How to Know if Political Campaign Work Is for You

John Tsarpalas: Today I am going to discuss a niggling bit about why I am so obsessed about local politics and running for local part. And then I am going to cut to the chase and really give yous the three essential elements to any entrada. Information technology'due south Commonwealthy #43, Three Essential Elements in a Political Campaign.

As I tape this podcast, it is just a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses for the presidential primary of 2016. This podcast is not about federal elections. It's about local candidates and local elections and local activism.

I wanted to talk to you about this today because I call back this is so important. Certain, the federal elections are important. Congress is important. The President is important. They set the tone. It's sets a direction.

Only unfortunately, at least where I alive here in Illinois in the Chicago suburbs, the mindset no matter who is in control is more than: bigger budgets, college taxes, more than government. I rarely hear or see people that are talking nigh privatizing things in local government.

How do we hold the lines on the budgets? And I am not even saying cut budgets. I am saying hold the line.

And then there is the whole outcome of education. I truly believe that our schools are getting worse. Start of all, not only more propagandistic, only too a whole lot of liberal garbage beingness fed to our kids. And they are not expected to get to different levels. Nosotros were expected to do more when I was younger. Now I sound like I am a sixty-two year old man, which I am!

So I am all nigh local elections: school boards, township boards, hamlet boards, county boards. There is so much that happens at this level and this is the center of America. If yous want to make a difference, you can run for these boards.

These are non full time positions. Running for Congress is a total time job. Yous keep your job, you proceed your life, and y'all practice donate part of your time to a local governmental trunk that you control or are role of the controlling form.

It'due south essential that nosotros do this. If we don't do this, it isn't going to alter because this is where is liberalism and state-ists (people that believe in government) live, feed, and abound. The beast will always exist here percolating and ready to rear it'due south caput whenever it tin can reach out and get more on a bigger basis and a bigger level.

Delight think about what's happening in some local co-operative of your regime. Start paying attention to one fiddling part of it. You can't do it all and you tin't spread yourself likewise sparse. But we can start watching something.

If you lot've got an interest in it, go for it! Run for that board. Get on the controlling body. Starting time making a difference. Outset speaking up.

So nosotros are hither to aid you lot run for role, how to get you elected, how to do things for activism. Today I wanted to talk about the big 3 things that are essential to every campaign and the iii things every candidate has to have care of. I don't care what size yous are running for.

You are going to have to accept a message. You are going to have to notice some help. And you are going to have to raise some money. It'south often said every bit the three Thou'due south: message, manpower, and money.

I wanted to talk about that. What that ways realistically for yous every bit a candidate. Paul Miller and I were talking about many local candidates take delusional ideas in Commonwealthy #41. We had a adept time complaining about things that candidates want to do that nosotros know are non effective.

But here is what is constructive: a candidate needs to exist request people, always request. Y'all are asking anybody that you meet almost what they are worried about for that local trunk. If information technology is schools, what are they interested in? You are talking to them.

You are going to tell them a lilliputian chip about what you represent and what you recollect is important with that issue or that group. Then you are going to enquire them for the vote. If they say, "Well, I don't know yet. I don't have enough information," then you lot are going to figure out how to follow up with them and get back to them.

Yous are going to enquire them for contact info if you don't know who they are or you don't know their address. Peradventure they are going to say no.

You are going to hear a lot of no's as a candidate. That's merely part of it. Rejection is part of it. Every ane of those little no'due south also gets you closer to yes'due south. Every i of those yes's gets yous closer to getting elected. And getting elected allows you to really input the system, to make change, or to hold the line.

And then you are asking. Yous are always request.

At present, you've got to craft your message. We had some good podcasts on that. You lot tin can go back to podcast #19 for school board issues. Or we can go back to John Tillman, podcast #12, framing the bug. Tina and I take done some issue stuff, too. That would be podcast #04, know what you remember.

And then let'due south think about bulletin. What is information technology that you stand up for? What are you running for? What is the issue you are running on?

Often I take people come to me who want to run for school lath because the local board is trying to pass a large bail referendum to build a new school or remodel a school. Some of the numbers are astronomical.

