropping out of the race, and she wrote the headline for this commentary.
To avoid sounding like a sore loser, I’ll begin here:
I’m exiting this race because I do not have the resources to continue. That’s in part because I simply didn’t do enough — not enough doors knocked, not enough hours on the phone, not enough political connections won over.
I’ll ruminate over everything I could’ve and should’ve done differently for a long time, but for all my political shortcomings, I learned valuable lessons about electoral politics I think are worth sharing.
Candidates are not incentivized to spend real time with anyone.
That’s why it all feels so transactional — because it is. The amount of time we are expected to be on the phone asking people for money is fundamentally at odds with the amount of time it takes to genuinely form connections with people.
So, candidates take shortcuts: Prioritize the highest profile events, prioritize the communities that have the highest propensity to agree with you, prioritize message over substance.
I preferred long policy conversations with no donation expected. That’s good social work practice, but bad politics.
It’s only big money if somebody else has it.
I’ve never had much money and the fact that my campaign didn’t either wasn’t a new feeling for me. So from my perspective, it was strange to hear candidates discuss big money in politics, when their campaign accounts have more money than I’ve ever seen. When one person raises millions of dollars, it’s grassroots support, but for their opponent it’s big money.
We’ll split hairs about who is more ethically raising millions of dollars and throw around campaign finance jargon, but not talk about why we need that much money in the first place.
Voting rights are about more than just getting to the polls.
Our power to vote is diminished if we get to vote only for the same kind of person over and over again. It’s patronizing to say “your vote is your voice” if we don’t have candidates who are reflective of those voices. No matter how hard we vote, we can’t expect different outcomes if a partisan establishment continues to dictate what type of candidate deserves resources and deserves to make it to the finish line.
The solution here is not to disengage. Instead, the solution is to be unequivocal in your support of the candidate you believe in. If you want to support someone but aren’t sure they’ll win, go all in on them anyway.
If we support only the people we think will win, we’ll never get anyone new. And the beautiful thing is, if you support them, they’re more likely to win.
The cynicism feels particularly acute now, so I’m not sure what my future in electoral politics looks like. But within the murkier emotions I’m processing, gratitude shines through. And some joy about what I was able to accomplish, too.
It’s been an honor to run and share my story with so many incredible people.
