Guerilla campaigning -- let's share strategies

[Liberty Belle]

I'm working on a state legislative campaign in a district that is geographically vast and overwhelmingly Republican. Our shoestring budget and out-of-the-box thinking have resulted in some creative strategies that are now snowballing in momentum. No doubt many of you have had similar experiences.

I propose we pool our ideas and come up with some tactics to achieve stealth victories in areas where the GOP thinks it will have a cakewalk.

In my case, I actually recruited the candidate to run for office. So this all started with just two people determined to make changes. I found a strong candidate who heads a local charity, has been a teacher of the year and a labor leader. We're positioning him as someone who has spent his life helping people -- running against a guy who pockets special interest money and votes only for corporate interests. Our slogan is real solutions for real problems.

We commissioned a poll. It showed our opponent has only a 2% name recognition - and half of those folks think the incumbent is doing a poor job.
It also showed the voters agree with our candidate's stand on the issues, and that only a third actually consider themselves conservatives -- includng many Republicans. These facts are helping us raise funds in what might otherwise be viewed as a hopeless district.

We prepared a professional-looking "Gameplan for victory" business plan. We got professionals in various fields (PR, media production) to help by allowing use of their name as "consultants" for fundraising purposes.
We've now even got a Hollywood fundraiser lined up! We also brought in a top precinct organizer who helped Howard Dean in Iowa.

We've also worked up a side-by-side "report card" comparing both candidates on qualifications (our opponent's only other job was as a lobbyist) education (PhD vs college dropout), funding (individual contributors vs. big special interests) and issues, listing our opponents astoundingly dismal ratings from independent organizations (0% on environment, 4% on protecting interests of working people, 0% on women's issues, and a failing record on protecting his constitutents from wildfire).

We're doing editor roundtables around our district so our candidate can ask the editors about issues of importance to their readers (and vice versa).
We've held press conferences and developed a "strike team" to respond swiftly to breaking news events.

Best of all, we now have an army of interns from local colleges. Wow! For example, today we assigned interns to :

- conduct research for a new poll
- help design an e-mail web broadcast to reach voters, supporters and donors
- research media outlets in outlying towns
- drive into small towns in remote mountain and desert communities, put up yard signs, and call frequent voter Dems there to ask if they'd help by distributing bumper stickers and flyers to friends and neighbors
- assist at upcoming fundraising events

Our interns are terrific. One is a deejay who offered to provide music and sound for future events. Another lives in a town that was burned in a recent fire. After hearing that our opponent shafted wildfire victims while our candidate raised money to help them, she offered to organize a meet-and-greet with fire survivors. Yet another is eager to help organize precinct walks. Some will be doing phonebanking. Others have writing skills. One gorgeous and vivacious intern who could be a body double on "Baywatch" will be in charge of representing us at high-roller events frequented by millionaires.
;-)

I'd love to hear your ideas for winning campaigns in your area.

Meanwhile, anyone interested in backing a winner (and getting rid of one of the most extremist bigots and chauvinists in the California legislature) please e-mail me privately for details on how you can help!

[rockymountaindem]

1. While this is all great

I don't think this is what one would call "guerilla campaigning". This sounds more like a well-run, regular 'ol campaign, which is something to be proud of. I wish you all the best!

BTW, what's the campaign for?

[Liberty Belle]

2. State Senate seat in CA's 36th

We were flying by the seat of our pants for a long time, before finally sending out enough feelers to locate some top-notch people who believe in our candidate and are donating their professional expertise.

The interns are helping a lot. Getting interns from colleges sounds like such a simple idea, yet no other candidate locally had thought to do it. So I thought I'd share to help overworked campaign staffers elsewhere.

Another idea someone had is to get stickers for hard-hats that construction workers wear, since our candidate is pro-unions.

[conscious evolution]

3. My tactic

I am a construction worker in Georgia and one thing I always do is carry a sharpie at all times for tagging anti-bush messages and progressive messages in every porta-jon on a job-site.The dialog these start is amazing.The Puke responses are always outnumbered and are thrashed soundly.

[Liberty Belle]

4. Good one!

A friend of mine rolls down his window whenever he passes a car supporting Bush. He'll start chuckling and say, "Hey, somebody stuck a "W" sticker on your bumper. Just figured you'd want to know so you could pull it off - nobody supports him anymore!"