I am running for City Council in Mountain View, CA. These have been my stories.
I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last diary. I will post this and probably only two more: the results, and the final diary being my observations of the whole experience. I’ll even include “key learnings” that might help future candidates prepare for a run of their own.
I’ll start off with the big news: I did in fact earn the endorsement of my local paper. In fact, there are two local papers and I was endorsed by both. To me, that is probably the biggest endorsement as most people see it. I have been endorsed by a very large and diverse swath of Mountain View leaders. You can see them on my campaign website here.
For me, this campaign has been all about walking and meeting people. In Mountain View, there are 9 candidates running for 3 open seats. No incumbents. I knew that we’d have many community forums (our word for “debates”) – in fact we had nine, but that isn’t where I’d meet the largest amount of people. Mountain View is a not a large town (population around 76,000, 12.2 square miles), but it’s daunting to try and walk it all yourself. I did. Well most of it.
Most candidates will have teams of people walking on their behalf. That is, people will assemble for a pep talk and get assigned an area. They’ll blanket the area with door hangers and move on. If you have an ambitious group of volunteers, they’ll knock on doors for you, but the efficacy of converting those greetings into votes is dampened by the fact that you are a representative, not the candidate. I walked alone and thus was able to say “I’m the candidate” which began many conversations. But because I had a large amount of supporters chomping at the bit to volunteer for a day of walking, I did one of these walk-day events, too. Since I had already hit most precincts and canvassed “likely voters”, I had my volunteers blanket the unlikely voters. They only distributed the door hangers. No actual conversations unless they came upon a resident. Having said that, it took me nearly 3.5 months to walk most precincts and knock on most doors [note: I only targeted houses that voted in 4 of the past 5 elections or only in the last election figuring they were new to town]. There were approximately 11,300 names on my list representing about 4,520 homes. Many of these ‘homes’ were actually apartment complexes or other areas that were completely impractical or impossible to access.
In the end, I walked 206 miles (I kept a pedometer in my pocket that measured stride. This is the equivalent distance from the front door of my house to the valley floor at Yosemite!), I knocked on 3,886 doors and spoke with 1,573 people, a 40% hit rate. My goal was 33%, so I exceeded that by a large margin. The key, for anyone out there planning such a task in the future, is to walk when people are home. Unfortunately, the window for that is different at each house and the primary window is so short that if you only walked during that time frame, you’d never complete the task. I ended up losing about 6 pounds and am in phenomenal shape! Walking a precinct is physically hard because you’re up and down, and climbing stairs and starting and stopping, etc. It’s not a straight line! In the past, this technique has worked well for winning candidates.
Independent Expenditures
This is likely a topic many Kos readers might find interesting. According to filings at our city website, there has been $46,728 spent on my behalf from outside interest groups. These are called Independent Expenditures and is 100% not coordinated with my campaign. In contrast, I will spend about $22,500, which is near the spending limit for Mountain View. One of the organizations that did a mailer on my behalf was an organization who endorsed me. Although it’s odd to receive a mailer with my face on it that I didn’t create, I wasn’t totally surprised because as I said, I was endorsed by this group. But a second group is also doing “IEs” in Mountain View for myself and two other candidates. So far, they have done two elaborate mailings for me (individually) and two that included myself and the other two candidates as a slate mailer (they also did one each for the other two). The problem that I’m having is that I don’t know who they are or why they are supporting me! This highlights our ridiculous campaign finance laws and shows how it can affect local races. I don’t like it. Clearly residents have started to notice and I’m likely losing a few votes over it (probably gaining a few more) because it has the appearance that I’m in cahoots with some group. But I really don’t know who is sending it. People have tried to figure it out and it’s just a cloudy mess. You can read my published response below my signature. Yes, people keep asking me about it!
I’ll leave it here. The race will be over in under two weeks. I then hop on a plane and decompress with some alone time with my wife in Hawaii. Ah, my wife the poor woman. I am the only candidate running with kids at home (15 and 13) and she has really stepped in to occupy the vacuum I created by not being there for the family. As I say frequently, nobody wins a campaign by themself and it takes all kinds of different efforts to successfully cross the finish line. Win or lose, this has been quite the experience.
Next diary: The results.
Website: www.mountainviewken.com
Donations:CLICK HERE!
Facebook: Ken Rosenberg for Mountain View City Council
Twitter: MountainViewKen
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Response to Independent Expenditures
As you are likely aware, local candidates are sometimes opposed or assisted by outside forces known as independent expenditures. These efforts operate outside the campaigns that are run by us, the candidates. We have absolutely no control over their actions. In fact, they are legally required to operate independently. These expenditures do not go to the candidate. No money changed hands. No coordination took place.
I was completely surprised to see my face looking back at me when I picked up my mail two weeks ago. My campaign has put out two mailings looking nothing like what you saw from NEC. I too looked into that group and couldn't make heads or tails of it. It is very frustrating to lose control of one's campaign because of the action of some other group, that you didn't have a chance to reject or approve the material or have any input in whatsoever. And no...I do not know who was behind it. I had no interaction, ever, with that organization. And neither did Ellen or Pat. People can make up their minds as for whom to vote based on any reason at all. To choose this reason, however, is unfortunate. As I said, the mailers and the content of the mailers are not done with any knowledge or control of the candidate. I have principled positions with respect to my personal views, opinions, and issues I support. They all remain intact. No amount of outside funding will change that.
Thus far all the mailers I've seen (both on my behalf and on behalf of other candidates) have been positive and civil. As I have no control over these expenditures or their content since I cannot legally coordinate or even talk with these with groups, I can only hope to influence them by making a public appeal.
I publicly urge all independent expenditure committees spending money in Mountain View whether they are supporting me or other candidates, to produce materials that are fact-based, honest, respectful, and positive.
I'm running my campaign in this fashion, as I pride myself and our city on being civil, inclusive, and collaborative. For the sake of all candidates and the City of Mountain View, I hope the independent expenditure groups will do the same.