Get involved
The first step is joining your town committee.
Every one of Connecticut's 169 towns has a Democratic Town Committee. Most people have never heard of them. They are where local Democrats decide who the party backs and how campaigns get run, and they are the most direct way in — to helping candidates, to organizing your own town, and to running for something yourself if that is where it leads.
What they are
A town committee is the local Democratic Party.
They recruit and endorse
Town committees decide who the party backs for local office — council, board of education, first selectman. Very often they are the reason a person runs at all.
They pick the delegates
Town committee members elect the delegates who go to nominating conventions. Those delegates decide who carries the party's endorsement. That process has its own rules, set out in how it works.
They do the local work
Canvasses, voter registration, candidate forums, get-out-the-vote. When a campaign has volunteers in a town, it is usually because the town committee produced them.
What to expect
Meetings usually run from half an hour to an hour and a half. Members talk through what is happening in town, get ready for the next election, and hear updates from the people they helped elect. It is a working meeting rather than a rally.
Committees expect their members to turn up and to take something on between meetings. The people who show up are the ones who end up making the decisions.
The part nobody explains
How the party actually picks candidates.
Endorsement conventions, delegate slates, caucuses and the petition route to a primary all have rules, and almost none of them are written down. Knowing them is what separates turning up from having an effect.
Tell us you're in
We'll help you find your committee.
Sign up and tell us your town. Reply to any email we send and we can help you find your committee, work out when your caucus is, and point you to people already doing this near you.