TWO

Define Your Message

Who are you?

THE WHO

Match these leaders to their campaign slogan:

Barack Obama	(a) Don’t Swap Horses in the Middle of the Stream
Abraham Lincoln	(b) Change We Can Believe In
Bill Clinton	(c) Morning Again in America
Nancy Pelosi	(d) Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow
Ronald Reagan	(e) A Voice That Will Be Heard

Each of these leaders chose a slogan that in just a few words would answer the question “Who are you?” Notice how each message answers the question and defines the leader:

Barack Obama:	(b) I am an antidote to war fatigue and transactional politics.
Abraham Lincoln:	(a) I am the commander in chief needed to win the Civil War.
Bill Clinton:	(d) I am optimistic and youthful.
Nancy Pelosi:	(e) I have the political clout to get things done.
Ronald Reagan:	(c) I helped America recover from recession.

Define or be defined. To define yourself you must lead with who you are. If people step onto an elevator with a supporter who is wearing your campaign button, what will the button tell them about who you are?

Take it a step further: what is the elevator pitch for you or your supporter to deliver to back up the button? You have less than a minute for your elevator pitch, and so you need a clear, concise argument promoting your effort, something the other person will think about later. This pitch is the heart of your message, and everyone who supports you should know it by heart and be able to make it under pressure.

Defining a message is just as essential for ballot measures as it is for candidates. In addition, ballot measures will affect turnout and affect candidate messaging, since voters will want to know where a candidate stands on issues.

In states like California, where the ballot initiative process allows just about anything to go before voters, legislative fights often carry over into the ballot box. Legislators pass a health care measure, the governor vetoes it, and the losing side circulates petitions to place it on the state ballot for reconsideration. And so forth.

This process grows tiresome for many voters, who feel as though they are doing what they pay public officials to do.

When you seek a “yes” vote on an initiative, the burden will be on you to lay out the urgency of the situation, the policy implications of the initiative, and the practical consequences of doing nothing. The campaign slogan and elevator pitch must define in simple and direct terms why this race matters: why voters must approve this measure; what exactly the initiative will accomplish for people; and how it achieves the vision, ideas, and values that call you to service.

FRAME YOUR MESSAGE WITH A MESSAGE BOX

Defining your message means articulating your vision, ideas, and values and identifying the behaviors (i.e., code of conduct) that reinforce them. Refining your message means positioning it to persuade people to choose your vision, ideas, and values over those of your competition. People do not make choices in a vacuum: for every good reason you can think of for people to embrace your message, there are equally valid reasons not to. To present your strongest case, you must identify the counterpoint and rebut it. Remember Jack Valenti’s advice: the most credible messengers are honest and straightforward about their own weaknesses and their opponents’ strengths.

The first step to defining your message is to frame it. Your goal is to define a message that energizes people ready to support you, wins over some people who do not start in your column, and divides the people who are planning to oppose you. Framing your message gives people a way to view you in contrast with your opponent. Voters have preconceived notions about political parties or cultural issues long before a candidate shows up. You have to understand what those notions are and how to discuss them if you are going to win over undecided or skeptical voters.

Try this exercise made famous by the late U.S. senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Draw a simple four-quadrant box to summarize your message with what you say about yourself, what your opponent says about herself, and what you say about each other. (Business consultants call this a 2 × 2 matrix.)

What You Say about You—put your best case forward.

What They Say about Them—put their best case forward.

What You Say about Them—why are you better and/or why are they worse?

What They Say about You—why are they better than you and/or why are you worse?

A message box frames what’s at stake in the debate, clarifies what you say, and helps you to play defense. You will anticipate where your opponent will attack you, how you can respond, and how you can move the conversation back to your message.

You must present a clear choice and a definite contrast with your opposition (be it opposition to a person or an issue). A message box helps articulate that choice and keeps your campaign disciplined. Every strategic messaging decision you make should be consistent with your message box. Please note: this is a tool to use regularly as the campaign unfolds. What they say about you will change over time, and what you say about them will likely change, too.

Before you begin crafting your message, find out what people are already saying about you and your competitor on the Internet. A Google search for your first and last name (or your opponent’s) can turn up thousands of Internet hits with newspaper articles about you, minutes of meetings you have attended, donations you have made, organizations you are in, blog commentaries, family histories, and more. Narrow your search with keywords linked to your first and last name, such as your place of residence, your business, your spouse’s name, or even scandal, bad, corrupt. Paid searches (the database services of LexisNexis, Dialog, and U.S. Politics) go further, covering national and local publications as well as public records, which can reveal current and previous addresses, your voting record, and any history of liens, bankruptcies, deed transfers, tax records, and mortgage records.

