| As a person who tries to keep one good blog article a day, I feel the same pressures that mainstream media is feel. So here some ways that I think the our campains could get more coverage.
Find local connections
So for Worthington, Matt Entenza was great about the local connections because he was from there. So what else could work? Say if you are talking about tax fairness, comparing Worthington's increase in paying state taxes because the poor pay more to the richest county in Minnesota's decrease in paying state taxes because the rich pay less. Then nail it down to Pawlenty's time in office. What if we had the story of the local lovely old Mrs Cravetts, who is slated to lose her health care coverage in Pawlenty's proposed budget cuts? It is easy to find the Mrs Cravets, if you hold a listening session before each speech!
Make It Easy
Provide local Worthington film, pictures and transcripts of speech highlights and especially of your candidate listening to Mrs Cravetts tell her sad story. Provide the "fact-checks" for your media. Provide selected helpful quotes from local Republican leaders who call people like Mrs Cravetts, "welfare cheats". Ask Mrs Cravetts if she will sign a release, so you can tell her story more widely. If she is up for reporters, provide Mrs Cravetts information for them.
Find the Drama or Make the Drama
Every story has to have a reason to be read. Here we are trying to say how a candidate will make life better and how the current office holder is making life worse - Tim Pawlenty. If there is no Mrs Cravitts, maybe you can get on-the-spot interviews from people at the grocery store saying how they have had to cut back. Maybe as part of the rally, you can collect donations for the local food shelf and then have pictures of your candidate presenting the donations, and promising a better solution when he (she) is governor. While there were many stories of Matt Entenza, most of the stories lacked the emotional part that would make me want to vote for him.
While I have more ideas, these ideas should give you the outline. If all of this sounds like hard work and lots of effort, it is. The real question is does it work? My answer is the very existence of this story. It does take a certain set of skills. PS. I am looking for exactly that job! |
In evaluating candidates for govenor, one of my criterita is how well that they run their campaign. This is important for both winning and running the state government. Hiring good people, making good campaign choices and effectively putting out a campaign message can easily be translated into running the state government well. I am super impressed with the way that Matt Entenza campaign has run its announcement. Here is why:
