Campaigns
This is a political story – but we’re not discussing the United States of House of Representatives. This is all about local politics; really, really local. That’s where I started my nascent career as a politician in the early 1970’s; trying to elect a local judge, then a state representative. I quickly expanded: first Congressional elections, then I even served on the state staff for a Presidential campaign. But, by the time I was twenty-five, my career in politics was over. I found something even more compelling to do: teaching and coaching.
Since then, I’ve helped plan and execute dozens of local campaigns; mostly school board and school levy efforts. I can take some credit for the new high school I now substitute in, and for some of the folks on the Board running that school. And I still do the “street work”; knocking on doors for Obama, and Clinton, and making my front yard a “blue spot” in a very, very “red” world here in Pataskala. When my first Biden sign was destroyed, my second “armored” sign was up the next day.
Old Tricks
But, like everything else, campaigning has changed in the last half-century. The formula for local issues was always pretty simple:
- Get the candidate out to local events
- Knock on doors in the community, with the candidate or others
- Do interviews and buy advertising in the local newspaper
- Either mail everyone, or put literature on everyone’s door
- Call local voters on the phone
- SIGNS – SIGNS – SIGNS – SIGNS
- Call back all those that you KNOW support you to get them out to vote.
And a lot of those still works. What doesn’t? Newspapers – in this area, it just doesn’t matter. The local newspaper was bought out by the national giant (Gannett), and no longer is relevant to the community. And mail – we all get so much junk mail, it’s tough to justify the high cost of a couple of thousand-dollar mailers with an 80% throw-out rate. Email is just slightly more effective – but not much.
And calls – everyone (me too!!) screens their calls. The “call lists” of old are useless: few houses even have “land lines” anymore. What used to be a phone book with everyone’s number, now has more ads than useful phone contacts. Phone campaigns today are friends calling friends, trying to create a “web” of connected voters, to get through the screen. Or text lists, they definitely get through the screen. I got a text from National Democratic Campaigner James Carville – it started “WAKE THE ‘F%#K’ UP”. That got my attention.
But it’s hard to get a “massive” list of contacts. And it still doesn’t have the out-reach of those old “phone banks” in the back room of the Carter/Mondale office in downtown Cincinnati, with five little old ladies and sixteen high school kids, calling for “Jimmy”.
Where is my Community?
So where can a campaign find the “community” gathered together; where is the general access to the voting public? The answer is simple — on the internet, on social media. We won’t answer the stranger on the phone, but we sure do read their post on Facebook, or Instagram, or even on “X” (the site formerly known as Twitter). While we used to read the paper in the morning, we now scroll through “all the news that’s fit to print” on the little screen of our phone. Sure, we read about the dysfunctional Congress and the twinned agonies of Israel and Gaza, but just as importantly (?), we see about the lost and found dogs, the intolerable neighbors, the giant pothole on Main street, and the latest teenage Tik-Tok idiocy.
Obviously, there’s contact through social media. There’s a reason why half of the richest persons in the United States made their money in the internet, computers, and social media applications. And as a local politician running for office, social media offers the cheapest and most direct out-reach to the community. Sure, you can stick up your nose at Facebook, but there’s still a lot of people reading (or watching) it. Social media represents the old “phone book” of the 1970’s. Most everyone is there – you just have to catch their attention.
New Tricks
Politics is serious. When the old tactics don’t work, the old “pols” have to change, or become irrelevant. So there’s a terrific guy running for local office in a nearby community. A friend put him in contact with me, and after some discussion, I’ve tried to help his campaign. But I’m not much good if I can’t function in the “modern” world of social media; even though that’s not the kind of “old school” campaigning I excelled in.
So if you’ve missed my essays for the past couple of days, it’s because I’ve been buried on my keyboard, trying to create social media “spots” to plug into local “community” sites. The last time I was making “movies” like this, was back in the early 2000’s, working on a one of those big, red, plastic “I-Macs”, the kind that looked like a giant, misshaped egg on the desk. Sure I served a “nine-weeks” sentence of online Covid schooling, putting together video lectures that a few of my history students actually watched, but this kind of editing, cutting, highlighting and fading in and out is new to me, at least in the last two decades.
So I’ve been refreshing my skills. It takes about two hours to generate a sixty-second “spot”, maybe more. It’s been fun, and frustrating, and all-consuming. When I wasn’t on the screen, my brain was still trying to figure out the “next move”. And, of course, I “lost” (erased) some of the raw data, that I had to go back and “find”.
I’m almost done. I think the social media “spots” will be helpful, and hopefully the candidate gests elected. His community really needs his kind of common sense. And there’s more to do. I hope we get back to some “old school” stuff.
Let’s put up some “illegal” signs. I’ve been doing that for fifty years!!!
