2. Leadership Opportunities — Build Independent Power

2. Leadership Opportunities — Build Independent Power

District teams are the heart of People Primaries. A healthy team is not a hierarchy of professional politicians. It is a group of ordinary Americans who live in the district, care about the district, and refuse to let corporate money decide their representation.

Critical reminder: Your team’s members choose the leaders. No national office, no headquarters, and no outside group gets to appoint or remove your leadership. You decide.

Who Can Lead?

Anyone who lives in the district, is a registered District Member, and is willing to put in the work. Age, party registration, education level, and prior experience do not matter. Character, reliability, and a genuine commitment to worker-first representation do. Leadership is earned by the trust of the people who live there — nothing else.

Core Leadership Roles (Examples — Your Members Decide the Structure)

These are common roles that work well. Your team is free to invent different ones, combine them, or create entirely new structures:

• Chair / Co-Chairs: Overall responsibility for the team. Runs meetings, keeps the group focused on the mission, and serves as a public face of the district effort.
• Recruitment Lead: Finds new District Members and volunteers. Organizes house parties, workplace conversations, and community events that grow the base.
• Candidate Vetting Lead: Manages the process of identifying, interviewing, and recommending potential candidates who will sign and live by The WORK FOR US! Promise.
• Field Organizer: Builds the volunteer lists, schedules canvassing and phone-banking shifts, and makes sure the ground game is real.
• Communications Lead: Handles social media, local press, flyers, and the stories that remind neighbors why this fight matters.
• Data & Systems Lead: Keeps the membership rolls clean, tracks volunteer hours, and makes sure the team can measure what works.
• Finance / 99-Cent Lead: Coordinates the district’s participation in the 99-Cent Revolution so the campaign is funded by thousands of small contributions rather than a handful of big donors.

How to Form a New Independent District Team

1. Register yourself as a District Member if you have not already.
2. Find 5–7 other people in your district who are ready to commit. They can be friends, co-workers, neighbors, church members, or people you meet through the national network.
3. Hold a founding meeting (in person or by video). Decide together how you will organize. Choose temporary leaders by vote of the members present. Agree on a first 90-day goal (usually “reach 50 active members and identify 3–5 potential candidates”), and set a regular meeting cadence.
4. Notify the broader People Primaries network so your team can appear in the district directory and begin collaborating with other groups if you choose.
5. Begin recruiting. Use the tools on peopleprimaries.com. Aim for a working team of 50–100 people; that is the size that can run a real primary and a serious ground game. Other independent teams can and should form alongside you.

What Success Looks Like for Leaders

You will know the team is working when (1) every serious candidate for Congress in your district feels they must seek People Primary support, (2) your volunteers can put 200 doors or 500 phone calls on the board in a single weekend, and (3) the people in your district start saying “our District team” the same way they used to say “our party.” That is real power — and it belongs entirely to the people who live there.