For those of you who think that being on the campaign trail is all speaking engagements and fancy fundraising parties with the political intelligentsia, be warned. This diary is about the reality and tedium involved in building a viable campaign strategy and the intense frustration that, I’m sure, many new candidates are facing. With tongue firmly planted in cheek I shall continue.
“Call time” is the cute term that campaign staff and political operatives likes to use when referring to the process of a candidate sitting down for hours and making literally hundreds of phone calls to potential donors and asking them to contribute to their campaign. It is written in the original books and scriptures passed down from the founding fathers that this is the only way to raise money in politics and that should any of us running for office question this edict from the political gods we shall be smitten and purged from the category of “serious candidate”.
Any time a candidate and a political operative of any sort meet for any reason the first question that is asked of the candidate is, and forevermore will be, “How is call time going?” And the universal answer from every candidate throughout history is and forevermore will be, UUHHHGGGG!!!
Being someone who is trying very hard to be considered a serious candidate I have resolved myself to follow the conventional wisdom and sit down every single day and make dozens of calls to people and ask them for money. What could go wrong? I have hundreds of contacts and I know thousands of people who are like minded and just like me are super interested in making a change based on shared political ideals and values. I am a gregarious and open communicator. I love talking to the people. This will be great. Lets start calling people.
Again as a neophyte I am going to stick with the guidance of the revered candidates and operatives that have come before me and build a call list of my personal friends and people who are most likely to be willing to help me. We now have a staff who is focused on doing critical research into donation history and light background information to facilitate conversations. We organize everything! My staff then presents me with a cool burner phone and a nifty dialer program with all the names and research loaded into it and 500 sheets of paper each representing an individual, their history and all their contact information. I have a brief script highlighting why our campaign is a good investment that includes a hard ask for $250, and we are ready to make it happen. This can’t fail!
Then the reality sets in. My network is made up of hard working people with families. They want to help but they don’t have $250 in disposable income. They give what they can and I am humbled. Many of the people who are in my extended network are in the same boat. I am reaching out to the people who I want to advocate for and they serve as a stark reminder to me that their voices have not been heard because they probably don’t land on the call sheets of savy politicians who are making these calls. They have been forgotten because they are not able to make large contributions to a campaign. All the while I am torn by the reality that I need to raise money to run a successful campaign and in order to do that I may have to consider not calling the very people that I am committed to help.
As an optimist It has been my goal to transcend the typical answer to the typical question from operatives. As an ethical person I find it antithetical to democracy to focus on reaching out only to those who are able to contribute financially. I will continue to spend time speaking with folks in my network and I will continue to enrage my staff with my insistence that those people be included in my call sheets. They will say that I am being inefficient and I will be forced to answer the next operative that I meet with UUHHHGGGG!!!
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