Q&A: How One PAC is Approaching Candidate Recruitment in 2026

Candidate recruitment can be tricky. And for Democrats, in particular, the question right now is: What exactly do voters want to see in the people they run?

Campaigns & Elections recently spoke with Mari Manoogian, a former Michigan state representative and the executive director of The Next 50, a political action committee focused on building a next-generation candidate pipeline for Democrats. Manoogian weighed in on how her group approaches candidate recruitment, trains first-time hopefuls and plans for the future of Democratic leadership. 

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 

C&E: There’s a lot of conversation about the state of recruitment in the Democratic Party. I’m curious, from where you sit, how are you thinking about recruitment in the broader Democratic environment? Where do you think there are problems, where do you think there are bright spots and how does The Next 50 fit into that?

Mari Manoogian: The Next 50 exists to find the next generation of leadership within the Democratic Party. We say that we search the highways and byways of America for talent, wherever it may be. So from our vantage point as an organization, we are actually quite excited about some of the candidates that we’re fielding. We’re thinking about people like Sarah Trone Garriott, who’s running in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District; Paige Cognetti, who’s running in Pennsylvania’s 8th District; and Rebecca Bennett, who recently won her primary in New Jersey’s 7th; and Cait Conley – who we were with on Day 2 of her campaign – who’s running in the Hudson Valley.

C&E: One thing I also want to talk about here: The ideological center of the Democratic Party has shifted considerably over the past few cycles. How are you all approaching the current ideological environment within Democratic politics, and how do you help candidates navigate a political environment that can punish ideological positioning in either direction?

Manoogian: I want to take a step back and talk a little bit about who we are and what we do, because I think it fits really neatly into this question. We endeavor to support principled, pragmatic, energetic and focused young Democrats. What do each of those words mean? Principled: Do you have a sense of who you are and what you’re fighting for when you put your two feet on the floor every morning? Are you pragmatic? Are you someone who’s looking for the path of least resistance to get done the thing that you want to get done, whether that’s winning an election or governing? Are you energetic? Are you someone who has a personality and a communication style that can translate both on digital and in person – whether that’s on a doorstep, in a union hall, at a rally or on a direct-to-camera Instagram reel? And are you focused? Are you someone who is willing to do the hard work of rolling up your sleeves and doing the call time and doing the field organizing – whether it’s virtual organizing or in-person organizing – to win? 

And you’ll notice that in really none of those words, did we say a particular place on the ideological spectrum within the party. We tend to focus on battlegrounds. We have an expansive view of what a battleground looks like, whether it’s a district or a state. But we are looking for leaders who can cut through the noise and the BS and communicate with voters and communicate the frustrations of voters more broadly. So when we talk about the ideological differences within our party with our leaders – honestly, our leaders come to us and say: “you know, we don’t fit neatly into a box. Just like our voters. They don’t fit neatly into a box either. We want to run as who we are and what we believe in.” And so we coach our leaders to be as authentic as possible when communicating on issues, because that’s where the American electorate is at.

C&E: A lot of first-time candidates underestimate how much of the job is going to be asking people for money. So what does your program do to prepare candidates for the fundraising realities of a campaign? Where do you see the steepest learning curve there?

Manoogian: I mean, having been a candidate myself – I started running for state representative when I was 24 and got elected to the Michigan State Legislature when I was 26 – I can vividly remember sitting in my parents’ backyard in the summer of 2017 and rolodexing. And obviously at 24 years old, I didn’t have as many wealthy names and phone numbers of wealthy individuals in it as some other candidates do. So what I was able to do in order to flip my seat in 2018 was really just work relentlessly hard to make new relationships; to meet as many people as I could. We did a great mix of meetings and calls, and that’s how we coach our first-time candidates. It’s about the recognition that you don’t have to come from a wealthy background to do this, though it is going to present some challenges, and that’s where The Next 50 comes in. 

When we back our candidates, we don’t pay lip service with an endorsement. It’s not like you could just put our logo on your website and then we walk away from you. We’re very serious about sticking with our people as they progress through their first campaign and onto other campaigns. What that means is that we don’t just help them structure their call-time programs – though we’re more than happy to help them do that – or help them out with events and meetings. We have donors, who are interested in the mission of our work; who are interested in finding these kinds of candidates, who not only can win one election, but can win multiple elections and lead our party. 

So we’re eager to make those relationships for our candidates in places where those donors match with our candidates in terms of their interests.

C&E: Piggybacking on that a bit: A lot of next generation candidates are running against entrenched incumbents or in races where institutional support flows to establishment picks. What’s your advice for a young candidate who’s essentially been told that it’s not their turn yet?

Manoogian: My advice comes from the heart, because I was once that candidate. I’ve had folks who were party chairs at the local level, in my own state, tell me that it was not my turn to run, and I showed them otherwise. So my advice is: don’t let that sort of pushback have you deviate from your plan to organize and raise the funds that you need to win. 

In terms of earning that support, that’s exactly what these candidates do, day in and day out. We see our Next 50 leaders building the kinds of campaigns that do eventually get the backing of party committees like the DCCC. 

A great example of this is Sarah Trone Garriott, as I mentioned, in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District. Sarah is a candidate that we’ve backed since 2022. We backed her when she was running for the state Senate to oust an entrenched Republican incumbent, and she beat him. And then she won her election again for the state Senate in 2024. It was a Trump-plus-five district that she carried by 29 votes. So, at The Next 50, we said, “hey, we really think you should run for Congress. We think this is going to be a great opportunity for Democrats to flip the 3rd district back.” Her opponent, [Rep.] Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), is someone who’s incredibly well funded and has positioned himself within MAGA world to be a well funded candidate, but we think Sarah has what it takes. So we helped her build her campaign from Day 1, and now, she’s in a place where she’s in the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program. She’s someone who consistently is one of the top fundraisers on the Democratic field out of all candidates for Congress who are challenging incumbents. So when I think about Sarah, and I think about my own story of people telling us to wait our turn, we just outworked everybody. And that sort of gets to that final word that we use to describe our people. You have to be focused and not let the noise drown out what you’re doing or have you deviate from your plan.

C&E:  There’s still the reality of campaign politics, which is you don’t always win. How does The Next 50 define success for the candidates it supports? Is it purely electoral, or are there any other metrics that matter to you when evaluating whether your program is working?

Manoogian: I mean, electoral metrics matter. Our ability to deliver support for our candidates matters. We give directly to our candidates, as well, and so we’ve been able to raise more than $3,000,000 for candidates in the last cycle. All of that really does matter. But one of the things that I think is special about The Next 50 is that we stick with our people as they seek leadership – whether they win or lose a leadership fight within their caucus or they lose an election. We stay in touch with our people, because we believe that this is a talent-building multicycle project. 

Last cycle, in a tough year for Democrats, we won 70 percent of our elections. So far this year, we’ve only lost two elections. In 2025, we won every single one of our elections. So what I would say is that success for us, of course, is winning elections and delivering majorities and winning these governorships and mayoral seats. But I also believe that it is really important for us to continue to keep this talent pipeline going, because there are many opportunities to serve in various ways. And the way that we lose as Democrats is by allowing good people to fall off the map if they lose an election. Our goal is to dive really deep with our leaders, maintain these relationships and continue to support the pipeline building of this party.