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New Politics is an American bipartisan 527-organization that recruits, develops, and elects leaders with service backgrounds, either through the military or national service organizations like AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. The organization is working to elect a new generation of political leadership by helping service-oriented leaders run for public office. It was founded by Emily Cherniack in 2013.[1][2]
Since its founding, New Politics has raised more than $8.5 million for their endorsed candidates and elected more than 30 of them to office, from local school boards to the U.S. Congress[3]
History and mission
Emily Cherniack founded New Politics in 2013 to recruit and support National Service alumni and military veterans to re-enter public service through politics. Cherniack's experience working on City Year co-founder Alan Khazei’s unsuccessful bid for the 2010 U.S. Senate special election led her to conclude that the barriers to entry into politics were intentionally exclusive and dissuaded servant leaders from running.[4]
A City Year alum herself, Cherniack chose to focus on building a pipeline of service-oriented leaders after seeing the impact they had on communities.[2]
Moulton's campaign earned the first-ever political endorsement from retired general and Service Year Alliance Chair Stanley McChrystal.[8] Moulton defeated Tierney in the primary with 50.8% of the vote to Tierney's 40.1% and later defeated Republican challenger Richard Tisei in November's general election.[9]
2016 cycle
New Politics replicated the Moulton-model in 2016 when they helped elect another Marine Corps veteran, Congressman Mike Gallagher.[7] New Politics ran Gallagher's GOTV push and raised more than $60,000 for his campaign. Gallagher won the general election for Wisconsin's Eighth Congressional District by 63 percent to become New Politics' first Republican officeholder.[10]
2018 cycle
New Politics had their most successful cycle during the 2018 midterm elections.[11] After a historically large crop of service veterans announced bids for federal office, New Politics partnered with Congressman Moulton to form the Serve America Victory Fund, a joint effort that sought to leverage the platform of a sitting member of Congress along with New Politics’ donor network. Serve America raised more than $5 million for over 20 candidates from across the country.[12]
In February 2020, New Politics partnered with nine incumbent House members to launch the Second Service Coalition to raise funds for a slate of first-time veteran Congressional candidates.[16]
2022 cycle
In 2022, New Politics launched an initiative called the New Power Project. The New Power Project lowers the barriers of entry into politics for leaders with military or national service backgrounds, and is uniquely focused on recruiting and empowering values-driven individuals who have grown up in marginalized or underserved communities.
During the 2022 election cycle, the New Power Project supported various candidates running for state and local offices across the country. Some of these candidates include Phil Olaleye, Josey Garcia, Pavel Payano, and Manny Cruz.