How to Raise Money for Political Office: The Original Guide to Winning Elections Through Aggressive, Organized Fundraising

By Brandon Lewis

How to Raise Money for Political Office will teach you how to gain a significant financial advantage over your opponent by letting you in on the secrets most paid political consultants don’t want you to know. Developing a campaign narrative, budgeting, prospecting for donors, building a finance committee, and organizing your campaign office are all crucial to your success. Learn how to build a war chest with outstanding events, compelling letters, and engaging online fundraising. It’s all inside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781105581588

Book preview

Part I

Your Fundraising Basics

Chapter One

The Importance of Fundraising

To win today you have to be organized, focused, and disciplined in your approach. You must identify your voters, hone your message, and then use every tool and medium at your disposal to communicate your message to the voters.

Unlike fifty, thirty, or even ten years ago, today there are torrents of distractions running in and out of our consciousness. The attention span of the average American is dwindling day-by-day. We receive more and more communication from sources and mediums that are changing and multiplying constantly.

Text messages and tweets have taken the place of the handwritten letter. Newspapers, books, magazines, and the evening news have taken a back seat to the Internet, talk radio, and late-night shows as a news sources. The stump speech has moved from the stump to webpage, the Facebook profile, and the blogosphere. In short, communication platforms and the messages sent from them have multiplied, amplified, and globalized.

What’s worse for political candidates (at least the knowledgeable, well-meaning ones) is that the quantity of communication is up, but the quality and depth of that communication is greatly reduced. While more voters, now more than ever, may have a political opinion, fewer of them can intellectually define why they hold that opinion. Sound bites, succinct messages, and slogans rule the day.

When you are trying to reach a voter and rise to the top of their consciousness for a particular office, you are competing for precious mental real estate. You have to carve out a place in their mind amid their work, family, and leisure concerns. You may not want to believe it, but the average American likely puts more thought into what they had for lunch on any given day than whom they voted for in the last election. This last statement may be reaching, especially concerning national elections where the media is abuzz with election year ratings drives, and maybe even statewide elections to a lesser degree. But for your state house, state senate, county commission, and city council races, a voter may mill over their choices for four to ten seconds at the ballot box.

And just in case you were wondering, the days of a few powerful politicos picking a candidate in a backroom deal are all but gone. Showing up at your local civic organizations, participating in a debate or two, kissing a few babies, and then waving a sign by the polling place on election day won’t cut it on election night if you want to rest assured of victory, or at least feel like you gave it your best shot.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a grassroots candidate annihilated by a well-funded and organized candidate who had zero support from the establishment or their local political party. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s best to have both. But if I had to choose, I’d pick lots of money and a deliberate strategy every time.

Maybe you’re wondering how you can overcome these challenges. Here’s the simplest way I can put it: When a voter goes to the ballot box on election day, somewhere in the recesses of his mind you have to have made a favorable impression that results in the following internal dialogue, Yeah, I’ve heard of Bill Johnson. I like that guy. I’ll vote for him.

How do you do this? You reach them through TV, radio, direct mail, print publications, earned media, websites, blogs, social networking sites, canvassing, events, phone banking, robo-dialing, polls, signs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, vehicle wraps, billboards, promotional items, and the list goes on and on. This book is not devoted to comparing and contrasting the efficacy or appropriateness of the aforementioned methods of reaching your voters, but rest assured, it ain’t a cheap undertaking if done correctly.

To sum up: It costs money. Often it costs lots and lots of money. You simply can’t run an effective campaign on a shoestring budget.

And it is almost always the part of campaigning that the candidate likes the least. Why? It’s uncomfortable. No one likes asking for money—almost. Worse yet, it’s a telling, obvious, measurable sign of the campaign’s successes or failures. Many candidates shrink from the concrete and prefer to play in the arena of abstractions and strategy.

There’s little that’s certain during the course of a campaign, but you can’t fake the results of a filing deadline, at least not legally. When you run for office you only get a political report card twice: Once in the primary election, and hopefully one in the general election. But you will get several public finance report cards throughout your campaign. In the earliest stages of a campaign, your fundraising efforts are usually the only concrete and measurable results you can point to as a barometer of your success. I don’t know anything that is better at deterring other candidates from entering a race than a healthy finance filing. Moreover, it can help bring opinion leaders and other helpful individuals over to your side earlier, and often helps garner positive reports from earned media outlets. Without a doubt, a large cash on hand number relative to your competitors builds tremendous momentum. For months, and maybe even years, the only thing substantive the press will be able to talk about, along with political insiders, will be your filings. So make sure they are good ones.

If you’ve studied political strategy, particularly as it relates to media campaigns waged in the mailbox, on the TV, and on the radio—the items to which the lion’s share of your campaign contributions will ultimately go—you know they are expensive. Also, they look to achieve two fundamental goals: 1) They build your name recognition and the positives associated with you as a person and your campaign, and 2) They create negatives about your opponent as a person, about their campaign, and/or about their ability to govern. Essentially you want the voters to like you and dislike him. If you have more money than the other guy, let’s say you outraised him two to one, then you can begin your campaign advertising 50 percent earlier than he can. And because most campaigns must save the majority of their funds until right before election time in order to get the most utility for their expenditure, he will not want to spend his resources until he is near Election Day.

As a result, you get months or several weeks of running your message on TV, radio, and in the mailbox without a substantial response from your opponent, because he simply can’t afford to do so. Because your messages are running without interference from your competition, you get time to build your positives and let voters get to know you without sharing the spotlight or having to answer negative advertising messages. So your positives build and build in a vacuum.

