Okay, 2018 candidates, right now I’ll bet you’re feeling a lot like I did after I signed up to run for office in 1994 and was looking forward to some no-holds-barred debates against my opponents. In fact, I had saved up some great one-liners for former Del. Henry Heller, Len Teitelbaum, and newcomer Andria Mandel. Del. Petzold had moved up to run for State Senate that year. (Remind me sometime to tell you a great Del. Petzold story). As I have previously mentioned, I had a serious case of “Candidatitis” that year which actually had me equating my little delegate…

You can’t win a campaign just by knocking on doors, especially when you have a district of 1,000 homes or more.  You need money to pay printers, TV stations, radio stations, the webmaster, the post office and the phone company. The bottom line is that you need to raise money and you shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for it. If you are, you may have a fear of rejection, and if that’s the case, you may be thinking that your campaign is more about you than about the cause.  Remember that if you are running to advance a cause, everything…

Let’s Review What We Have Covered So Far You’ve  filed for candidacy, put your finance team in place, and finished your first campaign event.  You likely have a small core group of volunteers now as well.  Hopefully, you also have a war chest of $5,000 to $10,000  in cash on hand, a campaign manager and many of your key people in place. Now it’s time to order your campaign collateral, or as I like to call them, “Campaign Tchotchkes.”  Of all the lessons I learned from my 1994 campaign, this is one of the most important ones.  By now, you’ve…

Congratulations! You guys have all filed for your respective offices, the deadlines have passed, and some of you running in Maryland are lucky enough to have no Democrat challenger.   Those of you without challengers should continue raising money.  Those with primaries should not only keep raising money, but also hit the Republican speaking circuits.  Those with just a Democrat challenger should keep in mind that this is a marathon, not a sprint.  You have 244 days to Election Day.  During the spring focus on door knocking, hit the swing precincts in your district.  You need to get a schedule of local…

Many people say we live in an ADD nation that only has an attention span of 30 seconds. True or not, as a candidate, you need to be able to craft your message to a potential voter in 30 seconds. Why Only 30 seconds? The amount of facetime you will get with potential voters is about 30 seconds, whether it is at a transit point, door knocking, or at a dinner or other event.  You need to maximize the number of people you can reach and get your message out in a short sound bite. When you are knocking on doors,…

So, you have now filed as a candidate, gotten a treasurer and put together a Facebook Live video when you went to Annapolis to file your papers to run for office.  Now you need to start raising money!  For a first-time candidate, it’s a struggle to find donor lists, since other campaigns have learned that such contacts are like gold and don’t share that information.  Your first option is to review your Christmas card Lists.  This is the best place to start because you are sending cards to friends and family, who are more likely to support you by sending…

Congratulations on your decision to run for elected office in Maryland in 2018. I have run twice myself, and wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world.  The offices we need to field candidates for in Maryland in 2018 include the entire State Senate and House of Delegates as well as 8 seats in the U. S. House of Representatives plus County Council/Commissioners, County Executive, Sheriff, and Registrar of Wills.  On the state level, we will be working hard to re-elect Governor Hogan and Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford, an Attorney General and a State Comptroller, along with Circuit Court…