Running for city council or city commissioner looks deceptively simple from the outside.
File the paperwork. Put up some signs. Build a website. Attend a few community events. Knock on doors. Post on Facebook. Send out some mailers. Ask people for money. Then spend Election Day hoping enough people remember your name when they walk into the voting booth.
That is certainly one way to run for office.
It is not how I would build a campaign to win.
A serious municipal campaign should be built backward from Election Day.
How many votes will probably be cast?
How many votes are likely required to win?
Where are those votes geographically?
Who already supports you?
Who can realistically be persuaded?
Who needs to be turned out?
How many doors need to be knocked?
How much money needs to be raised?
How many volunteers does that require?
And what needs to happen every week between today and Election Day to get there?
That is where campaign strategy actually begins.
Not with a logo.
Not with a yard sign.
Not even with an announcement.
It begins with the math.
And then you build an organization capable of making the math work.
Municipal Elections Are Their Own Animal
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when thinking about local campaigns is treating them like smaller versions of congressional, gubernatorial, or presidential campaigns.
They are not.
Municipal elections can have radically different electorates depending on when the election is held. Research on local election timing has found that moving municipal elections onto major federal election dates can double or even triple turnout compared with stand-alone local elections. (Wiley Online Library)
Think about what that means strategically.
Your potential electorate may include tens of thousands of registered voters, but the universe that actually decides your election could be dramatically smaller.
That makes voter identification incredibly important.
It also makes relationships incredibly powerful.
If 100,000 people are voting, talking personally with a few hundred people doesn’t sound terribly impressive.
If 4,500 people are voting and you need 2,300 votes to win?
Now every conversation matters.
That is why I believe municipal campaigns should be built as grassroots organizations first and advertising campaigns second.
Advertising amplifies an organization.
It should not replace one.
Step One: Know Your Win Number
Before we start talking about messaging, social media, endorsements, volunteers, fundraising or yard signs, I want to know one number:
How many votes does it take to win?
Nobody knows the exact number before Election Day, obviously.
But we can build a defensible target.
Start by studying previous comparable elections.
Look at turnout.
Look at registration.
Look at the number of ballots cast in the race itself.
Look at undervotes.
Look at whether the race was competitive.
Look at whether previous elections were held concurrently with presidential, midterm or other major elections.
Look at changes in population and registration.
Then develop multiple turnout scenarios.
For example, suppose we estimate that somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 people will vote in a two-candidate citywide race.
Winning 50% plus one theoretically gets the job done.
But I don’t want to build a campaign around theoretically surviving Election Night.
I want a cushion.
If our modeling suggests 8,000 votes at the high end, 4,001 technically wins. I may build our strategic vote goal around 4,300 or 4,400 instead.
Now we have something tangible.
We don’t need to “win the community.”
We need approximately 4,400 votes.
That changes everything.
Turn the Win Number Into an Organizing Plan
Once we know the target, start breaking it down.
Suppose our goal is 4,400 votes.
How many can reasonably come from people already predisposed to support the candidate?
How many votes can come from the candidate’s personal and professional networks?
How many can come through organizational relationships?
How many genuinely persuadable voters exist?
How many supporters will need multiple contacts before Election Day?
How many identified supporters have historically inconsistent voting records and therefore require serious GOTV attention?
Now the campaign becomes measurable.
Instead of saying:
“We need to knock a bunch of doors this weekend.”
We’re saying:
“We need 300 additional voter contacts this weekend because we’re currently 218 identified supporters behind our weekly target.”
That is an organization.
There is an enormous difference between activity and progress.
Campaigns frequently confuse the two.
Your Candidate Needs a Reason for Running
There is a question every candidate needs to answer extremely well:
Why are you running?
And “because I care about the community” isn’t enough.
Hopefully everybody running cares about the community.
Your campaign needs a clear narrative.
There is a problem.
The problem affects real people.
The current approach isn’t adequately solving it.
You understand the problem.
You have a credible approach to addressing it.
And you are asking your neighbors for the opportunity to do something about it.
That story should be understandable in a conversation at someone’s front door.
If your platform requires a 14-page PDF before voters understand why you’re running, you have a problem.
That doesn’t mean policy should be dumbed down.
Quite the opposite.
