I’ve run into one of my favorite Camden voices, Tom Knoche, a few times over the past few months. Knoche is the author of Common Sense for Camden, a long-time activist on a variety of Camden issues, and now doing a lot of work around universal health care. In one of our conversations, Knoche told me that the first question he asks candidates when they ask for his support is, will you commit to running twice? 

I love this question. It gets so directly to two issues that I think about all the time for new candidates. The first is how to build infrastructure to run a professional campaign — something that typically requires experience. It’s just easier to run a campaign once you’ve done it before, gotten your name out there, attempted to fundraise etc. For first-time candidates, that is a herculean task given the structural disadvantages to running against a candidate with professional support. Committing to running twice shows the maturity of knowing that a first run is essentially a dry run for a more serious run for office. It acknowledges that this isn’t easy. 

But asking candidates to commit to running twice is also to ask them to commit to a community. It avoids vanity runs. It avoids runs that raise a candidate’s profile so that they can move on to other positions and other things without truly serving the community. 

One of my pet peeves about candidates is that they often conceptualize their own abilities as being contribution to community. They are great, so being in office must be good for community. Asking such politicians to commit to running twice is the start of a conversation that asks if they are willing to sacrifice for community. What will they do (beyond being themselves) as a public servant? I think it’s important to puncture the bubble that simply being oneself is enough — for that is a candidate who will do anything to stay in office (then claim that compromises or betrayals are for the good of the community). 

Candidates often become the centerpiece of political movements. They are public voices. They are tangible faces of opposition. And I appreciate Tom Knoche’s simple test for judging which of them truly support the communities they are asking to serve.