START WITH YOUR CALL TO SERVICE

What You Say about You should express your call to service. Whether you are a candidate for office, a volunteer for a campaign, or a policy advocate, your personal story builds trust between you and your audience. Your call to service—your vision, ideas, and values—captures why you care about people and why people should care about you.

Two recent candidates told their personal stories and public service aspirations as part of their campaign messages:

As a child, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York campaigned with her grandmother, who founded Albany’s first women’s Democratic club and was a pioneer in the women’s rights movement. “As a ten-year-old girl, I would listen to my grandmother discuss issues, and she made a lasting impression on me,” Gillibrand said. Now a U.S. senator, she credits her success to her grandmother’s mentoring and urges women to get involved via offthesidelines.org.¹

Congressman Jerry McNerney of California was inspired by his son Michael, who in response to the 9/11 attacks sought and received a commission in the U.S. Air Force. Michael suggested that Jerry serve his country by running for Congress. One of McNerney’s mailers depicted a young servicemember on the cover asking, “How do I know that Jerry McNerney will protect veterans?” The response: “Because he’s my dad.” This message vividly displayed McNerney’s call for peace and veterans’ rights.

Both Gillibrand’s and McNerney’s messages express their personal stories, their public service aspiration, and the family members who helped inspire the call.

What You Say about You should also demonstrate your trustworthiness. “It boils down to trust,” says communications strategist Jamal Simmons. “At the end of the day when you are alone in that room and nobody can see, the public must believe that you will look out for them.”²

How will people come to trust you? Because you have taken a political risk, taken the lead on an issue, sacrificed for a cause. You will have a track record: your voter registration, votes, volunteer work, charitable contributions, advocacy for others, and performance in public life, all reinforce your message.

To perform this exercise yourself, start at the very beginning. Let’s say your campaign is for a challenger with no government experience and the opponent’s team is supporting an entrenched incumbent. Your message begins with Youth versus Experience.

CULTIVATE EXPERTS AND ALLIES
TO HELP DELIVER YOUR MESSAGE

“Message is so much more than what you say. People will look at who says it, who corroborates it, what you are doing when you deliver the message, where you are when you deliver the message, and whether you refresh, reinforce, and repeat your message,” says California political strategist Mary Hughes. “How you deliver your message conveys whether your leadership is authentic, attached to the community, and reflective of the people.”³

Some questions to ponder as you seek out allies:

Who should say your message?

Who should talk about the opponent?

Who are your allies cross-training and cross-messaging with you?

Who should back up your message once you are under attack?

What sorts of strategies will you use as message multipliers?

What venues work best to reinforce the message?

Which former opponent or unlikely ally can speak best?

Remember the main objective here is to answer the question “Who are you?” Yes, you want to present your self-definition but you must authenticate it with support from allies. This is where having a former opponent in law or business or politics stick up for you is especially helpful because unlikely allies cut through the clutter and make people think differently than “the usual suspects.” Your current opposition knows this, so in order to undercut your support she will likely undercut your ambassadors as well.

I saw this firsthand on the campaign trail as message allies were attacked by the opposition. Attacks began with Democratic Party candidates referred to as “Democrat” candidates—“democratic” sounds fair, but “democrat” emphasizes “rat” and is used as an epithet, not an explanation. Then attacks moved to candidates—Democrats in Republican communities were morphed into Ted Kennedy then Bill or Hillary Clinton, now Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi. Then the attacks became a systematic effort to de-brand, defund, and demoralize America’s nonpartisan center-left institutions (AFL-CIO, NAACP, Planned Parenthood, and even some veterans groups) in order to undercut their effectiveness as ambassadors by forcing them on the defensive and by forcing Republican legislators to abandon prior support for them. The response by We Are One (www.we-r-1.org) was to bring labor and social justice groups together to organize in solidarity for jobs and justice and to stick up for each other when under attack.

The efforts to undercut Planned Parenthood also yielded a strong defense—and a similar strategy of the ambassadors recruiting their own ambassadors to fight back.

The abortion rights debate is polarized: more and more Democrats self-identify as prochoice and more and more Republicans as antichoice. So in early February 2011, Republicans told conservative religious leaders they wanted to win “the war” on defunding Planned Parenthood, and the politics played out mostly along party lines when the House passed a measure to do so. However, during the Senate floor debate the tide turned. Senator Jon Kyl said that abortions are “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does” and was proven flat wrong. (The number is 3 percent.) His spokesman said, “That was not intended to be a factual statement.” Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert laid into him, using videos and a Twitter hashtag #notintendedtobea factualstatement that shamed Kyl and cut through the clutter.

