Managing Political Campaign

                                      Managing Political Campaigns

 

         Over dinner one evening, a friend asked me what all of this “campaign stuff” was all about. They had apparently been listening to the avalanche of political ads and news stories on television. They, like most people, were wearying of the entire process.

 

         I knew, from long experience in laboring in the vineyards of the vote, that their opinions were like everyone else’s. They were concerned with inflation, the cost of living, raising and educating their children and grandchildren and a host of other domestic concerns that affect them daily. Worrying about the long-term diplomatic fall out of certain government actions, managing the U.S Government’s long-term indebtedness and a bevy of other ethereal concerns were things that didn’t really claim center stage in their attention spans.

 

        It brought to mind a wonderful Michael Douglas/ Annette Benning film called “The American President.” In one scene, lobbyist Benning is trying to persuade an influential member of Congress to vote in favor of an Environmental Protection Bill then up for debate on the House Floor. The Congressman, a long serving and grizzled veteran of politics, answered somewhat curtly. “People don’t care about that stuff.” Benning’s character said rather forcefully, “Congressman, people care about what I tell them to care about on election day. They vote that way too.” The Congressman agreed to a yes vote on the bill.

 

        The conversation rung a chord with me, a veteran political operative who has fought the good fight in scores of political campaigns. It was our job to not only create the “image of an effective and hard-charging  politician, from a sometimes “amiable boob,” but indeed, to create the topics and issues of the day, using a complicated array of media tools.

 

        It also reminded me that the “sometimes amiable boob” rarely understood all of the many political and media machinations performed on their behalf. Usually, when they won an election, they were soon convinced that they had pretty much done it all on their own. Those of us in the political trenches, just nodded wearily and got on with carving up the spoils. At the lower levels of governing, politics is all about jobs. Who gets them and how many friends can you make dispensing them.

 

      The whole thought process brought to mind all of the many people and tasks required to win a major election. In two of the major campaign that I managed, we were the “outside challengers.” What that meant was the party in power would do everything they could to keep us from being successful. As such, we had to over a two-year span, create an “alternate party structure” capable of waging a successful campaign. 

 

       That sounds easy enough but it wasn’t. Picture planning to take over a small country. Only you don’t have any money, no army and not much more than a smile and a hope to accomplish your task. How do you go about it, one would be tempted to ask? Well, I started with a well thought out organizational device that I was later to call “The Nazarene Connection.” You start out with a good quality leader. Then you recruit a small council of second tier leaders. Hopefully, they are  of both genders and represent a “band of apostles.” From that second tier, you work down one rung at a time, expanding outward, until you have many small ranks of the top levels of an organizational pyramid.

 

     It is a classic organizational structure, first perfected by the Roman Army and later copied by the Catholic Church. Using their example, you could start out with twelve overly portly guys in the middle east, some two thousand years ago. By continually expanding  the lower tiers of your pyramid, you could end up with a world-wide Bingo Association two thousand years later. What makes the whole thing work is when the Buchminster Fuller type of Geodesic Dome that you have created, flushes out from the two-dimensional organizational structure. With this energized three-dimensional pyramid in place, you start pumping issue messages and positions stands into the organization from the top.

 

Of its own volition, the many members along the tier levels will start passing information back and forth, up and down the structure. The process, if done correctly, can take on a life of its own. One guy has a brother on a bowling league, who has a cousin in the Church Council, until the seething entity that you have created, takes on a life of its own. Now, you are ready to rock and roll, right? Well sort of.

 

First, you have to create a Finance Committee of well-heeled people who will plumb the depths of the community for the money needed to pay for all of your media and operations plans. It is easier said than done. But with time and the right people, it will fall into place.

 

What about the candidate. It helps if he/she has a strong core of ideas and plans to improve the community. If not, you need to get some pretty good people involved  to lecture and educate  the “amiable boob,” so that He/she can create an attractive sound bite in the news. If you have to dress them up a bit, do what you need to do. You are ready, yes? Well, sort of.

 

What takes time and input from many is a well-coordinated Campaign Game Plan. You have built your “army”  and have people to provide the financial resources needed. Now what?

 

A well-developed Issues platform is necessary. What are you going to say when a reporter asks for your position on any of a dozen issues? An “Issues Committee” is necessary to develop such responses. The responses have to be attractive enough to answer the question and fit into the candidate’s mode of speech. Otherwise, they can sound like Howdy Doody reading from a script.

 

 

You reach out to the election day some two years hence and walk backwards, providing tentative dates for radio and T.V. media, street canvasses, petition and sign drives and everything you will need to be successful. It sounds more difficult than it is.

 

 

Every campaign has a number of issues that are “of public concern.” You draw a logical, contiguous, sequence of such issues and when you will address them. The biggest hot button issue is the denouement taken on during the last week or two of a campaign. In the preceding weeks before the election, you list in order of successive importance, the remaining issues.

