John Tsarpalas: There are things that we often see candidates do or they want to do that make myself and my good, dear friend, Paul Miller, laugh and get frustrated. As we were talking over the holidays, Paul said to me, “Let’s do a podcast of all those things that candidates always want to do that drive us nuts.” And I agreed.
Only problem is what do you call this podcast? Paul and I actually talk about that in the beginning of the podcast once we get started. But for lack of a better title, we are going to go with Many Local Candidates Have Delusional Ideas.
My good buddy, Paul Miller, of the Paulie Group, a media consulting firm joins me. By the way, Paul is really rocking it. This guy gets so many things published and printed every month. I think he is up to fifteen million page views on things that he has a hand in per month. Talk about success!
As I said earlier, Many Local Candidates Have Delusional Ideas, Commonwealthy #41.
Today I am talking to my old friend and a person who has been on this podcast now three times.
Paul Miller: Really?
John Tsarpalas: Really. Paul Miller.
Paul Miller: What’s up, buddy?
John Tsarpalas: How are you? Good to see you. You know, this February is going to be our twentieth anniversary
Paul Miller: That’s correct.
John Tsarpalas: We met at the Iowa caucuses helping Steve Forbes for President.
Paul Miller: 1996. We actually didn’t meet at the caucuses. We traveled there together.
John Tsarpalas: That’s right.
Paul Miller: There was a caravan of five of us.
John Tsarpalas: That’s right. We carpooled so to speak all the way to Iowa, to Des Moines
Paul Miller: There were two cars. Thank the Lord that our good friend Bob Costello brought his van because no way you and I were fitting together in a small compact comfortably. Even though you also had your car if I remember- your Oldsmobile.
John Tsarpalas: I had an Oldsmobile?
Paul Miller: An Oldsmobile or a Buick?
John Tsarpalas: No, not in ’96, no.
Paul Miller: Yeah.
John Tsarpalas: No.
Paul Miller: It was. It was like a Delta 88. I think it was your mother’s.
John Tsarpalas: Oh, I had my mother’s car? Yeah, she had an Oldsmobile Delta 88.
Paul Miller: Like an orange almost.
John Tsarpalas: It was gold.
Paul Miller: Gold, yeah. I remember that because it was similar to the car my grandmother had driven ten years earlier
John Tsarpalas: Was it an 88 or a bigger car? Grand Prix.
Paul Miller: It wasn’t a Grand Prix. It was a four door.
John Tsarpalas: What were you driving in those days? A Continental or something?
Paul Miller: In ’96, I had my girlfriend’s, now wife, Plymouth Acclaim. I had that. And, yes, I was driving that –wow- 1990 Lincoln Continental.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, that’s what I remember.
Paul Miller: That boat that reeked of oil because it burned it.
John Tsarpalas: And you had the seat way back and you had that leaning way back. You looked like were pimping or something.
Paul Miller: Yeah, exactly! There was that whole hip-hop thing going on where people were like crouched or us young kids at the time that’s what we were doing because we were cool like that. That’s how we rolled before people rolled.
John Tsarpalas: Well, anyway, we were discussing doing this podcast. We were thinking of having a very relaxed mood. Well, we are in that relaxed mood! We were going to call this “Things Not to Do” or “Mistakes to Avoid” or “Quit Thinking Like That.” We have a whole bunch of titles. We’ll decided on one at some point here.
Paul Miller: I would like to just say make it simply, “If You Do This, You’re An Idiot.”
John Tsarpalas: Oh, I like that!
Paul Miller: I like that. You can deal with the title stuff later. What I think John is referring to is what we are talking about is elections. If you are running for office, there are certain things that you don’t do. Or there are certain things you do during a primary, but you do not do during the general election.
You know, you and I can probably talk hours about this subject. First, let’s just throw some things out there.
John Tsarpalas: Go.
Paul Miller: Alright, so you’ve won the primary. Or like most people, you don’t even have a primary challenge. You are now running in the general election and you’ve got to go pick up votes. Don’t be hanging up with just people who are already voting for you. The meetings and events that you attend, don’t let that only be other GOP events if you are a Republican.
John Tsarpalas: It drives me absolutely crazy to see a candidate in the general election in October before that November election showing up to Republican events.
Paul Miller: Exactly!
John Tsarpalas: You’ve got their vote. If they are not coming out to vote for the Republican ticket… It just makes me insane. What are you doing here? The other thing that drives me insane is the leadership is pressuring them to show up to those dinners.
