In 2024, there were 93 races for seats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives that went uncontested, including 43 seats occupied by Republicans.

In a hotly contested 102-101 Keystone State House, one seat makes all the difference.

That’s why Contest Every Race and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party are launching a new initiative to recruit Democrats to run for every local office across the state.

“Democrats are ready to fight by stepping up in every county, especially in rural communities, to ensure that every Pennsylvanian has a government that fights for working people and common-sense leadership,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Party Executive Director Mitch Kates.

Ahead of Pennsylvania’s filing deadline on March 11, the program aims to recruit and support nearly 5,200 local candidates running in non-urban areas that typically lack Democratic candidates. Contest Every Race, which has successfully recruited over 10,000 candidates nationwide since 2018, will assist in outreach, training, and mobilization efforts.

“In Pennsylvania, we are doubling down on our commitment to restore local democracy and contest every seat,” said Contest Every Race Director Zoë Stein. “There are no ‘off years’ when it comes to democracy, and we are determined to build a stronger, more representative Democratic Party across the state.”

The initiative will use a combination of text message outreach, organizing meetings, and coaching sessions to identify and support potential candidates, particularly in rural and non-urban areas where uncontested races are most common.

“With Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their billionaire cabinet stripping our federal government for parts, winning local elections has never been more crucial,” said Kates. “You can’t win unless you run and it’s critical that every Pennsylvania voter has a choice at the ballot box. Billionaires looking to get richer won’t help Pennsylvanian families afford groceries, housing, or have access to good union jobs. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party is committed to building back community by community, block by block.”

Contest Every Race, a project of Movement Labs, recruits Democrats to run in otherwise uncontested local races and operates a national rural organizing support program to net votes for Democrats in the 2025 election. The project found that Democrats failed to run in over 50 percent of all partisan races in 2022, a figure that lays bare the bench and party-building work needed to rebuild Democratic strength in the Trump era.

These recruitment efforts will target school boards, borough councils, township supervisors, and other local offices to compete everywhere, build infrastructure from the ground up, and ensure no race goes uncontested in the 2025 election cycle and beyond.

Steve Ulrich is the managing editor of PoliticsPA.

This article was originally published in PoliticsPA.