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I'm on a state party central committee and have only volunteered extensively with campaigns, so I have a slightly different perspective.Mooseontheloose posted:
Also people measure your viability by your fundraising capability. If you're not meeting fundraising expectations, groups at the state or national level won't endorse, support, or donate. It's not (intentionally) an establishment thing, it's just that folks are less than willing to back a campaign without some kind of viability assurances. Not only do they not want to waste their time/money that they could use to help other races, but there are sometimes reputational and social risks to backing a losing candidate in a primary. Officeholders who remember you mainly as the guy who spent Feb - June working against him are going to be less inclined to help you, even if you spent July - Nov on their side. Additionally, there's a lot of correlation between early fundraising and success in other areas - rich, well-connected people have a big "friends and family" round because they have connections, and those connections also provide the campaign with endorsements and favors, for instance. Monkey Fury posted:Gchat. Lots and lots of Gchat. And conference calls. Is it just the campaigns I've been involved with, or are folks in the campaign world over-obsessed with conference calls? Like an hour-plus a day for things like masturbatory cheerleading or having people go in a circle reporting their results - poo poo that has nothing to do with electing candidates. Mooseontheloose posted:3. I want to be Josh Lyman! Can you help me become Josh Lyman? I will also settle for Toby Zigler. This is my new favorite thing. The sad thing is that it's not even a strawman, people literally do this poo poo. Mooseontheloose posted:You nailed most of it but the other side is the fervor that people want lawn signs and think how effective they are. There is also a subset of people who will only get a lawn sign and get pissy if you ask them to do anything else. Hahaha, not just that, there are the folks who act like they're making a huge sacrifice by letting you drive over and set up a yard sign (that you're only doing because they asked for one) and that putting up a sign at the end of their cul-de-sac is clearly gonna turn out dozens of extra votes. Mooseontheloose posted:Anyone who is running seriously never should have ballot access problems. I've never seen ballot access as a major hurdle for a candidate. Depends on the area and the race. When you've got to do 10,000 signatures in 3 months for a state-wide, it requires a lot of a campaign when it's 6-8 months out from the election and you don't have nearly as much staffing as you would in November. And on the flip-side, you may only need like 100 for a small town council race, but that's a lot when there's only a few thousand voters in your town and at least half the people at the high-traffic events are from outside the town limits. Plus whenever they say "X signatures" they actually mean "130% of X" because of the rate of rejections for folks putting the wrong info, illegibility, etc. Concerned Citizen posted:gently caress yes it's an on year again. We don't have off-years in Virginia 
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May 15, 2014 23:02
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Fried Chicken posted:Volunteer here: is there a good VAN refresher available online? It's been a while since I used it and I was never well trained to begin with Not that I'm aware of. I could probably answer general questions though, I trained folks on it in 2012. My experience is that campaigns can be pretty stingy about giving out more than basic VPB or data entry access[1] - what are you looking to do with it? It's entirely possible that if you're only seeing 3 buttons on your My Campaign screen then it's an access/privileges issue. [1] - This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it drives me crazy when I know more about it than the FOs.
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May 20, 2014 19:20
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Fried Chicken posted:They haven't told me my job yet (they had me submit a "volunteering resume", is that normal?) But since that's what I did on other campaigns I figured I should try to get ahead of the curve to be more useful. Having never applied for a campaign job, I can't speculate about what's normal in their hiring process, but it makes sense that they're much more interested in your campaign volunteer experience than your other job experiences, since (for instance) retail experience is less relevant to field work or whatever. It's going to be pretty tough to learn the VAN/Votebuilder without using it, but basically the way it works is that you have My Voters which is just the voter roll, and My Campaign which has records only for volunteers and potential volunteers. From those you apply filters to generate sub-lists. Then you match that list up with a script (usually created by your RFD/FD) and make call lists/virtual phone banks/walk packets out of it. For instance I might generate a list from My Campaign that is Women, in [My County], who are top recruitment prospect, who haven't been called in the last 30 days. Then I'd match that list to a script and either print it out for call sheets or set it up with a VPB and I'd have a "Women-to-Women" phone bank. Or I'd go into My Voters, pull folks with a Party of 'U' or 'ND' (Undecided or No Data) in [My County], filter out the folks we've talk to recently, and I have a good list of folks who could use a Persuasion/Voter-ID visit. Then I again match it with a script, and I can use a geographical turf-cutting tool built into VAN to partition the list into sections for folks to walk in each precinct. Ofaloaf posted:During the first introductory day of work, everybody really emphasized the chain of command. What if our direct boss is already breaking into fits of nervous giggling and we still haven't found anyone who will tell us straight what our pay is? What's the best way to actually break the chain of command? At this point, whatever you think your pay is, it's lower.
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May 21, 2014 18:36
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Ofaloaf posted:We are supposed to get breaks for meals, right? Like, I get that we need to devote all our energies to getting out the vote, but we should be getting breaks for lunch and dinner, right? I mean if it's crunch time there should be food in the office. And if you're doing call time until 9pm and then entering data, I wouldn't count on eating dinner until 9:30, so have a mid-afternoon snack.
