Seriously?! It took me half a bottle of wine to get through the televised debate!!
The boyfriend is running for mayor. So there’s a field of seven, of which two should just go home and let the rest of them have more questions. One is ACTIVELY INSANE. The newspaper only reports on three. (We are not one of the three.) The bias in the system is evident and revolting. If you or a spouse or a partner has run, how the hell do you stand it? Did you do it again? How did you swallow the bile?
I ran for City Council a couple of years ago. Nine seats were up for grabs, over thirty people registered to run for election, a record amount. Unfortunately, about half were either,
[ul]
[li]-joke candidates[/li][li]-“not ready for prime time” (either underestimated their popularity or were simply running in order to have name recognition for next election[/li][li]-protest candidates, or those running in order to have a “ringside seat” during the campaign[/li][/ul]
I’d estimate at least a third of the candidates did or would have benefited from the help of a medical professional specializing in mental health issues.
I placed ninth, not bad but several thousand votes behind the winning eighth place candidate.
The media was flummoxed on how to cover this. There was no way to adequately cover the views of all the candidates, plus the several mayoral candidates (at least one of whom was certifiably out to lunch).
The media eventually will focus on a handful of front runners. If you’re not in this group you’re in trouble. People vote on name recognition.
One modern difference that didn’t exist a decade ago is the explosion of online questionnaires. I was bombarded with emails from every special interest group wanting to know my position on everything from sewage treatment to animal rights. I spent hours filling these things in for organizations that held great influence and some obscure clubs. I should have delegated this task better.
Here are some tips that I’ve learned, along with advice from political veterans:
In the run-up to the election, write letters to the editor on important issues to get your name out there. Your public Facebook page and blog should be up to speed well before the election starts. Another modern difference is how social media is taking some of the power away from traditional media when it comes to connecting the candidate with the public.
Do insane amounts of door knocking and street corner pamphleteering. Spend all day doing it, but don’t waste more than a couple of minutes on a person or they’ll yak at you all day (and probably won’t vote). It’s handy to have a helper to rescue you if you’re trapped by a chatty cathy. Or your helper can work one side of the street while you do the other. Identify strong supporters and ask if they will let you post a sign on their front yard or in their window. Don’t waste effort putting signs on public property. People pay more attention to signs on people’s lawns as it’s seen as a personal endorsement.
People will ask you why you deserve the office and what have you done that qualifies you for the job. If you can’t answer in a clear sentence pointing to a proven track record of public service and/or relevant volunteer work, well, why the hell are you running? People were so confused by the confounding number of candidates they really seemed to appreciate my knocking on their door and answering their questions.
All candidates meetings were a farce due to the number of candidates. Over the course of a two-hour meeting, a candidate was lucky to get a sentence or two out.
I know this is terribly biased and judgemental, but skip houses and neighbourhoods that look poor or have renters–they have a lower voter turnout. Focus on the wealthier neighourhoods and areas with a high concentration of seniors. These people vote regularly and passionately. It’s impossible to knock on every door in your city and every minute counts. Your job is to win a friggin’ election, not be a sounding board.
I got good results from teaming up with a mayoral candidate I saw eye-to-eye with. You might want to find a credible and respected council candidate and try doing some streetcorner handshaking. Likewise, I teamed up with some fairly like-minded candidates and we all chipped in for a mass mailing. There was no way we could have afforded individually to mail our pamphlets to every residence.
I really enjoyed my brush with municipal politics. I found it much more “real” and grassroots than a Provincial or Federal campaign would have been.
Having a trusted, experienced advisor or two is essential. At the very least you need someone to do your fundraising while you’re out campaigning.
Honestly, we barely had time to pay attention to the other candidates; we were so busy just with our own initiatives (especially in the most recent campaign, which I managed rather than ran in) that any interaction we had was mostly limited to riposting to whatever lies they were spreading, and fortunately that didn’t come up excessively often. We basically concentrated on our ground campaign (door to door, public meetings, phones and so forth).
I learned this lesson very quickly. No matter how small your campaign, always dragoon at least a volunteer with you to 1) hold the cell phone/clip board/pamphlets and 2) rescue you when trapped. The helper goes, “Ms. Candidate, we have to get going,” which enables Ms. Candidate to smile and go, “It was so nice talking with you.” Exeunt.
Holden posted several of the other important tips. One of the main reasons we did as well as we did in the last campaign was purely out of recognition – we ran a big name candidate who got a lot of good coverage, and the NDP was finally getting traction and attention in Quebec, which is something we had built over the last several elections. Don’t be discouraged. Some of our sitting MPs ran a half-dozen times before they got elected.
It’s just easy to get so frustrated because you know they’re going to elect more of the same because they’re stupid and the media is failing them. 
I have three times, losing once, winning twice in school board elections.
I HATED the process, and will never ever put myself in that position again. It makes me ill just to think of it.