Paul Miller: Absolutely.
John Tsarpalas: No, you are going to stop in for five minutes, wave, and get the heck out. Get back out where there are voters who are independents who haven’t made up their mind. Get back to knocking doors. Get out there!
Paul Miller: After the primary, you can go around to all of the local organizations and groups and you can say thank you. You can ask for volunteers and support. Go ahead. But from that point on, you’ve got to go find that independent voter. You’ve got to go find that Democrat that could be swayed to you. That is how you are going to win an election.
Hey, listen, if you are already running in a district that is ninety percent Republican, assuming that’s your party, you are going to win by default anyway, so you might as well stay home and start a new hobby. But if you are in a race that can be competitive at all, you need to go get those other votes.
And if you are real underdog, you have to go in assuming that you are going to get the overwhelming percentage of your party vote. You better go find ways to get votes from the opposition. How are you going to get to that fifty percent plus one? That is what you ultimately do.
And of course, we’ve been seeing it for decades now. It’s October and you’ve got somebody who shows up at an event that is his own party. What’s the value of it? Who are you swaying?
Here’s another thing. You are not raising money at these events. If you are going there saying you are searching for money, you are not raising there. You are raising money by making phone calls. You are raising money when you hold an actual fundraiser or do a mailer. But if you think you can go to a general event or another candidate’s event and think you are going to raise money there, you need to put down the crack pipe. That’s what I would tell you.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, there are lots of delusional thoughts going on in a campaign. So let’s back up. In the primary, yes, you are going to all the Republican events and you are asking absolutely everyone there to volunteer for you. And you are figuring out who might be able to write checks for you and asking if you can talk to them again or make appointments or whatever so that you can get money out of them.
But you are doing that early on. You are doing that in the spring or even the winter before the general election, if it is on the regular calendar. If for instance you are running in 2017, you are out doing that kind of stuff now, the winter of 2016 when we are recording this.
Paul Miller: Exactly. This is the early 2016. It is January. Happy New Years if I hadn’t said it already. But back to what we are talking about. In a primary, that’s when you are going to do your recruiting. You are going to start laying the groundwork for your fundraising, if not already raising funds.
Obviously we are talking about if this is not a competitive primary. If it is a competitive primary, then you have to run to get those votes. You have to convince your fellow Republicans to vote for you. And while you are doing that, get them interested in your campaign and your candidacy and get them volunteering for you during the primary and then of course carrying it into the general election.
John Tsarpalas: Get their phone numbers. Get their email. A big myth- do not think that sending them an email is going to motivate them to show up to volunteer for you.
Paul Miller: That’s exactly right.
John Tsarpalas: You have got to call them. You have to talk to people one on one. Perhaps you can text them, but perhaps they won’t respond. Literally, social media doesn’t necessarily motivate people to show up to work for or volunteer for you. You literally have to talk to them and ask them.
And set up a finite ask: “Can you come by Monday night?” or “We are together every Monday night from 7 to 9. Can you make it to this week or perhaps next week?” If they say, “I can’t do it now,” follow up with a call and keep asking. But you’ve got to keep asking.
Paul Miller: Yeah, and you have to make those direct calls because people tend to think that (and this is a big don’t) “I am going to set up a Facebook event and that’s how I am going to invite everyone to my event, phone banking,” or what have you. If you think that that is how you are going to attract people to show up, you are fooling yourself.
First of all, half of the people who say they are attending are marking attending because they are there in spirit. They are not going to show up, but they are there in spirit and they want to know that they are supporting you, even though they have no intention of showing up.
You have to be making phone calls. You need to have a volunteer coordinator that is making those phone calls. That is how you are going to get people to those events. It’s not going to be on social media.
There’s a real myth that you can win elections on social media; that it is so important. It plays a role. Social media plays a role. And I don’t want to hear that President Obama, or then candidate Obama, won because of social media back in 2008. He won because the country had a desire for something different and he was running against an absolutely horrible campaigner in John McCain.
Now did he motivate young people? Sure. But his young people turn out percentages were not that much higher than historical averages. And while locally some of those young people did a very good job in using social media, it wasn’t a game changer.
So while social media is important (don’t get me wrong- it is important), it is not going to win or lose an election for you. Again, what happened in 2008 with President Obama was social media was very helpful. But this whole notion that it won the election for him is not the case in the least.
