Six Stupid Things Candidates Do to Mess Up Their Campaigns
3. Failing to plan
Poor planning is a campaign killer. There are many questions in a campaign: How will you raise the funds? Who will be your campaign workers? How will you get your message out to voters? How will new media be leveraged to help you succeed?
No candidate has all the right answers to these questions, but they need to understand that in order to win the issues have to be addressed. Those campaigns that aren’t well0planned can go wrong in a number of ways. The cheapskate campaign hands out dull-looking literature and has a website that looks like an artifact of the GeoCities era. On the flip side, there are campaigns that move with frantic energy like a four-year-old on a sugar high, but have no strategy other than looking like a campaign.
In other campaigns, someone has won the Republican nomination only to become more scarce than Sasquatch after the nominating process is over. Sometimes the candidate fails to realize the time commitment required. The big tragedy of this is many people will be dissuaded from running in a race where another Republican has announced.
4. Not knowing their district
I must confess to this mistake also. When I ran for the state legislature in 2004 in the Republican primary, I decided on a noble strategy. I would campaign in every precinct in the district equally. I would reach out to Democrats, Republicans, and independents in my open primary state in a district that swung Democratic.
I knocked on 2,200 doors. I got swamped in a primary where only 1,100 people voted. Why? I wasted time on campaigning and passing out literature at apartment buildings and mobile home parks where few people voted and even fewer would mark a Republican primary ballot. Instead, I should have found out where likely Republican primary voters lived and focused on them.
5. Not being honest about themselves
Any time a conservative has a personal failing, whether it happened today or twenty years ago, its front-page news. Candidates owe it to themselves, to their families, and to their volunteers and campaign donors to fully examine themselves.
They should identify what could bring pain into their lives or the lives of their family if it came out. They should identify what professional or personal enemies they have that may come forward to sabotage a campaign.
Personal failings do not mean you shouldn’t run for office. If that was the case, only sociopaths who didn’t care who they hurt would file. Rather, such failings should be taken into consideration, and people should be fully prepared for any skeletons they have in their closets to become a matter of public record. They should plan for what will happen when the information is disclosed.
The good news is the American people are more forgiving than we imagine. Senator Scott Brown’s (R-Ma.) youthful nude photo shoot didn’t stop him from being elected. Evangelicals didn’t drive Sarah Palin out of the Republican Convention and put a scarlet “A” on Bristol Palin’s chest when it came out that Bristol was pregnant out of wedlock.
The one thing voters can’t endure is hypocrisy. Bill Clinton has had numerous affairs and continues to come back, but John Edwards is politically dead and will not be resuscitated. Edwards’ affair was not only a betrayal of his cancer-stricken wife, but an attempt to deceive the American people, who believed Edwards was lovingly standing by his wife as she fought for her life.
People should avoid hypocrisy and shun its appearance. Even if you’re a model wife and mother now, if you cheated on your husband ten years ago, don’t make being “mother of the year” a centerpiece of the campaign.
6. Failing to learn from mistakes
Some candidates show great potential as eloquent speakers or as people with great personal biographies, yet they can never make it in politics. This is because they fail to learn from their mistakes or they give up on the process.
The biggest telltale sign of a political loser is that he’s running the same losing campaign for the third time. Perennial candidates simply can’t be bothered with figuring out how to make politics work, but feel compelled to keep filing anyway.
For candidates disgusted with the political process after a defeat, the temptation to never run for anything again is high. However, one loss need not be “the end” of their efforts; rather, it can be a beginning. Like a football player watching videotapes of their games, candidates should think through their campaign and figure out how to improve.
America needs principled conservative leaders. For those leaders to get elected, they need to be wise, humble, and thoughtful as they seek the public trust.
Adam,
Great article and I think you nailed the issue right on the head. This is the reason that the current crop of GOP candidates is not doing better then they are. The GOP could sweep just about every election by having a clear message of how they are going to fix the wasteful spending in Washington with concrete examples (i.e. removing earmarks, lobbyist reform, true campaign finance reform, enforcing the laws on the books already, free market solutions, etc.) We need people that are running for something vice running against Washington because we are not stupid and know that if they have no plan or ideas of their own they are going to quickly become part of the problem vice solving it. This is the reason Palin isn’t getting better traction with more voters, she hasn’t put forth concrete policies that the average American can get behind. The people were tricked once by Hope and Change, so they are now looking for solid and believable policies.