An unlikely Planned Parenthood ally was conservative media titan Richard Mellon Scaife, whose grandmother had been friends with Margaret Sanger. He wrote an op-ed praising her and defending Planned Parenthood. His conclusion “Republicans Wrong on Planned Parenthood” was all the more powerful coming from a conservative Republican.⁴ It took a comedian and a conservative to do it, but a progressive victory was won.

The lesson: even your ambassadors need ambassadors. Moving beyond your base, cultivating allies, and backing them up are essential steps in defining your message.

The 2012 Project’s Mary Hughes recommends that new candidates especially need to cultivate experts and allies to help craft and validate their message.⁵

For example, many candidates running for office have not served in the military, yet, as legislators at federal, state, and local levels, they must address issues concerning military families and vets. So if you are a civilian and part of What You Say about You is that you support veterans and military families, you must be conversant with key policy challenges and integrate them into your message. You will need to communicate the vision, ideas, and values that will help make tangible change in a variety of areas. To corroborate your message, you need experts and allies. Convene an advisory group featuring all branches of military service and generations of veterans to develop your platform on these issues. Build off your Community Inventory (more about this in chapter 3) and look into prominent veterans in your community, veterans’ service organizations, military bases, and veterans’ hospitals.

Your advisory group should help you articulate the major challenges, for example:

Readiness: current membership in the armed services and status of combat operations around the world

Recruiting: military recruiting in communities and on campuses

Cost: Pentagon budget and the cost of war

Jobs: unemployment challenges and employment discrimination

Health care: physical and psychological injuries and treatments

Family life: including abuse, divorce, and alcoholism rates

Once you understand the key challenges and the changes in policy that you would support to address them, you can draft and incorporate policy statements into your message, develop a calendar of important dates (starting with Memorial Day and Veterans Day), deliver your message to target groups, and ask members of your advisory group to reinforce the message. When you hold events, repeat your message in your follow-up thank-you to participants and press releases to the public. Make sure you call upon your allies to talk about your opponents and back you up when you are under attack. Repeat, repeat, repeat your message wherever, whenever, and however you can.

RESEARCH TO DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGE

Your arguments are stronger when you identify and counter the arguments against them. To do this you must have competitive intelligence. Research assists with message development, helping to define you and control the campaign dynamic with polling, issue research, press relations, and rapid response.

Conduct ethical research. Many people say they oppose negative campaigning, but it works to expose hypocrisy or misdeeds. So how do you balance the desire to run a positive campaign with the need to educate the public about your opponent or with the need to come clean about yourself?

First, conduct ethical research on yourself and on your opponent. Don’t break the law or use information gained illegally. Stick to the public record. David Mark, Senior Editor at POLITICO and author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning says negative campaigning is “most effective when a candidate’s criticisms play into preconceived notions voters already have of their opponents. Charges that come out of left field and aren’t substantiated are not usually very effective. But if, say, a first time candidate who has been a businessman in real life is accused of wanting to gut environmental protections, EPA citations against their company tend to bolster the claims against them.”⁶

Second, be up front about what you dig up about yourself. Like our candidate with “convictions” from chapter 1 who could have talked about turning his life around, everyone has baggage, but few want to admit it. David Mark advises: “The best response to negative campaigning is to put out damaging information on your own preemptively, particularly early in the campaign.”⁷

Any professional campaign will do at least a cursory self-vet on its candidate to find the strongest line of attack for the opposition. Former business executive and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain should have done so. Mark observes:

Cain’s campaign was predicated on his can-do business experience and strong communications skills that seemed to resonate with rank-and-file GOP audiences. But in late October 2011 POLITICO reported that while heading the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s at least two female staffers had complained about his personal conduct. POLITICO gave the Cain campaign ten days to respond to the allegations and when they refused to provide any detailed information a reporter from the news organization confronted the candidate directly outside of a news studio—futilely, it turned out.