Well, the good thing is that the race hasn’t been mean or nasty or anything at all. The bad thing is that I never knew just how poorly served I was by the newspaper. (Seriously, do you know how many intelligent letters to the editor I’ve written in the past few months? Guess how many they’ve printed.)
Thanks for the great tips.
I’ve been involved as a campaign volunteer (and once, for Dukakis in 1987-88, as paid national field staff) in many elections over the last 30 years. I’ve been considering running for court of common pleas judge for several years now, but have been very leery of the time, money and effort I’d have to put into it, all with the virtual certainty of losing my first campaign… or two. Maybe someday.
Well, no surprise, we didn’t win mayor. But I really, really started to think after four hours begging people at the polls today that we were going to win City Council. And we came within eight stinking points - which tells you just how much people despise the incumbent. And we lost. And I didn’t think it was going to bother me, and it wouldn’t if we hadn’t come close. But goddamn, it hurts.
Also, the runoff for mayor is between the two people we really, really didn’t want it to be.
On the other hand, if you know anything about Columbia, we did beat Joe Azar.
It’s clearly too late, but did you have anyone’s backing? Endorsements of either major party? Reach out to them? Use the databases and tools available to you? The right data lets you know who you need to contact and who you don’t, and, with the right door-knocking, are free. There are other ways to get free earned media and get in the paper other than the letters to the editor (Which are a great idea, by the way. Check the online version f the paper. When local papers run out od paper-and-ink space, they print all the letters they receive online.)
The times have changed. I assume that the judge position is nonpartisan?
Ha, maybe your paper does. Our paper gave us a big fat “go fuck yourself” - they didn’t even cover the at-large race at ALL.
We, er, weren’t the sort of candidates the major parties endorse. The big candidates did get endorsements, and we got some help from friends and family in big campaigns for governor and such (specifically a mailing list).
It’s like the newspaper actively went out of their way NOT to cover us. We held a rally to take down the Confederate flag that had three hundred people at it - one of the big candidates even spoke at it. Two musical groups. I spoke, which you would think would be a major media event, right? Amusingly forced the big candidate to say, “Let’s hear it for a great performance from Confederate Fagg!” Did we get in the paper? No. They did mention the rally the next week… in an article about how great that candidate is. (He is - he’s a great guy. Also not in the run-off. Evidently we only vote for jackasses here.)
We held a transportation rally also at the State House that had TWO other candidates come and speak. (The other candidates thought we were worth courting, at least.) Coverage - none.
That’s what started to get really frustrating - if everybody had taken a look at us and had the chance to be informed and then not voted for us, fine. But the news outlets didn’t even cover the Council race at ALL, although the incumbent is rumored to be about to be indicted. There wasn’t a whisper in any of it about her ethical violations which are always buried in the back of the B section but were completely absent once the election started. The paper endorsed her with the sorriest endorsement I’ve ever seen - essentially it said a lot of bad things about her and a lot of good things about our candidate and then said you should vote for her anyway. Six thousand people voted for us against her, and she outspent us by an order of magnitude. I hope she’s at least a little embarrassed.
Running as a third party is hard enough and even harder if it’s a municipal spot. Next time, talk with an existing party and get in, at least partially, with them.
City elections here are non-partisan by law. We find it kind of gross that there was funding from the state Democrats to one of the candidates, frankly. It totally violates the spirit of the law.
Ohio primary elections are partisan for all candidates, including judges, and only registered members of a particular party can get that party’s ballot. The general election is nonpartisan as to judges, whose parties do not appear on the ballot.
This is one reason I like being a Canadian (at least a Winnipegger, your kilometrage may vary in other Canadian cities), city politics and school board elections are always non-partisan. (Well, “city elections are non partisan” comes with a footnote: officially, yes, unofficially, no. There have been special interest groups (“Winnipeg Into the Nineties” was one I can remember) that have backed groups of candidates, and it’s no secret organized parties (especially the NDP) back certain mayoral and council candidates, even though they don’t run under a party affiliation.) While I am left-leaning myself in my politics, I refuse to join any organized political party, for several reasons. This leaves me with city or school board politics - sure I can run as an independent in provincial or federal politics, but your chances of actually winning or placing higher than, say, fifth, are “none” to “less than none”.
That said, I’ve planned for a while (and with my job comign to an end in a matter of days, it may work out as there’s an election scheduled this fall) to run for school board this year. I’ve been following this thread closely.
I’m not telling you not to do it, but I am telling you that it’s about a hundred times harder than you expect.
Oh, but if you do it, and especially if you do it right, it’s so much fun. Exhibit A for someone that does it right.
Nice. Inspired, no doubt, by this famous pic of Adlai Stevenson, another Illinois Democrat, from 1952: http://www.flintjournal.com/125/paper/galleries/history/image/pulitzer.jpg
Yep. That’s how it’s done. Lots of door-knocking.
Our campaign did, amusingly, end up at Look At This Fucking Hipster a while back.