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May 22, 2014 02:55
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Ofaloaf posted:There's no primaries that we have to be concerned about, and primarily all we seem to be doing is phone banking to build up volunteers. We're not even doing that good a job of it- the paper lists have a depressingly low rate of return, and nobody seems to've bothered properly stocking VB. Wouldn't it be more useful for us to physically go out and attend local party meetings, and just try to get people from those face-to-face contacts in groups we know are already interested in seeing us succeed? Local party meetings probably aren't that useful to recruit at either - most of those folks know there's a Congressional race going on already, after all. You should still go and try to get them to sign up for specific events though. But at this stage volunteer recruitment is a big part of what you need to do.
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May 22, 2014 14:03
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Ofaloaf posted:decimated lists by confusing the code for 'disconnect' with 'deceased'. In votebuilder, you can make a list of everyone canvassed in the last X days with a result of deceased, and just delete those canvasses. Ofaloaf posted:Yesterday I got one (1) scheduled volunteer out of ten or so hours of calling, and out of something like 14 contacts total and about 300 dials. I (or any other FO) could've gotten one volunteer from attending one of the party meetings going on last night, and it wouldn't have taken 10 hours or cost the party 10 hours' worth of wages. And tomorrow you'll have a volunteer helping you and you'll get 12 total hours done. Two weeks from now you'll have 5 folks at a phone bank and they'll knock out that 10 hours of calling themselves. Concerned Citizen posted:1 volunteer from 14 contacts is a good conversion rate in May. I wouldn't be too concerned about that. Your lists will improve as you call into them more. Yeah. Your success rate once you get folks on the phone is gonna differ pretty dramatically between May and October as folks think more about the election, so keep that in mind. Plus many of your later calls with be to folks who've already committed or volunteered with you. Concerned Citizen posted:You would get zero volunteers from a party meeting, not one. Many will not allow you to even make a volunteer pitch. Trust those of us who have been doing this for awhile - if these people were going to volunteer, they'd be the first ones you'd call. I'd at least take a pass at it, and make sure you have the local party distributing your event info (where your office is, when your phone banks are, etc), but yeah. The folks who are in the local political party fall into three groups:
The first group of people you can slowly engage and pull into volunteerism. The second group will show up to your events if asked and don't really need to be persuaded super-hard. The third group aren't going to help in any meaningful way. They'll show up at office openings and parties and stuff, but they won't make any calls/knocks for you. Maybe you can drag one or two half-assed shifts a year out of them, but more likely they'll consider things like yard signs or a few bucks worth of office food to be their noble sacrifice. So it's worth it to spend some time working with the local party just to make a pass at the first group and to make sure the second group find their way to you sooner rather than later, but don't stress too much about that third group. I've had folks in that third group literally point-blank ask me what time a phone-bank/party turned into a party, because they didn't want to make the phone calls. And political parties tend to over time get dominated by that third group because the guys in the second group get bored/frustrated at the social/business meetings and feel like it's a waste of time, and it's not like there are that many new recruits if nobody in the party actively recruits.
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May 27, 2014 19:45
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Skeesix posted:Is it true his polling people had him up by 20-30 points on election day? No, that poll everyone's talking about was a week or two old. Also it had him up by 34 points...
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Jun 12, 2014 16:03
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Dante Logos posted:I'm going to get laughed at but might as well try anyway. GlyphGryph posted:I was basically going to say the same as that guy just said. Yes, volunteering every once in a while is definitely helpful, especially if you're willing to do poo poo like doorknock or phone bank. Seriously just walk into an office or whatever and be like "I wanna help" and the staffers will break out into like the biggest smiles. Your local Dem party should also have like an email list mentioning when events/phone banks/canvasses are and who to contact. I don't know necessarily if volunteering for a few phone banking shifts is going to get you on first-name terms with your Senator or anything, but you'll definitely meet some people and learn a lot.
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Jun 17, 2014 22:39
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Dante Logos posted:I'm rather curious now. What are your experience with the sorts of people who want to be policy wonks or want a job? I can understand where they are coming from to an extent. I have a variety of skills that might prove useful for a campaign. Keyword: "might". It sounds more like they want to advise on policy when the core focus is getting people out to vote, and nothing else. Is this interpretation correct? I dunno if it's hostility to folks who want to do policy it's just that there's not always a recognition that campaigning is a poo poo-ton of hard work and long hours talking to voters and corralling volunteers. It just seems like there are a lot of people who watched the West Wing or whatever and want to pull a 9-5 where they spend all day talking like Sam Seaborne and wandering uninformed through meetings like Josh Lyman, bang a starry-eyed college intern in the copy room, and then spend their evening schmoozing with bigwigs. They don't realize that (a) Sam and Josh worked 90-hour weeks, and (b) you really only need like 1-2 of those sorts of folks in an entire campaign, the other 90% of it runs the gamut from Donna/Ginger (work ridiculous hours doing paperwork) on down to spending all day knocking on doors or calling. And even if you get a policy-related position on the junior level you're still gonna be the dudes that Frank Underwood locks in a conference room for 4 days straight until they hand him a massive document. Generally there's a frustration with folks who think that voter contact and volunteer coordination (or fundraising) are beneath them, because that's like 90% of the gig. bunnielab posted:I work as an event production manager and through literally being "a guy who will do a 6 month out of town gig on 6 days notice" ended up working on the 2012 DNC. It was one of the coolest gigs I ever worked on, at least the parts where I was allowed to leave my desk and escape endless budget estimates. It was really interesting working around "political" people that closely. They are so close to rocknroll tour rats, but more drinking and less loving I guess. That 6 months stands out as then most hung-over period of my life. What I really got out of it was that doing campaign advance work seems like exactly what I want to do, the same frenzy as event work, the same travel as touring, but nicer hotels and less having to climb lighting truss on 3 hours sleep. Sadly none of the contacts I made really do that sort of thing anymore but I am still trying to worm my way into it. The problem is that there's not a whole lot of these jobs, from what I've seen. Until you're at like the gubernatorial or Presidential level you're just not drawing the kinds of crowds that justify hiring folks specifically for advance work. In a smaller campaign like House of Representatives or whatever you might wind up with a Deputy Campaign Manager or someone in Fundraising (depending on event) handle some of those duties - when your District is an hour or two's drive end-to-end, you don't need a whole lot of hotels. But I could be wrong, I used to work concerts/events but nowadays I'm too busy in field that I don't really worry about events much. The flip side of that is that political work in general pretty well replicates the frenzy of event work and if you have any supervisory experience you could try to get in above entry level where the jobs suck slightly less. While there's not a lot of travel, you can work on campaigns in other parts of the country - lots of the folks I met in 2012/2013 were coming to Virginia from other states and had worked in different states in prior years. You're probably crashing in someone's guest room instead of in a hotel, but you're still going out drinking with a bunch of 20-somethings (disproportionately women if you're a Dem) after hours. If you want to do pure advance work, I'd suggest maybe trying to hook up with consultants that work at the state/presidential level and try to get hired on there.
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Jun 19, 2014 15:33
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I'm looking at applying for some coding jobs at the DNC. Their web descriptions don't really seem to have a lot of information in terms of like job conditions and if the pay/benefits are competitive etc. Like is that sort of while collar HQ work the same sort of deal as organizing where you're underpaid for 90 hour weeks, or is it industry-comparable? I mean I'm happy to make some trade-offs to do in my day job something I really care about, but I don't know if that means double work and half pay, etc. Anyone have any idea?
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Jun 21, 2014 21:58
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Mooseontheloose posted:Craigslist will give you a basic idea. Find out the part of town you want to be in, look for empty office space and give a call. See if you candidate has any connections to real estate broker and see if they can help you. Also ask past local candidates if they know of a sympathetic real estate agent who might cut members of your party a deal.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:43
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Ok, I've got a calendar and some basic stuff. Now, what's the most economical way to do this? That sounds fairly reasonable. Any cheaper on the hosting and you're in "tiny shared computer in some teenage nerd's mom's closet" territory I feel like. In addition to WordPress, you'll need to set-up a mail server and mailing lists. You also need an ActBlue (or whatever the Republican equivalent is) site if you raise any money ever. It's DEFINITELY not worth trying to do this in-house unless (a) you're a web programming/admin Zen Master and (b) you're going to be raising poo poo-loads of money. Getting SSH certs costs money, dealing with the paperwork hurdles so you can accept credit cards, proper record keeping, an order of magnitude more security work, blah blah blah seriously just use Act Blue. If you want, you could probably get MYDISTRICT.STATEDEMOCRATS.ORG for free (saving you $10 on a domain name) depending on how the tech guys at the state-level are. If you're running a campaign or something you need your own domain name, but if it's just the general webpage for a Legislative District party, you may not need your own domain name.
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Jul 14, 2014 06:52
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Not sure at what point this becomes a necro, but what are folks impressions with using an auto-dialer for persuasion calls? I've seen it used effectively with GOTV, but it seems a lot less effective with persuasion - yeah you're getting more contacts, but because it's coming from an out-of-district number and there's a delay when they pick up that makes it sound like you're a telemarketer, they basically hate you before you've gotten two words out. Has anyone had similar experiences or better ones?
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Aug 27, 2014 01:42
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G-Hawk posted:If you use the computer enabled version you can have names. (And votebuilder actually has a predictive dialer in it, though I think it is kind of crap). The pause is really the only drawback. Yeah, I used the votebuilder predictive dialer. But the pause freaking murders us on these persuasion calls - it's not just me, staffers and interns had the same issue. Folks already aren't especially thrilled to talk politics and issues on a cold call before Labor Day, but that pause just seems to get them in the "gently caress telemarketers" frame of mind. Is there anything more I can do beyond jumping right into it on the beep and trying to be as cheery as possible?
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Aug 28, 2014 01:49
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Slaan posted:So I couldn't find a political job before coming back, and got just a normal job. But I am still interested in volunteering for local/state campaigns here. The only thing is that I am unaffiliated.Do parties actually care if volunteers are actually in the party or not? If needed, I can change to Democrat when I register to vote (and probably should as I plan to run for office in 5-10 years), but I enjoy not being within a party for the moment. I can't imagine a Field Organizer in any campaign turning away an eager volunteer unless you're like personally known to them or their campaign as an opposing activist. They tend to be sufficient desperate for folks actually willing to work that they'll not really care if you're registered as an I.
