| The first thing is homework. Yeah, you thought you left that all behind in school, but as M.C. Hammer said "Ring the bell, school is in session". No matter what level of office you are running for you will need to find out the following:
1) Who holds the seat now? Is the incumbent a Dem or Repug? How long have they held this seat? All of these factors are going to effect how you go about wining. If the seat is held by a Dem that is not term limited you had better gird your loins for a real battle in the primary. That is not to say that you can't win, it is just a lot harder to when you do not have the explicit support of the Party, which you most likely will not if there is an incumbent.
If the seat is open or held by a Repug, you might still have as primary battle, but at least it will be more of an even field fight.
2) Now you need to look at the last four or five cycles. You need to know how many votes each candidate received. This is important because it will let you set a goal for the number of votes you will need to win. By putting this in a numeric form instead of 50% +1 it lets you target voters for contacts and will make your efforts more effective. You should be able to find this info on your local newspapers website.
3) For the same time period, what was the fundraising and what was spent? Be sure to look at the primary challengers, even the ones that lost. Knowing how much you will have to raise to be competitive is very, very important. After all it is no use being the gal or guy with all the best ideas if you can not get your message out. At the local and even state level there are lots of things you can do to keep these costs down, but you will still need a significant amount of money for things like direct mail. Consultants will tell you (and they are right) that you need eight direct mail pieces to win an election. Those will not be cheap. This should be a real gut check moment for any fledgling candidate. If you do not have tons (or any) money of your own to pour into a campaign, you need to be very confident that you will be able to raise the money needed. Sadly you can not count on the State or County Party to make this up for you. They may or may not come through with the dough, so your best bet it is to plan to do it yourself.
4) What is the registered voter make up of your district? If you are a Dem (which the Dog is assuming given where you are reading this) and you live in a district that is 68% Repug, you are in a bit of a pickle. You had better be a pretty damn conservative Dem to have a chance in a district like that. You can find this information at the Sec. of States website (most of the time) or you can request it from them. Don't forget to look for Indy voters, in some places they may be more than either the Dems or Repugs (like the Dogs district).
5) Now you need to know the population of your district and where is concentrated. Ideally you would be able to hit every door in the district, but realistically you are going to have to choose where you will get the most benefit for the time you are going to put in (you did know that this is going to completely take over you life for the next year or two, right?). What cities do you have in your district? Where are they in relationship to each other? Which ones have predominately Dem City Councils? What about the County Commissioners? Are they mostly Dems or Repugs? All of this is going to tell you a lot about the voting habits of your constituents, and it is far better to know the scope of the job you are looking at then to assume that everything will be groovy.
Now that you have the number and are still sure that you want to do this (you still do, don't you?) it is time to start working on yourself. You need to be ready to answer a couple of big questions, mostly because everybody and their brother is going to ask them:
1) Why do you want to do this? There are going to a million different answers to this question, but one that is a total loser is "Well, because I think I can". That is where Caroline Kennedy got into trouble. It is not enough to want to be in a position of power, it is all about what you want to do with it. From the Dog's point of view if one of the top reasons is not that you want to serve the people of the district; you should reconsider your actions. Good government requires people that know they are being elected to make decisions that will positively impact the people that elect them. You have a certain amount of ego if you are even considering running. Ego is not a bad thing, if you can back it up with actions, so be sure that you want to act in the peoples name and not just your own.
2) Why should you be the one to be elected? What about your experience or outlook makes you the one that should hold this office? It needs to be short and specific so that people can get a quick handle on you. Most of the voters (sadly) are going to vote for or against you on the strength of a few words, so be sure that your words give them a road map to your skills and ambitions (remember the ambitions should be about what you are going to do to make their lives better).
You will need to put in some real time and word smithing for the above questions. Start making notes, start practicing it in the mirror, practice on your friends and spouse. This is little stump speech is something you are going to say over and over and over, so it better sound like you and be pitched at the people of your district.
Next you need to start working on you extra circulars. Just like Junior year of High School you are going to need to put some time in on things that show what a great choice you are. If you do not already belong to a service club (Optimists, Rotary, Lions, etc.) you had better pick out at least one and join now. It seems like a strange thing but people will judge you ties to the community by your participation in these clubs. But there is an upside for you, when you start your serious fund raising the members of these clubs are a great source!
You should also find some kind of business organization and join it. No matter how you come down on the management/worker split, you will need some contact with the business community. They are also constituents just because you have an ideological difference with them is not an excuse to ignore them. By being part of some business org you will get to hear what is important to this community and perhaps, know how your opponent will come at you.
Be sure that you reach out to local party officials, both those that hold office and those that just work within the Party. They are going to have wealth of good information for you, but you will have to go get it form them, they are not going to rain it down on you. You want to cultivate as many as possible, as having the Party structure behind you can make the difference between winning and losing. Since this is your first run for office, be relatively humble. People love to show off how much they know, so Big Ears, Little Mouth is the strategy to pursue with them.
Finally, you should start to look for the issues in your district. If you don't subscribe to all the news papers, do so now. Start following the words and actions of the person that holds the seat you want to take from them. It is going to be important to know if they are serving the people or themselves. You are going to become an expert on the problems of your district and or State, so you had better start now.
Obviously this is just the beginning of running for office. In the future the Dog will talk more specifics of how and what you should do in your campaign, and most importantly when, but for now if becoming X-Elect in November 2012 is your goal, then these are the things that you should be doing in the next few months.
The floor is yours.
|
RSS Feed