 

How do you determine “what the issues are?”  Very good question. If you have the money, you hire a good pollster for a “Benchmark poll.” This extensive query,  with a sample of at least six hundred voters, tries to identify what people are thinking of, and what their concerns are. It is from this information, that you start to draft your issue positions. As the campaigns develops, the pollster will hold a series of “tracking polls,” utilizing samples of at least 400 voters. This tactical device will identify weekly how opinions are changing,  or identify new issues manifesting themselves. The newer data will help refine your ad spots to address evolving concerns or newer issues that develop. The polling costs a fortune, but without it a campaign is virtually blind to events and concerns of the day. I convinced one congressional candidate with the analogy that not hiring a pollster would be like a Cavalry troop, operating in hostile territory, with no scouts available ahead, to warn them of imminent danger. He bought the poll.

 

 

As each “issue week” approaches, you have your concept dressed up into a presentable fashion. You launch the idea in a televised press conference with a visual backdrop of the issue being talked about. Then, following up, you might have several hundred volunteers either knock of doors with a voice canvass, or just door drop issue papers inside of doors.  A targeted mailing to the group, that you are trying to reach, goes out just before he press conference. You have made your point, right? Well, maybe. We always had a “rapid response squad” available to monitor the media for the opposition response to our claim. In this way, you can write and deliver a response to “their response” in the same news cycle, calling in our response to the media.

 

Next, you have to create video and radio commercials to send out your message. First, you stage a video, like writing a small play. Your guy/gal delivers and tapes the message.  You are ready, right? Well, sort of. The video tape is delivered to a small business that handles focus groups. Professionals show the tape to a audience of strangers. Afterwards, the interviewer solicits their opinions on the content and delivery of the message. The comments are usually very helpful. Unwanted hand or eye movements, annoying speech habits and other deficiencies surface. The message is also evaluated for relevance and resonance. From these many helpful evaluations, a new tape is filmed, incorporating the many suggestions garnered. Now, you are ready, right? Well, sort of.

 

You need a good T.V. time buyer to get them most for your money. You can’t just walk into a network and ask for twenty 30 second spots on the six 0”clock news. The stations offer you a spread package of ad-spots throughout the day. Some of the times are where you want them, some are what they give you. And then, when you do start your ad run, someone has to monitor each of the times purchased to make sure your spot is run. Otherwise, the station owes you a refund or another ad spot.

 

This sounds sort of complicated right? Well, in fact it is. When you are dealing with thousands of volunteers, media tools. Production companies, printers and a host of other professionals, date commitments get complicated. To address the problem, I had to reach back to an information management system that the U.S. Government had utilized to launch our Lunar landing, planned and carried out over a ten- year period. I will spare you all of the details. In essence, what you do is to take each task involved and chart it out its various talks on a calendar, from dates of inception to dates of completion. As each successive and cumulative task is charted, you place the necessary dates and requirements on your planning calendar, beginning with finish date and going backward to your starting date.

 

Like planning anything, when you deal with people, things change frequently. But, if you have been detailed in your planning, you can incorporate changes daily into the dynamic plan. When one date fills up, you may have to shift a function back or forwards in time, creating newer changes on those dates. It sounds and is sometimes chaotic, but it is at least an attempt to coordinate multiple events and functions with limited personnel. And this all works well enough until some major scandal or campaign night mare happens. Then, you just have to deal with the situation at hand,  as best you can, then sit down and reconfigure your plan of actions. It is a moving river of events, like an ornery herd of cattle on a drive. It can be managed.

 

To put it more simply, week one might be a “Help Old Ladies across the street week.” Literature is designed, showing candidate helping an elderly woman across the street.”  T.V.  press conference on a Friday shows our candidate helping elderly woman across busy highway and decrying the lack of cross walks in the area.  The “bad incumbent is just plain uncaring.” Radio spots echo the same message later that day and all weekend, on drive time radio. Volunteers go out on a Saturday morning with Literature showing “our guy/gal” in a scout uniform, helping elderly women across the street. It can create a “buzz” that everyone in the community is talking about. Campaign Rapid response squad watches for opponent’s counter message. They draft a response to that which candidate usually phones into media outlet.

 

Repeat this process eight or ten times, in succeeding weeks, until election day, with gradually ascending expenditures of money for impact.

 

Six months out, draft a GOTV plan on how you can maximize voter turn out in the areas where our candidate is strongest. It usually kicks in about three weeks before the election, in gradual levels on intensity, culminating with a huge volunteer canvass and rally just before the election.

 

When it is all over, you give a gracious victory or concession speech. And get ready to enter your new office. You also have to start thinking about doing all this again in a few short years.