Unless the first thing you did when you came to my web site was read my bio (unlikely), you may not know that The Campaign Coach is a fiction author, as well. I’ve published a few novels that, as you might imagine, are always influenced by politics in some way or another.
In today’s political environment, attacks have become the hallmark of campaigning. From one perspective, it’s an unfortunate thing, because voters often can’t see through the finger-pointing and mud-slinging to get a good read on the issues that actually matter. From another perspective, voting is so often based on emotion, and there’s no more powerful way to invoke emotion than raising questions and concerns about your opponent.
Canvassing is the time-honored tradition of going door-to-door through the neighborhoods in your community in an attempt to connect directly with voters. It is a painstaking but rewarding part of the political process that generally can’t be avoided. We’ve been to enough doors to know that every interaction isn’t a picture perfect two minutes of discussing the issues and securing support, but often more along the lines of a people-watching adventure at your local mall. […]
Let’s face it. We all have too many meetings. If you’re in any kind of professional role, you sit through a massive amount of meetings. And how many of them are well-run? How many of them reach an objective, and provide takeaway actions and follow-up steps? Probably not many.
Imagine you put your blood, sweat and tears into running your campaign and learn Election Night that you’ve lost by a margin of votes you can count on your fingers. It’s a candidates’ nightmare – and it happens. More often than you might realize.
The 2018 elections are barely over – in fact in some states the campaign filings from the recent elections aren’t even due yet! But local candidates all across the country already have their sights set on 2019, no matter whether their races are in March, May, August or November.
