Editor’s note: Finding – and teaching – America’s Next Top City Council Member

The 2026 election is finally here! … So it’s time to start talking about 2029.

An all-star team of New York City Democrats is working to recruit, train and connect the next crop of candidates who will be ready to run in three years, when a supermajority of the current City Council class is term-limited out of office. And if folks are antsy, they could run in 2028 races instead.

It’s called the We the People Fellowship, and it’s a 10-week program that features classes once a week, and homework. The “professors” include former City Planning Department Chair Dan Garodnick, NAACP New York State Conference President L. Joy Williams and Global Strategy Group President Jefrey Pollock. And it’s backed by elected officials who have been holding recruiting dinners, like Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, City Council Member Virginia Maloney and Assembly Member Keith Powers.

“It’s essential to our future that we find quality leaders and give them the tools to run for office,” Richards said. “This fellowship and the We The People program creates a community and a path for those leaders that is sorely needed.”

The fellowship is a creation of two prime Brooklyn consultants, André Richardson and Evan Thies. Richardson is Hakeem Jeffries’ political guy, working to take the majority for the minority leader, and Thies was the mastermind who made Borough President Eric Adams into Mayor Eric Adams. 

The Democratic Socialists of America does a version of this, and Thies credited them – playing the role that party machines once did to elevate promising talent. But this fellowship isn’t meant to be ideological, and there’s no litmus test, Thies said. Or as Williams put it, “supporting the next generation of civic-minded champions to serve with integrity and strengthen our democracy.”