Mr. Graham your article makes for interesting reading, but it is academic and fundamentally flawed because it speaks primarily to conservatives: A group loaded with about the same amount of energy as a split atom and an even greater number of hyper particles of logic flying off into space in different directions.
On the other hand liberals stay super-glued together in a sickening mass of humanity that continues to exist precisely because they violate everything you talk about in your article and people love it – They suck up to it everyday like some kind of soap opera or sugar fix.
You come close to the truth of the matter in your Stupid Thing #5 where – “If that was the case, only sociopaths who didn’t care who they hurt would file.”
Change the candidates part so that it includes over half of the active voting population and you have the answer as to why slobs like Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama keep getting elected.
The answers to the problems you are trying to solve are hidden inside their root which is, “The absence of God.”
Figure out how to put a nation whose people seek nothing but perpetual self gratification for themselves back together like America was from the beginning until it threw God out in the mid 1950s and you may be onto something that will work.
Meantime politics will remain an ugly art of deceit and destruction just like what we have in the White House and Congress right now.
Thanks anyway for the good fight Mr. Graham.
How about;
Letting the Media be a consultant.
Believing what the MSM says is important to people and trying to follow rather than shaping a vision to present to them
or
Viewing Principles as a Marketing Strategy rather than as Principles.
Many of todays Republicans are looking at the principles of the Tea Party Movement as a Marketing Strategy. But they seem to have Democrat Lite in thier DNA. (You can tell when the Dodge engages when asked about Repeal of ObamaCare. If the Dems can pass something via Crooked Means, why MUST Republicans accept that as Status Quo if elected to power? Because they do not actually posess the principles that they espouse!)
I might add that Obozo didn’t articulate any kind of proposals or policies beyond “Hope and Change” and he did quite well. He was completely vague and mushy in his policies before elected and had folks swooning.
Simply stated, while all this list above is nice, the biggest mistake most politicians make is Being Someone They Are NOT.
Ronald Reagan was Ronald Reagan! Period.
Bob Dole offered to be whoever we wanted him to be.
jd
Good advice. Not identifying the voters may be the biggest one in many primaries. One that catches a lot of candidates for local office is that primary voters in a presidential year can be a different group of voters than in an off year in many districts. Look four and eight years back to catch everyone who might vote in the primary. Another big mistake is to not aggressively go after another candidate’s voters when that candidate drops out of the race.
Another thing that I have seen happen is candidates who assumed they had a base because they had run for the same office before. Many times they find that a large component of the 40% they drew when running against the incumbent was protest vote and their own base is more like 15% when they are running for an open seat.
Wouldn’t it be more fun if Medina actually won the primary, and exposed her Truther-ness in her debate with the Dem candidate?
The Republicans and the Tea Partiers owe Glenn Beck big time.
Here’s some more hints:
1. Keep it simple. Your platform should have three main planks. More than that and your message gets diluted. Make sure these three main things are on all your literature. Be informed so that you can answer questions, but stick to your message.
2. Don’t waste money. You don’t need glossy, four color brochures and signs. Two color is fine.
3. Talk to as many people as you possibly can, but do it intelligently. Find out where your voters live and concentrate on them.
4. Have events planned so that you can invite people when you are on their doorstep.
5. Ask for help when you find a receptive voter. Try to make each supporter a force multiplier. But go easy-make it easy tasks that people can do.
5. When speaking, after you state your reasons for running, surround people with their own ‘yes’ statements. “Don’t you want lower taxes?” Don’t you want less government?” Get them to buy in on their own beliefs.
6. Don’t waste time trying to convince people. You want to ID the people who agree with you. This is very important. Argue with your opoonent, not the voter.
7. Never, EVER trust the media. On anything. Use them.but don’t think they are your frind. Their job is to get a story that promotes them, not you.
Good luck.
I’m volunteering on a campaign now on a policy committee. I’m rather dismayed at my fellow committee people – they’re mostly just looking for a job! They don’t seem to understand that we need a MARKETING plan for our topic – what will get the candidate into office! Instead they want to promote MORE regulation and hence power for them in their future prospective jobs.
So be careful and critical of your “helpers.” They too often are looking out for themselves.