So…. You wanna manage a Presidential Campaign? I have a copy of “All’s Fair in Love, War & Running for President” for your perusal

Getting Elected Election Districts are divided into: Precincts (neighborhoods – typically hundreds of voters) Counties (various) Legislative Districts (sometimes cross city and county lines– 49 of ‘em with 70,000 voters or so EACH) Congressional Districts (10 of ‘em with 350,000 voters or so) ALL REGISTRATION DATA IS PUBLIC RECORD

KITSAP COUNTY Precinct Map

WA STATE VOTERS (1) As a very general rule of thumb: Roughly 50% of the adult population is NOT regestered to vote. They cannot participate in the election process

WA State Voters (2) Of those 50% who ARE Registered to vote, typically only 50% (or so) actually vote Of those 50% of the 50% of the population who DO vote, typically 40% (or so) will always or almost always vote dem and 40% (or so) will always or almost always vote GOP

WA State Voters (3) That means Of the 50% of the 50% of adults who vote, 80% of them kinda uninteresting. Or 20% of the 50% of the 50% are where the battles are There are approximately 3,300,000 registered voters in Washington State

WA State Voters (4) Over the last 20 years, both parties have spent mightily building and massaging their “Voter Files” In the 1990’s the GOP had a big edge in their voter files leading to close wins in ’94, ’96 in Congressional Races. Several dems “elected” on election found out later they had lost…

WA State Voters (5) Both parties spent HUGELY on voter files in our state… Adults registered to vote in this state are almost certainly well-documented in each party’s voter file… Name, vote history (whether you voted or not) and *suspected* affiliations are all continuously updated

Election District Boundaries The US Constitution REQUIRES that boundaries be drawn every decade (1990, 2010, 2020 etc) Each state is entitled to design their electoral boundaries however they want. Washington State is one of only a handful of states who use an independent commission to design election boundaries. Most states election boundaries are designed by their legislatures. That means whichever party controls the leg draws the maps…which can be very humorous

Field Tidbit #1 This does NOT tell the story correctly

FIELD TIDBIT #2

In a very real sense there is not such thing as a “red state” and a “blue state” The best measure is whether a precinct is RURAL or URBAN. The more rural, the more likely it is to be Repbulican, the more urban, the more likely to be Democratic

Making it Through the Primary Avoid saying or doing something stupid

Making it Through the Primary RAISE MONEY RAISE MONEY RAISE MONEY RAISE

Making it Through the Primary GET NOTICED! PUBLICITY! GET NOTICED! PUBLICITY!

Making it Through the Primary KEEP YOUR “BASE” HAPPY DON’T UPSET YOUR “BASE” KEEP YOUR “BASE” HAPPY DON’T UPSET YOUR “BASE” KEEP YOUR “BASE” HAPPY DON’T UPSET YOUR “BASE” KEEP YOUR “BASE” HAPPY DON’T UPSET YOUR “BASE”

MONEY

Fundraising Tidbit #1

Fundraising Tidbit #2

Electioneering 101 If more of YOUR people go to polls, you win –SO… –Find people NOT registered to vote who are your (likely) supporters and get ‘em registered –Identify “lazy” supporters… those of your supporters who voted in the past but infrequently –Convince those ‘undecides’ to vote for you… that is called “persuasion”

Campaign Staff Romney 2012 Obama 2012

Media Buys TV, TV, TV and MORE TV Buying ratings *POINTS Let’s say you want to buy TV time in Western Washington (Why would you want to do that?) Let’s say it costs $50,000 for 50 rating points worth of advertising That means you can by 10, second slots at 4:00 AM when no one is watching, or you can buy second slots during prime time… ouch

POLLING DO NOT POLL to find out what the public thinks Take the MESSAGE that you want to push, and then poll with that Keep massaging the MESSAGE until it WORKS with the population that you want to work with… For example, if your target audience is senior citizings, massage your message through polling to see what your candidates stand on social security works best

POLLING DO NOT POLL to find out what the public thinks Take the MESSAGE that you want to push, and then poll with that Keep massaging the MESSAGE until it WORKS with the population that you want to work with… For example, if your target audience is senior citizens, massage your message through polling to see what your candidates stand on social security works best

Message Find a message that is important to your candidate AND WORK IT… DO NOT STRAY FROM THE MESSAGE Example: Al Gore in 2000 change his message so many times that he was effectively labled a “FLIP FLOPPER”, which is very dangerous territory

Message NEVER, EVER stray from the message even in small intimate gathers. (HINT: Someone’s selfphone video camera is ALWAYS on Example: Romney’s speech to a tiny fundraising group in Florida about the “47%” of Americans…

Tech You need to effectively manage a database to track tens of millions of donations from millions of donars AND keeping them all legal per FEC rules

Tech Your website is CRITICAL to the health of the campaign… make it easy, make it attractive A GO TO source of information to the campaign

Tech - Keep Up Handheld devices are huge for volunteers collecting and distributing data to the campaign…. How do you manage data from falling into the other side? Do you care?

Good/Bad/Ugly Friends They can help you and hurt you and both NRA EMILY’s LIST CHANGE.ORG NFIB

Communications Voters in the primary are typically MUCH MORE ideologically driven then general election voters You can’t win the primary without appealing to your “BASE”

Communications Famous lessons to learn– flameouts in recent presidential primaries. Howard Dean in 2004 Rudy Giuliani -- flamed out of the gate

Field Notes/Strategy Identify your supporters Identify your detractors Identify “persuadable” voters