The Campaign
We've been working on it for about two months now, and so far it seems to me that a political campaign boils down to about four things: meetings, phone calls, social media, and door-knocking.
The meetings began in December, when we were only considering running and praying about the decision. Harvey wanted to test the waters to see whether he might be able to find a few bright, dedicated people for his team. He met with the man who is now our campaign manager and the man who is now our fundraising chair. They were interested and excited from the beginning, so that gave us a solid place to start from.
Since then for Harvey it's been meeting after meeting. Meetings with pastors, politicians, trade associations, journalists, friends and family, donors, and district residents. Meetings at libraries, churches, restaurants, coffee shops, offices, parks, and houses. Harvey is working on the campaign full time, with no other job, so he has meetings morning, noon, and night. It started with friends and acquaintances our family has connected us with. Harvey's dad has worked in road construction for years, so he introduced Harvey to leaders of trade groups and paving companies. My father worked for our state denominational convention, so he arranged meetings with leaders he knew there. Our fundraiser has many contacts within our state denominational convention as well, because he has led fundraising efforts for them in the past. So Harvey meets with these people, and they connect him to people they know, and so on.
We've had town hall meetings in local libraries, where people come to meet and learn about Harvey and voice the concerns they have for our nation. We've had home events and fundraising dinners, where friends gather to hear about what we're doing and find out how they can help. We've attended festivals and shows, where we pass out our material, shake hands, and meet new faces. And we've gone to forums and conventions where Harvey has had the opportunity to stand alongside the other candidates and make the case for why he's the best for the job (more on that to come).
When he's not in meetings, he's often on the phone arranging meetings or strategizing. It seems like once he ends one call, not ten minutes go by before he's on the phone again. He doesn't have a campaign headquarters, so he talks multiple times a day with his campaign manager and others on his campaign team.
A lot of that talk is about social media. Harvey began toying with a campaign Web site weeks before we decided for sure we were running, posting pictures and information and his political positions. The next step after we decided to run was creating a Facebook page. Then Harvey entered the world of Twitter. Facebook has been our main social media tool. We made some videos of the kids and posted them and got thousands of views. And over the past few weeks we've gotten help from some Facebook-savvy supporters who have told Harvey how to make the most of our page, so Harvey has been spending a lot more time monitoring that and keeping it going. It has been effective. At the moment I'm writing, we have more than 3500 likes on our Facebook page, which puts us in first place among the other candidates, all of whose campaigns began weeks or months before ours.
I don't know whether it really counts as social media, but I had a new experience when I recently made a radio commercial! Harvey and Tyle wrote a short script for a thirty-second spot on the local conservative talk radio station. When I learned I would be doing it, I imagined myself behind a desk with headphones on in a huge recording studio. Thankfully it was much more low-key--I stood at a mike, sans headphones, in a tiny corner office atop 50 Penn Place, and I read through the script a few times with only a hint of coaching from the radio producer. ("Read it like you're reading a bedtime story to your kids." "Make your voice more serious when you get to the line about the financial crisis.") He took it from there, editing out my breaths to shave the thing down to thirty seconds and adding patriotic music in the background. The whole thing took thirty or forty-five minutes and we were done. Once the ad hit the airwaves a couple days later, it was fun to hear friends, family, and even strangers tell me they'd heard me on the radio.
Lately we've added another task to our campaigning repertoire: knocking on doors. Harvey began going house to house for an hour or two at a time when he wasn't busy with meetings. But there's no way Harvey can knock on all the doors on his own, so we all pitch in: the kids and I, our parents, and a few friends. Our family has spent two or three Saturdays, plus several other afternoons/evenings, making the rounds. The kids bring plenty of books to read for the hours they're just sitting in the car. Sometimes they go up to the doors with or for us, but they get tired, and sometimes it's easier for them to just stay put. Though it's an exhausting task for all of us, especially as the weather is getting hotter, we've had fun with this, and for the most part people have been kind and open to our information.
