The case for supporting political long-shots
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"A political party that contests only a handful of races eventually finds it represents only a handful of places." So says Peter Coe Verbica, encouraging the CA Republicans to get behind grass-roots candidates that can shape public opinion and move the Overton Window. Verbica is a candidate for CA Congressional District 19.
Modern political campaigns have become prisoners of spreadsheets.
Consultants run probability models, donors scan polling averages, and party committees concentrate resources only where victory appears immediately plausible. In California, this approach has hardened into
dogma: fund the tight races, ignore the rest. On paper it seems rational. In practice it has been disastrous.
When a political movement refuses to compete broadly, it gradually disappears from the landscape.
This is the lesson Republicans in California have learned the hard way. For years, party strategists concluded that statewide offices and many congressional districts were unwinnable. Resources were withheld. Campaigns were starved. Candidates were left to fend for themselves. The results speak for themselves. Voters stop hearing alternative arguments. Media ecosystems adjust to the absence of dissent. The policy debate narrows. Over time, what once seemed like competitive territory becomes politically barren.
A political party that contests only a handful of races eventually finds it represents only a handful of places.
But the deeper damage goes beyond seat counts. It affects the very ecology of ideas.
Tough-to-win races — even long-shot campaigns — play a vital role in shaping the public conversation. They force uncomfortable questions into the open. They introduce policy critiques that dominant political machines would prefer remain unspoken. They ensure voters hear more than one interpretation of events.
Without such voices, democracies become echo chambers. And those voices matter because minority viewpoints often introduce ideas that later become common sense.
Consider a few examples currently absent from much of California's policy debate.
School choice—whether through charter schools, education savings accounts, or scholarship programs—has demonstrated measurable improvements in educational outcomes in many states. Parents gain agency. Competition improves schools. Yet in California the conversation is often suppressed by powerful institutional interests that benefit from maintaining the status quo.
The same can be said about public pension policy. California's system of defined-benefit pensions for public employees has produced massive unfunded liabilities at both the state and municipal level. These obligations crowd out spending on infrastructure, public safety, and education. Cities across the state are already feeling the strain. Ignoring the problem will not make it disappear.
Housing policy offers another example. California's housing shortage is not a mystery. It is the predictable consequence of weakened property rights, excessive permitting restrictions, and regulatory obstacles that make building new housing extraordinarily difficult. When property rights erode, housing supply contracts—and prices rise.
Economic policy tells a similar story. Increasing tax burdens create dead-weight losses in the economy and drive capital elsewhere. Businesses relocate. Entrepreneurs move. Investment flows to states where regulatory environments are more predictable and costs are lower. California's recent wave of corporate relocations should surprise no one.
Public safety provides perhaps the most sobering example. Efforts to defund police departments, combined with sanctuary policies that complicate cooperation with federal law enforcement, have coincided with increases in crime and drug-related deaths in many communities. Policies enacted with good intentions can still produce harmful consequences if they ignore basic incentives and enforcement realities.
These are not fringe ideas. They are debates occurring across the country. Yet when political competition collapses, entire categories of policy discussion vanish from the public square.
This is why contested races matter.
History shows that minority viewpoints often punch far above their numerical weight. Some of the most influential political leaders on the global stage have governed relatively small nations yet have shaped international debate with remarkable force.
But none of this happens if those minority voices never reach the starting line.
A political movement that refuses to compete in large portions of the country is effectively conceding those citizens to one-party rule. Voters notice. Participation declines. Cynicism grows.
Funding tough-to-win races sends the opposite signal. It says that every community deserves representation. It says that debate matters. It says that ideas should compete openly rather than be filtered through a narrow set of "approved" contests.
California—home to forty million people and the world's fourth-largest economy—deserves a vibrant marketplace of ideas. That requires candidates willing to run, voters willing to listen, and donors willing to invest not only in likely victories but also in the long, patient work of rebuilding political competition.
Long-shot races are not wasted efforts.
They are the laboratories of political renewal.
If we want a healthier political system—one capable of confronting the challenges of the coming decades—we must fund the difficult-to-win races again.
Even the long-shots.
Read the whole thing here.
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