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Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

runforoffice.org

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Re: Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

#111

Post by anigbrowl »

antisocial wrote: post #26
OliverJones wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. And, if you see a news report about somebody whose positions you like deciding to run ... send them a campaign contribution. Running for office is quite costly these days, and no-strings-attached contributions are really helpful. (Many contributions have strings attached. Yours doesn't have to.)

Why does it have to be expensive? This is the fundamental question we should be asking and should be trying to find solutions to.

To keep riff-raff like you and me out, of course.

Re: Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

#114

Post by coulombian »

chimeracoder wrote: post #54
apsec112 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Almost certain" seems like an exaggeration. At my college (Yale), the "student government" was basically just a committee to plan Spring Fling. You can see their budget online: https://www.ycc.yale.edu/budget/

> "Almost certain" seems like an exaggeration. At my college (Yale), the "student government" was basically just a committee to plan Spring Fling. You can see their budget online: As a counterpoint, Columbia's student government is quite powerful. There are multiple levels (with different domains of influence), but the most powerful is the student senate - each school is allotted two (I think) student senators, and t…

The Columbia undergraduate student government was also basically just party planners, in addition to being a feeble roadblock to university policies. The truly powerful group was the student-run Activities Board, which distributes student life fees to a hundred or so student clubs and groups. (Of course, all student governments and groups are subject to administrative oversight and override.)

Re: Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

#116

Post by djent »

jMyles wrote: post #5

This doesn't appear to include student offices, which, especially at large state universities, are very powerful and misunderstood. If you are a student, consider running for student office. It's likely (in fact almost certain) that your student government makes more decisions that impact your life and spends more of your money than the national government does. They typically have multi-million dollar budgets, seats…

I'm Speaker of my student parliament at my college. It is not as grand as you describe it. We only get about $250,000/semester from the college. We are actually incorporated as a non-profit through our state's general assembly, so our college has limited control over us. We have limited seats on our college's committees, and we have committees of our own which are majority-student. Committees like the Board of Education in our state have one student member from all the public higher education institutions, and they're appointed by the president of the college rather than by our student government. Our student government hasn't made huge progress on any major student issue.

Re: Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

#117

Post by dahdum »

rtkwe wrote: post #86
kibwen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> state level positions which will all be full time That depends on what we mean by "full-time". Here's a great wiki page regarding the amount of time each state legislature demands from members: https://ballotpedia.org/States_with_a_full-time_legislature From the stats there, there are 10 states where legislator is 80% of a full-time job (avg. salary: $68,599), 23 where it's 70% of a full-time job (avg. salary: $35,…

True but I think for the intent of the original question I think most of these offices are largely incompatible with a normal full time job. You'd likely need to be self employed or have an extremely flexible boss/employer because when you're working as a state representative or senator you won't be able to do you normal job.

I think it would be pretty easy to land one of those flexible jobs if you were a state rep or senator. I can imagine plenty of construction firms, law offices, NGOs, and other institutions would be happy to carve out a part time role for the benefit of having your ear and knowledge.

Re: Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

#118

Post by nix0n »

jimterrapin wrote: post #34

My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments. I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff. Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea. If you like, feel free to email me at…

Hi Jim, this is a terrific tool.

It would be more useful for students if it included age requirements for offices (if any).

Re: Run for Office: Find all elected offices you are eligible to run for

#119

Post by chimeracoder »

coulombian wrote: post #114
chimeracoder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Almost certain" seems like an exaggeration. At my college (Yale), the "student government" was basically just a committee to plan Spring Fling. You can see their budget online: As a counterpoint, Columbia's student government is quite powerful. There are multiple levels (with different domains of influence), but the most powerful is the student senate - each school is allotted two (I think) student senators, and t…

The Columbia undergraduate student government was also basically just party planners, in addition to being a feeble roadblock to university policies. The truly powerful group was the student-run Activities Board, which distributes student life fees to a hundred or so student clubs and groups. (Of course, all student governments and groups are subject to administrative oversight and override.)

> The Columbia undergraduate student government was also basically just party planners, in addition to being a feeble roadblock to university policies.

Not really, though the degree to which that's true depends on whether you're talking about CCSC, ESC, GSSC, or SGA. The student governments absolutely can effect meaningful policies of their own; I know because I worked on more than one such policy while I was there.

> The truly powerful group was the student-run Activities Board, which distributes student life fees to a hundred or so student clubs and groups

ABC (Activities Board at Columbia) is only one of the four funding umbrellas for student groups. And incidentally, ABC does not fund any student groups related to politics, religion, humanitarianism, or public activism. SGB is responsible for all of those, and SGB's funding decisions are fairly autonomous, as opposed to ABC's, which fall under more direct oversight from the atrociously-named F@CU.

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