Taegan Goddard has a simple, pithy little post by Mark Montini about what to emphasize when campaigning:
There are two reasons people run for office. The first is to be somebody. The second is to do something. Voters have an uncanny knack for uncovering which of those motivates a candidate — and they don’t respond kindly to candidates who are running to be somebody. There’s no test or formula they apply, they just know instinctively.
Read the whole thing.
In Massachusetts, who’s running what kind of campaign?
Currently, the Dem LG candidates all seem to be running résumé campaigns, perhaps Kelley somewhat less than the others. That is the danger of running as a political unknown — that you spend so much time introducing yourself that you forget that really, we don’t care. It’s not that your life experience doesn’t matter; it’s just not enough.
Candidates, voters are asking you: “What are you gonna do for me?” Self-interest can be venal or enlightened, but it’s the very essence of politics. This was the resonant part of Howard Dean’s campaign: “It’s not about me, it’s about you!” And after all, people often vote for effective louts like Providence’s Buddy Cianci — heck, or Tom DeLay — because they don’t really care about the résumé. We don’t care about furthering your career, regardless of how appealing you may be. We care about us. Make sure you let us know that you know.
For example: reward their backers, get a job for themselves, position themselves for a future job. Mr. Montini has a way to go before he starts providing particularly useful insights in MHO.
… then why do so many Dem candidates get it wrong? Gore, Kerry, Lieberman… ugh, the list goes on. And I do think the LG candidates are falling into the same trap. As I say, it’s understandable to some extent when you’re running as a “citizen candidate”, but still, the emphasis has to be on the vision thing.
It’s the hardest question to answer for any of us. Why do you want to be whatever. The best way to make a connection is through your personal story, and Kelly’s answer to both the why question and the personal is health care. If Howard Dean had told more about himself, and we felt more comfortable about him as a person, and not as a wing-nut, he might have been president. And if Kennedy, who was clearly qualified to be president, but couldn’t articulate it, could have, well, we might all have been better off. We need to know who these candidates are, because after all we are being introduced to them, and we need to know why they are running for lt. gov, which should have some connection to who they are.
It seems that LG candidates have the “do” part down. Murray wants to help cities and towns get more aid. Silbert wants to help generate more job growth. Sam wants to “do” health care. And depending on the day of the week Deb want to do what Tim, Andrea and Same want to do. What am I missing? It seems they all a giving a pretty good “do”.
ah, the leadership qualities of spiro agnew, or alben barkley, or evelyn murphy. We don’t need to love our lg’s, just hope they add to the ticket, and st.fleur and hillman tell us that we have a pretty good pool, so I think that what you outline might be about right.
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Back to the original post, I think people accept that candidates are looking for personal advancement or another personal goal. It happens in life in general.
Well, the impression is subjective, of course; but when we’ve interviewed candidates, most of them seem to want to as much about what they’ve done, than in what they’ll do. And even if it’s a 50/50 balance, it can come off sounding a little bit … entitled.
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To contradict myself wildly, maybe part of the problem is that the candidates seem to have gone the single-issue route. And that’s always going to be somewhat autobiographical.
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And yet Kelley strikes me a little differently, although he’s certainly relying on his bio as well. I guess as a shrink, he projects professional compassion a little better. 🙂
“most of them seem to want to talk as much about what they’ve done, as about what they’ll do.”
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Yech. Always hit “preview”