Rather than ignoring the journalistic inquiries, the Cain campaign could have used that week and a half to communicate with the National Restaurant Association and get its story straight. Once the story broke, Cain kept changing his response, which, says Mark, “practically invited journalists to dig further into his background.” If Cain’s staffers had done the research, they could have produced a version most voters would have forgiven. After all, many companies make modest financial payouts over disputes about professional behavior. “Had Cain’s campaign leaked the information themselves and preempted POLITICO, the storyline likely would not have lasted longer than a day or two.”⁸

On the flip side, don’t exaggerate your qualifications. Candidates often are insecure about what they have done and wind up padding their résumés or exaggerating support, claiming education degrees they didn’t earn or support they haven’t garnered.

For example, one fellow told me that the party should support him for Congress because he had great relationships—in fact, he claimed, he helped talk the incumbent into retiring to make way for a fresh horse in the race. When I asked him whether the congressman would say that publicly about him he hemmed and hawed, and that was pretty much the end of his run.

Third, think long and hard before you release material gained from dirty research tactics. The short-lived presidential campaign of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty stumbled for many reasons, including the perception that his camp fed stories about congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s migraine headaches to reporters.

In another example, Connecticut senate candidate Linda McMahon leaked information about attorney general Richard Blumenthal’s statements about “serving in Vietnam.” This was a valid complaint considering that he served during but not in the Vietnam War. However, McMahon, a former wrestling executive, seemed to be taking a public bow for giving the research to the New York Times rather than releasing it herself. This made her look a bit too gleeful and undercut the seriousness of the charge. Better for McMahon to have simply compiled the research and then confronted Blumenthal with a Web ad in a more serious, less triumphant way. The message people took was that McMahon was more of a wrestler than a stateswoman, so her candidacy lost steam and never recovered, even though her opponent was the one with the problem.

The lessons: be clear about how you get your information, report your findings honestly, don’t twist the facts, and don’t act more like a stuntwoman than a stateswoman.

Document and frequently update your research. You should regularly check newspapers, the Web, radio, and television news coverage. Use RSS feeds, Google alerts, and Twitter searches to maintain contemporaneous updates. To see the details asked of aspiring presidential appointees, check out the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management Standard Form 85P: Questionnaire for Public Trust Positions.

Follow your opponents and their staffs on Twitter. You never know what staffers may do to undercut their boss. A spokesman for Mitt Romney, who railed against unnamed Barack Obama supporters for calling his boss “weird,” was embarrassed when he was revealed as the author of a fake Twitter account purporting to be authored by the opponent of his other Republican client, Scott Brown. One staffer created headaches for two clients, undercutting both men’s claims to be positive campaigners.

Follow the money. You should research campaign contributions to see what interests are funding the opposition. That can become part of your message. “Follow the money,” says Green-Dog Campaigns’ Dotty LeMieux. “This is the number one rule of politics, and it’s fair game for a comparison piece.” Sometimes the money is the message, as when a special interest is asserting itself. For example, says LeMieux, a California initiative for a new pipeline sounded like a good idea until the list of contributors appeared. Big development wanted that pipeline for a reason, and it was easily defeated, despite big spending on the other side. “Sometimes the money trail is hard to follow, but it can be your ace in the hole. Sometimes, all you need to do is list the sources of funding for both you and the competition. Tell the voters: ‘You be the judge,’” she advises.⁹

Once upon a time, the medium was the message—now, the Supreme Court Citizens United decision to increase corporate dollars in campaigns means that in politics, the money is the message.

The philosophy behind the Supreme Court ruling that corporate contributions equal political speech appears to be that special interest money is OK so long as it’s accompanied by transparency. But the transparency part of the Citizens United equation will only work if we have netizens united to share information, track the money, connect the dots between special interests and policy, and enhance new media efforts in campaigns.

Connecting the dots based on online reporting and filings about who is lobbying, who is spending, and who is promising funds won’t stop the attacks, but it will condition supporters to know that the hits are coming.¹⁰

EXPRESS VALUES AND ISSUES

Sierra Club executive chairman Carl Pope advises campaigns to establish a “values bond” with people. “If a candidate talks about values in a way that overlaps with our issues, our people will get excited. For example, ‘Ban dirty coal’ is a position; ‘Promote clean coal’ is a values-based agenda. The first one tells people what you are going to do; the second gives us something to do together—it is a values-based agenda that helps build bridges between people.”¹¹

Campaigns also need to establish “issues bonds” with people. Pope saw polling in which people identified themselves as environment-first voters—their top priority was the environment—and a large percentage of those voters said they were staying home. Why? “The church of politics had disappointed them,” reflects Pope. “They needed hope before they would vote.” With an environmental initiative on the ballot, the Sierra Club “had to convince them that their vote would matter and that their vote would be counted. So the phone-bankers told them three things: one, this policy will make it the law to do the right thing for the environment; two, we will be at the polls making sure your vote is counted; and, three, don’t you want to try to make a difference one more time?” Many of them turned out, and the initiative passed.¹²

