There are two problems here: the power of name-recognition and incumbency -ok, 3 problems, because those are distinct but related; and the power of political parties https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1316823249074913282

Name-recognition is difficult to deal with, because it seems (in the current socio-cultural context, at least) to be how our brains work, sort of like the fascination with celebrity. We could make candidates anonymous as I suggest in my story "Candidate Y" https://blog.mozilla.org/internetcitizen/2018/10/04/candidate-y-elections-malka-older/

That would also take care of all the baggage we assign to specific names or types of names NOT TO MENTION appearance. In general we focus way too much on individuals and way too little on policies, or even the evidence of what those individuals have done in the past.

but anyway. The benefits of incumbency include name-recognition, but that interacts with a plethora of other ways we make it easier for those already in office to stay there, from the way the press covers them to the benefits of seniority.

We do want a balance. It's not unreasonable that there be some benefit to having experience. We don't want people stuck in there endlessly, with no fresh ideas or real need to compete; but new people learning the ropes every 2 years, no chance to complete projects, also not ideal

Like many democratic conundrums, there isn't a perfect answer to this. We can fiddle with term limits and length of term and so on, but there's unlikely to be a perfect system that works for every case. Still...we could do better than the heavily incumbency-tipped version now

Political parties, though? We could just get rid of those.

Why are political parties? The way most of us interact with them, they serve as informational short-cuts. Eg, we don't have time to figure out whom we're going to vote for in every race, so we vote straight ticket.

Instead of researching all the issues, we trust the party platform. This means that people stop researching any candidates or issues, and political party allegiance starts to come before any real engagement with democracy, or even self-interest, if self-interest is too much work.

But why should it be too much work? We live in an age with far more and easier and cheaper access to information than existed when political parties were invented. Don't know who to vote for? Take an internet quiz. (or, as in my story above, go to an electoral counselor...)