Know your policy backward and forward.
But learn to explain complicated issues in normal human language.
I have always believed the best political communication sounds less like political communication and more like two neighbors talking over a fence.
Build the Campaign Around Local Issues
National politics consumes almost everything today.
A city council campaign shouldn’t automatically follow it down that rabbit hole.
Your voters are electing someone to deal with their city.
Roads.
Public safety.
Development.
Infrastructure.
Taxes.
Water.
Parks.
Zoning.
Housing.
Economic development.
Code enforcement.
Emergency services.
Government transparency.
Whatever the actual responsibilities and challenges happen to be in your municipality.
There will obviously be communities where national political identity strongly influences local elections. Pretending otherwise would be foolish.
But your campaign still needs to answer a basic question:
What are you going to do here?
A voter may agree with you about Washington and still wonder what any of that has to do with the pothole destroying their suspension every morning.
Meet people where they live.
Literally and figuratively.
Research Before You Persuade
Campaigns love talking.
Winning campaigns also listen.
Before developing the final message architecture, spend time learning what people actually care about.
Talk to business owners.
Parents.
Neighborhood leaders.
First responders.
Retirees.
Young families.
Community organizations.
Longtime residents.
New residents.
People who agree with you.
And, importantly, people who don’t.
Then look for patterns.
What keeps coming up?
What are residents frustrated about?
What do people think the city is doing well?
Where do people believe local government is falling short?
What issues are important but receiving almost no attention?
Campaign research should not simply be an exercise in discovering what voters want to hear so a candidate can repeat it back to them.
It should help a candidate understand the community they are asking to govern.
That distinction matters.
The Persuadable Middle Is Important—But Don’t Treat Voters Like Robots
Political professionals sometimes talk about “persuadables” as though voters are points sitting inside a database waiting for someone to press the correct psychological button.
Human beings don’t work that way.
And political science offers an important warning here.
A major meta-analysis examining 40 campaign field experiments, followed by nine additional experiments, found essentially zero average persuasive effect from campaign contact and advertising in general elections. The researchers found persuasion tended to emerge under relatively limited circumstances, including intensive identification of persuadable voters. (Cambridge University Press)
Other research involving 113,742 participants and 291 campaign messages found something else interesting: voters were more persuadable when they knew less about the candidates, and messages containing more useful information tended to be more persuasive. (Wiley Online Library)
That has enormous implications for municipal campaigns.
A candidate for president enters a race with voters already carrying years of opinions about the parties, issues and personalities involved.
Your average city commission candidate doesn’t.
Many voters may be forming an opinion about you for the first time.
That creates opportunity.
But don’t waste it with empty slogans.
Give people information.
Tell them who you are.
Explain the problem.
Explain your position.
Explain your solution.
Answer questions.
And listen.
Door Knocking Still Matters
I come from a grassroots organizing background, so this probably won’t surprise anyone:
I am a huge believer in doors.
There is research behind that belief.
One landmark randomized experiment involving roughly 30,000 registered voters compared personal canvassing, direct mail and telephone outreach. Successful face-to-face canvassing increased the probability of voting by 8.7 percentage points among voters who would likely have been reached through canvassing. Each direct-mail piece produced a much smaller effect, while the professional phone-bank calls tested did not measurably increase turnout. (ISPS)
That does not mean every door knock magically produces an 8.7-point increase. Different elections, populations, scripts and campaign environments produce different results.
But the broader lesson has held up remarkably well:
Personal contact matters.
Especially locally.
A city council candidate can actually meet a meaningful percentage of the people who will determine the election.
Take advantage of that.
Don’t knock on someone’s door and immediately launch into a speech.
Introduce yourself.
Tell them why you’re running.
Ask what issue matters most to them.
Listen.
Have a conversation.
Record useful voter information appropriately and legally.
Then follow up.
The objective isn’t simply to leave literature.
It is to build a relationship.
Build a Volunteer Army, Not a Volunteer List
This is another distinction that matters.
A campaign can have 200 people on a volunteer spreadsheet and effectively have eight volunteers.
A volunteer army is different.
People have responsibilities.
People have goals.
People know what success looks like.
People are trained.
People are followed up with.
And good volunteers eventually recruit other volunteers.
That last part is crucial.
If every volunteer relationship depends entirely on the candidate, growth eventually stops because the candidate becomes the bottleneck.
Instead, develop leadership.
A volunteer who consistently knocks doors might become a neighborhood captain.
A neighborhood captain might recruit five additional volunteers.
Those five might each bring another person.
Now the organization is multiplying.
That is how grassroots momentum starts becoming scalable.
Your Supporters Should Become Organizers
The strongest campaign supporter isn’t necessarily someone who puts your sign in their yard.
It’s someone who gets three neighbors to vote for you.
This is where relational organizing becomes incredibly valuable.
People trust people they know.
Friends.
Family.
Coworkers.
Neighbors.
Church members.
Business associates.
Parents they know from school.
Community relationships.
One recent field test in Florida reported that voters who received personalized relational texts from people they already knew were 8.6 percentage points more likely to vote than the study’s control group. The experiment involved 101 volunteers contacting 1,738 voters with whom they had existing relationships. As with any individual field experiment, the exact effect should not simply be assumed to transfer to every race, but the result illustrates the potential power of existing relationships. (Center for Campaign Innovation)
So give supporters something more meaningful to do than clicking “share.”
Ask them to identify five people they personally know who might support the campaign.
Then ten.
Ask them to host a neighborhood meet-and-greet.
Ask them to bring someone canvassing.
Ask them to make introductions.
Turn supporters into organizers.
That is how a campaign starts developing depth.
Digital Should Feed the Grassroots Machine
Digital strategy and grassroots strategy should not exist in separate universes.
They should constantly feed each other.
Someone watches a candidate video.
They visit the website.
They join the email list.
They donate $25.
They receive a volunteer invitation.
They attend a Saturday canvass.
They knock 40 doors.
They identify three supporters.
One of those supporters requests a yard sign.
Another donates.
Another signs up to volunteer.
That is a functioning political ecosystem.
Your digital operation should help people move from attention to action.
That’s something I’ve spent a large part of my professional career working on.
The goal isn’t simply reach.
It isn’t impressions.
It isn’t followers.
It isn’t likes.
Those things can be useful indicators, but Election Day doesn’t award additional votes because your Reel received 20,000 views.
Digital success in a campaign should ultimately contribute to measurable objectives:
votes, volunteers, donors, event attendance, voter identification and turnout.
Content Needs a Job
Every campaign post should have a reason for existing.
Some content introduces the candidate.
Some establishes credibility.
Some explains policy.
Some demonstrates community involvement.
Some answers criticism.
Some recruits volunteers.
Some raises money.
Some captures email addresses.
Some drives people to an event.
Some persuades.
Some mobilizes.
The campaign should also build owned channels wherever possible.
Social platforms are valuable, but followers aren’t the same thing as infrastructure.
Build your email list.
Build your volunteer database.
Build your donor list.
Build your supporter universe.
Build direct relationships.
Social media should help you acquire those relationships, not become a substitute for them.
Fundraising Isn’t Separate From Organizing
Candidates sometimes hate asking for money.
I understand why.
Do it anyway.
A campaign needs resources.
But fundraising can accomplish something beyond paying invoices.
A donor has taken an action.
They have invested in the campaign.
That makes them someone worth cultivating as a potential volunteer, host, ambassador, recruiter or repeat donor.
Research on small political donors shows their numbers have increased substantially, although their aggregate financial influence has not displaced large donors. Small donors also tend to react strongly to salient political events and advertising. (National Bureau of Economic Research)
For a local campaign, I would think about fundraising as another organizing ladder.
Someone gives $10.
Thank them.
Keep communicating.
Maybe they give $25 later.
Maybe they host a fundraiser.
Maybe they introduce the candidate to a business owner.
Maybe they knock doors.
Maybe they become one of your strongest advocates.
Don’t look at your campaign database and see transactions.
See relationships.
And because campaign-finance law varies considerably between federal, state and municipal elections, campaigns need to understand the specific contribution limits, disclosure requirements, disclaimers and reporting rules applicable to their jurisdiction. The Federal Election Commission itself only administers federal campaign-finance law; municipal candidates need to consult the relevant state and local authorities for the rules governing their race. (FEC.gov)
Yard Signs Matter—Just Not the Way Some Candidates Think
Now we’re entering dangerous territory.
