FOUR

Build Your Leadership Teams

Innovation distinguishes between
a leader and a follower.

STEVE JOBS

To win you must lead—and to lead you must innovate. A confident leader draws upon the best resources available and welcomes the guidance of innovative experts whose associating, questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting will propel the campaign forward. As a practical matter this means you recruit a diverse team of people who have demonstrated success in their profession and leadership in their community and you make sure the egos blend well in the cauldron of crisis. Candidates who think they know it all and surround themselves with people who reinforce that self-deception are doomed to fail.

Ultimately, the candidate or the campaign leader must weigh all advice and make the decision. GreenDog Campaigns’ Dotty LeMieux reminds us: “The old adage ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ is true in politics as in cooking. Of course you want to get input from others, but some candidates just can’t seem to say ‘no.’ They forget there’s a chain of command, and want to take everyone’s advice. They’re nervous and insecure and it shows.”¹

A cause or campaign requires managers who have both functional expertise to do the job and real-world experience to anticipate problems and to come up with solutions.

The campaign manager cannot be the candidate and should not be anyone whom the candidate cannot fire. Family members, business partners, and best friends are invaluable helpers in the kitchen cabinet and on the trail, and should be compensated for advancing expenses or pitching in between staffers; but unless you can fire them, it is better not to hire them (and in some jurisdictions the law may set limits). Most start-up campaigns begin with the candidate or principal doing just about everything but quickly morph into a constellation of actors both paid and unpaid. The minute you have money, hire a campaign manager who can draft a winning plan. With that plan, hire fund-raisers early on, and use the funds for stipends to volunteers. Bring on campaign consultants later as funds allow.

Most people will not be compensated in the early weeks of a campaign. Political contributions of money and time are not tax deductible so you will be starting out with a core of true believers.

CONFIDENT LEADERS PICK COMPETENT PEOPLE

Your teams reflect your ability to recognize innovative leadership talent and to recruit and retain the best people to your cause, and in a broader sense, the most credible ambassadors for the larger social movement of public service. Carefully recruit people to your campaign staff and volunteer corps who share your values and ethics. No matter what job or volunteer function they have, the people you attract are your ambassadors. Look at their work histories, speak with their references, and ask them questions that matter to you.

Remember, you are responsible for whatever your team does that affects the outcome of your campaign and the ultimate realization of your vision. Your team members must demonstrate consistently good judgment; otherwise, you could find yourself defending against criticisms of your own managerial judgment caused by the reckless statements or the untrustworthy behavior of your own team. How can you tell whether a prospect has good judgment? Sometimes you just have to ask (within the law of course).

When it comes to vetting talent, retired state senator Art Torres, who served as longtime chair of the California Democratic Party and is currently a cochair of the stem cell research entity California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, asks people the most basic questions: “Who are you? What do you believe in? Is there anything I could read in the papers about you I’m not going to like?” This straightforward approach sparks conversations with candidates and staff that have less to do with past mistakes—we all make them—but much more to do with lessons learned.

For guidance, many jobs will have questionnaires and personnel manuals. If you are running for federal office, consider using the Office of Personnel Management Public Trust Positions questionnaire discussion in chapter 2. Otherwise, consult with people who hire managers at established nonprofits. Ask to see their personnel manuals and use them as models for interviews. Remember to ask an employment attorney first so you are not asking questions that run afoul of the law. Your local or state bar association has an employment law section that may have a pro bono help line or consultation. Use it.

More likely you will be vetting people by what you see them do online. Some people are shocked to find that their prospective employers Google them before an interview, but what they say online or under a pseudonym is public information. It is out there and fair game.

The bottom line is that you need to attract good people and to be as straightforward with them as you ask them to be with you. Campaigns are stressful enough on the best days—the best building blocks of leadership teams are trust, candor, and compassion.

CAMPAIGN STAFF
AND VOLUNTEER LEADERSHIP TEAM

Each of the campaign metrics—management, message, money, and mobilization—requires leadership teams. Management requires a campaign staff and volunteer leadership team to form a winning plan as well as a kitchen cabinet of trusted advisers to assist with sensitive decisions. Message requires house meeting hosts to bring the campaign into the community. Money requires a finance council to raise the funds necessary for success. Mobilization requires a vibrant volunteer corps. For a ballot initiative or candidate, mobilization also requires an election protection team to be sure that supporters vote and that their votes are counted as cast.