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Sep 12, 2014 16:09
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What are folks' thoughts on canvassing vs high-traffic events? My local campaign seems really focused on canvassing/phones vs. staffing at high-traffic events. They're obviously sending the candidate to events like 24/7, but my local town-level committee is getting pissed that nobody from the campaign will help them at like arts festivals on a Saturday because all the staffers and the campaign volunteers are knocking doors or making phone calls. Thoughts?
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Sep 19, 2014 05:06
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CobwebMustardseed posted:I got hired as a field organizer with absolutely no field experience. I had literally never knocked on a door before. I had just finished school and sent my resume to every corner of the internet and found a campaign that needed organizers. I think if you can do solid interview, you could get an FO position right now, since it's the end of the cycle and practically every race is desperate to hire more organizers. Check out jobsthatareleft and democratic gain and tom manatos, you'll see a bunch of postings for top tier races that need FOs. If you can do well in an initial interview (basically show a willingness to work yourself into the ground for barely any money) and you're willing to travel, you can land yourself a job for the end of the cycle. Yeah, willingness to travel is HUGE - you're really limiting your search if you're only willing to work races in your area. Plus you get to see exotic places like Nowheresville, Indiana or maybe even Kansas City!
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Sep 20, 2014 22:59
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Ofaloaf posted:Switching from campaign worker to local candidate, this has been absolutely frustrating. I'm going door-to-door on the weekends, talking directly to voters (a fair number of republicans are willing to jump the fence for local elections, happily) and generally doing my best to chat with folks and make connections, but the local party organization is growing increasingly concerned by the lack of yard-signs and throwaway brochures nobody reads. Yard signs. Ugh, kill me now. That said, in your case some lit might be a good idea - let them pass it out when they do their events or their own knocking or whatever. Nowhere near as useful as talking to voters yourself, but it's not like you can knock every door before E-Day. Or maybe mail them out to a couple hundred folks right before the election - people may tell you they'll vote for you in June, but if they forget that or they forget that there's an election it doesn't do you much good.
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Sep 22, 2014 12:34
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Ofaloaf posted:In my case, I can-- it's only a township-level job I'm running for, and the township's rural and home to 6000 people on paper over 32 square miles (34 including lakes). Most of that's in 11 or so clusters. Oh wow I didn't realize your town was so small, I was thinking it was bigger than that for some reason. Yeah, it might be feasible to hit all those doors yourself. But I reiterate my worry that folks you talk to in June will need another touch in October so they remember to go to the polls, especially if you don't have a competitive House or Senate race in your area.
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Sep 22, 2014 13:32
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Is there a secret to making fundraising asks? I'm a generally shy person and I hate asking folks for things, but now I've got to try to raise some money for my committee's fundraiser. It just really sucks calling up people you like and being like "give me money"
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Sep 23, 2014 22:38
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Mooseontheloose posted:Remember you believe in this candidate for a reason. So you are asking to give to a cause that you believe in (And give me money!) Unfortunately it's not a candidate, it's a political committee. And half my committee-mates are lazy morons.
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Sep 27, 2014 00:27
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CobwebMustardseed posted:Five weeks out! Just focus on doing the best you can. At the end of the day, you're the one who has to live with yourself on Nov. 5th, and if you can look in a mirror and say that you did everything that you could've, you should feel proud no matter the outcome.
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Oct 1, 2014 13:36
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Slaan posted:So I've been trying to contact the Democratic parties here in NC see if I can help them in these last few weeks of campaigning, but I have yet to have any contact with them. What are other options for helping to volunteer, try contacting the campaigns directly maybe instead of through the local parties? Yes, definitely contact campaigns. Local parties are entirely volunteer-led (maybe a handful of huge ones have 1-2 staff) whereas campaigns literally pay people to try to find them volunteers.
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Oct 12, 2014 14:37
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I'm working as a Staging Location Director this weekend. I had someone come in, grab three signs, and ask for a T-shirt (which our candidate doesn't give out). When I asked her if she would think about volunteering, she said "maybe, probably not. I'm going to the Victory Party though". As if that was a positive thing, like showing up after the polls close and eating our food is supposed to somehow be a good and helpful thing I should be grateful for. And of course I've got to be nice because I'm representing a campaign, but she was the quintessential slacktivist - literally everything frustrating about some of these folks.
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Oct 25, 2014 21:37
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Illegal Carrot posted:drat, that sounds rough. I never even imagined that a person could be so disgusting with regards to "helping out," but I guess I must be lucky to work on such an awesome campaign. I don't think I've seen a single volunteer at our office that wasn't just as motivated as our paid staff. I try really hard not to criticize volunteers who aren't as effective or motivated as they could be, because just showing up for a volunteer shift puts them head and shoulders above many of the rest of the local Democrats. The volunteers we do get do what they need to do and work hard, but the folks who don't help but want to pretend they're politically active just drive me nuts. It's both parties, and it's up and down the food chain. I've had folks who are on the State Central Committee come out to canvass launches with (relative) VIPs, chat a bit, take pictures, shake hands, and then leave without taking a packet. Heck, I've had guys who were running the next year pull that kind of crap. If we hold a picnic for volunteers, we'll have 5x as many folks show up as if we had a canvass.
