Quentin James was tired of the Democratic Party taking black votes for granted without investing in building black political power. So, in 2016, he started the Collective PAC to fund progressive black politicians. The following year, James, a veteran of the Obama campaign, established a boot camp — the Black Campaign School — to train those candidates.
“Ninety percent of our elected officials in this country are white, and so part of this is about equal representation,” James said on a recent humid Sunday in Atlanta, where he was organizing the second annual Black Campaign School.
More than 100 campaign staffers, candidates and potential candidates from New Hampshire to Texas sat around in green plastic chairs at a nonprofit that had turned into a makeshift school for the weekend. They took notes in their campaign manual binders as they listened to experts from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Planned Parenthood and Emily’s List.
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