You can apply this successful message strategy to any campaign. Establish a values bond and an issues bond before you introduce voters to your political cause or candidate. If your candidate supports cleaning up a polluted river, you could tell environment-first voters that your candidate will prevent people from dumping waste in the river, but they’ve heard that before. If you show voters your candidate’s vision for a clean river and your candidate’s alliance with a clean-water group that is making clean rivers a priority, they have a values bond (a shared agenda to clean the river), an issues bond (a shared ally who is actually getting things done for people), and a much better introduction.

CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY

What You Say about You is heard in the context of a larger message environment. You need to personalize your message to reach people how and where they live. Brad Martin, who served as the longtime executive director of the Montana Democratic Party, recalls:

In Montana, our messaging had not been personal. We were using political jargon, and it wasn’t appealing to regular people who don’t speak like politicians. So we started to think of our voters as the people who went to our convenience store, where the sign in the window advertises “beer ice ammo” for sale. Rather than direct our remarks to political people, we thought of them as “beer ice ammo” people. We said “general fund” and beer ice ammo people said “Huh?” We switched to balancing the legislature’s checkbook and beer ice ammo people responded, “Oh I get it,” because no one has a general fund at home but nearly everyone has a checkbook.¹³

Like the Montanans speaking to the “beer ice ammo” crowd you must prepare yourself for how your audience will receive your message, and frame your message accordingly.

Two innovative experts who study the use of language in American politics are Frank Luntz and George Lakoff. During the 1990s Luntz helped change how conservative politicians used words to describe policies. Luntz’s Web site identifies his influence: transforming the “estate tax” into the “death tax,” “school vouchers” into “opportunity scholarships,” and “drilling for oil” into “exploring for energy.” Luntz’s work demonstrates that powerful words can have a powerful impact.¹⁴ Of course, you must use those words in a message context or frame. For example, “death tax” would not be a successful slogan without the context of the conservatives’ ongoing anti-tax messaging.

George Lakoff, author of Don’t Think of an Elephant (2004) and Progressive Handbook (2007), applies a linguist’s expertise to politics, urging progressive narratives based on values, ideas, issues, and frames. “First, tell people what you stand for. Tell stories that only make sense relative to your values. For example, I might say that I care about people and want to act responsibly on that care. Government is about protection (our health and safety) and empowerment (our courts and infrastructure).” Thus, you must prepare yourself for how your audience will receive your message and frame your message accordingly.¹⁵

Luntz and Lakoff impart similar lessons but from different philosophical perspectives: the use of particular words can dictate whether people hear your message as you intend. You won’t know until you look behind the words to the values of the people and the context in which they have been expressed.

Choosing your words carefully means incorporating input from your experts and allies. It also means applying common sense. Returning to our Youth versus Experience campaign example, let’s say that Youth cultivated experts and allies among other young people, which was great. Then Youth decided to hit hard on the age difference between the two candidates. This was not careful, not smart.

Here’s how this situation played out in a recent campaign: A youthful male contender cultivated young allies in his race against an older female incumbent. He said that his alliances could help him get things done for people. He said his opponent could not get things done because she was out of step with the people (fair enough) and because she was too old for the job (big mistake). He did attract new people—to her side. At the time, one of her supporters, a woman in her sixties, told me that the challenger was about to find out just how much power so-called old women have to get things done. He did.

On the other hand, if your candidate has been in office awhile and must defend continuity in an anti-incumbent mood, there are ways to present the freshness of your ideas. For example, longtime California Senator Dianne Feinstein has found renewed youth support in taking the lead in a legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act—an effort that has energized a new generation of activists who were schoolchildren during the 1990s culture wars and only recently became voters.

And then there was the spoof the California Democratic party made about Jerry Brown when his opponents criticized him for running for governor in 2010 after having served as governor in the 1970s: Democrats took a highly popular Dos Equis beer ad and played a video montage of Brown through the years. The tagline “Stay Jerry My Friends” used a bit of retro-futurism to present the candidate as political comfort food to a new generation.¹⁶

Whatever strategy you choose, remember the old adage: Respect your elders. Criticize them for their ideas, not their age. Defending longtime politicos means offering freshness and confidence, not relying on longevity alone.