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Oct 27, 2014 01:44
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Kazak_Hstan posted:Man reading this thread does not make me nostalgic. Was 2008 really six years ago? No reason to be nostalgic or Campaign-sick, you can come back to the campaign community anytime you want. We're a forgiving cult like that. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.
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Oct 29, 2014 02:05
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CobwebMustardseed posted:Saw a new poll today that has my race tied. My hair is for real starting to fall out of my head and I am not sure if I can withstand another six days of this. What if my candidate loses by one point and we lose control of the Senate by one seat and EVERYTHING IS ALL MY FAULT? All you can do is everything you can. If you've worked your rear end off this cycle (and no doubt you have), have no regrets either way on next Wednesday.
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Oct 30, 2014 02:21
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I've seen some of the strategies in the first half personally and watched them fail like crazy. Specifically: "Attack your opponents as being “extremists” when they hold views typical of the far right. If voters happen to share any of those views, you will be attacking those voters as extremists, even if that are partly progressive. Your opponents will be seen as courageous, standing up for what they believe. You will be helping your opponents." Yeah, sometimes it's hard when the campaign wants you to push a "our opponent is an extremist on immigration" line and then puts you on persuasion calls with voters who think the problem with immigration is that we don't shoot em when we catch em at the border.
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Nov 14, 2014 17:28
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Concerned Citizen posted:This is really a problem with how persuasion is done on phones/doors. A lot of strategists think of phones/doors as the same as a TV ad - a one directional message. On TV, if you put out an ad, it will gain you votes and lose you votes. Hopefully it gains more than it loses. On the phone, you only have a limited number of quality contacts. It's not worthwhile to employ the same messaging you use on TV/radio/mail as you do on the phone. Live persuasion is a back-and-forth affair and involves actual conversation with a voter. If you attempt to use the same strategy you use on TV/radio with voters on the phone, you'll find that you will gain very few votes. Certainly, much fewer than you'd gain through actual persuasion. The problem is that the average actual volunteer has an IQ of 100 who (at best) watches MSNBC/CNN regularly. They signed up for a two-hour shift and may or may not come back. In that context, you can't really afford to take too long training then or you won't get any actual voter-contacting done. I agree with you that the current system sucks though.
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Nov 16, 2014 16:37
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Love Stole the Day posted:If that's really true, then I'd probably stand out pretty quickly for volunteering and hopefully get to do cooler stuff. That's how it worked for me. It'll take a cycle or two, but (at least in my purple area) there's definitely a shortage of smart hardworking people who don't cause drama. When opportunities arise, grab them. I started just making phone calls and knocking doors, but then I took over doing training for data entry and I cut a lot of the lists for OFA2012 before they staffed up. Wound up managing dozens of volunteers per shift during GOTV. This year I spent a fair bit of time in the metaphorical smoke-filled rooms (the CD chair's GF makes him smoke on the porch or else it'd be literal) and doing things like helping define messaging or writing strategic plans and guidance to help local level party chairs. I still knock doors and make calls, but I do the cool stuff too. Hard work, sincerity, and intelligence worked for me, but I guess YMMV. Also identifying and making friends with the power players (or folks who think they're power players) helps - I ended up on the State Central Committee because I worked with a few of them on the 2012 campaign and I got myself invited to lunch with them after one of the caucuses to decide who got to go to the National Convention. I impressed a few of them by working with them and got them to like me (or at least remember me) by going to lunch with them and then when they needed a male from my county to fill a vacancy they were happy to vote me on when the local party chair (a friend I play D&D with sometimes) nominated me. But my point was less "go me I'm so awesome because I'm smart" and more about the blind spot that a lot of us high-information activists have. We don't always realize that the average activist on our side isn't necessarily well informed or politically adept, just concerned and motivated. A lot of field stuff involves using scripts and paper lists and handing out literature because the median volunteer (especially in off-years) isn't a 20-something techie who posts on high-quality political discussion boards. The key thing that gets someone to volunteer isn't intelligence or being well-informed, it's caring about their community. If we want to respect and honor their concern and their willingness to offer us their time, we need to make sure we design field programs that they can participate in easily and we welcome them without being patronizing so that we can lure them back. If a program takes 45 minutes to train for out of a two hour shift, folks will feel like they wasted their time and not come back. If a program is too complex or requires too much political knowledge to do effectively, folks might not come back because they don't like feeling stupid or struggling. I agree that the current system is kinda impersonal and that we need to improve it, but "actual persuasion" is hard - most of the time on a persuasion call you're pulling teeth to get the guy to say what issues he finds important, and it's difficult for the average volunteer to add much personal knowledge to that beyond the talking points. Like I can have a conversation with a voter about Israel/Palestine or Ebola (not on the talking points handout) which somewhat placates them without saying anything that could hurt the campaign, but I know the candidate personally and follow issues closely. Or I can explain to a voter how the latest "gaffe" was taken ridiculously out of context and how our candidate actually agrees with her, but most can't do that off the top of their heads (and shouldn't be expected to). Personally, I think the thing we need to go back to isn't the issue-based persuasion but the personal story/connecting on values sort of stuff they tried in 2012. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Nov 18, 2014 |