Because if there is one thing local political campaigns love, it is yard signs.
Signs have value.
They create visibility.
They demonstrate support.
They can create social proof.
They remind people the election exists.
And supporters love them.
Use them.
Just don’t confuse sign density with votes.
A sign cannot tell you whether the person living inside that house actually intends to vote.
A sign cannot identify a persuadable voter.
A sign cannot recruit another volunteer.
A sign cannot tell you the resident’s top issue.
A sign cannot chase a supporter who hasn’t voted yet.
A canvasser can do all of those things.
If I have to choose between spending our final available resources producing another mountain of signs or expanding voter contact, I’m going to have a serious conversation about voter contact.
Every time.
Momentum Is Built Through Visible Progress
People like joining things that feel alive.
That means campaigns should deliberately create opportunities for supporters to see progress.
Announce endorsements when appropriate.
Celebrate volunteer milestones.
Show canvass launches.
Highlight community events.
Thank donors.
Share photos of growing crowds.
Talk about doors knocked.
Show volunteers working.
Celebrate fundraising goals.
Introduce coalition members.
Let people see the organization getting bigger.
There is a psychological difference between:
“Please help my campaign.”
and:
“Look at what we’re building. Come be part of it.”
Momentum attracts resources.
Resources create more activity.
Activity generates more visibility.
Visibility creates more supporters.
Supporters produce more volunteers and donors.
Done correctly, the cycle compounds.
But Measure Everything That Matters
This is where I think campaigns need to become much more disciplined.
Have a dashboard.
Not necessarily anything fancy.
Track the fundamentals.
Doors attempted.
Doors contacted.
Conversations.
Supporters identified.
Undecided voters.
Volunteer signups.
Active volunteers.
Volunteer shifts.
Donations.
Number of donors.
Average contribution.
Email subscribers.
Event attendance.
Digital conversions.
Vote-by-mail or early-vote participation where lawful data is available.
And most importantly:
identified supporters versus the win number.
Suppose the campaign’s target is 4,400 votes.
Three months out, you’ve identified 1,900 supporters.
Now we know the gap.
If you identify another 600 during the next month, we know the pace.
If canvassing suddenly starts producing fewer supporters per 100 conversations, investigate.
Maybe you’re entering different precincts.
Maybe the message isn’t working.
Maybe opposition has hardened.
Maybe your targeting is wrong.
Data shouldn’t replace political judgment.
It should improve it.
Build a Campaign Calendar Backward
Election Day is not a surprise.
We know when it’s coming.
Build backward.
Election Day.
Early voting.
Vote-by-mail deadlines where applicable.
Registration deadlines.
Debates.
Candidate forums.
Major community events.
Fundraising deadlines.
Financial reports.
Mail drops.
Digital advertising phases.
Volunteer recruitment.
Persuasion.
Voter identification.
Launch.
Every phase should have objectives.
Early in the campaign, you’re building infrastructure and awareness.
Then you’re expanding identification, fundraising and volunteer capacity.
As Election Day approaches, resources increasingly shift toward turning identified support into actual votes.
The campaign should become more focused as Election Day approaches—not more chaotic.
GOTV Is Where All the Earlier Work Pays Off
This is the part candidates sometimes underestimate.
Someone telling you in June:
“Absolutely. You’ve got my vote.”
does not mean that vote appears in the ballot box.
People get sick.
They work late.
They forget.
They travel.
They procrastinate.
Life happens.
That is why voter identification matters.
If we have spent months building a list of people who told us they support the candidate, GOTV isn’t a blind search anymore.
We know who our people are.
Now the job changes.
Have you voted?
Do you know where to vote?
Do you have a plan?
Do you need publicly available information about voting locations or hours?
When lawful voting-history information becomes available during early voting, campaigns can often remove people who have already voted from further turnout universes and concentrate resources on supporters who have not yet cast ballots.
The operation gets narrower every day.
That is what disciplined organizing looks like.
Election Day Should Be Execution, Not Experimentation
By Election Day, the campaign should know what it is doing.
Election Day isn’t when we suddenly discover we should have recruited volunteers.
It isn’t when we begin building a supporter list.
It isn’t when we figure out which precincts matter.