Finally, and I’ve seen this pattern repeated time and time again because it’s the only option open to the under-funded campaign’s play book, your opponent will come out with a short period of positive ads about their campaign and then shift to negative ads about your campaign. At this point, you’ve built up a surplus of positive impressions. Now you can continue your positive campaign and run ads answering your opponent’s ads or run contrast (negative) ads of your own. In the end, because of your financial advantage and your early start, you can run your ads earlier and run three ads to your opponents two, ensuring you are leading the race when Election Day comes.

This advantage of superior funding holds true in all areas where communicating your message costs money. The above example about mass media is simply the best illustration of how funding can make a difference, because it will have the largest impact on your race and has been validated by poll numbers and tracking throughout races time and time again. Not to beat a dead horse, but fundraising is crucial to your success.

I remember one time I had an early breakfast meeting with a candidate for a local office, and we were discussing the various aspects of his campaign. As it is often my habit to do, I asked, So, how’s your fundraising going? He replied in a manner not atypical of most political candidates by saying, You know, Brandon, I really don’t like fundraising. I don’t like asking people for money. At this point I looked over at him and said, Well, John, how do you like losing? He was taken aback, and maybe was even a little offended. He stammered for a little while and changed the subject.

As it turns out, John really did dislike losing less than fundraising, because that’s exactly what he did. The worst part about it was that he was infinitely more qualified for the position, but his finances were meager because of his lack of effort. Even if your story is better than the next guy, it’s hard to ignore the next guy when you hear his story five times more often.

Let’s take a moment to recap. Fundraising is important because your race is but a small item competing for the attention of voters, gaining the attention of voters costs money, and a strong financial standing builds momentum for your campaign.

Chapter Two

How Much Is Enough?

One of the questions candidates most often ask pertains to the amount of money that should be raised. I often hear people make statements like, It will take $100,000 to win this race or You can win this race with $5,000. Usually well-meaning but misinformed politicos make these statements. Even people well versed in public relations, advertising, and other seemingly related fields can miss the mark on this question.

To arrive at the number needed to win an election, or at least make the best possible attempt, you must consider a few key questions:

What are you trying to accomplish?

This may appear to be an innocuous question, but it is fraught with complications. You need to ask yourself: How many voter contacts through what mediums do I need to raise my name ID, build on my message, expose my opponent’s weaknesses, and so forth? Will I use direct mail, radio, TV, Internet, door-to-door campaigning, etc.? (Likely the answer is all of the above.)What are my fixed costs for rent, utilities, web hosting, consultants, staff, and other services? How many voters in the entire voter universe should I target and which ones should I ignore with direct efforts? For these answers, you likely need to turn to your consultant, campaign manager, or simply make an educated guess based on the best possible information.

Voter contact should be the biggest consideration in setting your campaign budget. Essentially, every move you make in a campaign is centered on one goal: How do I get more people pulling a lever for me in the voting booth rather than the other guy? A number of immeasurable items lead to this action, like your message, personality, presentation of your platform, and public relations, but the main thrust should be focused on voter contact. You want the majority of your dollars to be directed at communicating your message to your targeted voters. In order to get your point across you might ask yourself the following question: In order to make more voter contact than my competitor with potential voters, how many times do I need to …

Knock on their door

Call their phone

E-mail them

Show them a TV, radio, or published ad

Show them a yard sign, 4’ x 8’ sign, or billboard

Speak to them in a group setting

Send them a direct mail piece

Many campaigns spend in overhead and staff what should be spent on direct voter contact. Make sure your campaign does not make this mistake.

Do not fall into the trap of simply going on assumptions based on past performance of individuals that have held or attempted to hold your office. Every candidate faces a unique set of circumstances. Establish goals based on winning, and then determine the amount of resources you will need to accomplish those objectives. Start by looking at Election Day and working your way backward, determining how much money you will need to raise, when you will need to raise it, and how much cash on hand you will have to preserve.

Take the time to review Document # 1: Sample Campaign Budget.

With that having been said, the following item will strike you as contradictory …

Review what has been raised in the past for the seat you are looking to fill.

If for nothing else but the sake of reference, look at the numbers raised in previous campaigns. Because campaign contributions and filings are most often easily accessible and public knowledge, it should be simple to obtain this information. These numbers can show stellar performers, losers, and candidates in between. By studying this data, you can determine what was paid to consultants, what was used in media buys, and who contributed to those candidates in the past. The latter point is a double-edged sword that we will address in more detail later in this book.

Looking at past performance can give you a gauge, although not a comprehensive one, on what you can call a respectable showing. As I mentioned before, fundraising can help you accomplish your goals, but it also affects your momentum, deterring opponents, and generally getting supporters to take your campaign seriously.

Consider your competitive environment as it relates to your opponents and other office seekers.

On this point, I’ll tackle the most important element first: How much money is your competition raising? Let’s say your research has pointed toward the sum of $100,000, a million, or $25,000 to accomplish the objectives of your campaign, given the necessary voter contact and fixed expenses. However, you find out that your competition has raised the same amount or more during your last filing period. What then?

There are some things you need to think about. Let me give you my personal approach to political fundraising, and you can do what you like. I prefer a scorched earth policy regarding fundraising. If your opponent posts $25,000, you should post $75,000. If he posts $1.2 million, you post $3.6 million. Fundraising is the only area in your campaign where you can create a tangible, measurable, concrete advantage. Maybe you have the best message, the best grassroots organization, or the best strategy. But how can you prove that through indisputable measurement? In short, you can’t until Election Day, and by then it will be too late to change course if the winds of fortune aren’t blowing in your favor. But your bank statement can give you a resounding yes regarding your financial superiority throughout the campaign, and you can use these resources gathered to improve upon or even distract from other elements of your campaign that may be lacking compared to the competition.

If your opponent enjoys certain