The Californer - Why Long-Shots Matter: The Case for Funding Challengers in Every Race

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David vs. Goliath — Today's long shots become tomorrow's Republican victories.

BAY AREA, Calif. - Californer -- y
Peter Coe Verbica
Candidate for U.S. Representative, California's 19th Congressional District

Modern political campaigns have become prisoners of spreadsheets.

Consultants run probability models, donors scan polling averages, and party committees concentrate resources only where victory appears immediately plausible. In California, this approach has hardened into dogma: fund the tight races, ignore the rest. On paper it seems rational. In practice it has been disastrous.

When a political movement refuses to compete broadly, it gradually disappears from the landscape.

This is the lesson Republicans in California have learned the hard way. For years, party strategists concluded that statewide offices and many congressional districts were unwinnable. Resources were withheld. Campaigns were starved. Candidates were left to fend for themselves.

The results speak for themselves. Voters stop hearing alternative arguments. Media ecosystems adjust to the absence of dissent. The policy debate narrows. Over time, what once seemed like competitive territory becomes politically barren.

A political party that contests only a handful of races eventually finds it represents only a handful of places.

But the deeper damage goes beyond seat counts. It affects the very ecology of ideas.

Tough-to-win races — even long-shot campaigns — play a vital role in shaping the public conversation. They force uncomfortable questions into the open. They introduce policy critiques that dominant political machines would prefer remain unspoken. They ensure voters hear more than one interpretation of events.

Without such voices, democracies become echo chambers.

And those voices matter because minority viewpoints often introduce ideas that later become common sense.

Consider a few examples currently absent from much of California's policy debate.

School choice—whether through charter schools, education savings accounts, or scholarship programs—has demonstrated measurable improvements in educational outcomes in many states. Parents gain agency. Competition improves schools. Yet in California the conversation is often suppressed by powerful institutional interests that benefit from maintaining the status quo.

The same can be said about public pension policy. California's system of defined-benefit pensions for public employees has produced massive unfunded liabilities at both the state and municipal level. These obligations crowd out spending on infrastructure, public safety, and education. Cities across the state are already feeling the strain. Ignoring the problem will not make it disappear.

Housing policy offers another example. California's housing shortage is not a mystery. It is the predictable consequence of weakened property rights, excessive permitting restrictions, and regulatory obstacles that make building new housing extraordinarily difficult. When property rights erode, housing supply contracts—and prices rise.

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Economic policy tells a similar story. Increasing tax burdens create dead-weight losses in the economy and drive capital elsewhere. Businesses relocate. Entrepreneurs move. Investment flows to states where regulatory environments are more predictable and costs are lower. California's recent wave of corporate relocations should surprise no one.

Public safety provides perhaps the most sobering example. Efforts to defund police departments, combined with sanctuary policies that complicate cooperation with federal law enforcement, have coincided with increases in crime and drug-related deaths in many communities. Policies enacted with good intentions can still produce harmful consequences if they ignore basic incentives and enforcement realities.

These are not fringe ideas. They are debates occurring across the country. Yet when political competition collapses, entire categories of policy discussion vanish from the public square.

This is why contested races matter.

History shows that minority viewpoints often punch far above their numerical weight. Some of the most influential political leaders on the global stage have governed relatively small nations yet have shaped international debate with remarkable force.

Consider Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore is a tiny island state of six million people. Yet Lee's strategic clarity about economics, governance, and geopolitical realism shaped decades of global policy discussions. His speeches were studied in capitals around the world. Leaders listened not because Singapore possessed overwhelming power, but because its leadership articulated ideas with uncommon precision.

A similar dynamic can be seen in Alexander Stubb. Finland, a country of just over five million people on Europe's northern edge, has become one of the most important voices in discussions about NATO expansion, European security, and how democracies confront authoritarian aggression. Finnish leaders—including Stubb—have earned outsized influence not through population or military size alone, but through clarity of thought and candor about geopolitical reality.

Small states can wield disproportionate influence when their leaders speak clearly about difficult realities.

Political minorities inside large democracies serve a similar function.

They challenge prevailing narratives. They test policies that have escaped scrutiny. They force the majority to sharpen its arguments. In doing so, they improve governance—even when they lose elections.

But none of this happens if those minority voices never reach the starting line.

Campaigns require funding. They require organization. They require the ability to communicate with voters. When donors limit their support exclusively to "safe" or "competitive" races, they unintentionally strangle the broader intellectual life of their own movement.

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California offers a cautionary tale.

For decades, Republican donors and national committees have largely abandoned vast portions of the state. Only a small handful of districts receive meaningful investment. The rest are written off as hopeless. Over time, this strategy has produced exactly what one would expect: a shrinking bench of candidates, declining organizational strength, and a generation of voters who rarely encounter a robust alternative perspective.

In short, the strategy designed to conserve resources has instead accelerated political decline.

If a party wishes to rebuild in a state as large and diverse as California, it must rediscover the importance of tougher-to-win races.

Underdog campaigns serve several indispensable functions.

First, they introduce new leaders. Many of tomorrow's influential voices begin as candidates who were not expected to win. Campaigning forces individuals to sharpen their thinking, articulate their principles, and build networks that endure long after election day.

Second, they expand the map. Districts that appear unwinnable today can become competitive tomorrow—but only if voters have already been exposed to alternative ideas and credible candidates.

Third, they shape the policy debate. Even unsuccessful campaigns can influence legislation, media coverage, and public priorities by raising issues that the dominant political coalition would rather avoid.

And finally, they signal seriousness.

A political movement that refuses to compete in large portions of the country is effectively conceding those citizens to one-party rule. Voters notice. Participation declines. Cynicism grows.

Funding tough-to-win races sends the opposite signal. It says that every community deserves representation. It says that debate matters. It says that ideas should compete openly rather than be filtered through a narrow set of "approved" contests.

California—home to forty million people and the world's fourth-largest economy—deserves a vibrant marketplace of ideas. That requires candidates willing to run, voters willing to listen, and donors willing to invest not only in likely victories but also in the long, patient work of rebuilding political competition.

Long-shot races are not wasted efforts.

They are the laboratories of political renewal.

They cultivate leaders. They introduce ideas. They ensure that even in places where one party dominates, the public conversation remains open rather than predetermined.

In the long run, a movement that invests only where victory is guaranteed will eventually find that victory itself has become impossible.

The objection that funding challengers drains resources from competitive races rests on the finite-pie fallacy. Political giving is not fixed. The solution is not to take from one campaign to fund another — it is to grow the pie. Pass the proverbial offering plate twice. A broader donor coalition can support both competitive races and the challengers who keep the political ecosystem healthy.

If we want a healthier political system—one capable of confronting the challenges of the coming decades—we must fund the difficult-to-win races again.

Even the long-shots.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
— Winston Churchill

(Image source: Yousuf Karsh's "The Roaring Lion" Modified with Inputs by P. Verbica, ChatGPT, 2026.)

Paid for by Verbica for Congress