I really enjoyed running for local government office. It was interesting in so many ways that, say, knitting or doing crossword puzzles is not! (I’ve had a lot of hobbies and projects in my life, but this was one of the most interesting by far!)

Here are some things I learned from running for local office.

  1. Nobody is paying attention to local debates. If you look at a local debate (here’s one for my race this election), you can see it has 55 views as of 2024-11-14. The election was won with 3000+ votes, so 55 isn’t much!
  2. Newspaper organizations are paying attention. I got many calls, where (1) they got my phone number from my paperwork to apply for candidacy and (2) they asked a lot of questions, which showed that they read my website and did some basic Google search on my name.
  3. Don’t put your real phone number on your documents which are made public.
  4. Get a P.O. Box to put on your documents that are made public.
  5. You can look up political contributions as well as political spending for all the candidates
  6. A lot of people will open their door when you knock, and they may even be willing to talk to you for 20 minutes about issues they care about.
  7. Political candidates are just making shit up. What is on my agenda? Here are some things I wrote down. I wish it were more data driven, and maybe it could be if I had a budget and analysts and such.
  8. Why do organizations endorse people? Is it really because Politician A is better than Politician B at environment/gun safety/abortion rights/etc.? Or is it because they have a better plan for winning, and organizations want to back the winner? In all the endorsement interviews I attended, they all asked how “election ready” I was. I suppose it would have been nice to be picked for my personality, grit, ideals, etc. and to have an organization endorse me, then help me become more “election ready”. But no, that’s not how they operate.
  9. Endorsements don’t necessarily happen based on equal information. Not all candidates applied, not all candidates showed up for interviews. A person who makes an endorsement doesn’t necessarily have to consider all options.
  10. You can’t just place political signs anywhere. You need to ask permission, and there are rules about where they can and cannot go.
  11. If you raise >$1000 from a single source, you need to report it within 24 hours to the FPPC.
  12. To you, a political mailer might be annoying or just junk mail, but to the politician who sent it, it might have been hours of work and 22 cents per piece for postage, 10 cents per piece to print.
  13. Signatures don’t count unless you’re registered to vote. And registered to vote in the right district/area. They check.
  14. If you have a reason to have the information, you can buy voter information for about $150 from the Registrar of Voters. They’ll just give you everybody’s name, address, phone, email, party affiliation, and vote history (dates, party affiliation, methods for voting) for the past forever.
  15. You can also buy this info from PDI for like $600
  16. The election is one big money-making-spree. Anything I could do myself, I could instead pay somebody to do: (1) make a website, (2) design a mailer, (3) send out those mailers, (4) make Facebook/TikTok/YouTube ads, (5) have somebody tell me how I can make any of the above better (“Did you know your website could get MORE TRAFFIC if you pay me $1000 to help you?!”).
  17. I’d much rather do stuff myself than pay somebody else to do it. Not because it’s cheaper, but because it’s more fun that way.
  18. Pay for EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) before you bundle the mailers! I bundled all of my 11,000 mailers for EDDM. And I actually did it twice, because I bundled it with slips without the barcode, and after I paid for it, I had new slips with barcodes. You can pay somebody to bundle it for you for a couple hundred dollars.
  19. If you get the list of registered voters, you can target only certain households (by party affiliation, whether they are more likely to show up to vote, etc), but in order to mail it with the post office, you need a Bulk Mail permit which is some $500 or so for an annual permit, after which you can send at bulk mail rates, which are only cheaper if you use automation (barcodes) on your letters/flats! Again, you can pay somebody to do this for you. They’ll get the cheaper rates, but they’ll charge you for the convenience.
  20. Direct marketing mail is cheaper to send because the USPS doesn’t guarantee to return to the sender if it cannot be delivered.
  21. It’s a lot easier to talk to people about your campaign if you’re also fired up about something. (It’s easier to sell something you believe in.)
  22. I ran for office, but still nobody recognizes me at the grocery store.

Re-visiting this list of items, I definitely feel more prepared if I ever decide to do this again!

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