Each team must organize people around a shared vision, work with them in a disciplined way, build a culture of service within the campaign, and help achieve the vision.

Columnist George F. Will summarizes candidate leadership qualities as the physical stamina and the abilities to think strategically, to be tactically nimble, to select good staff members, to use their advice and criticism, and to respond to surprises and setbacks.² Your job is to recruit a campaign staff and a volunteer leadership team to hardwire leadership attributes—physical stamina, strategic thinking, nimble tactics, good recruitment, and responsiveness to surprises and setbacks—into a winning plan.

Physical stamina. A winning campaign will require an aggressive schedule to advance your message. The principal should be the hardest worker on the team. As AFSCME political director Larry Scanlon often reminds campaign leaders: “Don’t ask people to do anything that you are not willing to do yourself.”

You and your team members need the physical stamina for this marathon of a campaign. You will be working sixteen-hour days for months at a time. Be sure that you have the commitment to service and family support for this. With limited exceptions—brief workouts, weekly worship, family celebrations, and holidays—you will have to give over your personal time to the campaign.

“I should see you out and about in the community more than I see my own family,” declares former California Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr. Brown heard the call to serve during the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and was in elected office for thirty years while winning over a dozen elections himself and fielding a team of eighty legislative candidates every two years during his fifteen years as Speaker. “The more people who can see you are working for them, the better.”³

In addition to physical stamina, you and your team will need emotional maturity. While there is a natural bonding that goes on during campaigns, many candidates or advisers have been known to stray from mentoring into romance. Though circumstances vary, as a general rule it is always more trouble than it’s worth. You could violate workplace harassment laws and betray your loved ones and supporters. There are no secrets on campaigns—in earlier eras they may have been kept to a close circle, but that is no longer the case: the truth has a way of coming out. Best to devote your energies to the larger cause, and to remember that anyone is expendable, even you.

If you are working on a cause, you may not have a timetable as concrete as a specific Election Day. That gives you all the more reason to demonstrate stamina as you move through the political process, creating coalitions one person at a time to bring about social change.

Strategic thinking. The primary purpose of a campaign staff and volunteer leadership team is to craft a campaign plan that lays out a strategy to win. Former San Francisco Supervisor Jim Gonzalez advises, “A campaign plan must answer who, what, when, where, why, and how you are going to put forward the best message and deliver that message as many times as possible to as many of your identified supporters as possible.”⁴

Be nimble. In the words of AFSCME’s Larry Scanlon, you must be “nimble, creative, and opportunistic” because you can’t take the politics out of politics.⁵ No matter how well thought-out your plan, political considerations will require you to shift gears. Shifting gears means a big donor pulls her funding, so you find the money someplace else; a newspaper editorial slams your ballot initiative, so you increase media buys to counter the effect; someone jumps into your race, so you keep your supporters on your team; someone drops out, so you chase their supporters. Your plan should be flexible enough to turn fast when needed. As President Bill Clinton often cautioned Democrats, “Assume that the other side is working just as hard as you are” to think fast, react forcefully, and seize opportunities.⁶

Recruit well. Choose good people who can work together as a team for long hours under intense pressure. Test the chemistry of the team so that people with shared ethics and values also have good teamwork. Many a campaign hired great talents whose egos got in the way of the cause, leaving the shuddering staffers waiting for “mom and dad to stop fighting in front of us,” as one young man described it.

Everyone will be an advocate for a particular part of the campaign: message people will want polls and media ads; mobilization people will want field program dollars. Choose people who can debate tactics without scaring the campaign “kids,” and then leave internal discussions behind to emerge as “one team, one fight.”

As national communications strategist Jamal Simmons advises, “People will tell you the truth—either to your face or behind your back. It’s up to you to create an environment where they can tell you to your face.” For instance, when Simmons worked for Mickey Kantor, commerce secretary in the Clinton-Gore administration, he was told “don’t blow smoke” by his boss, who wanted an honest critique of his performance after speeches and interviews.⁷

Respond positively to surprises and setbacks. Every public service effort has its bad days. One of those unwelcome surprises turns up in the news one day, and the campaign morale plummets. It may not even be a crisis but a disappointment: you work your heart out for an endorsement, and it goes to the other side. You raise less money than you thought; you get a bad poll; your allies have other priorities. If you believe in what you are doing, you will have the strength to fall and get back up numerous times. Successful campaigns respond to surprises and setbacks by remaining optimistic and true to their service mission, and by addressing problems up front.

