10 Questions to Ask Your Family Before Running for Public Office.
The conversation to have at your kitchen table before you file a single form or ask for a single dollar.
Ten questions that decide whether your family is running with you.
The Hours
Running takes 15 to 40 hours a week for a year or more. Open the calendar together and name what actually comes off it.
The Money
Lost overtime, cut hours, small costs the committee can't cover. Can your household handle three lean months without panic?
The Public Attention
Your name will be in the paper, and sometimes theirs will too. Find out where their line is before a reporter does.
The Unsaid Worry
The last question is the one that matters most: what are they worried about that they haven't said yet?
Ten open-ended questions on one printable page, with a box to check as you work through each one. No right answers, only honest ones. Pick a weekend morning, pour the coffee, put the phones down, and walk through them in order with your spouse, your partner, or anyone whose life changes when you run.
Your family runs with you.
Running for office takes your evenings, your weekends, some of your money and a lot of your attention for a year or more. The people you live with feel every bit of it. The only question is whether they agreed to it.
Skip the conversation, and it shows up later.
- Your spouse or partner picks up the slack at home while you're at meetings — slack they never agreed to carry.
- They read something about you in the paper or on social media, and it's embarrassing — which means even more stress at home.
- Every bad week on the campaign turns into a fight at the kitchen table.
- Small surprises add up to something bigger: a feeling that you made a decision for the whole family without them. That's how trust starts to slip.
Have it first, and your family becomes your foundation.
- Their yes is a real sign of support — not a shrug, and not "whatever you want to do."
- They know the schedule, the money and the trade-offs before they show up, so nothing blindsides them.
- They're the people you go to when the race gets tough, and they're ready for it.
- Support that's agreed up front lasts. It holds in October, when you need it most.
What I learned from two campaigns.
When I decided to run the first time, I had a growing family with young kids who needed my time. I spent weeks going back and forth about whether to run at all.
We didn't have these conversations as often as we should have. The campaign moved fast, and the talks at home didn't keep up with it. That made an already demanding race a lot more stressful — at home and on the trail.
We had the conversations ahead of time. We talked through what was coming before it came. The race didn't get any shorter, but it got a lot easier, because we were in it together from the start.
That's why I built this guide. These are the ten questions to ask, in the order to ask them, so your family's yes is a real one — and so they're the people you can lean on when things get tough.
A note from Craig.
For years, I worked behind the scenes of campaigns, helping candidates get elected to every level of office. When I heard people complaining in my own town, I knew it was time to step up, run my own race, and be the change I wanted to see in my own community.
Your moment may have been similar — you thought "I could do that" or "our lives could be so much better if we could just change this one law."
Or maybe you just want to set a good civic example for your kids.
If you're desperate for change and you're considering a run for office, but you're not exactly sure how to run a campaign… I'm here to be your guide.
This free PDF gives you the ten questions to ask your family before you run, so the people closest to you are with you from day one.
I'm so excited for you to get started and to see how you'll change your community for the better.