They wanted to raise $100 one thousand thousand dollars in my local commune to remodel the high school. They could build 4 or v make new loftier schools for that amount of money. Of grade, that referendum did get defeated thanks to Tina and myself and others in the neighborhood. But they are dorsum for $35 million now, still a crazy corporeality for remodeling purposes.

So often someone comes to usa and they desire to run for a board they are worried the board is borrowing too much coin and creating too much debt. And ofttimes it is.

You lot need to call up well-nigh where you lot stand on this issue and why. Discuss it with others. Get some feedback. Only know where you stand. Understand what others are thinking. The only way to reach that is to start asking other people their opinion on this issue and heed.

Go back. Think nigh it. Piece of work on how you are going to arroyo this effect and what you would exercise. Have yous gotten all the background information, the budgets and everything from the schoolhouse board?

And so go practise with some friends. Get a group of friends together in your living room and tell them to shoot questions at you. Have a group discussion and see what they think and where this is all at with them.

Retrieve, when you are pulling together a little group of this to rehearse, y'all need a cantankerous section. Information technology can't be all parents. It tin can't be all seniors. It can't be all females. It tin't be all males. It has to exist a little bit of everybody that would be function of the voting customs.

Think about that. Talk. Work on it. Rehearse it. Get meliorate at it. And a message can evolve. It will evolve as you get out and talk to people.

So you've finally got a little bit of a bulletin and you lot've decided you are going to run. You need to start talking to people about helping you. Talk to your friends. Talk to your neighbors. If you are involved in the school, talk to other parents. Talk to people in that PTA or some type of arrangement that might be associated with that board.

You perchance want to talk to other board members. Or perhaps not. If y'all are challenging the condition quo, they are probably non going to exist friendly to you anyway. You lot don't want to give abroad your hand.

But get-go talking to people quietly and finding out who will footstep up. Who will write you a bank check? Absolutely everybody tin give you twenty dollars. Anyone who is employed I should say. And so you are going to start request for twenty dollar donations to your campaign.

For those people who could write a hundred, yous are going to ask for a hundred. Y'all are going to ask for those who could possibly write you bigger checks who they might be.

Here'due south a tip: if you are running to hold the line on some kind of a belongings tax increase or some kind of big bail plebiscite that will increase belongings taxes, you can go to concern people in that community to raise money and ask for support, especially a business organization that has a lot of holding.

Around here nosotros ofttimes go to auto dealers to get their support to hold the line on holding taxes because they accept big pieces of property and their taxes go up dramatically. So think nearly whose got a lot of property in the surface area and why they would want to hold the line on those property tax increases.

Mayhap you live in an area where holding taxes aren't bad. I literally recently sold my house because my property taxes were $xx,000 a yr on a three thousand foursquare foot house. $20,000 a twelvemonth, most $ii,000 a month! That is what happens when liberalism gets crazy and you lot live in an urban expanse where government is out of command. And that is after defeating the $100 million bond referendum!

You might not have those kind of bug notwithstanding in your customs. Just they tin can creep in and it can happen. If yous've got depression property taxes, be thankful and figure out how you lot are going to keep it that way. What have you done to footstep up for running for some level of government that taxes? Often the biggest taxers are the school boards.

So you are out asking people for money and you asking people to volunteer. Let's talk about volunteers one more time. We did talk about volunteers back in podcast #15, volunteers in a political campaign.

We likewise talked about interns in Commonwealthy #23, starting a political internship programme. Internships are something you can use do even for a local campaign.

Merely here's what yous've got to accept for volunteers. You demand to fix a fourth dimension and a place where they are going to see regularly. At first, it is one nighttime a calendar week or 1 Saturday morning for a couple of hours. That's until you get enough volunteers to set up-up another fourth dimension.

Simply is wonderful if you tin have one consequent moment. You, as the candidate, need to be there, until you've got a volunteer who is willing to volunteer to be the manager and be in accuse of that session one time a calendar week.

Ideally those sessions are to come together to brand phone calls. Take people bring their prison cell phones. If you've got a voter data system that will do dialing, accept them bring their laptops. If non, you are handing them a printed phone list of people to call.

