Which Office To Run for

Twitter's @Jonathan_Ufi writes:

my view is that the bigger, more expensive races are not going to yield the results we want. Honestly, we cannot compete in races that require millions of dollars in expenditures. We cannot compete over large geographic areas. If I were running here, I would look at running for an auditor position. It fits my legal background and my government experience. It takes relatively few resources to win when compared to many other races. The hard truth of this is the Green Party has to start winning some races and establishing itself. Winning small, local races is the best way to develop name recognition. Serving in office is a great way to help establish a record. Losing races with onepercent or less of the vote really does not advance the ball.

And different people need different messages. The message has to be authentic. It Hass to relate to your life experience. The message that I may be good at delivering may not be the message someone else is good at delivering. The key piece to this is being able to figure out what works for each individual and how what works for that individual reaches their targeted voters. In some instances, you may need to do some race shopping. What I mean is you may need to find a race that best fits your message and that has the voters you can effectively target

When I first started thinking about this, I thought it would be cool to run for Congress. Now that I have looked into it, I realize doing so would be a waste of time. That is why I have settled on something like an auditor position. It seems like the kind of role where I can authentically reach people, it doesn’t take the same amount of resources, and there is a reasonable chance that I could be competitive. If I won and was successful in the role, I would have a base from which to establish myself.

I don’t believe it’s a choice between a candidate and a message. Both are critical., especially when time and resources are at a premium. I think candidates need to ask themselves what they really want to accomplish by running. Then, they need to figure out where they can run to have the best chance of accomplishing what they want to accomplish. Once a candidate has found a race that meets their desires, they have to understand the demographics where Green policies can be best heard. Then, it’s about telling a consistent story describing why your experience qualifies you, why your experience has led you to your values, and how those values benefit the people you are targeting. In some cases, the people you need to target must get a different message than you may be used to delivering.

 @Jonathan_Ufi

's advice. I know that I need to listen to it myself. I am more bottom up focused rather than goal oriented. I will disagree with him on one point. I do think we need nation wide and state wide candidates. Not to win, but to generate publicity for the down ballot canidates. if delilah were running for local auditor, no way would she have generated this active group. If she shows up sayng she is running for governor, people will show up, and she can introduce them to the local candidates. Also I am about to copy that long document and post it on http://GreenMaps.US.