John Tsarpalas: No. They built a very strong ground game. They had people making sure people turned out to vote. They had identified their voters and they had a Get Out the Vote plan to get those people to polls to vote. Sending them a text isn’t necessarily going to motivate them. Some, but not all.
You literally have to call. There is something about talking to somebody and when somebody commits to somebody in a conversation one on one (not from social media, but with real words) that people tend to honor their words and then follow through.
Alright, let’s talk about something else that I know drives you nuts: parades.
Paul Miller: Oh, my gosh. Parades!
John Tsarpalas: You should see the look on his face!
Paul Miller: So, there is this complete misnomer that, “I need to participate in all of these parades and I need to participate with this huge army of supporters because it’s going to look so great. And it is going to mentally discourage my opponent. And it is going to help us win elections.”
Parades are the greatest waste of time in politics. You can’t tell me I am wrong. I am sorry; you can’t. I have experienced it too much. I have had parades. I have organized parades where I have had these massive armies of people showing up.
What happens? The parade viewer goes, “Oh, look! There’s a lot of people and there’s a guy or gal shaking hands. Must be a candidate.” They say hi. Blah blah blah. And within thirty to forty seconds after your group has left, they have completely forgotten about you.
Sure, maybe you have handed them a sticker and that will stay on their kid’s clothing until the next time they wash it. That’s another time that they might see the name. Great. It’s not going to transform into votes.
If you have noticed (I have noticed this quite a bit around our area in the ‘burbs of Chicago), you have all of these incumbents, these hardcore Democrat incumbents, that basically show up to parades with themselves and three or four other people. It’s like they are doing it just because they want the local community group that sponsoring to get the feel good and that they are helping.
But they are not putting in time to organize. The parade itself might be fun and it might be motivating for your supporters. That’s fine. But the time and effort to orchestrate the parades, put them together, is an absolute waste.
So if you want to go to the parades, fine, on the Fourth of July or what have you. But don’t spend more than a few minutes calling a few folks to show up with you.
John Tsarpalas: Right. You are wasting volunteer time. If you took those ten or fifteen people in this entourage and then knock doors for that hour, at the end you’d have ten people who you knew were voting for you from each person. Ten times ten is a hundred votes that you knew that you could drive to the polls on election day in your Get Out the Vote efforts.
Versus in walking in a parade, they waved and your name looked good. Okay, I am all for walking in a parade, having a nice big banner with your name on it, for you and a couple of other people, and that’s it. Your little name ID is all you are going to get out of it. Don’t waste the rest of the time.
Paul Miller: And very little. “Oh, fifty thousand people! Look at this parade.” That’s fine. Well, guess what? Forty-nine thousand of them are trained to always know where their kids are.
John Tsarpalas: And forty-nine thousand of them saw your opponent five minutes later walking in the parade, too. And no one knows the difference between either one of you.
Paul Miller: Yeah. Whether or not you have more people walking with you than your opponent does is completely moot. It’s absolutely moot.
John Tsarpalas: Right. So please don’t put a lot of effort into parades. Now, events, such as softball leagues and things in the summer are a good place for a candidate to walk around and strike up conversations on the sidelines. Football games, if you are in a small town where that it is popular, soccer fields.
Places where there are a lot of people but you can stop and pause and talk to people and make your one minute elevator pitch to them about why you are running. Hand them a piece of literature. That’s good. Then you are maybe winning and persuading somebody to vote for you.
Those things are worth doing. You don’t go with a lot of volunteers. You go with maybe one who is your wingman so you don’t get tied up too long somewhere. They keep interrupting you and dragging you to the next person. That’s it.
But the problem with that is you might win a vote but you do not walk away knowing who they were and how to get them to the polls. If you go door to door, you then have the address and probably the phone number in your database. You know who you can get to the polls.
Paul Miller: Yeah, that’s where it is identifying the voters who is going to come out for you, whether you know they are supportive, undecided, or strictly not voting for you. That’s what the door knocking and the phone calls is going to do.
It’s always nice for candidates to go out to those big crowded places. I get that. Again, you are striking up conversations. You are saying hi. You are being seen. As I said, you are being seen, you are striking up conversations, and so forth.
You are not going to be able to identify that voter because you are not going to be saying, “Oh, by the way, can you just give me your name and number for my computer?” It isn’t happening. But that is basic campaign stuff that you do. Whether you’ve identified them or not, you want them getting to the polls anyway.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Paul Miller: So hopefully they will do that. And there are some people out there (not a lot but a few) that do feel that if they meet a candidate and they like them personally and that candidate asks for their vote (actually asks for the vote), they will vote for that person regardless of party or even perspective.