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Nov 18, 2014 16:20
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Arnold of Soissons posted:The tag team of first blaming apathetic voters for not volunteering, and then reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff was really funny to read, and a great microcosm of why no one wants to vote Dem Can you be more specific about who is reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff? If that was how I came across, I apologize for being unclear. I'm grateful for everyone who volunteers to do stuff like voter contact or LTEs or whatever, I was just trying to explain that a lot of the way those programs are currently set up is so that anyone who volunteers can do them, as opposed to a hypothetical persuasion program that requires you to basically be as smart as the DCM (as some have unknowingly suggested). I'm grateful for every volunteer we get to do voter contact or to host fundraisers or to help spread the word in similar groups. I'm annoyed at folks who think that putting up a yard sign makes them the MVP of the campaign, and I'm frustrated by folks who think that "spend 20 minutes talking the field staff's ears off about something he read on DailyKos" or giving the Staging Location Director some uninsightful "how to run a campaign" advice when he's trying to enter data is a productive use of anyone's time, but I'm still generally polite to them. I also don't really think it's possible for a volunteer to work harder than paid staff - field staff put in 12+ hours a day, everyday for months. Maybe the finance person sleeps in every once in a while or something, but I know firsthand that the political and media and CM folks put in ridiculous hours as well. Like you couldn't put in as many hours as they do and hold down another paying job.
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Nov 24, 2014 01:41
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Concerned Citizen posted:I think we do need to review the idea that, in a world where we're spending hundreds of millions on field, we still need volunteer labor. That said, certain kinds of persuasion - centering on values, rather than specific issues - can be very effective. It also doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the issues. Maybe you can work the math on that from a numbers perspective but I think that as you add more and more staffers, you're going to wind up with staffers who are more and more foreign to the area and less and less dedicated to the cause. Right now there's an oversupply of folks who are politically passionate enough to work lovely hours for crap pay in the field. But if you're talking about doubling or tripling the number of FOs, you'll have a hard time doing that and still getting folks who'll be eager to pull 80 hour weeks and passionate enough about the cause to really sell it well. FOs who are from the same region and whose passion shines through in what they do are great, but there's not enough of them and down that slope lies $10/hour paid door-knockers who don't give a poo poo. If you want to talk about connecting on values and showing their passion, you're going to find a lot more of that in volunteers than in many paid canvassers. Also, while it might be the case that statewides have the budget to move extra hundreds of thousands or millions into field, 95% of the races in this country don't. A state legislative race can't do that, and many Congressional races probably can't do that very easily. Not that we necessarily need to have the same campaign structure for US Senator and Board of Supervisors, but I don't think you can easily write off volunteer labor.
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Dec 1, 2014 22:48
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G-Hawk posted:On what planet is this true? During off years, yeah, but in even years every campaign I know of is practically begging people to FO and will basically take warm bodies Maybe Virginia has a surplus of staffers living here because we've got elections every year and we're right next to DC. But an oversupply of recent college grads willing to work long hours is one of the explanations for why campaigns get away with paying jack-poo poo to staffers. G-Hawk posted:I'd question the model that we currently have where people are expected to work such long hours for such low pay. Most of the hours are unneccessary at best, every fo spends a bunch of the morning and afternoon not doing much. And the money exists to pay more. Yeah, if it was prioritized we could definitely reduce the stress on FOs without seriously impacting campaign quality. Cutting out those hour-long nightly circlejerk-calls would probably be a good start. G-Hawk posted:Volunteers may be more passionate than a typical paid canvasser, but that doesn't mean their values or the volunteer themselves neccessarily are the right ones to connect to the voters they're talking to. Democratic campaign volunteers tend to be a lot whiter, and a lot richer, than the average Democratic voter that you're trying to GOTV, or the swing voter you're trying to persuade. It is a simple matter of who can afford to volunteer their time. This is a good point I hadn't considered, but to a large degree paid staff has a similar problem - they're disproportionately recent college grads. G-Hawk posted:There is no reason why someone can't care about the candidate or cause and also be paid. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm suggesting there aren't enough folks out there who are passionate and looking for a field job to fill 2-4x as many field slots. If right now we're "basically tak[ing] warm bodies" where are these additional passionate paid-folks gonna come from? Unless you're suggesting just mostly paid-time folks who work evenings mostly or something, that could work.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:29
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G-Hawk posted:the current way the democratic party collectively does literally anything is incredibly short sighted, impractical, and inefficient. Just got back from a State Party meeting. Fixed that for you.
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Dec 7, 2014 00:19
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Mooseontheloose posted:Thoughts on a 2015 thread? How many places have 2015 races? I know VA does.
