These Millennials aren’t just voting: They want your vote

Millennials and their relationship to the voting booth have been subject to incessant punditry in the run-up to the midterm elections: Will they vote? Can they sway the outcome?

Even 75-year-old Joe Biden has weighed in, telling Millennials they need to get off their backsides and “get involved.”

But Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, doesn’t just want young people at the polls. She wants them on the ballot.

Litman, 28, was director of emails on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign — “the other emails,” she jokes. She was approached shortly after the election by a friend, angered by Donald Trump’s victory, who wanted to know how to get started in a run for office.

“I didn’t have a good answer,” Litman said. “And that felt like a problem that was a symptom of a whole bunch of problems in the Democratic Party.”

Those problems, she said, include a lack of “intentional candidate development” and “a weak, non-diverse, uninteresting bench for the future.”

The day Trump took office, Litman and Ross Morales Rocketto, a political consultant who is married to one of Litman’s friends, started Run for Something to “create a diverse talent pipeline.”

Several progressive groups were born around that time, but Run for Something stands out for its focus on developing Millennials to run as Democrats for public office. It helps only potential candidates under 40 who are looking to run for the first or second time.

The organization works exclusively with candidates running for office at the state level or below. The group seeks out diverse candidates, emphasizing women, people of color and LGBTQ recruits.

The organization’s 15 paid staffers are bolstered by more than 2,000 volunteers and about 115 mentors, consultants and workers from past campaigns — Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and Clinton veterans included — who help guide the rookies on the Run for Something roster.

Initially, Litman and Rocketto expected around 100 candidates to sign up in the group’s first year, to take part in note-swapping sessions and local support networks. Instead, by March 2017, 8,000 people from around the country had contacted Run for Something. Now that total is up to 19,000 would-be candidates, with more than 400 endorsed candidates on the ballot for Tuesday’s elections.

Endorsed candidates benefit from greater attention and, in some cases, money. In the past two years, Run for Something has tapped more than 11,000 donors for money for about 150 candidates in 14 states. So far in 2018, the group says, it has collected $2 million.

In California, 35 candidates have received a Run for Something endorsement for next week’s elections. Among them: 22-year-old Rigel Robinson, running for Berkeley City Council; Alex Brown, 27, who is running for Chico City Council; and 31-year-old Sonia Aery, a candidate for Assembly in the northern Central Valley.

Robinson began his campaign in April, just a few weeks before he graduated from UC Berkeley. He got in touch with Run for Something after meeting Rocketto at the College Democrats of America’s national convention.

“It’s a funny little kind of ragtag, misfits campaign we’ve got,” Robinson said. For his entirely student-run operation, Run for Something has provided an “incredible network ... advice and a sense of community,” he said.

For Aery, Run for Something has become an antidote to feeble local support in her campaign against Republican incumbent James Gallagher, who is running for a third two-year term in the Third District.

“It’s really hard to find the local resources,” Aery said. “My campaign manager works in Santa Monica, my social media manager lives in Wisconsin. Just having that community has been really helpful.”

Aery said she felt compelled to run after serving as emcee for the January 2018 Women’s March in Chico.

“I said something like, ‘All this marching isn’t going to mean anything unless we take action,’” Aery said. “That was the impetus ... being like, ‘Oh crap, I can do this, too. ... I could be a leader in this movement.’”

Aery needs all the help she can get. The district is solidly Republican, and Gallagher has run up lopsided victory margins in his last two elections. In the June primary, he finished 30 points ahead of Aery.

“It’s definitely a long shot,” Aery said. “I think people have resigned themselves to the fact that we’re just represented by Republicans and we’ll always be represented by Republicans.”

Gallagher, ironically, is a Millennial himself. At 37, he’s just six years older than Aery. He said he was unfamiliar with Run for Something, but he expressed frustration at groups “that have nothing to do with the north state” coming into the district “to ensure a blue wave.”

“I think that’s really the focus of those types of groups — it’s about progressive politics,” Gallagher said. “I don’t think it’s really about their age or that they’re young.”

Millennials — defined by the Pew Research Center as people born between 1981 and 1996 — make up barely 6 percent of all state legislators, according to a report from Run for Something and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

The same goes at the national level. The average age of House members is almost 58. In the Senate, the average is just under 62 years old, making the current Congress one of the oldest in history.

Despite the built-in disadvantage of running first-time candidates against incumbents, Run for Something made a decent showing in 2017. Just under half the 72 candidates it endorsed that year won their races, the group said.

Litman says Run for Something’s value extends beyond electoral victories.

“We think simply running does a lot for the community,” she said. “As a party, how can we expect voters to show up if we don’t give them someone to vote for?”

Litman added, “We know this from social science: You can’t be what you can’t see. In the future, it will be unacceptable to say that we can’t find a qualified non-white dude.”

For Aery, the daughter of Indian immigrants, this pursuit is personal.

“I never thought I would run for office growing up,” Aery said. “You don’t see yourself in those positions of leadership.

“Look, whatever happens, you’re showing a lot of young Indian girls that they can do this,” she said. “If we don’t win, absolutely this will have been worth it.”

Holly Honderich is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: holly.honderich@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hollyhonderich