John Tsarpalas: That’s true. That’s very true. Alright, let’s talk about something else that I see in naïve candidates. And most new candidates are naïve. That’s assuming that people will help, that people will show up, and, tying into that, that the party will help.
Paul Miller: Yeah! (Laughter!)
John Tsarpalas: Isn’t that the biggest falsehood out there, that there is party infrastructure that is going to help?
Paul Miller: Not just that the party will help me, but that the party has to help me. That it is mandatory because I am the candidate and blah blah blah, the party is going to help me. Guess what? The answer to that is no.
Even if you are like in Illinois, the Cook County Democrat machine, that doesn’t mean that they are going to help every Democrat that is running for office. What they will do is they will take their own polling and they will make their own decisions depending on the race about where they are going to put their resources.
If they don’t feel you can win or you have not demonstrated any hope of winning that race, they are not going to throw money and volunteers your way just for the heck of it. Not going to happen. They will take more volunteers and more money and more staff and put them in the places that they know they have a chance. They will double down on where they can win and they will ignore where they have deemed they can’t win.
So as a candidate, you better either demonstrate you can win there or you better find other sources of help because it isn’t going to be the party. Honestly, you don’t want to necessarily be beholding to your party. If they want to help you, great! But you don’t want to rely just on the party to get you elected. You never do.
John Tsarpalas: No. Let’s also talk about party. Party is not going to come in anything (well, I shouldn’t say anything)… What your county organization is like for county candidates is probably minimal at best. Minimal. A few people. Maybe they have a meeting once a month and they’ve got some volunteers there. That’s great. Do they have much money? No.
A campaign really is up to the candidate to take care of it, to do it. So let’s talk about fundraising for a minute. “Money will just come” is something I’ve heard. No, money doesn’t come. Money has to be asked for.
You have to make a list of people that you are going to talk to. You are going to ask them to write checks for you. And you are going to ask them for referrals. And you are going to keep doing that over and over and over again. From the moment you start running until two weeks after the election is over, win or lose, you are still raising money. It doesn’t go away.
Paul Miller: And never assume that this one or that one is definitely going to cut you a check for this amount or that amount. And I say that with a lot of experience. There is something about candidates that strictly believe that their friends and their family are going to open up their wallets. That’s not necessarily the case.
It’s not personal, but you’ll never fully understand the finances of everyone that you know, number one. Number two, some of them you are going to find don’t like their name associated with anything political.
They also simply may not believe you could win or they may not agree with you enough where really feel that they should be supporting you. They might do so personally. They may even throw the vote your way. But they are not going to be writing checks.
So you have to work at it. You have to make sure… I am not going to say make sure, but you can’t assume that your friends and family are going to write checks. But here’s the other thing: you have to ask them. You can’t be afraid to ask anybody for money, whether it is your mother, your brother, or whoever. Any friend or family that you believe can contribute and you are not putting some hardship on them because you are feeling guilty-
John Tsarpalas: Well, you are asking the little ones for twenty-five dollars.
Paul Miller: Yes! You’ve got some cousin just out of college who just started working. See if he’ll give you twenty-five bucks. He might feel better. But it is important to not be afraid. Not long ago, I was involved with a campaign where this candidate was so afraid to ask family and friends for money. And there was no money.
John Tsarpalas: It was doomed. The campaign was doomed. She couldn’t do it.
Paul Miller: Yeah, that individual couldn’t do it.
John Tsarpalas: Without asking. The other thing I remember (this goes back to ’96. You and I were there) is how hurt he was that people in his church wouldn’t vote for him. He was really upset by that. And it’s like, well, guess what? They don’t agree with your political views. They are not going to vote for you. That was more important than the friendship. I guess is what he felt like they would vote for him out of friendship. I don’t know.
Paul Miller: It doesn’t work that way.
John Tsarpalas: It doesn’t work that way. Politics is very different. So you’ve got to ask absolutely everybody. And you’ve got to assume that people might say no. Don’t take it personally. That is just how life is. And you keep going.
Paul Miller: Yeah. I remember back in 2000 I was involved in a campaign in Schaumburg, Illinois, western Chicago.
John Tsarpalas: Oh, yeah. I remember that.