Those decisions were made months ago.
Election Day is execution.
Volunteer deployment.
Poll coverage where permitted.
Turnout monitoring.
Supporter contact.
Rapid troubleshooting.
Legal compliance.
Transportation assistance where lawful.
Digital reminders.
And relentless execution until the polls close.
The candidate should be visible, energetic and accessible.
The organization should be calm.
A good campaign can feel incredibly boring behind the scenes on Election Day.
That’s a compliment.
It means people know their jobs.
The Campaign Should Ultimately Be One Integrated Machine
This is the point I want candidates to understand more than anything else.
You do not have a fundraising campaign.
A digital campaign.
A field campaign.
A communications campaign.
A volunteer campaign.
And a GOTV campaign.
You have one campaign.
Fundraising gives field the resources to operate.
Field produces stories and supporters for digital.
Digital generates volunteers and donors.
Volunteers identify voters.
Voter identification builds the GOTV universe.
Events create content, relationships and fundraising opportunities.
Data informs targeting.
Communications reinforce what voters hear at their doors.
Everything feeds everything else.
When those pieces operate independently, campaigns waste enormous amounts of energy.
When they operate together, something very different happens.
You build a movement capable of winning an election.
Where My Approach Comes From
This isn’t a philosophy I developed by reading campaign books from the sidelines.
A significant part of my professional career has been spent in digital engagement, grassroots organizing, issue advocacy and campaigns.
During my years with Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Action, I worked in roles including Grassroots Engagement Director and Deputy Director of Grassroots Operations, alongside extensive work in digital engagement and organizing.
That experience gave me the opportunity to work at the intersection of something I still believe too many campaigns separate:
data, digital communication and human relationships.
I’ve seen firsthand what happens when organizers are given clear goals, good data and the freedom to build relationships.
I’ve seen how you move someone from awareness to interest, from interest to engagement and from engagement to action.
I’ve seen the importance of persuadable voters.
I’ve seen the difference between talking at communities and organizing inside them.
And I’ve learned that you cannot manufacture a real grassroots organization with Facebook ads two weeks before Election Day.
You build it.
One conversation at a time.
How Stephen Despin Consulting Can Help
That experience is a major part of what I bring to political campaign strategy through Stephen Despin Consulting.
I don’t believe every municipal candidate needs a giant national consulting operation.
Most don’t.
But serious candidates need a serious strategy.
That can include developing the overall campaign architecture, determining realistic vote goals, building voter-contact plans, developing grassroots organizing programs, integrating digital strategy, creating volunteer pipelines, establishing campaign metrics, developing messaging frameworks, building fundraising systems and planning the transition from persuasion into GOTV.
Most importantly, I want the pieces connected.
Because I don’t want your digital program chasing meaningless engagement while your field operation desperately needs volunteers.
I don’t want fundraising disconnected from supporter development.
I don’t want volunteers sitting around waiting for someone to give them something useful to do.
And I definitely don’t want a campaign reaching the final three weeks without knowing where its winning votes are supposed to come from.
The objective is to build a campaign in which every major activity answers the same question:
How does this move us closer to the number of votes required to win?
If it doesn’t, we need to ask why we’re doing it.
You Don’t Need Everybody
This may be the most liberating thing I can tell a first-time candidate.
You don’t need everybody.
You don’t need every Republican.
You don’t need every Democrat.
You don’t need every independent.
You don’t need everyone on Facebook to like you.
You don’t need universal agreement.
You need enough people to trust you with their vote.
That’s a much more manageable challenge.
Figure out how many that is.
Find them.
Meet them.
Listen to them.
Earn their trust.
Build relationships with them.
Give the people who believe in you opportunities to bring others into the campaign.
Build a volunteer organization.
Build a donor organization.
Build digital infrastructure.
Measure your progress.
Keep growing.
Then, when voting begins, turn every ounce of that organization toward making sure the people who said they support you actually cast their ballots.
That’s campaigning.
The signs, videos, mailers, ads and social posts are tools.
The strategy is building enough human relationships to produce enough votes to win.
And if you build that operation correctly, Election Day isn’t the day you find out whether your campaign worked.
It’s the day all the work you’ve been doing for months finally shows up on the scoreboard.
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