Amanda Litman

Sexy budgeting system renovation (and other powerful stories)

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Feb 12, 2025

Hello there. I hope you’re all coping as well as you can considering the onslaught of horrors in the news this week. This is the exact sentence I wrote as an intro last time and I’m now wondering whether I’ll be writing it weekly for the next four years…

If you’re new to What’s Left?, welcome! I’m a British comedian from American late-night TV on a quest to better understand progressive politics at this particularly crazy moment. Each week, I interview someone from somewhere on the left, from liberals to radicals; a mix of comedians, journalists and political commentators from both sides of the Atlantic. Today I have the privilege of talking to someone working inside the belly of American politics who’s making things happen through an inspiring amount of will, hard work and good intention. Chatting with this week’s guest gave me more energy and optimism, which I hope you guys will feel too.

If you’d rather watch or listen to our conversation, the video and audio versions are available here! Now let’s go and meet Amanda…

Amanda Litman is the co-founder and president of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for down-ballot office. She’s also president of RFS Civics, a 501c3 that works to end the gerontocracy. Amanda is the author of the book Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself and is currently working on her next book about generational shifts in leadership that will be published this spring. Before Run For Something, she worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Charlie Crist's 2014 Florida gubernatorial campaign and Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

Hi and welcome Amanda. If there was a version of the political spectrum where zero is the center, -100 means you're an actual fascist and +100 is you're as far left as you can go, where would you put yourself?

Somewhere in the 40 to 60 range depending on the issue and moment in day.

And what made you want to work in the political sphere? Where did that drive come from?

I grew up outside the DC suburbs, so politics was always part of the vernacular. I don't remember a time I didn't want to work in politics, it's the only thing I've ever really wanted to do. I had a high school best friend whose mom was super radical and would take us to protests and I remember stuffing envelopes for Pro-Choice Virginia and knocking on doors for Democrats running for office. I went to see Barack Obama speak before he launched his campaign for president. I skipped class to hear him and I thought, ‘Oh, I want to do this. I want to work in politics for someone like him who can make you feel like you're part of something really big that can make the world a better place.’

And so now that you’re doing that, what’s it actually like?

It's incredibly meaningful. The impact is really inspiring. I get to wake up every day knowing that the way I'm spending my work week will hopefully make a difference and things better for people.

But it is also incredibly mentally taxing. I have friends who don't work in politics who can check out of the news. I don't get to check out of the news because the news affects my job and my job is how I spend my time.

So do you ever turn your phone off? There have been points — at the height of the pandemic for instance — where I’ve imposed a news curfew for myself. Would you ever be able to do anything like that?

The closest I came was in the couple weeks after my daughters were born when I had a little less capacity for paying attention. But even then, with a newborn, you're just sitting and feeding them and not trying to make sure they're not dead. So you're scrolling on your phone.

Oh yes, I definitely know how much you can be on your phone with a newborn! And so how has the recent election impacted your life and your organization?

It hasn’t made a big change, which is perhaps unsurprising given our backstory. My co-founder and I launched ‘Run for Something’ on Trump's first inauguration day. So in many ways, it feels like muscle memory and has come back very quickly. We’ve got to respond to the news and make sure we're paying attention. We’ve got to make sure we're capitalizing on these moments where people might want to run for office and just need to be asked, need to be told that a way to solve this problem is by getting involved yourself as a candidate or helping someone local run for office.

Since election day, more than 16,000 people have raised their hands to tell us they want to run for office in the last three months. That has already exceeded the number of people who signed up with us in all of 2017.

That's mad!

People want to run and we want to be here to help them.

Are you ready for this onslaught of new candidates?

We are. We have been always trying to build towards scaling and working with many people at the same time. We want floods of young leaders running for local office. So we've been building for this.

And do you have a good hit rate of getting people into office?

We do. Over the years, we’ve endorsed more than 3,000 people and more than half of them — just about — have won their elections. These are all first-time candidates running for state and local office. They're all under 40, majority women and people of colour and about a quarter LGBTQ+ in 49 states.

Oh wow. But what's that one state that you're missing?

I believe we are missing Idaho. Either Idaho or South Dakota.

That can happen. So what's your ideal candidate? Who are the people whose applications excite you the most?

The ones who I love and who do best are the ones who can clearly tell a story about why they're running and why a voter should want them to win. Which is different from why you want to win. You want to win because winning is great and losing sucks. But a voter wants you to win because you're going to do something specific and concrete for them. So the candidates that I get excited about are the ones that are running on issues that aren't sexy but are important.

We worked with a young woman, Lina Hidalgo, back in 2018, who was running for county executive in Texas. Her reason for running was that she wanted to reform the county's budgeting process because she had a very clear understanding of how it had failed to cover them in a case of emergency. In Houston at the time, there were hurricanes causing flooding and the county did not have emergency relief funds for that. The idea that you could run because you care about budgeting is I think very beautiful.

We've worked with candidates who have really powerful stories about their own experience with government. We worked with a county council member in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, called Bethany Hallam. She was an athlete in high school who got an injury and was prescribed opioids. Then she got addicted to opioids and ultimately heroin, ended up homeless for a while and was in the county jail system. After the election of 2016 — a night that she spent in the county jail — she decided she was going to get clean and run for the office that oversaw the jail system. She understood exactly what that experience was like and how the county was failing people. She won and she's been an amazing public servant ever since. Those are the ones who want to do something, not just be something.