You need your team to face surprises and setbacks directly, and that means you must face them directly. Likewise, if you have bad news, take it directly to the leadership team. “Don’t spin the bad news,” cautions Lezlee Westine. Reflecting on her experience as a senior adviser to President George W. Bush, Westine recommends giving the news “first, fast, straightforward, simple, and solution-oriented.”⁸ First—because getting bad news from allies beats getting blindsided by enemies. Fast, straightforward, and simple—because people need to understand what they are up against. Solution-oriented—because people are relying on you to help them figure out how to address the problem. They expect you to exercise candor and judgment, so be up front about what’s wrong and what can be done to make it right. If you have a more serious crisis brewing, it’s time to bring in the kitchen cabinet.

KITCHEN CABINET

A kitchen cabinet is a management team of trusted friends, colleagues, and family members who know how you receive advice and criticism and can speak truth to power when necessary. They know your character—your core values and vision, your code of ethics, and your sensitivity to feedback, be it positive, negative, or unsolicited. They are the people to whom you already turn when you need advice, constructive criticism, or guidance in difficult situations. They volunteer their advice on critical issues with a minimum of gossip and a maximum of discretion, assist with rapid response to surprises, and otherwise help to avert or to manage crises.

In assembling your kitchen cabinet, ask yourself:

How do I receive advice and criticism?

Who are the people I already engage in that process?

Whom do I trust to give me constructive criticism?

If I make a mistake, whose advice should I take?

When I get stuck, who gets me unstuck?

When I am in crisis, who convinces me to stop doing what I am doing, put my future ahead of my anger, and take a long view to my life dreams?

Then, break down your answers in the following categories:

Your friends. In public life, there are “first-name friends” and “last-name friends.” First-name friends are those who know and appreciate you for you: they know you outside politics, and their personal ambition does not depend on your professional success. Last-name friends know and appreciate you for your public persona or service agenda and can be great allies, but they may not necessarily be trusted advisers. Every prospective candidate or campaign leader needs both first-name friends and last-name friends, but add only first-name friends to your kitchen cabinet.

Your family. Which family members give you good personal and professional advice? While you will solicit (and receive unsolicited) advice from many family members, you may not want them all in the same room with each other or with your campaign team. Be open to hearing all their concerns but pick a couple for your kitchen cabinet. Again, think of these as concentric circles: you want the chemistry to work and can’t have too many cooks. Sometimes only a family member can call you out for failing to maintain work-life balance or tell you that your decision making is off because you haven’t slept in three days.

Your mentors. Which of your political or civic mentors have managed public service campaigns and dealt with political crises? Include a couple of them in your kitchen cabinet and be in touch with as many as you can. They know how you make decisions and sometimes can be good sounding boards for ideas because they are not in your fray every day. They are the people who remind you how you failed and recovered in the past, or keep your wits and humor intact with advice like that of the late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, who said, “Don’t act so humble, you’re not that great.” Mentors who know the rhythms of the particular campaign you are working can be helpful guides. Others may just provide sympathetic ears. But all are important to keep you on track.

Your allies. Sometimes our philosophical opponents see us more clearly than we see ourselves. Allies from the opposite side of the aisle can provide a reality check on your policies because their success does not depend on the outcome of your campaign.

Those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know. The ideal is a kitchen cabinet whose members provide unvarnished feedback and bad news along with constructive solutions with a minimum of gossip and a maximum of discretion. As with any other internal deliberation, advice should be offered behind the scenes, not in the newspapers. Advice should be discreet and direct—a discreet conversation with a direct approach to the issues at hand.

The old adage about Watergate—“The cover-up was worse than the crime”—is a sharp reminder to today’s crisis managers. If you face a crisis, get out in front of it: set forth your version of events, provide supporting documentation if applicable, communicate with your supporters and the public, and get back on track.

Rapid response is vital in our twenty-four-hour image cycle. The arc of a scandal is generally the same: recognition, responsibility, recommitment, and redemption. There must be recognition of the issue with candor and contrition as appropriate, responsibility for any mistakes, recommitment to service, and redemption. People tend to want to move on and focus on their future, and they will more likely do so if they can trust their public servants to do so as well. Any delay—or relapse—in this narrative will be politically dangerous.

