There are not many grassroots campaigns that need to have the elections stolen from them. Some campaigns like that are just awful.
-- The candidate does whatever he feels like.
-- So much of the budget is spent on signs. So much time is even spent on signs. Maybe a mailer. Hardly can anyone else on the campaign imagine what to spend money on.
-- There is no fundraising to speak of.
-- The candidate spends most of his time gabbing with non-voters.
-- If he attends an event, he will be there for 2 or 3 hours, not 30 minutes. Thirty minutes is better than two hours, but in all likelihood, the candidate shouldn’t really be there at that event anyway because only 10 people there are actually from his district, only 4 are registered to vote and only 1 regularly votes. A two hour trade off for one possible vote is an awful trade off of a candidate’s time.
-- When he speaks to voters, he doesn’t actually ask any important questions or collect any information that is actionable.
-- At the end of each day he is exhausted from ineffective and unfulfilling action, while being no closer to his goal of saving the community.
-- In fact, he’s further away, because during that time, his opponent, who received some training from some union stooge at least picked up some effective pointers, and is at least moving vaguely in the right direction. Often though, the opponent’s strategy is not much more than “say nothing controversial ever and just let the media, the party, and the unions shill for you while the other guy messes up.”
Often, the grassroots campaign I here described loses.
When the campaign is over everyone who supported our grassroots man has a little less faith in the system.
That’s what happens after most grassroots campaigns and it is devastating to watch. I watch good people lose hope. I watch good people get burnt out. I watch good people even move out of the community sometimes. The latest grassroots campaigner asked them to believe in him, then he ran an awful campaign, then they were so disappointed they lost faith in the system.
Somewhere that equation doesn’t make sense.
Why do they have less faith in the system? Because the best person did not win?
Why didn’t the best person win? Because he didn’t get enough votes.
Why didn’t he get enough votes, because he was a terrible campaigner. Often that means he was bull-headed and undisciplined.
Each year, I find progressively worse campaigners and find progressively worse horror stories.
This is due to my increased interest in impacting local campaigns and my increased interest in helping likeminded people campaign.
People who have spent 30 years in a corporate office at work and can read from a script and say all the milquetoast lines are very good at campaigns. They usually win for that reason.
They don’t even have to think in order to win.
But you know what. They don’t have to win. Ever. Not ever. That dude in the suit who is as bland and passionless as a candidate can get is usually the antithesis of freedom and the enemy of good values. He’s marching toward totalitarianism just like all the worst folks, only if he’s really good, he’s marching toward totalitarianism at maybe half the speed of the really bad guys.
Grassroots folks can beat that kind of candidate every single time though — if they would just get out of their own way and let that happen.
And I really mean every single time. Grassroots folks could win every single campaign, if they just did more of the things that matter.
They often have such a hard time distinguishing their values from their campaign.
Viewpoints and values are amazing things that no self-respecting person should ever be parted from. Bad people let their campaign handlers talk them out of their values. A campaign is a vehicle to earn the right to govern, though. That’s what a campaign is for. A campaign is not the time to let every ninny who walks up to you hear your deepest secrets and get a thorough understanding of everything you hold dear.
Only special people get that.
The random person who walked up to you only needs to help you answer two questions before you continue moving onward toward victory.
These are those two questions:
1.) Are you talking to a voter?
2.) Is the voter voting for you?
Great. These are the basics. I’d be happy to share a few others with you, but regardless, in thirty to sixty seconds you better be on your way to the next voter.
A campaign is a vehicle to earn the right to govern.
A campaign needs to win first in order to do that.
Accordingly, a campaign needs to be focussed on what works. And a lot of times that means the candidate needs to be focussed on the nuts and bolts rather than undisciplined bloviating.
If you have not made enough fundraising phone calls this week, you don’t get to spend twenty minutes on each fundraising phone call. It is simply not the right time to catch up.
Do that after your win.
After you win is a perfect time to make thank you calls.
If you haven’t done enough door knocks this week, you don’t get to spend twenty minutes on each door knock. It is not time to catch up.
Do that after your win.
After you win is a perfect time to make thank you visits.
And for goodness sake, you might be Dad of the year most years, but if you have not done enough phone calls to voters this week you do not get to spend three hours at your kid’s recital. It is simply not the time.
Make time for a family vacation after you run. Or better yet, make all your phone calls, door knocks, and fundraising calls early in the week so you can earn yourself the right to go sit at the recital if it is a can’t miss event.
But, instead, that’s not what the grassroots voter, what the community, and what your family get from their candidate or from their government. They instead get really ineffective behavior from your campaign. This ineffective behavior is almost part of the peril that comes from being in the minority. It happens to too many people. And it might even happen to you: You get comfortable losing, you get comfortable doing losing things, you get comfortable teaching losing things to others.
You are just plain comfortable.
In fact, change would be your enemy almost as much as change is the enemy to the status quo.
You may not think that, but you show that with your every campaign action. Change is your enemy, or at least that is how many grassroots candidates behave when they are finally presented with the opportunity to seize the bull by the horns.
For 21 more days, that is exactly the opportunity you have.
How do you identify more voters?
How do you get them to turn out?
How do you turn them into volunteers AND donors?
How do you get one more vote than the other guy on Election Day?
The last time I ran for office, it was a focussed 4am-to-midnight schedule, 7-days-a-week. No exceptions.
You don’t need to keep that kind of schedule, but you need to be disciplined about what your campaign exists to do.
If you are not as focussed as can be, I want to help you be that.
You have the power to emerge from November 8, 2022, a winner.
You can have my help in making that happen by tapping here to join “There Is No Substitute For Victory.”
Allan Stevo