Thread by @HedgeDirty

Ok, real talk:
I've known people who have run for congress and lost (which is always the modal outcome for a non-incumbent), and watched the process closely because once upon I time I thought I might want to do it myself. Here's how it really works:
(1/n)

https://twitter.com/HedgeDirty/status/1869547655107625452

I'll make this party agnostic, becauseehile the parties are definitely not mirror images of each other it's not *that* different, procedurally

First: ex-ante, what are your odds of winning?

There are 4 basic configurations of running as a 1st-timer

1. Open seat, partisan-safe (your team)
2. Open seat, partisan-competive
3. Primary challenge, partisan-safe
4. Primary challenge, partisan-competitive

If you are launching a primary challenge against a same-party incumbent, your odds top out at 1/3 in the best case. Incumbents only lose when they are deeply crippled by scandal or have built up many years of grievance by pissing off local interests

If you are running for an open seat, there will be 10 candidates on paper and at least 3 or 4 serious ones. As one of the serious candidates, again your odds are generically 1/3 or 1/4

The absolute best case is that because your father is a widely liked bigwig or because you've spent 10 years donating, volunteering, and building relationships, you start as the party favorite. Even that best case there's a 50% chance an anti-establishment populist beats you

And as a matter of conditional probability, if the seat is partisan-competitive you then face another 50/50 coin flip in the general

So the starting point is: your expected outcome is losing. You can't ever *admit* that, because then you're a self-fullfilling-prophecy loser, but if you're even in the neighborhood of rational you know it. Outside of exceptional Favorite Son cases, your odds top out at 1/3

What does it look like to lose?

First, depending on your state's filing deadline, you have to publicly announce ~12 months before the general and ~15 months before you'd take office. When you file publicly you have to de-facto quit your job, so your income goes to zero

Second, the first ~$100k of campaign expenses come out of your pocket. Campaign manager, website, data vendors (voter files), graphic design, etc. It's a lot like starting a small business

Now, you can structure this $100k as a loan which you can claw back once you raise enough money, but realistically you can only do that after you win in a general and start building a permanent campaign warchest

Political campaigns are exceptionally terrible credit risks. Most-even winners- end up in the hole and default to a bunch of their vendors. Losing campaigns are *always* broke. You have to assume the first $100k you put in is toast

Third, after you lose, what then? You've been out of your previous job for at least 6 months (lose in primary) and possible 12 (lose in general). In most cases, your old job's been filled, there's no maternity leave rule for loser aspiring politicians

There are a number of exceptions- you working for the family business, you're a lawyer with a pretty established personal practice, etc. But if you're a professional W-2 you gotta find a next job

If you're a competent, experienced professional with specialized skills that takes 4-6 months, and at best you get back to something similar. Running for congress does not make you *more* qualified than you were before for anything. Most likely you take a career step back

So add up the cost-cost, opportunity cost, and likely multi-year career sidetrack, and the personal NPV of filing your candidate paperwork is -$500k at best case, and probably more like -$1-1.5m if you are in a high-achieving career

So, let's say you beat the odds and win. What next?

You start as a backbencher. You are a nobody your first term. You get 1 committee slot in something relevant to your district, maybe 1 in something suited to your personal experience, and then crap like rules or investigations

The job itself is, contra common belief, a ton of work. It's not a 9-5. It's a whole-identity 24/7/365 job. Sure you may only be in DC in committee meetings Tue-Thu, but you are *always* on the clock. Fundraising, meeting various interested groups, staying in touch with your dist

You also have to maintain 2 residences. Constituents-reasonably- expect you to remain a primary resident and live your regular life (such as it is), where you come from

DC is famously a high cost of living town. Your DC apartment is probably an additional 3k/mo, and that's a personal cost. No charging that months campaign. It's expensive enough that somewhere between 10-20% of congress sleeps on cots in their office

(This is technically against the rules of decorum but goes unenforced because the people who do it do so because they can't actually afford the additional cost of a DC 2nd residence)

And then traveling. Back-and-forth from home to DC ~40 weeks of the year. 2x a month is on the taxpayer as a standard congressional expense, and the other 2x you can usually call a campaign expense as long as you do something campaign-ish when you're home, but it's a grind

In your first term, you basically won't *do* anything. Your main jobs are just raising enough money to scare off challengers for the next cycle amd meeting a ton of people. Because you have many, many coworkers

Basic math: there are 435 congressional reps, 200-230 in your party, depending on fortuna's wheel. If you wanted to do a 1-on-1 lunch to meet all the other reps just in your own party while you're in DC, it will take *the entire 2-year term* to get through all of them

So just establishing the light, casual personal knowledge for working relationships with the colleagues with whom you negotiate and collaborate on $3,000,000,000,000 budgets takes a long time to do

And then of course there's your own staff, ~25ish or so, whom you must hire and manage. In practice your chief of staff does a lot of the managing but you have to make time for facetime with all of them, because they worship and fear you like a pagan deity

So, in your first term, if everything goes well you shake down all your friends for more money, meet a bunch of fellow slimy pols, learn a little policy, and if you're lucky and your party is in power you get 1 favor for a key employer & 1 random amendment to put your name on

This is the prize for *winning*

This is what the fulfilment of all your noble aspirations of public service looks like in day to day reality

This is what you lit $1m of NPV on fire for

This is what you are depriving your kids of 2/3 of a parent for

No sane person does this

You have to *really* *really* believe in it to do that sort of thing

Or you have to already have FU money

Or you have to be a complete mediocrity who thinks getting paid $175k for that is a good deal

Apologies, but no politics thread on this platform is allowed to blow up without a cringey grift at the end. I don't make the rules.

https://x.com/HedgeDirty/status/1427761560815030280