Arena is meeting the moment by making unprecedented investments in the Arena Staff Fellowship, a strategic effort to place and fully fund Arena-trained staffers on the state legislative campaigns that matter most. The program works as follows:

• Arena looks at critical legislative races in states where ending unchecked right-wing control is within reach.
• We work with in-state partners and campaigns to assess staffing roles that the campaign would not otherwise be able to afford that could make a difference between winning and losing on election day.
• Drawing from our pool of Arena-trained staff, we identify individuals that can meet the needs of targeted campaigns and fully fund their salaries and benefits.
• We support placed fellows with ongoing training to help them be proactive problem solvers on their campaigns, help the fellows build community with each other to create a lateral support network, and make introductions to experienced campaign leaders who can act as mentors to guide our fellows through unique challenges.
  
  

Last year, we piloted the Arena Staff Fellowship in Virginia, placing and fully funding Staff Fellows on the five incumbent-protect seats most critical to retaining Virginia’s Democratic majority. Despite a tougher than expected political environment, Arena helped deliver victories in three out of the five incumbent-protect campaigns campaigns, with two others coming within 650 votes of victory.

This year, we’re expanding the initiative to Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania where we know that strategic staff investments can deliver Democratic majorities for the first time in decades.