Connecticut Governance Director

About the Working Families Party

Working Families Party (WFP) is the progressive party for the multiracial working class, fighting for a nation that works for the many, not the few. We recruit, train, and support transformational candidates up and down the ballot — and run them to win.

We believe that no matter where we come from or what our color, most of us want the same things. We want to earn enough to thrive, not just survive, and leave a better future for our kids. We want healthy food and clean water, safe neighborhoods and a safe world. We want to be free.

The Working Families Party is regular people coming together across our differences to make a better future for us all. We’re a multiracial party that fights for workers over bosses and people over the powerful. We want an America which realizes the promise – unrealized in our history – of freedom and equality for all.

Working Families Party (WFP) and Working Families Power seek to build a powerful, left political force that can win real governing power: the durable capacity of the multiracial working class to shape and wield government in its own interests. In Connecticut, we’ve been winning elections for champions for working people for two decades, and organizing to leverage those electoral successes into legislative victories for working families — including paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, immigrant protections, and equitable state budgets.

The Governance Director will lead our work aligning and organizing elected officials around a clear vision for Connecticut and how we can get there through explicit policy changes and a unified platform. From cohering newly-elected legislators to convening aligned allies, this role will take the lead in organizing our legislative champions. The position is also responsible for crafting and implementing a legislative strategy for the organization.

Electoral responsibilities for this role predominantly include incumbent defense, with other elections as Party priorities dictate. The role will require the staffer to be a registered lobbyist with the state of Connecticut.

This position is supervised by the Connecticut State Director, and will work closely with our team of five, as well as with staff in similar roles in other WFP states around the country. The role includes local and national professional development opportunities.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Organizing legislators
• Organize and run regular WFPower meetings of elected officials
• Develop trusting working relationships with allied legislators
• Develop bi-annual WFPower legislator retreats (pre- and post-session) to debrief and plan
• Regularly host skill and/or issue training spaces (such as on press relations or housing policy)
• Lead development of a public WFPower legislative agenda or platform
• Identify opportunities for shared messaging
• Lead WFP staff team in supporting aligned legislators (ie communications and social media work with Comms Director)
• In conjunction with the organizing staff, develop pathways for activists to support WFP electeds and legislation
• Analyze and strategize the evolving legislative landscape
• Organize substantive new legislator orientation event series to build community and recruit newly-elected legislators into organizing with WFPower
• Meet monthly with newly elected aligned legislators for at least a year after election
• Coalition work and legislative lobbying
• Lead WFPower involvement with coalitions working on tax equity, progressive revenue, paid family & medical leave, housing, and more
• Craft legislative strategies and build campaigns to pass priority legislation
• Track priority legislation and manage/deliver WFPower testimony on key bills
• Lobby legislators on WFPower priority…