Indivisible’s national office will facilitate a grassroots-driven national endorsement program for federal (U.S. Senate and U.S House) and gubernatorial candidates. Indivisible groups who have undertaken an endorsement process in their district or state can submit a local endorsement for national consideration. Indivisible members in the relevant district or state will then be able to vote online on the endorsement. As a national organization, we also expect all candidates we put our name behind to live up to certain values, including organizational priorities around democracy reform, immigration, health care, and economic justice. Together, Indivisibles have a tremendous amount of power—and endorsing is an important first step to influencing who represents us.
Why Do National Endorsements?
Endorsing as a movement helps us grow and work together to make a bigger impact. The party can try to make this choice for you—nominating people who look like traditional politicians, and come with money and connections. Grassroots endorsements disrupt gatekeeping, elevate new leaders, and change the power landscape.
National endorsements help further elevate candidates who have local grassroots support. Uplifting these candidates on the national stage will showcase a new class of leaders who reflect the values of the Indivisible movement.
What Does a National Endorsement Mean? (Aka Why Should My Group Request One?)
A key goal of the national endorsement program is to provide local groups in every part of the country with the resources to impact elections. Every national-level endorsement will come with:
- A $1,000 check made out to the campaign
- Candidate added to slate of endorsed candidates on our website and announced across social media channels
- Web and social media graphics, customized to candidate
- Free Indivisible merch for your group (rally signs, hats, buttons, etc.)
- A press release from the national team announcing all candidates endorsed in that round, along with your group’s media contact for national press
- Priority processing of MyVoters requests for voter contact on behalf of endorsed candidates
In addition, we plan to make deeper investments in a small number of nationally endorsed primary races. These races have yet to be determined and will depend on electoral dynamics as the cycle develops. These investments may include some (not all) of the following:
- Support with media activities related to local Indivisible group support of the candidate, including proactive pitching to local press
- Research, analysis, and polling of electoral dynamics in the endorsed race
- Identification of potential volunteers to support your candidate and email event recruitment for events registered through indivisible.org
- Direct mail pieces sent to targeted voters
- Literature and materials to support your group’s door-to-door canvassing
- Paid digital advertising
- Group access to voter contact tools (canvassing, phonebanking, P2P texting)
- Support and strategic guidance from one of our Regional or Statewide Organizers
General Steps of the National Endorsement Process
1. Nomination Submitted for National Endorsement
Once you’ve endorsed at the local level, group leaders can submit a request for a national endorsement.
2. Indivisible Team Reviews the Candidates
Our team will conduct a vetting process of all endorsement requests to review the candidate’s history and ensure that they’re consistent with the values of our movement; we anticipate that local groups will have gone through a similar process and we don’t expect to disagree with those assessments. Candidates will submit answers to our policy questionnaire (which you can view here), which will be reviewed and shared with local groups. To pass the questionnaire, candidates must score 80% or better, and answer correctly on all baseline progressive issues. We'll also consider factors like: the number of Indivisible groups that have endorsed a candidate and whether there are any conflicting endorsements; the number of progressive partners that have endorsed a candidate; and intangible factors, such as whether a candidate is running for the first time or performed well in a past race. We actively seek to support women, people of color, and members of other marginalized communities for office where possible. Candidates who clear the vetting process and the questionnaire will move to the next round, which is online voting by local groups within the candidate’s district or state.
3. Group Members Sign Up to Vote
We will ask everyone on our email list in the district or state in which the election is taking place to vote via email. Group leaders can circulate this form to group members who want to vote on endorsements. (We don’t sell anyone’s information or share it with other organizations, but we want to make sure we’re in touch with the people who lead our movement—the members of Indivisible groups—exactly for situations like this so that we can make sure we’re taking their preferences into account. We’ll also use these emails to help drive attendance to events!). Sign up to vote now.
4. Indivisibles Vote
Everyone on our email list (make sure all your group members sign up here!) in the candidate’s congressional district or state will receive an email asking whether we should issue an endorsement.
Why aren’t all the candidates included in the email to vote? The only candidate(s) that will be included in the email will be those that have been locally endorsed by Indivisible groups, nominated for a national endorsement and have passed our policy questionnaire.
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First, we will only endorse a candidate if 60% or more of Indivisibles who vote online support them
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Second, we will look at the portion of total potential voters who decided to vote to ensure that there's enthusiasm for the candidate among Indivisibles.
5. Results Announced and Celebrated!
Indivisibles in the district will receive an email announcing if an endorsement has been made. If voting results in a national endorsement, groups should make plans to announce the endorsement and get involved in supporting their chosen candidate.
Any endorsement is a team effort between local groups, our national team, and all local Indivisibles who voted to endorse. So celebrate it a little! Consider hosting an announcement event with the candidate. Think about the ways the race might be historic in nature or what about their story excites you—talk about that! (Reminder that we always tell groups to spend their time, not their money—otherwise it will need to be reported to the FEC).
Note on Hosting Events with Candidates. Note on Hosting Events with Candidates. In general, if you spend money on an event at which a candidate can advocate for their own election (or against someone else’s), that spending will be treated as an in-kind contribution to that candidate, unless the event falls into a specific exception. We recommend that groups avoid spending any money to host candidate events unless they have received guidance from a campaign finance attorney about how to structure the event. One way to avoid campaign finance implications is to host a candidate event without incurring any expenses. For instance, a group may be able to avoid spending money on a candidate event if they invite a candidate to do a Q&A at the end of the group’s regular meeting instead of hosting a separate event.
What To Do After Securing a National Endorsement
Congratulations! Your local group has just secured a national endorsement for an awesome candidate. But now what? While this is an incredibly important step, we know that simply saying you endorse a candidate won’t get them over the finish line. What’s meaningful about an endorsement is the commitment of real work behind it. So it’s time to start planning how exactly you’ll make an impact in the race. Check out our Post National Endorsement Planning resource to get you started!
When Will This All Happen?
Endorsements will occur in rounds throughout the election cycle, with endorsed candidates announced at the end of each round. We announce the first round of candidates in November, with subsequent rounds announced about every 6 weeks.
As of the launch of this guide, our nomination form is live and accepting submissions. We’ll continue to accept nominations from local groups until late August.
