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<h2>Frequently Asked Questions about the Brand New Congress</h2>
<p class="lead">We've answered some common questions here. If your question is not here, please ask it in an email to us@brandnewcongress.org.</p>
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<p><p><b>Q. What is Brand New Congress?</b></p></p>
<p>A. It’s a plan to accomplish sweeping political and criminal justice reform while rebuilding the American economy and getting to 100% renewable energy in a very short time—in other words, Bernie’s plan! We’re recruiting working people with track records of integrity and service in their communities, workplaces and families to run for Congress behind Bernie’s plan—and we’re going to run them in one unified, national campaign to replace almost all of Congress in one fell swoop. </p>
<p><b>Q. Isn’t it impossible to defeat 400 incumbents in Congress in one cycle?</b></p>
<p>A. We know this will be difficult, but it will be easier to replace nearly all of Congress than to replace a single incumbent, and here's why: Few voters pay attention to their local congressional elections, especially in midterms. One big campaign for a Brand New Congress will attract enough media attention, volunteers and grassroots donations to overwhelm those no-name, sold-out, unpopular incumbents. Skeptical? Try walking your block and asking people who their Congress person is. Ask them if they'd like a Brand New Congress made up of non-politicians. Send your results to us@brandnewcongress.org</p>
<p><b>Q. Who will the candidates be?</b></p>
<p>A. We’re looking for people from all walks of life and all fields of our economy and society, representing every community, who have a few special things about them. All the candidates must:</p>
<ul><li>be good at what they do.</li>
<li>be proven servant-leaders to their communities, families, friends.</li>
<li>have consistently passed on opportunities to sell out, choosing instead to keep serving their people.</li>
<li>have, <b>in general</b>, never held or sought public office.</li>
<li>agree on the core of the Bernie economic, social justice, and climate change platform.</li></ul>
<p><b>Q. Why don’t you want candidates who’ve served in office before? </b></p>
<p>A. We’re not banning them, we’re just saying that “in general” we want people who’ve never held or sought office before. There are a lot of great people in office and seeking office. But we mainly want those people who would never think of running for office. We want people who live for others. Those people do not usually seek out the limelight of political office. We are going to need to drag them kicking and screaming into public office. The longer our list of awesome potential candidates gets, the more they will inspire each other to run. When they see that this is not a vanity project but a real chance to change everything, we'll get their hats in the ring. It'll take a lot of work, but that's how it should be.</p>
<p><b>Q. Don’t people need experience as legislators to work in Congress?</b></p>
<p>A. No. Members of Congress should have experience staying true in the face of adversity and bribery. Our candidates will have that. Moreover, if we get enough seats, then we'll be rendering obsolete the game that's currently played in Congress. But seriously, this is not a valid concern. No one objects when a governor or big city mayor runs for Congress even though those jobs have nothing in common with legislating in Congress. And lots of “successful” Congress people have jumped in with no experience in public office at all, from jobs in banking, real estate and law for example.</p>
<p><b>Q. What is the Brand New Congress platform? </b></p>
<p>A. Basically the core of Bernie’s platform on the economy, environment and criminal justice reform. In the coming months, we’ll be working with policy wonks, advocates and leaders in many fields to craft the actual legislation that a Brand New Congress would pass on Day One to put the plan into action to accomplish the platform. That way, people will know exactly what they're going to get with a Brand New Congress. Working with experts, we will take some of Bernie's policy directions and craft them into practical economic building plans—for example we want a step by step practical plan to get to 100% renewable energy in a very short time, and we want a plan to create jobs not only from rebuilding infrastructure, but supporting the creation of missing industries.</p>
<p><b>Q. Who’s behind this?</b></p>
<p>A. We are mostly grassroots leaders from the Bernie campaign and a few ex-staffers, most of whom began as grassroots leaders for Bernie. We have been talking about this idea for a while, and decided the time was right to launch it. </p>
<p><b>Q. Is there a formal organization behind this?</b></p>
<p>Right now, a political action committee called Brand New Congress, is accepting contributions to support travel costs and to pay stipends for a handful of organizers. Zack Exley, a former Bernie staffer, is the treasurer of the PAC and works on Brand New Congress as a volunteer. Once we have our candidates, formal decisionmaking and fundraising will flow through them, with the PAC probably being dissolved. We are required to have a PAC to accept funds and spend money toward electing federal candidates.
