Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D-I-Y’ers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week, we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.
Before you have a campaign, you have to have a candidate. Coming into March of 2017, people are already making decisions about whether or not to run in 2018 or fall 2017 local elections. Maybe you’ve thought about it. Maybe your friends have urged you to consider running. This week, we’re going to go through a shakedown: cover these bases before you run.
This week isn’t about discouraging you from running, it is about making sure you are prepared to run for office and that your campaign won’t face any unfortunate surprises. So, before you throw your hat in the ring, let’s go through a quick checklist and get you ready to run.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot more work and difficulties are presented in a run for a state-wide or federal office than a run for your local water board. Despite the scale, though, the amount of work you will put in should be almost identical—because you need to devote a similar number of hours in a day to make your run successful.
With that in mind, let’s cover the deal breakers and the items you need to check off before you put your name out there.
If you are married or in a long-term relationship …
Many of the people who choose to run may have a spouse, a long-term partner or children. Before you run for any office, rule number one is: your life partner must be onboard with you running for office. I say this to every candidate: if your husband/wife or your family is not onboard with you running for office, the at-home stress will make your run for office one that you will regret from the beginning.
Relationships never improve thanks to a campaign for political office. A run for office puts a lot of outside pressure on your personal life, monopolizes time, and can be pretty stressful. If your spouse or partner is not in favor of you running, DO NOT RUN.
Are you financially stable?
There is a significant difference between financially stable and wealthy. You do not need to be wealthy to run for most offices, as your fundraising can help, but if you are not financially stable, running for office can be very bad for you.
Running for office takes a fair amount of your time, and it can diminish your earnings. So, if you live paycheck to paycheck, running for office may prove to be something that puts you into serious financial difficulty.
As long as your bills are paid, and you know your mortgage or rent is covered, you are fine. Run, especially for lower office. But if you worry about your financial well-being, then a run for office may put a lot more mental stress on you than you are prepared to handle.
Do you face a deal breaker?
All candidates for office need to do a candid evaluation of themselves. If there is anything in the public record about yourself you are unprepared to discuss or unwilling to discuss, a campaign could be pretty awkward. It is okay to have things in your past you regret, decisions you have made you wish you had not, financial difficulties or personal foibles. Almost all problems can be dealt with if you are willing to be frank and discuss them. If you are not prepared to have an open discussion about those foibles, though, it is difficult.
There are, however, some items, which indicate you should not run for office, under any circumstances, not just because you will not win, but also because you may damage other candidates around you. Anthony Weiner could have learned this lesson: if details about you come out which are devastating to your campaign, they may also harm other Democratic candidates around you by depressing turnout or creating a bad narrative about all candidates.
Do an in-depth evaluation of your own plusses and minuses, and be realistic about them. Too often, people will say they have decided not to run for a “deal breaker,” but if they discuss with someone else they may discover it is not a deal breaker at all.
So, before you decide something is a deal breaker, run it by someone else inside the party privately and see what they think. Great candidates can worry about items in their past that will not matter: “I am deep in student loan debt”; “I had to refinance my house to save it after 2008”; “I was a rambunctious teenager 20 years ago”, as examples.
Don’t let these items scare you away from running ...
If you are young, odds are, there is at least one photo on social media of you that may be embarrassing. There may be a story or two as well. That time you wore purple paint to a college football game and stuck your tongue out. You were drunk at a friend’s house. There is a photo of you in cosplay or a long gripe you posted on the Internet as to why you didn’t like Star Trek or Star Wars or your epic takedown of why Titanic sucked or why the album of the year was wrong.
These items are not something that should deter you from running. Welcome to the new world: more and more candidates who run for office will be running with a long social media background. As we learned with the Trump candidacy, most people are at a point where it just does not matter.
Unless something you have on social media is truly devastating, i.e. posts and content you have put up that are explicitly racist, sexist, homophobic, hate-centered or harm others, then playful photos or even embarrassing moments from your college and high school years should not drive you out of a race. If we allow simple embarrassment to drive people out of elections, well, it is going to be very hard to find candidates going forward.
Final Thoughts
Do not be discouraged from running for office. Running for a smaller local office often has low requirements and low risks to you as a candidate. Do not expect a dirty campaign in a run for a local water or school board. In many communities, the local city council and mayoral races are also low-key, positive undertakings.
As long as you make sure you are OK to run, you will be fine. If you are confident you can keep a roof over your head, your life partner is on board, and you do not have public issues you are afraid to discuss, then get out there and run.
Next week on Nuts & Bolts: Volunteer? Paid? Where do I fit in on a Democratic campaign?
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Nuts & Bolts: Building Democratic Campaigns
Contact the Daily Kos group Nuts and Bolts by kosmail (members of Daily Kos only).
Every Saturday this group will chronicle the ins and outs of campaigns, small and large. Issues to be covered: Campaign Staffing, Fundraising, Canvass, Field Work, Data Services, Earned Media, Spending and Budget Practices, How to Keep Your Mental Health, and on the last Saturday of the month: “Don’t Do This!” a diary on how you can learn from the mistakes of campaigns in the past.
You can follow prior installments in this series HERE.