USE POLLING TO REFINE YOUR MESSAGE

A winning campaign will spend most of its money to communicate with voters. Polling can tell you what is on voters’ minds and how they will hear your message. For example, if you are asserting leadership on a local growth initiative, you will want to determine whether families in the area want new development; whether they want to use taxpayer dollars to fund it; and whether they will give up parkland or wetlands to accommodate new homes, better roads, or additional schools. A simple poll should answer those questions.

Media coverage of political polls usually goes something like this: “Polls show Barack Obama at 50 percent and Mitt Romney at 38 percent, with 12 percent of the voters undecided. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 4 percent.” These results are called the “horse race numbers,” because they simply report who was leading at the moment the poll was conducted.

An early poll is a benchmark that can provide a snapshot of your starting point, particularly in the exploratory phase of a campaign: how well the voters know you or your cause, whether you have traits that the community has never supported—in which case, it’s better not to run but to support someone—and what their mood is toward politics and life in general. Later surveys are tracking polls to find out whether and how voters are hearing your campaign message.

Good polls capture more about a race than who are the leaders and laggards; they can help you determine

what issues voters believe are most important in an election

which voters are most likely to come out and vote

what percentage of voters are locked into supporting one candidate or the other

what the trends are among the voters and candidates

who has momentum

whether blocs of voters will move depending on a particular issue

if attacked, what responses are needed

whether voters are inclined to believe your response to an attack

The two essential candidate questions are “Is America on the right track or wrong track?” and “Who cares about people like me?” Candidates can win by losing one but not both of those. When a candidate happens to be losing on the right track/wrong track question but winning on the “cares about people like me” category, many opponents begin to “other” her—that is, to paint her as different from you and me, far out of the mainstream, and therefore less likely to care about our problems. If your polling telegraphs the othering that is to come, your message box should reflect and refute that.

Think about how you will release your information. Some reporters may want to see the whole poll—not just the good news—before they report on any of it. Laws may require you to release the entire poll if you release some of the poll results. So be careful about disclosing positive results and withholding the negatives. Candor creates credibility. For instance, Stanley Greenberg’s Democracy Corps has been praised because it “seeks to measure public attitudes accurately and does not shy away from publishing data that reflects unfavorably on the Democrats.” As a laudatory Democratic Strategist magazine profile remarked, “The purpose of their research is not to produce politically useful headlines but rather to use the data they collect to guide the comparison and testing of alternative political messages in order to find the ones that most effectively promote a Democratic perspective.” That willingness to be brutally honest lends credibility to their advice.¹⁷

Make sure your polling reaches people where and how they live and who wish to receive information. Traditional polling methods utilized phone numbers from landlines, and so they did not accurately reflect the sentiments of people using cell phones. It is essential to add cell numbers and e-mail addresses to reach people on mobile phones and laptops. Because most young people do not have landlines and barely use e-mail, cell phone contacts are essential, as are peer-to-peer networks and polls of online communities through vendors like SurveyMonkey.

However, just because people use mobile devices does not mean they want your pollsters to contact them that way. I personally am OK with calls or e-mails but not with texts. Others have their own preferences. Be sure your team investigates the various Do Not Call, Do Not E-mail, Do Not Text, and other anti-spam laws before initiating contact and that any costs for answering the call or receiving your text message are covered. This is not just common courtesy—in some venues, it’s the law.

If you are trying to get to the heart of voter attitudes, you need in-depth discussions via focus groups and dial groups. Focus groups are small-group conversations with voters about values and issues that can go deeper than your questionnaire. The state-of-the-art technique is to add dial groups, where people listen to a message while at a dial machine that they can crank up, level off, or turn down as they listen. That gives you an even better reading of the elements of your message, and it prevents one person from dominating the conversation as can happen in a focus group.

IF THE FACTS DON’T FIT
THE FRAME, CHANGE THE FRAME

Message framers often use the Albert Einstein adage “When the facts don’t fit the theory, change the theory.” Apply this to politics and you get this: When the facts don’t fit the frame, voters reject the frame. We have two choices—barrage people with statistics that will not change their minds or adopt new frames that change the conversation and move the debate.