You are asking them to run across once a week to exercise those calls together. Why? Because if you send it home with them, they tend to not practise them. You tin can tell them to take the sheet domicile and come back next week with the sheet if they accept time to make a few more calls.

You lot are going to accept a script gear up for them. You are going to exercise with them. You are going to explain to them what needs to be said. You are going to explain what your viewpoints are and what you are running on.

You lot've got to give them training. Y'all've got to take some time with them. And you've got to come together at the terminate of the session and say, "How did it go?" Get their feedback.

Ask them to come dorsum side by side week. They might say, "Well, I can't make information technology next calendar week, but how about the following week?" That's slap-up! While you are at information technology, mention to them if they've got any friends they tin can recruit, please bring them adjacent time. You accept to ever exist asking people what you need from them.

You don't desire to overload them at in one case, though. You tin't say, "I demand this, this, and this." Yous can't say, "I demand yous to run this for me." You need to get-go them small-scale and piece of work them up to college and bigger things as you see their level of commitment and see that they are competent and they can exercise the job.

But volunteers are essential. I don't care what you are running for because you tin't exercise everything yourself.

The lesser line is y'all are trying to find voters and ID them that they are voting for you or they are not voting for you. On Election Day, y'all want to effort to get equally many volunteers as y'all tin can and so that they can remind your people that are voting for you to get to the polls. How of import that is! And this happens in any kind of election, whether information technology is partisan or not partisan, a slate or not a slate, and no affair what time or season of election this is.

This is podcast is national. Here in Illinois, unfortunately nosotros usually only have elections iii times in a bike. We take a primary in an fifty-fifty number year; this year it is the presidential and on downwardly. At that place'due south the general election in November, which just nigh everybody is familiar with. But then here in Illinois, in 2017 early on in the wintertime will exist the primary and later in the bound will be the general election. Those are usually nonpartisan races for local offices.

I know in other parts of the country you have elections two and three times a year every year. Those things are broken upwards by different cycles and different timing. So please look at that wheel and look at that timing.

I don't care when that full general election is, start now! If yous are running in 2016 and y'all can all the same get on the ballot, do information technology! You lot might not have had enough fourth dimension to get completely prepared for the general election in Nov. Then what? Yous merely got yourself prepared for the adjacent ballot wheel.

In that location is no impairment in running twice. Many people that I work with stop up running twice and twice is the charm. The first time out, you are just getting started. You are building your website. You are crafting your message. You get yourself a cadre of donors and a core of volunteers, but it isn't enough to go all the fashion. Then the 2nd time out, you don't actually ever stop running. The 2nd fourth dimension is the charm.

I wanted to take this fourth dimension just to talk with yous nigh all of these things. These are things that are always in the back of my listen with every candidate. These are things I call up about and things I worry almost.

I am worry about America. I imagine if yous are listening to this, you probably are, too. The simply way we are going to get this inverse is if people footstep upward. They need to cease thinking they are going to run for a big office. Everyone, 99.9% of the earth, is qualified if you lot are an American citizen to run for local office.

We just need skillful mutual sense and decent, honest people. That'south what America was built on. We demand more than of that. We need to bring information technology back. Nosotros need to take this away from those that feel they are entitled.

We need to take back schools from our unions because the unions often are running candidates. We need to realize that the parties are playing and often the parties are looking to grow regime and so they can have patronage workers and people at that level that they can call on for their bigger campaigns.

There are all kinds of vested interests out there that are involved in our local campaigns, trying to control them. Why? Information technology pays off for them. We equally taxpayers and the average citizens and parents and simply people of good character are not beingness represented. Our interests are going to be represented by someone similar y'all who is willing to volunteer and do what is right. We demand a whole lot more than people doing what is right.

If I can help you in any way, I am always here (john@commonwealthy.com). I am more than than happy to answer emails and your questions. That's what I am hither for. I am trying to grow a citizen army, an army of activists who are well trained and sympathize how to win elections so that they tin get control of their local government boards and they can starting time making a difference and making America freer!

Talk to next week. Cheers for listening.

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