Meetings, phone calls, social media, and door-knocking. All opportunities to get Harvey's name out there introduce him to voters. But how can those voters get a better understanding of who he is--not just his positions on certain issues, but his personality and character, the whole package? And how do voters decide how he compares to the other candidates, why they should give their support to him rather than the others? This is where a certain type of meeting--the forum--comes in. Harvey has participated in two of them. How did he fare? I'll divulge in my next post, hopefully coming soon.
The meetings began in December, when we were only considering running and praying about the decision. Harvey wanted to test the waters to see whether he might be able to find a few bright, dedicated people for his team. He met with the man who is now our campaign manager and the man who is now our fundraising chair. They were interested and excited from the beginning, so that gave us a solid place to start from.
Since then for Harvey it's been meeting after meeting. Meetings with pastors, politicians, trade associations, journalists, friends and family, donors, and district residents. Meetings at libraries, churches, restaurants, coffee shops, offices, parks, and houses. Harvey is working on the campaign full time, with no other job, so he has meetings morning, noon, and night. It started with friends and acquaintances our family has connected us with. Harvey's dad has worked in road construction for years, so he introduced Harvey to leaders of trade groups and paving companies. My father worked for our state denominational convention, so he arranged meetings with leaders he knew there. Our fundraiser has many contacts within our state denominational convention as well, because he has led fundraising efforts for them in the past. So Harvey meets with these people, and they connect him to people they know, and so on.
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| Harvey speaks to the High Noon Club. |
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| Harvey meets with the board of directors of the Oklahoma/Arkansas chapter of the American Concrete Pavement Association. |
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| Harvey sits down with the Oklahoma Municipal Construction Association board. |
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| Meeting other homeschool families at the Oklahoma Christian Home Educators Consociation (OCHEC) convention |
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| Hanging out at a Seminole arts festival |
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| Getting the word out to Shawnee at an arts and crafts show |
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| After Harvey's speech at the Tea Party Express |
When he's not in meetings, he's often on the phone arranging meetings or strategizing. It seems like once he ends one call, not ten minutes go by before he's on the phone again. He doesn't have a campaign headquarters, so he talks multiple times a day with his campaign manager and others on his campaign team.
A lot of that talk is about social media. Harvey began toying with a campaign Web site weeks before we decided for sure we were running, posting pictures and information and his political positions. The next step after we decided to run was creating a Facebook page. Then Harvey entered the world of Twitter. Facebook has been our main social media tool. We made some videos of the kids and posted them and got thousands of views. And over the past few weeks we've gotten help from some Facebook-savvy supporters who have told Harvey how to make the most of our page, so Harvey has been spending a lot more time monitoring that and keeping it going. It has been effective. At the moment I'm writing, we have more than 3500 likes on our Facebook page, which puts us in first place among the other candidates, all of whose campaigns began weeks or months before ours.
I don't know whether it really counts as social media, but I had a new experience when I recently made a radio commercial! Harvey and Tyle wrote a short script for a thirty-second spot on the local conservative talk radio station. When I learned I would be doing it, I imagined myself behind a desk with headphones on in a huge recording studio. Thankfully it was much more low-key--I stood at a mike, sans headphones, in a tiny corner office atop 50 Penn Place, and I read through the script a few times with only a hint of coaching from the radio producer. ("Read it like you're reading a bedtime story to your kids." "Make your voice more serious when you get to the line about the financial crisis.") He took it from there, editing out my breaths to shave the thing down to thirty seconds and adding patriotic music in the background. The whole thing took thirty or forty-five minutes and we were done. Once the ad hit the airwaves a couple days later, it was fun to hear friends, family, and even strangers tell me they'd heard me on the radio.
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| Touting my husband on the radio |
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| Tabitha's an expert door-knocker by now. |
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| The aftermath of a long night of campaigning |
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