Be forewarned! Without the knowledge you will gain from Leadership Institute courses, you may be vulnerable to unwise advice from consultants or even paid staff whose principles may be based strictly on pragmatism rather than principle. That can lead not only to internal campaign disputes but also to presenting you to the electorate as something that you are not.

In order to conduct a successful campaign, there are many things you must do. As you will learn from the Leadership Institute, a few of those things are as follows.

• Campaign Staff: You must assemble a staff that includes, at a minimum, a Campaign Manager, a Treasurer, a Scheduler, a Fundraising Chairman, a Volunteers Coordinator and as many Volunteers as you can find. Your Campaign Manager will organize all parts of the campaign and should have experience in having done so. Your Treasurer will handle campaign finances and file all required forms. Your Scheduler will establish your schedule for meetings, debates and speaking engagements, and will often accompany you to such events. The Fundraising Chairman will coordinate fund raising and the Volunteers Coordinator will recruit and assign tasks to Volunteers.
• Fund Raising: If you can finance your campaign out of your own pocket, you have a leg up on your opponents. It's usually a waste time trying to convince the Republican Party to provide financial assistance. The Party generally does this only if their polling shows that your election is close and that some extra money will make the difference in winning your election. You should seek endorsements from Political Action Committees (PACs) that can contribute money. Local fundraiser events serve the dual purpose of raising money and giving you exposure to voters. If done effectively, direct mailing and personal telephone calls from you can raise significant amounts of money. Don't waste time with appeals to high-propensity voters. Rather, you should appeal only to known conservative political contributors.
• Precinct Walking: By far, the most effective way to influence a voter is to make a personal visit to his or her home. Statistical studies show that a personal visit to a voter's home increases the family's propensity to vote for you by 16% -- 20% if it's raining when you visit. By comparison, a mail piece increases their propensity to vote for you by 1% and a telephone call has no perceptible effect. See below for further comments on precinct walking.
• Debates: If your opponent agrees to debates, be sure to come prepared. Above all, be sure to speak directly into the microphone if there is one and speak in a bold, confident voice at all times. Avoid "umms" and "ahs" because they are signs of uncertainty. Often debates will include questions from the audience. A very effective technique is to have numerous supporters in the audience with prepared questions that cast you in a very positive light and/or expose the big-government nature of your opponent.
• Campaign Literature: All of your campaign literature should be brief and it must stress the theme and essence of your campaign. Use large fonts, color pictures and don't overload mailers with too much detail -- long, complicated sentences and paragraphs are turn offs to voters. In a Republican Primary be certain to establish yourself as a conservative and your opponent as whatever he or she happens to be, e.g., big-government liberal. In the General Election stress your honesty and integrity. These are the two most important traits that statistical studies say voters are looking for in candidates. If you aren't an honest person of high integrity, please don't run as a conservative!
• Newspapers: Ads in local newspapers within a week or two of the election can be helpful. Buying space for an ad will contribute to your popularity with a town weekly as will a personal visit with the publisher or editor. You would be well advised to have a team of letter-to-the-editor writers to publish letters supporting you and a rapid-response team for rebutting letters against you.
• Endorsements: Endorsements from elected officials are great for public relations. If they are well-known conservatives, their endorsement helps establish your conservative credentials, which is most valuable in a Primary Election.

The Power of Precinct Walking

As noted above, voters who speak to a candidate at their front door have a greater propensity to vote for the candidate. Statistical surveys show that a voter is 16% more likely to vote for you and, if you have enough commitment to your candidacy to come in the rain, the propensity increases to 20%. Even a surrogate visiting on your behalf increases a voter's propensity to vote for you by at least 10%.

IMPORTANT: If you know that you're going to be outspent by a wealthy opponent, precinct walking is the great equalizer!

If you enjoy meeting people and talking with them, precinct walking can be a real joy. At times it can also be very humorous and, for many candidates, is the most enjoyable part of the campaign.

The only drawback is the amount of time it takes to go door to door. But, if you are committed to walking and do it every day, the numbers add up quickly. You should visit only high-propensity voters, i.e., voters who have voted in the last five elections. Most important, have a warm and friendly opening line to give the voter as well as a piece of campaign literature. The opening line should tell the voter who you are, what you're running for, something about your background and a little humor if you can work it in. In my 2004 California State Assembly campaign, for example, I used the following opening.

“Hi, I'm Dave Wilcox and I'm a Republican candidate for the State Assembly. This (referring to a campaign literature piece I handed the person answering the door) will tell you I'm a Caltech PhD, a businessman, a teacher and a dad. What it won't tell you is that I'm a granddad who's lost 17 pounds walking door to door all over this district.”

Don't stay with each voter too long. Plan on spending a minute or so to explain the main theme of your campaign and the essence of what you stand for and wish to accomplish. But, be aware that if you stay too long and discuss a large number of topics, the last topic you discuss could be a point of disagreement, and that's what the voter may remember most.

Dirty Campaigning

Some candidates choose to wage vicious and unethical campaigns against their opponents. The primary reason for this is to overcome the handicap of having an opponent who has a far stronger background or perhaps more name recognition. The candidate who goes negative must weigh the possible results. It invariably drives the dirty campaigner’s negative image up. The hope is to drive the opponent’s favorable image down by a greater amount.

If you’re a principled conservative running against a liberal Republican or Democrat, you must brace yourself for a dirty campaign. Above all, you should keep in mind that people’s memories are short and few will remember the rotten things said about you for very long.

Even if you’re “squeaky clean,” a dirty campaigner will still create semi-plausible attacks. They are usually based on a tiny shred of truth that is grossly distorted. A local woman candidate was once accused of having an affair with a famous football player. The shred of truth was that one of her close friends was a friend of the football player she was accused of sleeping with.

Some attacks are totally dishonest. In my campaign, for example, I was called a racist because I said, “The black family is often dominated by a woman with strong moral principles - and you can believe it.” I often use those five words to emphasize a point in everyday life as well as in a political speech. My opponent told a newspaper reporter I said, “if you can believe it.” Changing one word morphed my statement from a strong affirmation to one of cynicism. To top it off, I was actually condemned by a state civil rights organization!

Dirty campaigning dates back to the beginning of our Republic and has become an art form as the power of government has increased. Power seekers -- exactly the people we don’t need in government -- will go to any extreme to obtain the power elective office brings them. The power they seek is power over their constituents’ lives.

If you’re the victim of a very negative campaign, let voters know why your power-seeking opponent is conducting a dirty campaign. And remember that pigs enjoy wallowing in the mud, but that doesn’t mean you should jump in and wallow with them. If a charge needs to be answered, do so, but do it in a dignified and rational manner.

As an example of the benefits to be gained from not responding to dirty campaigning in kind, consider what happened to me in my campaign. My primary opponent, a woman, and I appeared before a Federated Republican Women’s group with about 100 people, mostly women, in attendance. We each had five minutes to speak. She spoke before me and spent her entire time attacking me with half-truths and gross exaggerations. When it was my turn to speak, I answered her with a single sentence. I said, "If I were all the things she just said, I wouldn't vote for Dave Wilcox." I then proceeded to give my standard campaign speech, beginning with, "Now let me tell you who Dave Wilcox really is."

Within less than a minute after I finished speaking and returned to my table, one of the women came up next to me and said, "News travels fast in a room like this. When you and she walked into this room, about 2/3 of the women were inclined to vote for her. When you leave this room, all of the women will be planning on voting for you."