Signature Assignment 1: Campaigns and Elections PaperSignature Assignment 1 (Unit 2): Campaign and Elections Paper(3-5 pages)Paper must be double spaced, with 12 point font and include section headers
Components of a Modern Campaign
The days of running a campaign with a few close friends and relatives, an emery board with your name on it, and a good pair of walking shoes are long gone. Running such a campaign in the modern era is like driving a Model-T on Interstate 30-not only will you not get where you want to go, but you may suffer severe damage in the process! There are five components to the modern campaign: the candidate, the organization, a campaign message, the campaign strategy and resources.
Lecture: AUDIO 
1) The Candidate
Obviously, every campaign for office, whether in Texas or in another state, must have a candidate! You can’t win without a name on the ballot. Candidates tend to be white, wealthy, older, conservative, and well educated with a connection to the business community. The number of women candidates has been increasing greatly. Modern candidates must have a great deal of money, or at least have access to money. The number of minority candidates is increasing as the number of minority voters increases. Historically, you need to be a Democrat, but now it helps to be Republican. This describes the three most recent Texas governors, George W. Bush, Rick Perry and Greg Abbott. All three are white, Republican, pro-business, conservative males.
Required Written Lecture: Elections- Modern Campaigns
Components of a Modern Campaign, continued
2) The Organization:
Behind every winning candidate is a winning organization, These are the people that are hired (or in some local elections volunteer) to perform particular functions critical to the election. Possible positions in each organization are listed below.
The Treasurer: While every campaign has to have a candidate, the only legally required position for a campaign organization is that of treasurer. The law requires that every campaign have a treasurer separate and apart from the candidate. It is the treasurer who is required to file all the campaign paperwork and is held liable in court if it is not filed or is filed with mistakes.
Campaign Manager: The campaign manager is the person that runs the day-to-day operation much like an office manager runs an office. This person works closely with the candidate and others to oversee the overall operation of the campaign. Usually, these folks are paid professionals who are trained to run political campaigns. They coordinate and oversee the operation of the campaign.
Fundraising Director: As noted earlier, modern campaigns require a lot of money so it makes sense to have someone in charge of fundraising. This person will oversee efforts to raise money from small donors, large donors, and everyone in-between.
Volunteer Coordinator: Another important position in most campaigns is the volunteer coordinator. Every campaign of any size needs volunteers to put up yard signs, stuff envelopes, knock on doors, and make phone calls. The volunteer coordinator is in charge of recruiting and organizing these volunteers.
Lecture: AUDIO
Media Consultant: The media consultant is the person hired to help the candidate hone his or her look and media-oriented message. The media consultant is hired to make you look good and sound good. For the most part, media consultants contract out and may work with multiple campaigns.
Pollster: There may have been a time when candidates decided what issues to run on based on knowledge of the district and gut feeling, but those days are gone. Every modern campaign needs a pollster to help them determine whether or not to run and if so, how to run most effectively. There are several types of polls that are important in politics.
Lecture: AUDIO
Campaign Strategy: The campaign strategy has to do with the message around which you plan to build your campaign. What will be your central campaign theme-how will you “market” your campaign and your candidacy? The campaign strategy is generally a function of two things: the strengths of the candidate the context of the times.
If you have a great deal of political experience, that might be the strategy. If not, you have to adopt a different strategy. If the economy is good and the candidate is an incumbent (in office), then the strategy will focus on what you have done to improve the economy. If it is bad, you will take a different approach.
Required Written Lecture: Elections- Modern Campaign Components (cont'd)
Components of a Modern Campaign, continued
3) The Campaign Message
The Experienced Leader: This is often the strategy of the incumbent officeholder or an experienced policy maker looking to move to a higher office. The focus is on his or her political experience and the things he or she has done for the district or state.
The Outsider: This strategy is usually adopted by the person trying to dethrone the experienced leader. This person focuses on the fact that he or she has not been tainted by the political system. This strategy works really well when times are bad and voters are ready to toss out the incumbent leaders. Issues position will focus on changind the way things are being done- we have to improve education, ethics, etc.- change, change, change.
Local Boy (or Girl) does Good (One of Us): This candidate focuses more on where he or she comes from than where he or she is going and emphasizes roots in the community. Works best for localized office and candidates with deep community ties.