Paul Miller: The slate, all of these folks believed that their church or their mosque in one case I remember were going to turn out in droves to vote for them. They also thought that these folks would be writing checks. They thought that they would then spread the word and hold events. None of that happened.
Again, these are things you can’t assume. And on a personal note, you shouldn’t be offended by it. You have to remember, if you are running for office, chances you are more into politics than the average guy out there. For the average guy out there, politics is nothing he or she wants to get involved with often.
We talk about an informed voter. Guess what? The majority of voters are uninformed. As sad as it is, that’s the reality. You have to work at getting that uninformed voter to vote for you. Hopefully you get them informed enough. That doesn’t mean they are ever going to write you a check or volunteer.
John Tsarpalas: Right. Well, here’s my last myth. “If they only met me, they’d vote for me.” Yes, I don’t care how many liberal Democrats talk to me. I am never voting for a Democrat. Never. I don’t care how nice you are or how wonderful you are or what you have done. I don’t care if you are in alignment on politics with me with the issues, but you still have a D next to your name. Because voting for you might help put Nancy Pelosi back as Speaker of the House. I am not voting for anyone on that other team.
So why do people think they are going to convert somebody from that other side who is hardcore? I just think it is a waste of time. In fact, I know liberal Democrats that will try to tie up Republican candidates at their front door, talking to them for as long as possible because they think are then wasting the candidate’s time from going down the street and converting three independents. And they are right.
So do not think you are going to convert people whose minds are already made up. It isn’t going to happen. But you should be able to persuade people that already of your persuasion so to speak and those that consider themselves open or independent, and if you match up on a certain issue.
If you are all about getting rid of Common Core or something about education or you are worried about the big bond referendum that’s happening at your school and you are opposed to it and others are opposed to it but they happen to be of a different party at that time, you can get them to vote for you on that issue. So you can do it by issue.
But you’ve got to be careful. Don’t waste too much time on people who are just not convertible.
Paul Miller: Yeah, exactly. That is so, so important. Here is my newest pet peeve from the past few years. This has to do with the modern age. I talked about how social media doesn’t win elections, but there are certain things you do have to do. You have to have a website. You have to have a Facebook page.
John Tsarpalas: I hate a candidate who is out and there is no site. There is no site. No one can follow up. No one can find you.
Paul Miller: Yeah. Because guess what? If you are going to get yourself some radio play or you are going to get some television or newspaper exposure and heck, even if you are going to be printing your literature or you are going to be talking to folks, you want to be able to say, “Check out my website.”
Why do you think every presidential candidate finds a reason, even in the most mundane way, to mention their website during the debates? That’s because they want to get you to the website. The websites have been crafted. They have been crafted to have a message that is completely controlled by the candidate and his team. Once they get you to the site, they can show you everything they want you to see with no distractions.
John Tsarpalas: Right. And hopefully get you to leave an email. That’s huge.
Paul Miller: Yeah, leave an email or click that donate button. It doesn’t happen a lot online in that regard, but it happens more and more, especially in national races.
John Tsarpalas: Right.
Paul Miller: But you have to have it. If you are going to be on that radio show, you’ve got to be able to say, “Visit me at JoeSchmoe.com.” You have to be able to do that. Or “Check out my Facebook page.” While they are not necessarily recruiting tools, they are tools for people to be sent to to learn more about you.
You have to have them up. And you have to have them when you announce. You can’t announce and say, “My website is under construction.” Guess what? That means your campaign is under construction. When you first announce and you are organizing and doing all that stuff, you need that website to have people volunteer to donate. You need to get people to make donations through that website.
That’s the easiest thing. When you are going to go meet your friends and family and say, “Listen, just go to my website please. I’d love you to make a contribution.” Or let’s say you get that pledge. Guess what? Not everyone wants to write a check. Most people don’t. Get the website up.
Honestly, I know you have talked about this in other shows, but it is pretty easy to get a simple WordPress site up. And of course setting up a Facebook page takes you five minutes.
John Tsarpalas: Right, absolutely. You’ve got to have somewhere, some thing for people to find you so that you are legitimate. You are not legitimate without it. Alright, personal pet peeve as a public speaking coach: “Oh, I am a pretty good public speaker. I will just wing it.”
Practice! You need to get up in front of the mirror or with a video camera or at least in front of your spouse and practice your speech a few times. What’s even better is to get some friends in a room and practice in front of them. Then get their feedback and have them ask you questions so you are ready to answer questions when you are out on the stump.