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Dec 29, 2014 00:02
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Concerned Citizen posted:First, do your research. Who currently occupies the seat you'd run for? How big is the electorate? How much money was spent in past elections for this same seat? If it's partisan, make serious consideration as to whether your partisan profile matches what the community might typically vote for. I don't want to discourage people from running for office, but realistically a fresh out of grad school kid isn't going to flip a blood red district blue. Then you need to research the laws or local practices in your municipality/state - specifically, ballot access laws. Some states require signatures. Others, you just pay a small fee. You also may or may not need to open up a bank account and form a campaign committee for disclosure purposes, depending on your state and the size of your municipality. In addition to this, it may be worthwhile getting to know the City Council members. On my town's council, there are a couple of long-time folks who pretty popular around town - it would be borderline-suicidal to run AGAINST them, but at the same time it'd be a huge boon to be running WITH them (something made possible by a staggered top-three election system).
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Dec 29, 2014 19:03
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:How would I do this? *Accidentally* bump into them at a charity fundraiser? Volunteer for their organizations and hope to meet them? Try and schedule a meeting directly? First, if your city is Bright Blue, get involved in the Party. If this is a multi-year plan you're thinking, then be really active in 2015-2016 and make friends in the Party and while campaigning. If you're competent and avoid pissing people off, you'll attract at least a bit of notice. This will also help you build a campaign for your City Council race - folks who've worked with you in the past will be receptive if you ask for their help or support for City Council, and even a few volunteers can be a big deal at first. This will also let you sound out who has a lot of support in a Party (which is crucial in a primary, less so in a general) and who is popular, if you're trying to figure out who to run against. It will also give you a lot of general knowledge of how campaigning works and what's involved which will help. Secondly, try to get appointed to something. I know it sounds silly, suggesting you seek an office as a stepping stone to a local office, but if you're running for City Council and you can point to your time on the Library board or something as experience, that might help. Plus it will let you work with other muckety-mucks more closely. Here's a list for Austin, TX, which is probably of comparable size to whichever city you're running in. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:I have done all of these except for the bank account thing. Do I just open a bank account and say "this is my campaign stuff"? I even made a several year budget that included amortized student loan payments to figure out how many years it would take to save enough private capital to fund my city council campaign. It varies state-by-state. You may have to register some sort of committee or something for tax purposes and with your local State Board of Elections. Do not open a campaign account or file paperwork unless you are imminently announcing - newspapers track this stuff and if it's a slow news day they might spoil the surprise by writing a story before you wanted. Also look into this closely and be very sure you know what you're doing here - don't screw up these filings or have unaccounted-for money or anything. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:Unless I wanted to run as an independent/green or something? How does that work? If you're running as an actual Green, it's the same process of working within the Party to get their endorsement, but on a smaller scale (since there's a lot fewer of them). If you're filing as a real independent with no party, it's probably just a ballot access petition and possibly a filing fee. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:Does the DNC care about city council stuff? The DNC does not (unless it's like NYC/LA and they're grooming a Congressman or it's somebody's cousin or something), but the local party will. I guarantee you that there are people in the local party who spent the last 5-10 years dealmaking/backstabbing their way into having some influence in the local party, because that's the particular sandbox they've decided they want to play House Of Cards Jr. in, and they'll care a great deal. How much influence they have will vary. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:I have not discussed my intentions with local parties or political individuals. So far several of my employers and a few of my professors know my intentions. For several reasons, I thought it more prudent to initially consult people outside of the political sphere. It is good to hear reinforcement of how important political networking is. Don't like open a conversation within the Party with "I want to run for City Council next year". Hold your cards close to the chest until you're "in". JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:This will take research but should also be fun. I like numbers, accounting, and systems analysis. Would the strategy be to attend many town meetings for awhile and gauge hot points from there? Go to city council meetings, see what's on the agenda. See what folks are bitching about. Read the local paper (you're a top-20 city, there's got to be some local coverage). Ask the folks who are bitching what they're bitching about and how they think it should be fixed and what the city council is doing (you may not like their solution but at least you'll learn something). This is a hard problem at the local level and isn't one I've fully solved. Usual hotspots are things like Education (are the schools perceived as underfunded, is there a scandal/mismanagement, redistricting/boundary fights (these get really loving nasty sometimes)), Transportation (are they behind on fixing potholes, what parts of the local roads are always jammed, are they aggressively pursuing federal/state money, some really dumb project), Taxes (...), Zoning (they want to put a WHAT in OUR backyard, the zoning policy is resulting in too little growth, the zoning policy is resulting in too much growth), Ethics (...), Emergency Management (see Olaloaf's posts earlier in the thread, also police/fire response time, cops not cracking down on XYZ enough), Public Utilities (trash not getting picked up on time, water bills going up by a lot) and so forth. That's not an exhaustive list and you're not going to see every single one of these in your city but it's a good list of stuff people might bitch about. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:Edit: Oh yeah I should mention my city is top 20 in U.S. population. That probably matters. Yes, it matters a great deal. City Council of Spartanburg, SC is one thing, and City Council of Houston is another. Like each City Council District in Houston is like 5 times the size of Spartanburg and the same size as a State Senate seat in other states.
