The competence of elected officials affects state performance and economic growth, yet it is often difficult to find high human capital, representative citizens willing to put themselves forward as political candidates. We analyze an intervention designed to address this challenge that combines structured community nominations, private screening of technocratic skills, and information provision to political parties in advance of local elections in Sierra Leone. Estimates show that this approach successfully identifies individuals who are substantially higher quality and enjoy broader local support than incumbents and status quo candidates. While new to elected politics, these individuals are still elite, mostly drawn from traditional chiefly families. One quarter of top nominees formally enter politics by filing candidate applications, positively self-selected on quality and boosted by an encouragement nudge. Their entry marginally improves the maximum quality observed in the potential candidate pool and among those selected onto the parties’ lists. These results provide proof of concept that there are better people out there willing to run. We find null results on the quality of those who win seats, largely driven by party leaders favoring rerunning incumbents, gatekeeping that prevents new entrants from getting elected.