– Contact DSC members before the meeting. I made phone calls, especially to people who had been identified as “key” members or likely to attend meetings. Now that I have been the recipient of these calls, I would say they are only marginally effective. I give some credit to those who reach out, but I don’t like having my evenings interrupted by calls at home. So this may have limited value.
– Get someone – preferably from your state Senate district – to act as your sponsor. DSC members are a chummy group and they are MUCH, MUCH more likely to react favorably if someone they recognize asks for their vote on your behalf. If you don’t already have a buddy on the DSC, call your state Senator’s district office and find out whether there is a “political person” from the staff or the campaign who will be at the meeting who would be willing to introduce you around at the meeting. It helps if you have done some volunteer work for that legislator’s past campaigns . . .
– Bring food. The way to a DSC member’s heart is through her/his stomach. We are, quite simply, giant oinkbags for free food. The meetings are feeding frenzies for whatever refreshments are available. Add-on candidates have done clever things with customized candy bar wrappers with their name and the seat for which they are running, or buckets of candy for each table with the name/seat. Four years ago, I bought boxes of cookies and used leftover stickers from another campaign to plaster my name all over the boxes. I set them out at a break, when coffee was just set out. The timing was perfect and this wasn’t too expensive or difficult.
(Eight years ago, for my first run for a gender-balance seat, we were trapped in a windowless room at the Reggie Lewis sports center in Roxbury for many hours. Candidates who brought along bottled water to hand out – with stickers with their name over the label – made a lot of friends.)
– Bring brief and to-the-point fliers, but don’t feel bad if they get buried on the table. The face book published by the DSC this year is a godsend, and will (I hope) help to save trees as well as make the voting more efficient. The DSC members may make one huge pile of fliers on each table (and wish for a bonfire) but they also fish them out and read them (or skim them) at the appropriate time. If you can make SUCCINCT points about things like your support for labor, past campaign activism and names of mentors who endorse you, you could pick up a few points this way.
– Work on a BRIEF statement that will help you to stand out when it comes time to speak. Use humor, if possible. At the event at the Reggie Lewis center, after members had been sitting, listening to idealistic speeches and sweating for hours, I think my entire statement was, “I am in favor of short meetings and good air conditioning! Please refer to my flier for more details, and please vote for me.” (I suspect this kind of speech works only if you have done other legwork to line up votes ahead of time.)
Good luck to everyone! But don’t feel bad if you don’t win. I have noticed that many elected add-on candidates end up dropping out before their terms are up (move out of state, etc.) so you may have a chance before four years are up to step up to DSC membership. You will also make contacts you can use in four years, or for other political activities you may have in mind.
I almost forgot to mention slates.
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p>Eight years ago, someone organized a big slate that would have filled all of the gender balance seats. This was the first year that gender balance seats were created, so all seats were open and no one really knew what to expect in terms of competition. The slate candidates did a mailing (or maybe it was just a professionally-printed palm card distributed at the meeting).
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p>People who didn’t know about this monolithic slate or who weren’t invited to participate were ticked off. (In some cases, I think they just wanted a reason to scold the organizer of the slate for reasons unrelated to the slate itself.) I became something of a poster child for the non-slate candidates (I was supposed to get teary and make my lower lip tremble on cue) because slate opponents decided to make a big deal out of the fact that the slate did not include one single candidate from western Mass.
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p>I guess my point is that aligning yourself with others can help or hurt, so put some thought into it ahead of time. Try to find out whether anyone is organizing a slate and whether you can be on it. The lesson from the 2000 slate may be that people don’t really like attempts at power plays that would dominate a whole category or a large number of seats, although many of the slate candidates were ultimately successful.
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p>On the other hand, horse-trading may be very useful.
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p>I expect the seats will be voted on in the order shown in the Index of the Add-On Candidate Book. All the people who are elected before you will be able to vote for you when your category is called. You will be able to vote in each of the categories that follows yours, if you are successful. You might also be able to figure out who among your fellow candidates would be willing to try to trade blocks of votes – my supporters will help you, if your supporters will help me.
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p>Politics is so fun, isn’t it?
It’s fun…in a crazy, “hot poker in your eye” kind of way.
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p>Ryan, et al who are running for the DSC:
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p>I wish you the best of luck. If there is anything you can do to move the vast majority of DSC dinosaurs into something resembling common sense and reality, your efforts would be greatly appreciated. If the only thing you do is point out where the ground is for some of these aging hippies…
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p>I have been through two DSC elections with various friends; the first was not successful, the second was.
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p>shak is giving you good advice about food. The second campaign we ran had the aforementioned food involved. We made stickers up with the candidates name and we plastered them on water bottles and bags of homemade cookies. This can be hard to do on a college student’s budget…but believe it or not, some of these dollar stores have cheap bottled water and other little goodies. You don’t need to buy Perrier! Let the Republicans buy that crap.
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p>shak also brings up the issue of slates, something that I consider to be “incumbent protection” for the most part, but unfortunately – a senate district is huge and you’re not necessarily going to have contacts in every town. So, slates are a necessary evil, I’m afraid. I also think reaching out to these committee chairs is a good thing. We used to leave phone calls during the day, so that the chair would know we were trying to reach out, while giving them the option of returning the call at their leisure. We also sent letters and cards.
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p>The thing I would not do is tell other committee chairs what they are doing wrong. We watched an opponent go to the various town committee meetings and insert himself into the meetings, and tell them what they awerent doing according to the rules. He wanted to be the “smartest kid in the class” and he shot himself in the foot. He did our work for us. đŸ™‚
My understanding is that the last paragraph of this comment is not accurate. John Walsh and the Executive Committee are looking to do a unified ballot with most add-ons being voted in at once. This takes away the possibility of each set of add-ons being able to vote in subsequent races.
A good management decision by Chairman Walsh. This will make things more fair for all the candidates, and may help to keep the meeting down to a manageable time frame, too.
I really appreciate the advice. It reconfirms some of the things I’ve been hearing from other people. I’m not planning on running on a slate, but I’m not completely unknown to DSC members. I’ve met a few working for Lori Ehrlich’s campaign as her Field Director, and a few others from different places. We’ll have to see where it goes. I truly hope to win, because I think I’ll make a kick arse DSC member, but unfortunately a blogger’s budget doesn’t have room for too many water bottles. We’ll see.
Unless it’s 95 degrees outside, I doubt people will prize bottled water at the meeting. The magic eight ball says candidates should go with chocolate, cookies or candy . . .
Shack, would you be willing to email me by any chance?