For example, when Planned Parenthood was fighting a parental consent ballot measure in California in 2006, the frame was privacy rights versus a parent’s right to know. Despite statistics about teen health and safety, some parents were uncomfortable voting to allow their daughters to make intimate choices without them. The organizers talked it through and refined the winning message in the “Think Outside Your Bubble” ad that said, in essence, “You are good parents, so in your world that conversation with your daughter happens, but consider the young women outside your bubble who may have to obtain consent from abusive parents.” The frame changed to teen safety versus an abusive parent’s right to know, defeating the measure.¹⁸

INTEGRATE ALL YOUR RESEARCH
INTO YOUR MESSAGE BOX

Let’s say your research and polling reveal that people view you as a populist and your opponent as a diplomat, as it did for Paul Wellstone when he ran against Minneapolis Mayor Norm Coleman in 2002. That message box looked like this:

The voter has a choice: a populist or a diplomat. So rather than just define your message as “I am a populist,” refine your message to “We need a populist because some fights are necessary; if you get along with everyone, you aren’t making the tough choices needed to help people.”

Once you refine your message, use the message box as a guide to your decisions and behavior. For example, once you define yourself as a populist, you have committed to taking on the big fights that come up in the course of your service, such as a large employer in your community that does not pay living wages or provide health care to its employees.

THROW A PUNCH AND TAKE A PUNCH

Campaigns are tough. In the rough and tumble of politics, you have to be prepared, in the words of my grandfather, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., to “throw a punch and take a punch.” What You Say about Them and What They Say about You are the punches you have to throw and take to compete.

“New candidates are often shocked by the negative campaign ads they’ve seen on TV and in other campaigns and vow to keep theirs clean and positive,” says Dotty LeMieux. She advises people not to be sidetracked by attacks. New candidates fear voters will think less of those who use negative ads, even to defend themselves. They think, “If I get attacked, I’ll just explain the truth. The voters will understand.” They won’t. LeMieux says candidates should use opposition research to make pointed comparisons showing the opponent’s negatives. “If you’re attacked, you need to quickly respond, and then get back to your message.”¹⁹

In 2002 Georgia Senator Max Cleland lost his seat after his opponent ran ads comparing him to Osama bin Laden. He said,

The biggest mistake I think we made in 2002 and 2004 is that we let the accusations of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [that John Kerry did not earn his medals and was not a war hero] linger too long in the media. We should have swiftly responded back as soon as the attacks appeared on the front page, and instead we underestimated the damage they caused. All future candidates should take that lesson in campaigns when they are attacked with lies and garbage.²⁰

Senator Cleland helped lead the movement to establish a Democratic National Committee (DNC) Veterans and Military Families Council; campaigned for dozens of the Fighting Dems running for Congress in 2006, 2008, and 2010; and speaks out quickly against attacks on his allies. By validating Democrats’ credibility on national security issues, Cleland enhances the What You Say about You element of the message; by pushing back against “swiftboating” attacks, Cleland adds the What You Say about Them counterpunch to the debate. Hence, all four corners of the argument are engaged.

Since then, other networks have formed to engage in this space. Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld created the Truman National Security Project, a start-up that now has a $4 million budget to articulate progressive security values, fight for them on the campaign trail, and enact them in government policy. As Kleinfeld explained,

By 2004, I saw how conservative security policies were making America less safe—and the world less secure. But progressives were in a deep hole with the American public, after forty years of conservatives calling progressive security ideas weak. Growing up in a conservative household, I knew how their leadership training institutes worked—and how effective they were at functioning across silos in policy, electoral politics, and the media. We created the Truman Project to train a new generation of progressive leaders, so we could own this security space again.²¹

USE AGGRESSIVE SCHEDULING
TO ADVANCE YOUR MESSAGE

Prioritize every action according to your message. Ask: How does this event help advance the message of the campaign? Why am I here? What votes are here? How does this event help me advance my message? Who will be impressed by my decision to attend or offended by my decision to send one of my allies as a surrogate?

Be consistent. Every event should be consistent with your message. If you say you are a populist but you are only delivering speeches in venues that cost money to attend, you are undermining your own message. On the other hand, don’t go overboard and deliver your support-the-troops message in a tank. Keep it real.

Create events that help the campaign advance your message. Anyone should be able to look at the campaign slogan and the calendar and immediately understand the connection between message and event. To take our veterans example, if you are campaigning in support of veterans and military families, you should deliver your message with members of your advisory group on veterans and military families at a house meeting or a town hall meeting, with members of a veterans service organization in attendance.

Refresh, reinforce, and repeat your message. Participate in an online chat or radio interview after a meeting, send the message out to your e-mail lists of supporters and media contacts, and repeat it.

Consult your message box in schedule conflicts. On concurrent events, staff may be evenly divided about which event gets priority. No one will want to compromise. So which event goes on the schedule? Whichever event best advances your message.