The Savior: This is a variant of the outsider strategy, but focuses on the ability of the outsider to come in and save the day; the problem solver. This candidate will build his or her campaign around promises to address key issues important to the voters- provide jobs, improve education, clean up the environment, etc.
The Good Person: This strategy once again focuses more on who the person is and where he or she comes from than what he or she will do. He or she will talk about background and his or her work in the church, in the community, and for the common good. This persons campaign will focus less on specific policy issues and more on his or her qualities of moral leadership.
The Moral Leader: This strategy focuses on social issues and is often used by social conservatives (bedroom Republicans) who build their campaigns around abortion, school prayer, etc. He or she promises to support "traditional family values" like supporting a traditional definition of marriage, school prayer and vouchers for religious schools, while standing against abortion and expansion of rights based on sexual orientation or gender identification.
The Progressive: This candidate will build his or her campaign around the promise of economic equality- better wages, taxes on the wealthy, equal rights according to race and religion, etc.
4) The Campaign Strategy/ Issues
the specific demographic, regional, partisan and ideological groups of voters you will target and how your message and issues you will focus on will be used to target those voters.
* What parts (regions) of the state will be likely to vote for you and what issues/ message will you use to appeal to them?
* Which party (Republicans, Independents and Democrats) will be likely to vote for you and how will your message/ issues appeal to them?
* What economic groups (wealthy, middle class, poor) will be likely to vote for you and how will your message/ issues appeal to them?
* Will any particular ethnic group or gender be more or less likely to vote for your candidate and why?
The campaign strategy reflects the campaign message. For example, the Experienced Leader might appeal to Democrats and Independents, wealthy and middle class voters, etc.
5) Campaign Resources
Finally, every campaign requires significant resources, particularly money, people, and organization.
Money: As discussed above, money is critical. It buys you name recognition - if you have enough money, you can run enough commercials so that people know who you are. Second, it buys you credibility. Because you have money or have access to money, you are considered a real, viable candidate.
People/ Volunteers: Every campaign needs an army of people (preferably volunteers) who will stuff envelopes, knock on doors, make telephone calls and hand out fliers on election day. The candidate cannot be everywhere, but with enough people, his or her campaign can be.
Desire to Win: You must really want to win. Don’t go into the campaign half-heartedly. If you do, you will not win. The road is too hard and the demands too great.
Time: A candidate must be willing to commit a significant amount of time to the campaign. If you are running statewide, plan to commit at least two years of your life to the campaign. You have to raise money, give speeches, make appearances, etc., and all of that takes time.
Required Written Lecture: Elections- Modern Campaigns
Why are political campaigns in Texas so different than they were in the mid 20th Century?
First, the stakes are much greater. While many of the political officers (particularly state legislators) are still not paid that well, the other benefits of service are much greater. Government is involved in much more and leaders can do much more than they ever could before, therefore the competition for the offices increases.
Second, as the Republican Party has grown, so has the competition for positions-increased competition means a more costly, negative, and public campaign.
Third, as Texas has grown in size and political prominence, a victory in Texas can mean a national platform (do you really think anyone would have considered George W. Bush a candidate for president if he were governor of Vermont?).
Finally, modern technology and expensive means of communication readily lend themselves to use in modern campaigns. People respond more to television than to newspapers. People respond more to flashy advertisements than to long debates. People respond more to slick, professional commercials than to something that looks like it was done with a home video camera!
In the end, modern campaigns have arrived, because we, the voters, respond to them. If we still responded to emery boards and catchy phrases on the back of a funeral fan, then candidates would use those. However, the good old days are probably gone forever, if they ever existed at all!
Required Written Lecture: Aggregate Participation - Individual Participation
Factors that Determine Your Vote
Traditionally, political scientists divide the factors that determine vote choice into two groups: long-term factors - those characteristics of the voters that are not likely to change and predispose the voter to vote Democratic or Republican; and, short-term factors - those factors that often change from campaign to campaign, particularly candidates, issues, and national trends.