HOUSE MEETING HOSTS

Your strategy must bring your message into the community, introduce you to your neighbors, and attract volunteers to your campaign. There is no more intimate setting than the homes of your constituents and no better stage than their living rooms and backyards for practicing your pitch, testing new ideas, and refining your message to your community.

House meeting hosts can become full partners in your campaign—and in your career. In 1987, farmworkers union organizer Fred Ross Jr. ran a grassroots house meeting operation for the Nancy Pelosi for Congress special election campaign. Over 120 house meetings were held in six weeks. Nearly twenty-five years later, dozens of those hosts are still engaged in her ongoing community events. You might think house meetings are old school—and you’d be right—but they still work better than anything else I’ve seen to connect and inspire people.

For example, at a South Carolina Democratic Party–sponsored boot camp on primary eve in January 2008, strategist Donnie Fowler and I presented to volunteers and observers, including supporters of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. When I talked about finding strangers to give house meetings, a Clinton volunteer said, “We don’t do those here.” “We did,” said an Obama supporter.

Since Clinton and Edwards had nearly all the opinion leaders who could turn out their people via top-down operations, the Obama campaign had to organize bottom-up with house meetings in order to change the tide of the election.

Three days later, I was discussing Obama’s decisive South Carolina victory win at a reception with Martin Luther King III and United Farm Workers of America’s Arturo Rodriguez. “Obama won using the house meetings we did twenty years ago for my mom’s campaign with UFW support,” I said. “[UFW founder] César [Chavez] did them forty years ago to start the farm workers,” Rodriguez chimed in. “And my parents did them fifty years ago during the civil rights marches,” added Martin King. What was “innovative” to some in 2008 was actually a reincarnation of a bottom-up grassroots strategy that worked in 1987, 1968, 1956, and probably before that. So before you reject house meetings as “old school” consider the rich history and successful results, then innovate adapting to new times.

Technology makes for more interconnected house meetings. For example, in 2010 the Barbara Boxer for Senate campaign combined old-school organizing with new media tools. She held concurrent house meetings around the state where supporters watched her campaign videos, heard from guest speakers, and then got a conference call linking the house meetings together featuring the candidate herself to maximize impact.

House meetings also work for issue campaigns because the intimacy makes them excellent organizing tools for screening films that promote social change, such as former vice president Al Gore’s Academy Award–winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Plan your campaign’s strategy for recruiting house meeting hosts. First, take a look at your kitchen cabinet and other leadership teams. Each person who lives in your community should be asked to host or help host a house meeting that can serve as a recruiting vehicle for small donors and volunteers. Second, take a look at your Community Inventory. Whom did you identify as the Opinion Leaders? Who are the people who know people? Who is the person who always hosts house meetings? Whose efforts have you helped who might return the favor? Third, conduct meetings and recruit house meeting hosts from there. You should always end a meeting with a commitment to hold another one.

While some campaigns consider house meetings to be closed to press, everyone is a citizen journalist these days. Assume the proceedings are recorded and on the record. Also, have the host facilitate questions because oftentimes people will show far more politeness to a host extending them hospitality than they will to a candidate. While most people are civil, there are a few who take it upon themselves to vent. Hosts should be ready to move the conversation along.

Be sure that people leave with a creative memento of the campaign. Bumper stickers are great—if they actually go on cars. Stickers are more common than lapel pins in a low-budget campaign. Other ideas include hats, T-shirts, potholders, and unisex nail files—all made in America with union labor.

Reach voters in their native language. If you do not speak it, then recruit a respected leader from the community to translate on your behalf. At a house meeting in a bilingual neighborhood, bring bilingual materials, play your Spanish-language ads, or seek bilingual phone bankers to help build support.

Avoid offending blocs of voters by recruiting them from the start, hiring staff from diverse constituencies, and preparing materials with specific translations.

FINANCE COUNCIL

A public service campaign finance council is the team that raises the funds necessary for success. It creates and oversees the campaign budget and implements the campaign finance plan.

The financial council consists of a finance chair, a treasurer, a finance director, and key donors. The finance chair is a well-respected member of the community who has a track record in support of your public service mission. This person leads the fund-raising effort. The treasurer balances the books, issues checks, and files campaign disclosure reports. The finance director works with the finance council to identify new sources of potential contributions and to bring that money into the campaign. Start with your informal finance council people with whom you have raised funds for other causes and candidates.