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<p><b>Q. What is a PAC? </b></p>
<p>A. To comply with campaign finance law, we created the Brand New Congress political action committee. That is not a Super PAC, but a plain old “PAC” with full transparency and contribution limits. You can learn more about PACs at http://fec.gov </p>
<p><b>Q. Does Brand New Congress have staff? Are you hiring?</b></p>
<p>Nearly all of the work on this campaign is done by volunteers, just like it was on the Bernie campaign. It’s a revolution, not a paid-staff organization. When grassroots funds start rolling in, we'll be hiring the best organizers in the movement who need to be paid. In the Brand New Congress movement, most of the team leaders who hold responsibility and authority are volunteers—people with day jobs they don't want to give up, retired people, people with small businesses, etc... Some organizers are paid. Paid staffers are people with a unique contribution to make to the movement who want work a demanding full time job for the movement. Being a paid staffer is a huge responsibility because one is taking up one of a small number of paid positions available, therefore standards for paid staff are very high. Funds are very limited, therefore Brand New Congress is not able to hire everyone we would like to hire.</p>
<p><b>Q. How is Brand New Congress funded?</b></p>
<p>A. We simply ask supporters on our website to pitch in if they can. So far we’ve been amazed to raise more than $35,000 in small donations. </p>
<p><b>Q. What do you need the money for?</b></p>
<p>A. The money will go for travel costs for our launch tour of 100 cities, and to eventually to start paying full time organizers, though this will be a mostly volunteer-driven campaign just like Bernie was.</p>
<p><b>Q. What about good candidates already in Congress? Are you going to run against them?</b></p>
<p>A. We won’t run against candidates that fully support the Brand New Congress platform. Plenty of members of Congress already do—for example, the members who endorsed Bernie. And we expect that as the campaign becomes stronger, more and more members of Congress will endorse our platform. In those cases, our candidates may drop out. We’ll have to decided on a case by case basis. </p>
<p><b>Q. Who makes the decisions for Brand New Congress? For example, who chooses the candidates?</b></p>
<p>A. As soon as we get our first batch of candidates, then they will be the ones ultimately in charge, and a leadership structure will have to come together among them. Right now, we’re just a group of people who agree on the platform and the organizing approach laid out here. We are bootstrapping this with a small group of grassroots leaders and a few staff who worked together and share the same vision of a grassroots movement to elect a Congress full of down-to-earth, trustworthy working people.</p>
<p><b>Q. Are you forming a third party?</b></p>
<p>A. No, we’re not forming a third party. America seems to be sick and tired of parties. Maybe the solution isn’t to create a new one. Or maybe it is. Either way, we’re starting off by running candidates in the Democratic and Republican primaries, and then running independents where we lose. There are some similarities and differences between this idea and starting a third party. The big difference is that we are not trying to create a big bureaucracy behind our candidates. It’s just them. This will allow maximum agility which will be needed to win!</p>
<p><b>Q. Will you be supporting candidates in the 2016 election cycle?</b></p>
<p>A. We’re happy to see so many “Berniecrats” running in 2016 and we want to be supportive, but we’re just getting started, so we don’t think we’ll have that much to offer 2016 candidates. We think the way to win is to start very early and plan a great campaign. That’s why we’re focusing on 2018. </p>
<p><b>Q. Will any of my donation go to the Democratic Party? </b></p>
<p>A. No! We use the same payment processor as many other Democratic candidates, which has led a few people to ask if somehow their donation goes to the party. No, it doesn’t. ActBlue is a private entity with no connection to any party. It’s a great service for accepting donations. That’s why we use them. </p>
<h3>If your question wasn't answered here, please ask it in an email to <a href="mailto:us@brandnewcongress.org"> us@brandnewcongress.org</a>. Thanks for reading!</h3>
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