That’s such an amazing story. But it also seems to me an easier sell than renovating the budgeting system?

Well, Lina was able to tell people in Houston, ‘Here is how our county is not serving you: there were floods and your house flooded and your sewer flooded and our county wasn't ready. If I was in charge, here's what would have been different in that outcome, and here's what would be different moving forward.’

She was able to tell folks not just what she wanted to do, but what she wanted to do for them.

So in your experience, do you think that voters are more swayed by a candidate talking about fixing things locally than making more theoretical arguments? A lot of people are saying that this last election was over the price of eggs rather than the existential threat to democracy.

I’ve found that the most effective candidates can tie the concrete specifics to a broader value system. They can do a little bit of both.

Everyone should have a right to their own healthcare autonomy. But you can also say, ‘I want to make sure that the community healthcare centres in our town are well-funded so that when you show up, there's a doctor who can see you tomorrow or today.’ That's specific. I can feel that, I can hear that. And it’s an easier argument for local candidates to make.

If the big wings of the Democratic Party found my Substack for whatever reason, what would your message be to them at this point?

It's so funny that you asked that because there are no bigwigs in the Democratic Party anymore.

Right. Who am I talking about?!

The problem is that nobody’s in charge of the Democratic Party. This is a coalition of a mix of candidates, elected officials, activists and donors who are all just trying to row in the same direction.

And on the right, Trump is in charge. Elon Musk is also in charge, but really, Trump is in charge. And like it or not, you get behind him. On the left, we don’t have that same kind of singular leader at the moment. And I think one of our bigger problems is that we haven't had that kind of singular leader in years. Joe Biden was not it.

Who was the last one in your opinion?

Obama.

So what do you want to happen next?

I want to see the next generation of Democrats step into power, a new group of folks in the front. My hope is that we are at this tipping point. Nancy Pelosi is very good at what she does but is not reflective of the American people anymore. Bernie Sanders is also not reflective of the American people anymore. Chuck Schumer is not going to cut it. These leaders don't have the skills and don't have the stomach to do the fighting we need right now.

If you are, let's be generous and say 70 or older right now, you're not in this fight for the long haul and you shouldn't be. That's not to say you don't have a role to play. But there are currently 55 members of the House Democratic Caucus over the age of 70 or who will turn 70 in the next two years.

That's nuts.

They are not fully able to capitalize on attention in the way that we need. It would be like if I asked my grandma to go to an Instagram live. It would be crazy.

I take your point and I don’t know your grandma, but I would still watch her do an Instagram live. Is social media something you encourage your candidates to get better at?

It helps that we work with folks 40 and under who don’t need to be encouraged because they already get it. They've been on Facebook most of their life, they've been on the Internet most of their life. They understand what it means to have a public persona and to be always shaping it. And in campaigns, you are doing that with a goal. Our candidates need tools and tactics and some strategy on social media, but they don’t need to be convinced to do it.

So what's your take on the podcast circuit? If your candidates got invited on Joe Rogan’s show or similar, would you encourage that?

I think that’s missing the forest for the trees. The problem is not that Kamala Harris or whoever didn't do enough podcasts, it's that they couldn't. Nancy Pelosi could not go on a show like that or have a conversation like that. They are not people who have the skills to do these kinds of informal conversations and be real folks.

But Harris did Call Her Daddy, right?

She did and she did it better than many, but she didn't have enough time. You’ve got to build the brand of being a real person over years. I think AOC and Maxwell Frost are really good examples of this. Maxwell Frost went on Sia's podcast to talk about music. These are real people who are also politicians, they’re not politicians trying to sound like real people.

So let’s talk about 2028...

Trump is never going to be on the ballot again, and that is an opportunity for Democrats because we know from primaries that Trump's shtick does not work for other candidates. It didn't work for Ron DeSantis and it doesn't work for JD Vance. These are pieces-of-shit dudes who do not have the charisma, nor the 30 years in the public eye to carry forward the same kind of reputation.

Ha. Are you saying Vance’s lack of charisma means he won’t be able to carry on the MAGA mantle?

JD Vance is the most punchable person in Washington, maybe even more so than Ted Cruz. He is so slimy and has so obviously changed his fundamental core values to align with Trump in a way that is not believable. He doesn't have the brand that Trump has.

My sister-in-law, for example, watched The Apprentice decades ago and said that Trump should be president. Decades ago!

That's crazy! We all thought it was totally implausible, and she called it.

She’s a Trump person. But I'm not sure what she thinks about JD Vance. I don’t think that there's that same affinity or even affection for him.

I love that answer, it’s very reassuring, thank you. So do you have optimism for the future?

I mostly do. I think these four years are going to suck, to put it lightly. I think people are going to be harmed or killed. But this is what I keep coming back to: Trump will never be on the ballot again.

American elections are decentralized. They are not run by the federal government, they are run at the state and county and sometimes city or township level. It is really hard to fuck around in them.

If we can make it to 2026, we can hopefully take back the House. And although the amount of what Elon can do is very scary, I don’t think Trump's going to be good for the economy and so people are gonna be pissed.

So I am cautiously optimistic. I think you have to be optimistic to do this work because you have to believe that change is possible.

That's a very hopeful and lovely attitude. Thank you, Amanda!

Amanda Litman

Sexy budgeting system renovation (and other powerful stories)

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