“How should I spend a $7,000 campaign contribution?”
Until Election Day 2022, I am going to focus on getting good candidates elected. Because I want them to succeed, I want most candidates in my circle of influence to use my reliable system for getting elected. It is called “There Is No Substitute For Victory.” That is only most candidates I know. For the candidates with awful anti-freedom ideas, I hope you delete this email without reading it. For all the other readers, this next month you are going to get a snapshot into some of the unique ways I view elections that have made me such an asset to candidates in the past.
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Running for federal office, you are likely to be raising a million dollars or more on the low end. Running for local office you might win with a small team of volunteers and some gumption.
A candidate asks:
Dear Allan,
How should I spend a $700 campaign contribution?
-A Candidate
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I get this type of question often, and the answer to it fits into the context of my thinking on the purpose of an election.
Whether it is $700 or $7,000 or $70,000 my answer would follow the same approach.
What should that last minute gift in a small local election be used for?
Should I spend it on signs?
Nope.
Should I spend it on ads?
Nope.
Should I spend it on radio?
Nope.
The question I would start with is this. What are your individual concerns about what may be preventing the complete and total success of you campaign?
I am going to skip the 45 minute conversation with me that it will likely require for you to really answer the question ….
And instead I will just give you, dear reader, the answer to the question that almost every honest candidate will give after that conversation.
What are your most pressing concerns?
1.) Not enough identified voters,
2.) Not enough engaged volunteers.
Well, then that is what the money should be used to ameliorate.
Don’t throw the money at it though.
Be wise. Be conservative. Be circumspect.
Be exactly the person the people would be proud to elect to office.
Your top campaign volunteer’s computer broke and she has gone from making 30 hours of phone calls a week to making 0 hours of phone calls a week while her computer is in the shop.
There’s a problem. She doesn’t know computers but she sure knows how to sit down for 6 and 8 hours at a stretch and bang out phone calls to voters signing your merits and inspiring them not only to vote for you but to volunteer on your campaign as well.
You can’t pay for that kind of dedication and leadership.
Her broken computer, has brought that most valuable player on your team to a grinding halt.
For $250 you can take care of that problem and get a computer mailed to her before the end of the next business day. You can send someone over to set it up for her for $50.
Every campaign has those kinds of situations, in fact, I wonder if a single person walking the planet doesn’t have those kinds of situations in life: a conflict between the neglect that boilerplate solutions say to deal with versus the neglect that actually needs dealing with.
Asking that question and being honest with the answer is often enough to get you there.
Or perhaps you notice that your phone banking volunteers don’t have unlimited minutes on their cell phone plans and it is preventing them from doing the volunteer work that you most need right now.
You know you could double or triple your phone banking output with some cellphones with free minutes so that volunteers wouldn’t have to use their own minutes. Easy. Make it happen. Patriot mobile would love the extra business.
You see, there might be all kinds of ways to spend money that won’t mean much a few weeks from now, but often on a grassroots campaign, the ways that inspire action and involvement are ways that will long affect people around you, for it builds them for bigger and better in the future.
Every campaign has its own needs, but seldom is it unwise to focus on how to creatively expand the potential and the responsibility of those who have been brought together by your campaign and believe in you.
I would often advise for to err on the side of such approaches rather than looking to do something eye-catching.
Err on the side of building capacity in those around you.
There is no one size fits all answer on how to spend money on a campaign, but this much is true — spend it on the things that get you closer to short term and long term success as an individual and as a movement.
Win this election by engaging more voters directly, one on one.
Win this election by engaging and activating more volunteers.
Win battle after battle after battle for the next four years in office by doing the same. And if that’s not where you are at this moment, build that ground work for that.
My goal is to make you a winner on Election Day.
It goes beyond that too though.
My goal is to make you a winner not just on Election Day, but to make you a winner in the many battles that follow Election Day.
You know how to get me working on your campaign.
Join “There Is No Substitute For Victory” by tapping here.
The cost for that goes up Tuesday.
Allan Stevo