Ex-Republican at Democratic Boot Camp - II

On July 13, I began describing my experience at "Grassroots Activist Training,", leaving off as our instructor, a bacon-eating, Banladeshi-descended Muslim from North Dakota, bounded to the front of the room and began speaking in rapid, machine-gun fashion.  There we all were, clutching our coffee cups, seated in our uncomfortable plastic and metal chairs at the splintery tables lined up across the room (note to rich Fairfax County:  ignore the howls of the no-tax lobby and spend a little more on maintenance and equipment for your schools!).

The stated objective of the seminar was to ?train progressive activists? for campaigns.  While there are many kinds of campaigns -- electoral, issue advocacy, initiative, referendum, corporate accountability -- this seminar was geared primarily for towards electing Democrats and progressives.  A campaign, we learned, has only three resources: people, time, and money.  You can always get more people or more money but you can never get more time.  Of course, your opponent has no more time than you do, so it all boils down to how well you?re using that time.  I thought back to the last national elections, where my former party, the Republicans, had apparently fielded the superior organization and made BY FAR the best use of their time.

A campaign is a conversation between a candidate (plus his/her campaign workers) and the voters.  Of course, as we had already acknowledged, we political types are not exactly the most normal people in the world -- after all, we HAD locked ourselves inside to discuss politics on a beautiful day when normal people were outside engaged in summer fun!  Which raises an important point: in communicating with normal people (the average voter), we strange people (political junkies) must remember to speak normally.  In other words, we must avoid the use of jargon and "inside politics" stuff while  addressing the real interests of the voter in terms they can relate to.

Aside from speaking normally, we were also admonished by Arshad, our super-charged leader, to ?quantify everything... ?some? is not a number and ?soon? is not a time.?  We were told to know exactly how much sacred time we have left, and exactly what we must do in that allotted time in order to achieve the desired objective:  making sure our candidate candidate wins one more vote than his opponent does on Election Day.  Start with the desired result and calculate backwards to create a time line, and  figure out who does what when.

Next, Sandra Ramos, a veteran campaign manager from Colorado, told us to begin with a ?Political Landscape Memo.? Since my first adult job had been as a political analyst, I was familiar with such a memo:  a no-holds-barred, executive summary listing facts about the district.  These would be real and specific facts, like exact population of registered voters and how they voted in the past, turnout figures, strengths and weaknesses of both your candidate and the opponent, issues, projected costs in hard dollars, and so on.  Draw a square and divide it down the middle horizontally and vertically, just like math class with an ?x? axis and a ?y? axis.  On the top left is ?What we say about ourselves;? on the top right is ?What we say about our opponents.?  On the bottom left is ?What they say about us (i.e., figure out in advance how they?re going to attack you, and for God's sake make absolutely sure your candidate ?fesses up to anything which might require damage control); the bottom right is ?What they say about themselves.?

On one level, then, a campaign is all about making lists -- data and data management even more than money and money management. To begin with, a candidate and their campaign MUST have a clear message or theme. A great example of this is Ronald Reagan?s classic,?Are you better off today than you were four years ago?? (the answer to which, of course, was supposed to be?no,? meaning it was time for a change). 

In addition, Sandra warned us that EVERY campaign must have one individual as the ?press person.? One of this person's most important jobs is to NEVER let the candidate speak to the media without him or her being there as well. Doing otherwise is an invitation to to confusing or abusing ?the message,? and thus to potential disaster.

Good grief, that was a lot of material already, and it wasn?t even the end of the first hour! And no potty break in sight.

To be continued...

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