The goal of a good campaign is to spend exactly what is needed—and not a penny more—to win. As with the campaign plan, your budget should express a clear strategy to capture the votes needed to win the election or to complete your concrete service mission. (Represent X number of indigent clients, do X number of trainings, place X number of books in public schools, maintain X number of organic gardens, etc.) It should cover the staff and materials required by each of the four major parts of your campaign: message, management, money, and mobilization.

In considering recruits for your finance council consider these questions:

Who are the people who sit on finance councils for campaigns like mine?

Who among my kitchen cabinet is a good fund-raiser or can recommend one?

Who in my Community Inventory is known for donating to causes I believe in?

Who is able to leverage “in kind” (not cash) contributions of food or services?

Who has an active network and can send e-mails on my behalf?

Are there networks (see chapter 5) that invite candidates or campaign reps for meet-and-greets? One of their leaders would be helpful.

Who can advise on the proper mix of network TV (old media) buys and new media buys, especially if I pay my media consultant on commission?

Potential supporters looking at campaigns want to see how much money goes for old media versus new media in the communications budget. One old school campaign strategy I can do without is the overreliance on heavy old media buys with management commissions. I once invited a candidate to a boot camp, and his field director accepted. Three days later the campaign manager called saying the field director was gone and he wasn’t sure the candidate needed my boot camp: “He is going to spend $3 million on this race. When that goes to media I get 15 percent commission. What will he learn at your boot camp that will help my campaign plan?” Well, geez, when you put it that way…. I gave Mr. 15 percent credit for being honest. He saw no need to invest in field operations and didn’t want to lose “his” campaign plan, aka his commission. While few will be as blunt, many think like Mr. 15 percent.

As craigslist founder Craig Newmark comments, “I hope that buzz and social media will be more important and less expensive than television. Campaign consultants still make too much money on TV buys, and they will in 2012, but I am hoping that in 2016 we will see candidates directing buys primarily to social media.” If given the choice between a candidate spending a million dollars on TV versus a candidate spending a million dollars on new media, Newmark “would go with the new media candidate because moving our politics online makes it cheaper and more exposed to truth telling.”⁹

The following percentages are meant to provide you with a rough guideline to creating a strong budget: management: 10 percent; message/media: 60 percent; money: 10 percent; mobilization: 20 percent. To stretch that 60 percent, you can use cable instead of network television and use new media buys: banner ads on microtargeted Web sites and social networks like iPhone apps, YouTube videos, Twitter hashtags, Facebook and text messaging to rev up support.

Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusets did this in 2010. He created the “Brown Brigade” where “Brown’s staff could reach his supporters, his supporters could respond to him, and supporters could find one another to organize.” They sent text messages to supporters when he or his opponent was on the radio with the show’s number to call in and multiply his message.¹⁰ That money was likely far better leveraged than if it had been spent on network television.

How you recruit your finance council sends a message about whether you want communication with your voters to be “one to many” (you send a message out to many people on TV or radio or e-mail) or “many to many” (your networks send messages to their networks, all of whom communicate with you and each other). Adding new media gurus will help guide media spending that reflects the more modern crowd-sourced beehive model in which people are communicating in concentric circles and giving constant feedback. It will also help you save money, because new media gurus can wire your campaign and provide discounted or in-kind (free) services.

Remember that your budget must accurately reflect the various intervals of a campaign. Do you qualify for matching funds at a certain point? Is there a large fund-raiser scheduled for June 30, the last day of the quarter and an important finance filing deadline? You will face such issues in creating a working campaign budget.

Once you have created your budget, the campaign manager’s job is to stick to it. For this reason, many campaigns have a rule that only the campaign manager can authorize expenditures. Not even the candidate should be able to spend—or promise to spend—money without getting the campaign manager’s approval first. The campaign manager, in turn, should not have a conflict of interest if he is getting a piece of the action.

If you work with a nonprofit, your finance council is your quality-control team. It may be a subset of your board of directors and include your auditing and accounting staff. Monitor your expenses and maintain exquisite records. TechNet’s Lezlee Westine said that, as CEO of a $3 million nonprofit, she checked her budget every week. That kind of scrupulous vigilance plus technology tools can help keep track of your finances and keep faith with your investors and the public.