The same thing is true to get ready for debates or editorial boards. You’ve got to practice. You have to do it more than one time. Usually it is practice, take the feedback, and try it again a week later.
So give yourself a couple of weeks before you are going to give your first public address or you know you’ve got to go an event and do your little stump speech. Make sure you’ve worked it through and practiced it.
On Commonwealthy.com, click on Videos and we’ve got a great one on your stump speech. It doesn’t take long. It’s like three minutes. Maybe it is five minutes. Watch that. It will give you some ideas on how to do your stump speech. But you need to practice it and do it in advance. Winging it doesn’t work.
Paul Miller: So now you see, folks, what John just did there, how he snuck in the website? That’s why the website is important. If you’re being interviewed by someone on the radio, TV, or even the regular print press, you want to be able to say that website. Get it out there.
So my personal pet peeve from a political consultant perspective is I don’t want to constantly hear that because your opponent is a jerk or is evil or is this horrible person, there is no way you are going to loose to this person.
John Tsarpalas: Ha! They got elected in the first place.
Paul Miller: Yeah, or they are just your challenger. You may think that. You are letting your emotions drive these opinions. You have to remember they are just opinions. Whether you think they are fact or not is moot because not everyone is going to agree with you. Ninety-nine percent of the voters in every election don’t know a candidate ever well enough to decide whether they are evil or a jerk or what have you.
“How can they vote for this person?” Or “He’s an idiot” or “she’s an idiot.” They don’t know that. The voter doesn’t know that. Worry about yourself. Worry about how you are perceived. You can’t control what your opponent necessarily does. There are certain campaign tactics for another podcast that you can talk about to try to get reactions and stuff. There’s always that whole offense and defense mentality.
But don’t spend your campaign just being with your friends, family, and campaign supporters and saying, “This one is a jerk” or “That one is a jerk” or “Only an idiot would vote for this one.” Guess what? All you are doing is taking away from your efforts to secure voters. And somehow that makes you sleep better at night. Shut the heck up and do your own thing.
John Tsarpalas: Good, well said. Well, said it is our twentieth anniversary of our friendship, the traditional gift is china and the modern gift is platinum. Which one do you prefer?
Paul Miller: When we are talking china, are we talking Chinese food?
John Tsarpalas: No, no, no. This is not Christmas for Jews. This is elegant, china dishware. You know, plates.
Paul Miller: I would go with platinum because this means I am getting more points on my platinum credit card, which is what I am doing, which is important to me with the traveling and all of that stuff.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, okay. It’s kind of like my retirement plans is winning this next Powerball.
Paul Miller: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know when this is going to air, but right now Powerball is $1.3 million.
John Tsarpalas: No, $1.3 billion, not million.
Paul Miller: Oh, what did I say million?
John Tsarpalas: You said million.
Paul Miller: $1.3 billion and nobody out there should play it because it is mine. It’s mine.
John Tsarpalas: Oh, there you go. Okay. I think it will roll over unless you bought every number, so you are in trouble.
Paul Miller: Pretty much.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, there you go. Well, this has been fun. Any more pet peeves that we need to get off our chests?
Paul Miller: Any more pet peeves? There’s going to be something.
John Tsarpalas: Yeah, well, we can always do another podcast again.
Paul Miller: We can.
John Tsarpalas: We can..
Paul Miller: Thanks, buddy.
John Tsarpalas: This has been good.
Paul Miller: Good times.
John Tsarpalas: Alright, bye.
Alright, Paul Miller and I talking. That was sure fun for me. I hope you got something out of it. That was the goal. We tried to hit on a few things that we think candidates always think are going to be important and frankly, for the most part, they are wastes of time. They need to stop thinking that way and get on with getting back to work.
Getting back to work means finding money, making calls for money, and talking to voters. Asking those voters for their vote and getting them to support you. And then getting that information back in your database so that you are ready for Get Out the Vote, which is next week’s podcast.
Before I jump to that, I should say a couple of thoughts. You can reach Paul Miller at the PaulieGroup.com. You can see tons of Paulie’s work at SalomonCenter.org.
So next week as I said, we are going to start talking about Get Out the Vote. Kristina Keats will be back because she and I have done a lot of Get Out the Vote plans together and crafted many of them.
If you have any questions for me or anyone on Commonwealthy, you can simply contact me at john@commonwealthy.com. Please give us a review in iTunes. If you like this podcast, it would really help to have some reviews in iTunes.
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Thanks for listening!