Blog

Campaigns & Elections magazine this month features some sage advice for candidates who want to win and actually make a difference, from professional political consultant and pollster Tyler Harber, partner at the Prosper Group.

Click here to read it for yourself.  He says, in part:

Rookie candidates often have a campaign in mind that is unrealistic, ineffective and more like a mom-and-pop operation than the polished, professionally run organizations that bring the most success. More often than not, it’s a campaign that just can’t win.

For these starry-eyed candidates, campaigns are built on speeches to local civic groups and walking parade routes with county party volunteers. They believe superior policies and passion about “fixing the country” are enough to attract the support needed win an election…

…Now, more than ever, campaigns have to fight to be heard over thousands of other distractions brought to voters by the 24-hour news cycle, social media, cellphones and the Internet.

The modern political environment has rendered idealistic, first-time candidates the longest of long-shots to win. The ideas of the Mr. Smith-type candidate may be superior and he may even be better qualified. Voters, however, are only responding to what is being repeatedly pushed in front of their faces.

Even if this earnest politico attends every Republican, Tea Party or civic club meeting across the district, he will only be able to reach a small fraction of the voters who will ultimately decide who is victorious in November. These candidates expend valuable time traveling the district and making hundreds of five-minute speeches to earn a single-digit vote percentage on Election Day.

Time spent on the road means Mr. Smith has virtually no money in the campaign coffers because it is rare that candidates can make effective fundraising calls from the road. Moreover, most of these candidates find excuses to avoid making money calls because it doesn’t fit into their view of how the campaign should operate. In their minds, the money, support and votes will flow through the doors at campaign headquarters if they make enough speeches...(Emphasis added)

And Harber is right.  Dead right.

Elections are not debate contests or battles of ideas.

People don’t vote for the guy who best explains Austrian economics and how they apply to the Springfield School Board.

Elections are exercises in political organizing.

Whoever calculates the number of votes needed to win the race, identifies those voters, organizes them and mobilizes them to vote, wins.

That means, especially at the local level, spending weekdays on the phones raising money and spending your evenings and weekends knocking on the doors of registered, active voters, marking down which ones say they’ll vote for you and making sure they cast their ballots.

People vote for the guy who comes to their door, agrees with them on the issues they care about and makes sure they cast their ballot — not the guy with the most impressive white paper or who thinks he can “educate” them.

With jobs, retirement accounts, home ownership and our freedoms withering away the stakes are too high to run ineffective campaigns.

We need Libertarians who can win.

The Libertarian National Campaign Committee is all about getting the necessary resources to principled Libertarans who can win.

Support us today.

Libertarians can’t win unless you take action.

Click here to chip in $10 or more to push Libertarians over the finish line.

Click here to volunteer.

Click here to sign up for free updates from our Campaign for Freedom online newsletter.

And click here to sign up to run for office.

Being right isn’t enough to win and take back our freedoms.

If it were Libertarians would win every time.

Winning means out-organizing, out-raising and out-working the other guys.

Help the LNCC push winnable Libertarians over the finish line.

Tweet or share this by clicking below.