The work of becoming mayor begins years before the ballot.
Public presence
Show up consistently, in person and online, for years before the campaign begins. Build the kind of recognition no ad can buy.
Policy fluency
Learn the budget, the zoning code, the comprehensive plan. Read the same documents the council reads. Form your own positions, slowly.
Earned trust
Trust is built in small acts, repeated over time. There is no shortcut. The community exists to help you stay the course.
“I'm Jim Blackburn. I live in Fort Lauderdale, and I intend to run for mayor of this city — sometime around 2040. A decade and a half of preparation, done in the open, before I put my name on a ballot.”The Founder's Commitment
Behind this site, a smaller thing.
A private cohort of people from cities across the country, each on their own long path toward local leadership. We meet once a year. We hold each other to a written standard the rest of the year.
We keep the group small on purpose — one member per municipality. The reason is capacity: this community exists to pour real attention into each member, and attention doesn't divide well. One person per city is how we make sure everyone in the room gets the full weight of what the community offers — and how we make sure the room stays a room.
We don't publish who's in it. We don't count it. What happens inside the cohort stays inside the cohort. If you're admitted, whether you speak about your own participation in your own life is up to you. Whether anyone else's participation gets spoken about is up to them.
The work is quiet by design.
There is no checkout page.
The community is joined by application, read by a Review Panel, decided on the substance of what you write. An open seat in your city is not a guarantee, and payment is not the deciding factor. What you're building, why you're building it, and the frame that makes it mean something beyond politics — those are.
Most people who read this page will click away, and they should. The community is small because it's meant to be.