VOLUNTEER CORPS COORDINATORS

A vibrant volunteer corps is the heart and soul of a public service campaign. The volunteer corps is generally led by the volunteer coordinator and includes trusted volunteers who believe in the campaign and have invested time training new people as they come in to the effort. These team leaders must be patient and enthusiastic.

Devote resources to recruiting, training, and motivating volunteer coordinators who, in turn, will give each potential volunteer a brief welcome interview, lay out the plan, experiment with different activities to find a match, and be patient and thankful.

Begin with people from your Community Inventory, opinion leaders who volunteer on campaigns like yours and already have good connections within the community and a willingness to share their Rolodexes. I met former San Francisco Supervisor Leslie Katz on the campaign trail twenty-five years ago. Well before running for office herself, she walked in the Nancy Pelosi campaign headquarters with her Rolodex one day and called through it to bring in volunteers. Now a San Francisco Port Commissioner with national experience organizing for LGBT equality, Katz continues to expand and share her Rolodex in pursuit of her call to service. You need to find volunteer corps coordinators like Katz who “graduated” from house meeting host to take on greater responsibility.

As discussed in chapter 1, many of your networks do campaign training programs that can help your team learn the ropes: political parties and political networks have trainings for specific campaign roles. The campaign should organize a boot camp for volunteer corps coordinators to show new team members the ropes and set up basic data management systems so that as people enter the system their areas of interest and levels of participation (house meetings, lawn signs, donations, door knocking) are all on file. That way the team is ready for, say, a veterans-to-veterans or women-to-women phone-banking night: a click of the mouse should pull up all the people for a particular constituency.

Cloud computing systems through Google allow people to schedule events together online, then meet up off-line, and phone services like FreeConferenceCall.com allow participants to set up virtual phone banks and training calls. You can use these free programs to initiate regularly scheduled events like a monthly call with the candidate or the initiative pollsters and the volunteers working with the grassroots.

Most campaigns skills can be divided into the 3 Ps: people, paper, and physical. Volunteer coordinators are the “people people” who work the phones, doors, and house meetings; paper people track voters, volunteers, and current events; and physical people deliver signs, secure supplies, or prep the headquarters for various activities. This method of mobilizing builds a culture of service within the campaign, where each person’s contribution—to any of the leadership teams or organizational needs—is a message multiplier.

Devising some kind of recognition makes everyone feel good. Write names on stars and hang them in the office. Have a photo wall or a creative thermometer to show that the team met its goals of walking X precincts or stuffing X mailers. The Volunteer corps coordinators make the headquarters a place where people want to return for a positive experience even during the negative times of a campaign.

ELECTION PROTECTION TEAM

Voting is a civic sacrament—the highest responsibility we have as Americans. You must promote and protect the vote for all your constituents, whether they vote for you or not. Your election protection team comprised of voting experts and lawyers develops the strategy to ensure that supporters vote and that their votes are counted as cast.

If you work on a political campaign, you must know how and where the votes are being cast and counted. Begin with your campaign counsel. Add people who understand the voting patterns of the community, including representatives of constituency groups who have voting rights expertise and who can add counsel and help with get-out-the-vote efforts across the electorate. Expand to institutes that track voting rights issues. Particular areas of concern are early voting, military ballots, and student voting.

Do not save your get-out-the-vote efforts for the last days before Election Day. You must begin at the inception of your campaign.

From voter registration to vote recount, you must have this team keeping an eye on your votes at all times. This is where your national networks are helpful because they already “know the territory.” If you call an election hotline, you can find someone who knows the election law in your community.

Democratic National Committee vice chair and voting rights advocate Donna Brazile describes voting as “one of our most sacred and important rituals” and cautions that voting is “still threatened every election day by uninformed poll workers, technology, campaigns more interested in winning than an individual’s right, and election laws that don’t always make sense.”¹¹

Moreover, in the last few years there has been an aggressive effort to restrict voting. According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, legislators around the country have been pushing bills that make sweeping changes to their election codes to limit the voting rights of students and movers, reduce early voting days, and restrict voter registration and “get-out-the-vote” mobilization efforts that all told could restrict voting rights of 5 million Americans in 2012.¹²

The DNC’s Voting Rights Institute report on voter ID laws is revealing: 11 percent of Americans—approximately 23 million citizens of voting age—lack proper photo ID and, as a result, could be turned away from the polls on Election Day. Those without photo ID are disproportionately low-income, disabled, minority, young, and older voters.¹³

Your team should know your opponent’s views on these voting laws. Is she an advocate for reform or for restrictions? What roles has she played?

