I haven't been posting on DK for a while but Joan McCarter's blog got me thinking about one of my favorite subjects-campaigns and what they are really like. The word campaign has an impersonal sound to it, like corporation or bureaucracy or some kind of machine. Campaigns have a pulse, they're populated by real people and they are a pressure cooker under which both brilliant and terrible decisions are made.
In most campaigns, even those with a candidate, there is not always a final decision maker (depends on the candidate) but an issue campaign often has a leadership group and the success of the campaign may well depend on their interaction. Follow along for part of the story....
A campaign is often a series of 'silos'; separate but important parts of the campaign: Fundraising, Field and Communications. Field usually has a number of paid organizers responsible for a geographic area. They spend most of their time trying to get volunteers to knock on doors, make phone calls, put out signs, etc. Fundraising usually consists of a coordinator and committee who spend their time calling and meeting with potential major donors, unions, national groups and issuing online appeals. Communications with the media is usually handled by one person who knows a number of the key outlets and serves as the spokesperson for the campaign. A campaign manager oversees the work of the campaign and is usually the spark and directional hub of the effort as well as the accountability enforcer.
In campaigns, time is precious and often short. Election Day means no more time, it's a definite end of the campaign, one wins or loses and goes home or back to a regular job. People make decisions under pressure often without a lot of information or time. Time being the most important component. If a leadership group spends its time sweating the small stuff and doesn't have a centralized message and doesn't stay on message, they will waste everyone's time.
This campaign in Maine dealt with the issue of same day voter registration. Not a 'sexy' issue but it was part of the over reach of the new Republican majority in Maine and clearly a cut and paste operation as part of the national voter suppression effort. However, each state is different and treating Maine as if it were some hotbed of voter fraud fell flat. This was spotlighted when the GOP state chair waved some papers around demanding an 'investigation' into some 200 'out of state' college students who voted in Maine and 'may have' voted twice. The Republican Sec of State happily obliged and after spending time and taxpayer dollars found a total of ZERO fraud.
The implication of the attacks on students is there was some kind of fraud going on in the 38 years that Maine has had same day registration that kept 'liberals' in power. It takes only 10-20,000 votes to swing a statewide election in Maine but here's the thing about rural states. If there's a conspiracy of more than 5 people everyone in the state knows about it. The other line of attack by our opposition was there was no good reason why people couldn't register to vote before Election Day.
Our basic message boiled down to: Same day registration has worked without fraud for 38 years. It's convenient, protects the voters and if it isn't broken don't fix it.
Polling showed we could win but when the opposition appealed to it's R base the race tightened up and we knew we would lose if we didn't raise enough $$ and get a good ad on TV. It's terrible to say it but true. A lot of voters are influenced by ads. We hustled, we had one major, major donor but that wasn't nearly enough. We called, met, begged, cajoled, said this issue would shape next year's agenda at the state capitol, appealed to fairness, and reached out to Daily Kos readers. With Joan's and Chris Bower's help you responded. Even though OWS was sucking a lot of air (justifiably so) DK readers came through with something like $7,000 (I didn't add it up exactly) which was awesome but also just getting the sense of support was huge and kept me and others fired up. Thank You So Much.
Our ad was simple, filmed in Maine by Gum Spiritsa Maine company and starring real Maine people, not actors. Worth watching. Meanwhile our opponents turned to an out of state group who, of course, filed a late report so we're not sure who it is (but we can guess) and they ran an ad. Their ad showed states south of Maine creeping up on Maine and their slant was out of staters were trying to influence our elections and our ethics law. The fact that same day registration was not the ethics law was brought up in the media and our opponents response was, 'Well, we couldn't raise money in Maine so this is really an out of state group and we don't control their message.' This played out in the media but it was hardly headlines or part of the every day discussion.
Every day conversations were more about same day registration and I think the opposition should have focused on the theme of, 'People have plenty of time to register, no one really needs to wait until election day, they should be more responsible.' We stayed on message, we raised most of our money in Maine, we had a GOTV operation (they had robo calls and direct mail) and we won.
Election night was very, very sweet. After all, we had taken it on the chin in 2010 (lost Gov AND both houses of the legislature) and this was our chance to send a message. Going into election night we felt we would win but were not sure of the margin and most felt it would be close. We won 60-40% and it was a strong, clear message. We won every county and every legislative district in the state. If you've read this far I hope you either have or will have the opportunity to work on a campaign and have that sense of relief, optimism, and satisfaction. It's a great feeling and I hope we can use that in Maine to fight back, lead a charge into next year and win again.
So, what's your campaign story? What are you planning on working on next year? I shortened the campaign in this blog but if anyone has any particular questions about this campaign or others, happy to answer. Like I said, I haven't been blogging in a while but I really appreciated the help and wanted to share a bit.