Who Runs for Office, Anyway?

Why do people run for political office, and why do they suck so bad?

Jul 25, 2025

Someone sent me a message this week that pushed me toward writing this topic. Like many folks who are trying to put their thoughts into the world, I’ve got an endless list of ideas that I’d love to write about. At some point midway through the week, something typically tips the scales toward one of those ideas (and if that doesn’t happen, I just pick one at random). So thank you, nameless friend, for reaching out. It helped!

Before we get started, have you told folks about how much you love reading my work? Go for it—the more, the merrier (except when it comes to liver. I have never in my life thought to myself, ‘self, I sure wish I had some liver right now’.) Anyway, go for it.

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That said, have you ever run for something? Think back to when you decided that it should be you to lead your 6th grade class to glory, or decided that you’d make the best Treasurer that your high school French Club had ever seen. How did that election go for you? Was it a great experience? Was your debate performance in front of the entire student body electrifying and inspirational? Or did you crash and burn? Did that experience inform your willingness to run for anything, ever again?

Enjoy this lovely picture of the Ohio Statehouse:

Isn’t that pretty? Thanks to the Ohio Statehouse site for it.

Are you curious about how many elected officials won their position without any competition? I saw a piece of information the other day that blew my mind a bit. Ballotpedia is a fantastic site that presents free information about candidates, issues, and elections. We should all be very familiar with Ballotpedia! This Ballotpedia article shows their analysis of uncontested elections throughout the United States in 2024. Do you have a guess as to how many elections that year had only one candidate? As they say,

Throughout 2024, Ballotpedia covered 76,902 elections in 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories. Of that total, 53,485 (70%) were uncontested and 23,417 (30%) were contested.

That is an absolutely wild statistic. 3/4 of the elections in this country only had a single candidate.

How about elections in Ohio? Surely it can’t be that high in Ohio, right? From the same article,

Oh. (I-O.) Oh no. 79% of elections in Ohio last year were uncontested, and only 21% of our elections had more than one candidate. What that means is that very few people actually run for something, and that those who do are the ones who end up winning. In statistical terms, at least.

I thought this was also a really interesting piece. I know it’s eleven years old, but it has some fascinating insights to share that are probably still largely true. It’s from the Pew Research Center, and shows that, at that point, “about 2% of Americans say that they have ever run for federal, local or state elected office”. Maybe this doesn’t surprise you, but they go on to report:

Our data show that those who say they have sought office tend to be white, male and well-educated. In fact, while women account for half of the adult population, they are just a quarter of those who say they have run for office.

There is a similar imbalance when it comes to race and ethnicity, with whites disproportionately more likely to have sought office and Blacks and Hispanics less likely to have done so. While non-Hispanic whites make up 66% of American adults...82% of those who say they have ever run for office are white.

Moreover, 16% of those who say they have run for office have post-graduate degrees; only 10% of the total adult population has attained that level of education.

So, to recap: only 2% of the general population chooses to run for something, and they’re almost all white men with college degrees. And beyond that, almost none of those white men ever have real opposition in their elections.

Do those numbers hold true in Ohio? Well, we have 99 House Districts in the state, and 33 of those seats are currently held by women. Out of our 33 State Senate seats, 10 are currently held by women. So that’s 33% of our State Representatives who are female-identifying, and just 30% of our State Senators. Since achieving statehood in 1803, Ohio has never elected a female U.S. Senator. It’s interesting to note that we’ve had one female Governor (but just for eleven days). Read about Nancy Hollister here!

But wait—is that because there are fewer women in Ohio than men?

Nope. As the data shows, 50.69% of the population in Ohio are women. There are actually roughly 161,892 more women than men in this state, and yet that dramatic gender disparity in public officeholders still persists.

Does that make you feel good about our political system and those people in powerful positions? Are you happy about who represents you?

Let’s go back to the Pew Research Center, this time from a study they did at the end of 2023.

Oof. If you don’t like reading charts, here’s how the authors describe their findings:

Today, 63% say that all or most elected officials in local, state and federal government ran because they wanted to make a lot of money, while about three-in-ten (29%) say some elected officials ran for this reason. Just 8% of Americans say a desire to make a lot of money motivated few or no elected officials.
Majorities also say all or most officials ran with the intention to run for higher-level office in the future (57%) and to get fame and attention for themselves (54%). No more than one-in-ten say that few or no officials ran for these reasons.
By comparison, 22% say all or most elected officials ran because they wanted to address issues they care about, while about half (48%) say that some elected officials ran for this reason (30% say few or none did).
Just 15% say all or most elected officials ran because they wanted to serve the public, with 43% saying that few or none ran for this reason.

It appears that most of us do not think that those people who ran for office (unopposed, remember) did it to help address issues that they care about, or because they wanted to serve the public. That is a tragedy. It shouldn’t be that way! We call them “public servants”, for goodness’ sake!!

Here’s the thing: I would like you to think about running for public office. Especially if you’re a person of color, or a woman, or someone who hasn’t spent most of their life in positions of power.

Because we have enough elected officials who look like me. We need politicians who look like YOU. We need politicians who look like the communities their policy decisions impact.

Ohio has dropped in the rankings on almost every category over the past two decades. It’s getting pretty bad, in fact. As David Dewitt wrote this May in the Ohio Capital Journal:

Ohio continues to do terribly in nearly every way possible, according to the latest state rankings from the U.S. News & World Report.

The Buckeye State slid two more spots in the report’s latest rankings of the 50 states, moving from No. 36 in the last report to No. 38 in the latest iteration.

In addition to ranking No. 38 overall, Ohio also ranks No. 41 in natural environment, No. 41 in higher education, No. 39 in economy, No. 34 in health care, No. 30 in crime and corrections, No. 30 in education overall, No. 30 in infrastructure, and No. 25 in fiscal stability.

Ohio could be a truly incredible place to live, grow, learn, and raise a family. It was once. It isn’t anymore, for so many folks. And a large part of why that’s the case is that Ohioans aren’t being represented by our best.

So please. Consider the good you could do on your local school or library board. Consider the difference you might be able to make on a city council, or as police chief. Or—and this isn’t pie-in-the-sky thinking—run against your State Representative, or State Senator, or even a statewide or national elected official who is not doing everything they can to make life easier or better for the people who placed them into their position.

Run for something. You’ll shock the hell out of them, since they don’t expect to be challenged. And who knows—you might even win. And if enough reasonable, values-based, compassionate, intelligent people win? That’s how we change our state, our country, and ultimately the world.

What can we do? We can run for stuff.

Find more resources about pursuing higher office here, and let me know if you need help with your campaign. We need you.

As always, thanks for reading. Share this newsletter with anyone who needs to run (and win) an election!

Sources:

Who Runs for Office, Anyway?

Why do people run for political office, and why do they suck so bad?

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