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book." Don't tackle a primary campaign until you have prepared such a list.
CHAPTER IX Landmarks and Booby Traps
Don't waste volunteers on the blanket distribution of political literature.
"Volunteers" who won't or can't punch doorbells
should be worked hard at office work. Don't let them
lounge in headquarters - especially the Big Operator.
Make people come to see you - unless it's your idea.
Insist that the candidate conform to your discipline.
Lay it on the line!
Brace yourself for phonies, sell-outs, and other disappointments.
Publicity: If humanly possible, get a professional publicity man.
Never mention your opponent by name, neither in printing, signs, meetings, nor in doorbell pushing. Don't budget too much money to newspaper ads and publicity.
Short radio spot plugs during the last week may be worth the money.
Prefer 6-sheets to 24-sheets. One-sheets, half-sheets, quarter-cards, and bumper strips are cheap and useful.
The prime purpose of publicity is to strengthen the morale of your workers and supporters by creating a bandwagon atmosphere. Publicity gets very few votes but it keeps the campaign from dropping out of sight. Pinch the pennies - publicity can bankrupt you.
Party Harmony: A successful primary fight is worthless if it splits open your party. Keep it clean!
A party-wide Sunday breakfast club is a cheap and easy way to keep the party factions friendly during the primary.
Scouting and Heckling: Scout opponent's public meetings for information; heckle only to nail a lie. For
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heckling use well-dressed, well-mannered, small women who can keep their tempers and their wits under stress. Train them to attack the lie and not the liar.
In coping with a heckler, treat him with great politeness and insist that he talk himself out. Then refute him after he has returned to his seat.
If possible, give direct unequivocal answers to questions from the floor. If the question is irrelevant, impertinent, or loaded, counter-attack by demanding details from the questioner and publicly set a date for a (private) meeting with the questioner to permit detailed investigation.
Don't use the above device to duck a proper issue, even though embarrassing.
Sampling a District: Cultivate skill in predicting election results by making and recording all possible predictions, then examine your results in the postmortem. Try to analyze your mistakes.
Check the progress of campaigning by a statistical poll. Make up a random list by taking, for example, the last name from the middle column of every third precinct list, then poll them by telephone or post card, using a question form which does not suggest the desired answer. When fifty responsive replies are in, double the number of favorable replies, subtract eight, and treat the answer as a percentage which indicates what per cent of the vote you could be reasonably sure of if the election were held at once.
Supplement this by prowling through your district, looking for chances to gossip about politics. In a primary, if one in four of the people you meet in your excursion know who your candidate is, his chances are excellent; if only one in ten have heard of him his chances are poor.
Don't expect the majority of the population even to notice a primary.
CHAPTER X The Final Sprint
Final Mail Coverage: Send signed post cards or personal letters to all persons called on. Don't use third class mail.
Election Day: Regroup to cover the precincts covered by the candidate. The purpose of election day work is to get every certain and every probable vote, as determined by canvassing, to the polls. Telephoning the night before and election morning is used to separate the certain voters from those who must be coaxed or carried. Election afternoon is used to round up stragglers. Work from lists. Use any left-over time to carry any members of your party to the polls and thereby pick up a few stray votes in return for the courtesy of a ride.
Use poll workers if available-conform to local law.
Election Night: Have the count watched and the results telephoned in. Give a headquarters party with refreshments for workers and friends.
Post-Primary Troubles:
Don't forget:
Personal notes to all who have helped.
Get-together and rally meeting of Doorbell Club
Heal-the-wounds meeting of the Breakfast Club
County committee meeting
State committee meeting
State convention
Official report of campaign expenditures.
Vacations for you and for the candidate.
But your principal effort will be to bring candidates you have defeated into line at once.
Final Campaign: Organize a district campaign for the entire ticket and have your candidate beat his own drum by campaigning for the entire ticket.
Keep your candidate's campaign funds separate from the district funds.
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In congressional contests attempt to get national committee funds allotted to your district
Conduct the final campaign in the same fashion as the primary campaign, with the same emphasis on doorbell-pushing-despite any and all advice or pressure. Your list of selected targets now comprises the members of your own party who failed to vote in the primary plus members of minor parties plus unaf-filiated voters. Ignore die other party.
Continue strenuous efforts to register potential voters.
Put special effort into election day organization and get workers in from outside the district impossible.
Guiding Principle: If you are licked, it means your friends stayed home. Your object is to stir out the largest possible percentage of your own "sleeper" by registering them and dragging them to die polls.
Post-Election Chores: Same as for primary, minus the convention and plus between-election plans for the organization... elections are won in the off-years!
CHAPTER XI Footnotes on Democracy
Political Expenses: Volunteer work can be effective without costing you anything, but about $2.00 a week, on average, will make your work easier and pleasanter. This is usually offset by the money you don't spend for recreation as a consequence.
Coping with Communists: Communists pop up anywhere and make trouble-their objectives rarely if ever coincide widi yours. You can spot them by their catch words and by occasionally checking to see what the current "party line" is. They will try to dominate your meetings under the pretense of "free speech." This is a false plea; free speech is not a license to interrupt others in their affairs; the group who pays the hall rent are entitled to set the agenda. Suppress them by parliamentary maneuver-usually by insisting on theorder oftheday.
Communists are nuisances rather than dangers, but they have one prime usefulness: Any real local success on their part is a sure sign that some group of Americans are in such dire straits as to need emergency help - not punitive action!
Lawyers in Politics: To a major extent lawyers control our economic and political life, partly through special advantages enjoyed by the legal profession but primarily by default of the laymen. Unfortunately they are not well fitted by training for such responsibilities; their training is too narrow and too impractical. They are especially ill fitted to make laws, because they speak a foreign language and look to the past rather dian the future.
A Third Party? This is a practical matter. Granted that there are glaring strange-bedfellow conditions in our present party alignments there is still no point in starting up a new party just strong enough to lose. However, third parties have won more than once in the past; the enterprise is always speculative but it is not impossible.
The time to join a third party is before the primary; if you take part in the primary of a party you are honor-bound to stick with it through November.