Most elected officials are still

New Politics, a group focused on supporting candidates from service backgrounds, is launching a multimillion-dollar effort to recruit thousands of candidates over the next four years. And the congressman co-chairing the effort said it comes as the country faces “a crisis moment in political leadership.”

“When I talk to my constituents, they sense that we have a fundamental lack of leadership in the country right now and are desperate for integrity and courage and authenticity and candor and honesty, and they’re not feeling that,” Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., said in an interview. “It’s the exception rather than the rule in both parties.”

”A crisis Moment”: new politics launches $20 million push to recruit service-oriented candidates

Ryan is co-chairing the group’s new recruitment effort, called "The Next Mission" and powered by $20 million, which will aim to recruit 5,000 candidates up and down the ballot over the next four years, according to an announcement shared first with NBC News.New Politics, which has a nonprofit arm and a political committee-style arm, is bipartisan and has worked with some Republicans but mostly with Democrats.

Ryan, an Army veteran, said he would not be in Congress without support from New Politics, which was founded in 2014 to recruit candidates with military and service backgrounds, including Peace Corps and AmeriCorps alums, and help them navigate the ins and outs of running for office.

Emily Cherniack, the group’s founder and executive director, who is also an AmeriCorps alum, said the recruitment campaign will have an “‘Uncle Sam needs you’ type of vibe,” with the funds powering a marketing campaign and staff focused on the effort.

Cherniack said that the group remains open to working with both parties but that it has “a very red line around pro-democracy” and is not currently working with any GOP candidates for Congress. The group had worked with former Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who resigned from Congress last year.

Ryan said the new crop of candidates could include federal workers and others who have been affected by the Trump administration’s effort to drastically reduce the size of the federal government, led by the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk. Ryan said he has spoken to multiple potential candidates who have either lost their jobs or are in agencies affected by the “wrecking ball.”

“There’s a big opportunity around folks that are catalyzed and mobilized by all the harm being done and the chaos of the second Trump administration that want to get off the sidelines — many people that have been fired from their jobs or affected by cuts to them or their families,” he said.

Ryan and Cherniack are seeing a growing energy among potential candidates, but it has been a slower burn compared with the surge of interest from potential candidates that followed Donald Trump’s first election as president in 2016.

”A crisis Moment”: new politics launches $20 million push to recruit service-oriented candidates

“It’s taken some time for people to get there. We are seeing an uptick in energy,” Cherniack said. “Why we’re launching this campaign with an ‘Uncle Sam needs you’ type of vibe, right, is because I think we’re just seeing we have to continue to keep the pressure on and get a pipeline of people who aren’t just going to run this cycle but are going to run next cycle or the cycle after.”

More than 30 elected officials are participating in the New Politics recruitment committee, including six other members of Congress who have worked with the group in the past. Among them is Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., who is alsoco-chairing recruitment effortsfor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

While the party’s campaign committees have their own recruitment programs, Ryan said New Politics “fills, frankly, a huge gap in our ecosystem,” especially in working with candidates in crowded primaries, in which the party may want to stay neutral.

Ryan noted that he worked with New Politics during his first unsuccessful run for Congress in 2018, when he lost a crowded race for the Democratic congressional nomination in his home district. He went on to be elected Ulster County executive and won a special election to the House in 2022.

New Politics, Ryan said, has been “taking risks early on the right candidates, when the DCCC or others are much more cautious.”

“And this is a moment where we need to lean into supporting these kinds of candidates, not be cautious,” he added.