Insist that only the scheduler puts events on the calendar. Otherwise, there will be chaos. Schedulers are message managers. They must process dozens of requests and track a million details. A well-organized scheduler will confirm or deny all requests officially. Detailed information is needed on each event accepted, including the exact time the event starts, who will attend, who will speak, and how the message will be advanced through press coverage of the event. Using free cloud computing tools like Google Docs, schedulers can host events and accept virtual responses.

Plan for effect not volume. I worked for Andrew Cuomo when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton-Gore administration. He would often look at the schedule with a view toward what we could accomplish well, not how many events we could cram into the calendar. He looked over one particularly ambitious trip proposal and asked, “Are your scheduling eyes bigger than your logistical stomach?” Now New York governor, Cuomo scheduled only in-state events his first year and posted his schedule online to keep his People First campaign pledge.

A good scheduler shows compassion for the campaign team and allows time for food, sleep, exercise, and worship. Without a minimum of rest and reflection, no one performs well. Better to identify fewer events and do them well than to overbook and underperform.

PREPARE TO SEND YOUR FIRST MESSAGE

The first message that a twenty-first-century campaign sends is usually an e-mail announcing a campaign with a link to a Web site. The person sending that e-mail is the campaign’s first ambassador. Therefore, from the start it is essential to establish protocols for every ambassador, beginning with Internet use. Nothing instills more confidence than a welcoming Web site or doubt more quickly than an egregiously inappropriate e-mail.

Welcome with your Web site. Your Web site is the public’s first exposure to your campaign. It should welcome people to your cause and reflect the vision, ideas, and values of your public service mission. It should encourage visitors to volunteer, contribute, and network. Be scrupulous with any personal data you gather: do not share information with anyone except appropriate campaign finance reporting entities, and never sell it to anyone. Be sure that your information technology vendor understands your ethics. Avoid spyware technology that may violate the privacy of visitors. Constantly update security and check for viruses. People are trusting you with their information and will expect you to allow them to “opt out” of any communications.

Beware of inappropriate e-mails, posts, and tweets. No medium is more permissive and less forgiving than the Internet. Blogging, texting, or tweeting is like getting a tattoo: you want to express yourself in the moment but have it wear well over time because it will be there forever.

Netiquette—the etiquette of using the Internet—is essential to any twenty-first-century public service effort. Here are a few basic rules of netiquette:

1. If you wouldn’t say it or post a picture of it off-line, DON’T say it or post it online.

2. DON’T forward other people’s messages without their permission.

3. DO assume that other people will forward your message without your permission.

4. DO save copies of important messages and posted items for backup and verification.

5. If you get a group message rather than a blind copy, DON’T harvest it for contact information.

6. If someone calls you on a netiquette lapse, DO apologize in real time and move on.

7. DON’T forget that www stands for World Wide Web—there is no “private” messaging!

Your Twitter followers are not your confidantes; your Face-book friends are not your confessors; your e-mail list subscribers are not your counselors—they are all people with whom you are having public communications. When you need confidantes, confessors, and counselors, pick up the phone—or better yet, meet in person.

Be sure to keep your social networking accounts clear of racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise insulting commentary that undermines your code of civility. While you can’t track each and every message in a large campaign, monitor sites for vitriol and keep people engaged in spirited but respectful discourse.

Ignore these rules of netiquette at your peril. Florida GOP Congressman Mark Foley went into rehab after media publication of his e-mails to a sixteen-year-old former Capitol Hill page.²² In New York, Kathy Hochul has Chris Lee’s old job and Bob Turner has Anthony Weiner’s. Apart from inappropriate conduct, Foley, Lee, and Weiner forgot a fundamental rule: the e in electronic can also stand for evidence. Oversharing ends careers.

GET REAL: DRAW YOUR MESSAGE BOX

Create a message box for your campaign. Here’s what to put in the box and what each one means:

What You Say about You—Put your best case forward.

What They Say about Them—Put their best case forward.

What You Say about Them—Why are you better/why are they worse?

What They Say about You—Their best case against you/why are they better than you?

Integrate your call to service, allies, research, and common sense into your message box.

Who are your allies, alumni, and ambassadors, and which ones best speak for you?

What new media strategies will you use as message multipliers?

How does your schedule advance your message?

What venues reinforce the message?

How many volunteers can help you?

How do your Web site and electronic communications reinforce your message?

What human technology and coalition networks do you have to reinforce and repeat this message?

Who is spending money for or against you? What does that say about the message?

What mobilization metrics do you have to test your message (letters sent, petitions signed, calls made, doors knocked, media points, new media connections)?