Leaders Making New Leaders

When American Majority kicked off the New Leaders Project a couple of years ago, we did it with the goal of having 1,000 individuals or organizations commit to helping build a team of new leadership that would address several severe problems our country faces. We’ve passed our first benchmark, and we are seeing the impact of the hard work of hundreds of local activist groups around the country.

The goals of the New Leaders Project are simple. We want to:

• Hold current elected officials accountable for their decisions by encouraging local leaders to challenge them.
• Build a network of leaders who are experienced in governing and campaigning and are ready to move up to higher office when new leadership is needed.
• Roll back irresponsible policies at the local level that increase government debt and intrude into the lives of the American people.

But these goals are not easy to accomplish – it takes the commitment of individuals and groups in the trenches who know the local political environment and are willing to find and support new leaders. It takes focus and planning.

This is something progressive organizations understand – they have been openly recruiting candidates for local office and then training them to win and effectively implement liberal policies for years. And we’ve seen the results, with huge local government debt and spending, and experienced liberal candidates who continue to move up to higher levels of office and implement even more progressive policies.

But thankfully, the New Leaders Project has brought together over 400 liberty-focused organizations in our country that decided to take action and stand for freedom and responsibility in their communities. Over 1,034 individuals have signed the pledge to either step forward to run for office or to recruit someone to run for office. With campaign and leadership training from American Majority, we are already seeing results. Over 60 of those people have run for office and 16 more are following through on their promise this year.

Lisa Belak in Minnesota managed several campaigns for new leaders and then won her own election for a seat on her city council. Jim Watters led a local organization in Georgia and then jumped in the ring and won. In Wisconsin Dan Hunt saw the need for new leadership in the local public school system, recruited candidates for those positions and took them to American Majority training, and then proceeded to win elections. Now School Board elections are coming up again, and Dan is still at work recruiting and supporting even more local candidates. Many other groups and individuals who have joined the project are following in these new leaders’ footsteps.

In Florida, a recent election victory by School Board candidate Jason Fisher is representative of the work of American Majority in that important swing state. Florida is a constant battleground between progressive and conservative ideology at all levels of government. In some areas of the state there are not enough candidates to fill all of the seats on the town council, and then in other areas, local party leadership discourages candidates from participating in the political process. In Florida and across the United States, we clearly need more people to take a stand and change the way business is done.

A great leader in the fight for liberty in the state of Florida, Col. Allen West, will be joining us in Ft. Lauderdale for our New Leaders Summit on July 12^th and 13^th. The purpose of the Summit is to roll up our sleeves and get to the hard, practical, and nitty-gritty work of training leaders how to identify and support candidates, and how to run and win campaigns for local office across the United States.

With over 500,000 elected positions in government structures across our nation, we need lots of new leaders to step forward to take up the fight. Please look at American Majority’s free resources, join the New Leaders Project and pledge to find new leaders in your community, or consider running for office yourself. Someone has to lead – why not you?