Democrats continue to fight in public and in private over what the future of the party will look like, but ultimately, it’s candidate recruitment — the kinds of people party leaders try to lure into running for office — that will tell us a lot about what Democrats think needs to change after last month’s election.
NOTUS’ Alex Roarty and I took a look at the earliest candidate recruitment steps through the lens of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, a newly reconstituted party organization that is launching its first recruitment drive with the express purpose of building out a bench that can eventually win higher offices (ones perhaps more powerful than Lt. Govs., like senator or governor. No offense to the Lt. Gov NOTUS fans out there).
The word you hear most when asking Democrats about candidate recruitment right now is “authentic,” which seems to be code for “not afraid to anger college grad liberals by publicly breaking with orthodoxy on social issues.” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the current vice chair of the group, thinks he has an answer to the question “What kind of Democrat can win?” And yes, he used the word authentic.