Democrats are winning at the state level by reinventing the idea of the citizen legislator.

[DonViejo]

A Different Kind of Outsider

Democrats are winning at the state level by reinventing the idea of the citizen legislator.

By Susan Milligan, Senior Writer | Nov. 24, 2017, at 6:00 a.m.

For many Americans, the new Democratic face in the state legislature may be a former favorite teacher. Or perhaps the nurse practitioner who helped care for a loved one. It might be the journalist whose work was seen on local TV, or maybe an elder in the church.

Democrats – skewered in congressional and state legislative races in 2010 and beyond by Republican "outsider" candidates promising to shake up the status quo – are winning down-ticket races this year with a different kind of outsider, one that recalls the citizen legislator of yore. Instead of offering up lawyers, businesspeople and professional politicians who make up the majority of state legislators nationwide, Democrats are picking up seats with candidates drawn from voters' everyday lives.

"Teachers are ordinary people. And we live in a world where we should have a government of the people. Who better to represent the people than a teacher?" says Cheryl Turpin, a science teacher elected earlier this month to the Virginia House of Delegates. Turpin, who captured one of at least 15 seats Democrats picked in this month's elections (three races are still under official review), will serve with newly-elected teacher Schuyler VanValkenburg and former teacher Wendy Gooditis (herself the daughter and granddaughter of teachers). VanValkenburg, notably, teaches government to high schoolers.

In other races, Democrats have run (and won with) a nurse practitioner, a cybersecurity expert, a Georgia software expert who is also an elder in his church and a social worker who came to America from Peru as a single parent. The field helped Democrats flip 32 state legislative seats from red to blue in special elections and off-year, general elections on Nov. 7. Republicans have flipped just a single contested seat.

The pickups have turned the Washington State senate to a Democratic majority, giving the party the coveted "trifecta," control of both chambers of the legislature and the governor's office, and have erased the GOP supermajority in the Georgia State senate. The party also made some surprising gains in states like Oklahoma, where Democrats picked up four seats. The winners? Two teachers, a mental health therapist and an immigration lawyer.

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https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-11-24/democrats-are-winning-state-races-with-a-new-kind-of-political-outsider

[katmondoo]

1. This is a good start.

[NotASurfer]

2. Feels like stealing a page from Republican playbook circa 1980

People who never thought about politics motivated to run, so they're citizens, not politicians

Next step would be to nationalize the next election around a small set of common goals - keep it to 4 or 5. Just take a lesson from "Contract on America" and don't pick a name that sounds like a Freudian slip about evil intent

Then you hit DC running, with an agenda and a plan to put bills on the Resolute desk. Try to start with something that will pass with enough Repubs to be veto-proof if possible, but get bills passed

All of which would take a lot of well-executed leadership, if we can muster it