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Dec 30, 2014 05:37
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:Insightful information, thank you Jackson Taus. I don't necessarily have all the answers unfortunately, and I'm not a pro at this. Additionally, things can vary wildly locality to locality in terms of what the power structure is. It's possible that your local Congressman or Senator has a tight Harry Reid-esque political machine and that's where you need to focus your efforts or who you want to suck up to. There is also no one single right path to this sort of stuff. Running a successful small business in your Ward/District and having only affiliate Party involvement (show up at meetings, drop a few hundred a year on a few fundraisers) could be a successful path - "prominent local Real Estate agent/lawyer who happens to be a Dem" isn't necessarily a dream candidate but you'd have some name recognition and a pre-existing base of folks in the community who might endorse you or give you money. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:What is "in"? I don't think there's a definition per se, but I think you don't want to be perceived as "I'm just here because I want to be on City Council" and instead more "I'm here, I've been here a year or two, and there's an open City Council seat, do you think I'd be a decent candidate?" If you're a hard-charging ambitious young man, you risk just by that demographic alienating old-timers if you are seen as "bucking the system" instead of working within the system. I'm not saying lie to someone's face or anything, but there's a difference between saying "Yeah, I'd like to maybe run for something someday if an opportunity arose" and "Hi I'm JD this is my first City Democrats meeting I want to run for City Council". JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:My current s.o.p. is just be friendly and useful, and tell the truth; I want to help the party help my community however I am able. In my experience this sort of attitude can get you noticed especially if you're competent. In addition to putting in the grunt-work on voter contact, take on small leadership roles - I ran data trainings one year and organized voter registration at a few places in a different year, for instance. Coordinating the booth at a high-traffic fair or something, helping set up and/or plan a fundraiser, really anything that stands out a little beyond the run of the mill stuff. Folks will notice they're hearing your name more and more. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:Will they eventually they suggest I run? Is that assertive enough? Depends on locality. In a small purplish town in my part of my state, they had two incumbents running in a top-three election for Town Council, and would've recruited to round out the ballot (and that dude might well have won if he/she was good). But then on the other side of the state you've got City Council/Supervisor races where folks are lining up two years in advance for the primary because the seat is perceived as safe and desirable. In your circumstance (solid blue and very large city) it's highly unlikely you'd be recruited barring some special circumstance (a self-financing war veteran, for instance). But if there are open or contestable seats coming up, you could test the waters by bouncing "I'd like to run for something someday" around folks you trust and seeing if they respond with "well what about City Council?". Be willing to (a) accept the possibility that stuff may not go your way and (b) exploit other opportunities if they come along. If folks you trust are saying not to get into a race or if the opportunities for City Council aren't there, be willing to look at School Board (if it's elected) or state legislature or something - don't pass up a shot at a purple or even purple-red State House race in order to challenge a popular Dem incumbent for City Council. If your City Council is 100% at-large, great. If it's district-based, you may want to plan where you live based on that. Ideally you want a seat where the incumbent is going to retire in a term or two, or a seat with a Republican who won only narrowly last time - you're unlikely to win a primary against a Dem incumbent who has been building relationships for years unless he/she has done something really bad, and you don't want to run in a deep-red district you'd get crushed in. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:If I wanted to become Governor, would your advice change? It would scale up dramatically - instead of an appointed city commission you'd want some sort of local/state elected office or a lot of other public experience (or be a CEO or something). Instead of informing yourself by going to City Council meetings and talking to the guys bitching there, you'd follow state legislature sessions and talk to the lobbyists/staffers to get the scoop. Instead of working with and impressing other City Councillors or local party folks, you'd be working with and impressing state party and state legislature folks. You'd also need a huge fundraising network and probably other stuff, and it'd take 15-25 years, but the basic premise of getting a jump on a primary by working within the Party and getting endorsements from other elected officials and building relationships with other stakeholders while working on vital issues would remain. I am, however, nowhere near qualified to advise/manage someone's Governorship race unless it's like American Samoa or something where it's the size of a Town Council race. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 07:44
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Slaan posted:The presidential race is coming up next year and so is the Tea Party 2010 wave senate elections. I'm guessing that getting in with a party now is probably a good idea to build up trust to get a good position on high profile campaigns? Concerned Citizen posted:If you're looking to start in politics, you'll likely be starting from the bottom unless you have significant wok experience. Can you get a job this year? If you can travel to one of the states holding state legislative or gubernatorial elections (or find a local-level election) and get a job, that's the best way to position yourself. It's possible to parlay volunteer work into starting out higher on the campaign ladder, but it would require several years of very dedicated work - if you can work for a campaign this year, that'll pay-off far faster.
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Feb 26, 2015 22:44
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Love Stole the Day posted:I remember reading in newsweek years ago that the Obama campaign did a study and found that spamming people gained more supporters than it lost. That's why they send so many emails so frequently. On the activist/local level, there was a lot of negative response to the DCCC's email campaign last year, but that's sort of an extreme case.
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Mar 20, 2015 18:14
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