Long-term Factors: These are factors that generally describe the voter and do not change from one election to the next: income, education, ethnicity, gender, political party affiliation, and religiosity. These things do not rapidly change from one election to the other and generally predispose a voter to select candidates from one party or the other. For example, while there are clearly exceptions, voters who are wealthy, educated, male, white, and Republican tend to vote for Republican candidates unless given a compelling reason not to. On the other hand, minority, poor, and less-educated voters that identify with the Democratic Party will vote for the Democratic Party unless given a compelling reason to do otherwise.
Lecture: AUDIO
Short-term factors: If long term factors were all that mattered, we would not get presidents or governors from different parties in back-to-back elections. However, while people are predisposed by the long-term factors to vote a certain way, factors associated with a particular election (short-term factors) can cause a person to vote against the position predisposed by their long-term qualities. Political Scientists generally identify three short-term factors (factors likely to change from campaign to campaign): candidates, issues and national trends.
Candidates: It is very rare that the same two candidates will seek the same office in back-to-back elections. Usually, the loser does not try again. Sometimes people like or dislike a particular candidate so much that they will vote against their predispositions. For example, Ronald Reagan was so likeable that many poor and uneducated voters supported him for president despite their predisposition to vote Democratic.
Issues: The issues that are important do not stay the same from one election to the next. Sometimes an issue is of such great importance (i.e., abortion or immigration) that a person will let his or her position on that issue override everything else in casting the vote.
National Trends: Finally, state and local elections are not held in a vacuum. They are held within the context of the national electoral, economic, and political environment. In 2006, Democrats did win in Texas and across the country because of the Iraq War, a weak economy, and Republican scandals. This meant that some people who would usually have voted Republican cast their vote for the Democrats against their own predispositions. In 2010, many folks who generally vote Democratic were frustrated with the economy and Obamacare and, therefore, voted Republican, sweeping in a large, conservative Republican majority. In 2016, many rural voters in Texas and across the country who have traditionally voted Democratic voted for Donald Trump (or against Hillary Clinton), weeping Trump into office.
See the next page to see how Texas compares!
Required Written Lecture: Texas Election 2014 and 2016: A GOP Sweep!
While prior to the 1990s, Texas government and politics was dominated by the Democratic party, recent elections have seen Republicans taking control. In 1994, George W. Bush was elected governor and no Democrat has held the office since that time. Two years later, Republicans won control of the Texas Senate and in 2002, Republicans gained a majority of the seats in the Texas House of Representatives. The 2014 elections saw Republicans maintaining their majorities in both the House and Senate and sweeping to victory in all statewide offices, including Governor (Abbott), Lt. Governor (Patrick) and Attorney General (Paxton). Republican Greg Abbott defeated Democrat Wendy Davis by almost twenty percent in the closely watched race for Governor. This trend in Texas matched the national trend where Republicans gained seats in the US House and gained a majority of the seats in the United States Senate.
In 2016, Republicans continued their domination in the Lone Start state with Donald Trump defeating Hillary Clinton by nine percent (52.5% to 43.5%) and Republicans holding their majorities in the Texas Congressional delegation, the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate. However, the decreasing popularity of Republican President Donald Trump seems to have hurt the Republican Party in Texas and the 2018 elections will allow us to see just how much damage has been (or has not been) done.
Required Written Lecture: Individual Participation- Summary
Individual Participation includes the methods of participation that individuals undertake by themselves. They are not doing it in a group. They are not doing it because they were coordinated or asked by the party or a lobbyist. They go into the booth or write that campaign check all by themselves. There are four basic types of individual participation: voting in an election, contacting a policy maker, contributing to a candidate and running for office. Each of these methods involves a different balance of costs and benefits. For example, running for offices may costs a lot of money and time, as well as a loss of privacy but could also allow you to have a significant impact on public policy and the lives of many people.
The most common method of individual participation is voting for a candidate. The reality is that some types of people vote more than than others and those differences matter. In Texas, people who are wealthier, older, white and more educated tend to vote at a higher rate than their counterparts Therefore, policies tend to benefit those who are wealthy, educated,older and white.
Finally, voting and other methods of individual participation take place only because people are willing to run for political office. To win an election, candidates must win in both primary and general elections. A winning campaign includes a good candidate, a strong organization, an effective message, a good strategy and necessary resources (money, people and organization). Voters cast their votes based on long term (their age, wealth, religion, party, race and gender) and short term (candidates, issues and national crises) factors.
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