Even if some voter restrictions end up passing, they may backfire as people remember which party wanted them to vote and which one didn’t. Look to the West, where GOP-backed Latinos for Reform ran despicable ads urging Latino voters not to vote in 2010.¹⁴ Galvanized by longtime civil rights activists like Dolores Huerta, who called it a “deceptive trap of no representation,” and new media networks like Voto Latino, Latino voters did vote, and a majority gave their votes—and thus the Senate Majority—to pro-immigrant Democrats Harry Reid in Nevada, Barbara Boxer in California, and Michael Bennet in Colorado. The lesson expressed by Voto Latino’s Maria Teresa Kumar applies to all voters: “Voting, no matter your political party or which candidate you support, is the most important civic tool that American Latinos have to be heard and understood by decision makers nationwide.”¹⁵

You must check to know the current state of the law. Your election protection chair should brief the team on the law in your community so that you can prepare your volunteers and plan your campaign accordingly. Your campaign’s veterans and military families advisory council should have representation on the election protection team. Consult with national networks such as the Overseas Vote Foundation and Democrats Abroad for the latest on the Federal Absentee Ballot for Americans temporarily abroad.

Your team should consult with disability rights advocates to ensure access for your voters. Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Mark Perriello, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, wrote “Voter I.D. Laws Hurt Our Democracy,” an op-ed in the Progressive (July 18, 2011). It points out:

There are more than 30 million Americans with disabilities of voting age, yet the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports that there are more than 20,000 inaccessible polling places. Some are located in basements or buildings without ramps, and others only offer machines that are outdated and unworkable for a person who is blind, deaf, or physically impaired. Too many citizens with disabilities can only cast their vote curbside or are denied the right to a secret ballot when they have to speak their vote out loud for someone else to mark down.

If impediments were removed and people with disabilities began voting in the same proportion as other Americans, fully 3.2 million more people would be casting ballots.¹⁶

After all the hard work of your leadership teams to develop and implement the campaign plan, you will want to make sure that your public service campaign ends in victory, with every supporter voting and every vote counted as cast.

GET REAL:
BUILD YOUR LEADERSHIP TEAMS

Campaigns are often shaped by character and events. Campaign teams made up of people who know your character can best help you create and respond to events in a manner that will effectively promote your message.

1. Build Your Kitchen Cabinet

You need people you can trust to give unvarnished feedback and bad news along with constructive solutions with a minimum of gossip and a maximum of discretion. Consider:

People already in your informal kitchen cabinet

Key family members

Political or civic mentors

First-name friends who appreciate you outside of public life

An ally from the opposite side of the aisle who can provide a reality check

Who needs to be added to your kitchen cabinet, and what is your strategy to recruit them?

2. Recruit Your House Meeting Hosts

House meeting hosts will literally bring your campaign home to living rooms and community centers to meet their friends and recruit volunteers. What is your strategy to recruit them?

Consider:

Family members

Close friends

Work colleagues

Political or nonprofit allies you’ve helped before

Key volunteers from networks in Community Inventory

Mavens who already host house meetings for others similar to you

3. Develop Your Finance Council

Starting with your finance chair, treasurer, and fund-raising director, you need a team to raise the funds needed to win. Who needs to be added to the finance council, and what is your strategy to recruit them? Consider:

Finance chair

Treasurer

Fund-raising director

Current informal finance council

4. Choose Your Volunteer Corps Coordinators

Your best ambassadors and trainers, the volunteer corps coordinators lead the people who form the backbone of your campaign, strengthening and expanding your support. Consider:

Volunteers in politics with close community ties

Opinion leaders who volunteer on campaigns like yours, already have good connections within the community, and have a Rolodex to help you recruit

House meeting hosts who want to take more responsibility within the campaign

Good teachers, trainers, nurturers

Techies who can set up basic data management systems so that as people enter the system, their areas of interest and levels of participation are all on file

5. Establish Your Election Protection Team

From voter registration to Election Day to recount, you must have a council of voting experts and lawyers keeping an eye on your votes at all times. You need a team with experience in your community.

Appoint a campaign counsel

Add experts on election laws, voting rights, and campaigns

Include experienced activists for get-out-the-vote efforts in hot spots such as early voting, military ballots, and student voters

Use national networks with local chapters, hotlines, and other networks