10 Lessons from Rand, Amash, and Schiff

[Jordan]

10 Lessons from Rand, Amash, and Schiff
​

With the primary battles now over for three of the most well known liberty candidates, it is time to sit back, reflect, and take a lesson from each primary race. In the paragraphs below, I hope to outline a few key points for each candidate and how we should better allocate our resources to winning elections.

Rand Paul​

Rand Paul was hands down our easiest victory. Old GOP talking points and ideas still persist throughout Kentucky and this was a state where we could simply waltz to victory. Luckily, even without political experience, Rand Paul had the name to be able to take a senate seat without any prior government position. This is rare, but so is today's political climate.

Polls and Politics

We should note that Rand's victory did not come out of thin air. From the very first polling of the race, Rand Paul was within 11 points at 37-26. These kind of poll numbers helped establish the idea that Rand Paul could win the primary, and gave him legitimacy both in the media and with potential voters. Unlike previous campaigns that had significant late momentum (Medina, and in some ways, Schiff), Rand had a foundation. I would argue that without good early poll numbers, candidates do not deserve our support.

Politicking

I don't think there was a single person running as a liberty candidate that put in as much sweat equity as Rand Paul put into winning the Senate race. All over the state he took the time to meet with groups of people big and small (some as few as 20 people in “meet and great” settings). This kind of work ethic and “pedal to the metal” campaigning is the kind that we should support in the future. Having a candidate speak directly to the electorate makes our job—funding and providing general support--easier.

Advertising

Rand benefited in that he raised as much or more than Trey Grayson in virtually every single quarter. This allowed him to go toe to toe with Trey and attack him on being a Washington insider.

However, if Rand didn't already have a strong position in Western Kentucky, Rand would have been at a severe disadvantage. The Western Kentucky DMAs are largely made up of populations living in Indiana, Illinois, and Tennessee. Having to run TV ads in these areas would have dried up his funds faster than ever, and would have forced his campaign to spend huge amounts of donated dollars just to reach a very small Kentucky population. In my own DMA that includes some of Western Kentucky, there are more than 1 million people, but the vast majority reside in Indiana and Illinois and cannot vote for a KY politician. Those are wasted dollars.

Justin Amash​

Justin “motha-fuckin” Amash was probably the best candidate least known by the liberty movement. He donated more than $1000 to Ron Paul's presidential election and put his mouth where his money was in each of his votes on the MI State House Floor. Despite being a liberty candidate through and through, support in the Liberty movement was weak at best, but thanks to his work in the Michigan state house, he bested a large republican field for Congress.

We can learn more from Justin Amash than we can either Rand or Schiff. Amash's victory should be used as a roadmap for all future liberty campaigns. Run for state house, vote like a libertarian, run in a heavily GOP district, then win in an anti-establishment year.

Purely Grassroots

Amash earned respect from constituents in the Michigan state house by explaining each and every vote in real time. His principled stances (frequently being the only “No” vote) earned him headline after headline, and media mention after media mention. Of all the liberty candidates this year, he got the most free publicity and it certainly helped his name recognition in the republican primary for MI-3 Republican primary.

Patience

The biggest thing we can learn from Amash's campaign is that running for a lower office is the best way to establish credibility, name recognition, and a voting record that generates support. Just imagine if the hundreds of thousands of dollars we've spent on federal races were allocated to state house races. State house races typically cost just $100,000 for an easy victory. We've spent 10 times that much on just one loser.

The liberty movement should help nurture small campaigns that can lead to huge political success in the future. If we can fund serious candidates in state house races, we can create a monster of a political victory in just a few short years. Off the top of my head, I should mention Glen Bradley (GunnyFreedom on the forums) who in recent polling is ahead by double digits for NC state house. He could easily be another cheap victory in the state house, then in the US house a few years later.

Peter Schiff​

He's fiery, he loves the camera, and he's not one to be silenced. Well known in the liberty camp, but a relatively unknown in the mainstream, Peter Schiff was to be one of our best candidates up for election this year.

Unfortunately, Schiff didn't even come close to winning his primary. But rather than simply moving on after a terrible loss, we should be sure to take some notes from his campaign, as well.

Know Your Opponent/District

Peter Schiff was sure to be an excellent contender against Chris Dodd. Dodd's favorability was in the toilet, his position/knowledge on the financial crisis was polar opposite of Peter's. Dodd, however, dropped out early and Schiff should have followed.

Richard Blumenthal, a candidate with awesome name recognition (Schiff had practically zero at this point), was sure to win the general election. Blumenthal had his own baggage, but being a Dem in a largely Democratic state will be enough to insure his victory, regardless of how much Linda spent.

If Schiff shouldn't have quit after Dodd made his exit, he most certainly should have after Linda entered, and we should have cut our support.

What Campaign?

I say this in the best way possible, but Peter Schiff lacked severely in voter outreach. Rather than appeal to the people who would show up to vote, Schiff tried to make friends at the RTCs, preaching to the political class. As we know, this strategy backfired greatly in that Schiff, after failing to get enough votes at the convention, had to waste resources to get signatures to be on the ballot.

It wasn't until the final few weeks until Schiff used the strategy that Rand used to win Kentucky—get out and talk to people. The RV tour through CT was months too late.

Advertising

Connecticut is one of the worst places to run a candidate with limited funds. The New York City Designated Market Area includes 1 out of every 15 Americans, or some 20 million people. Of those 20 million people, only a small percentage are going to show up to vote. Needless to say, the best form of advertising (TV) was simply too expensive for Peter to utilize. He had to advertise to 20 million people just to potentially get the votes of 100,000.

As much as this forum may hate television, it remains the best way to get the word out about a product/service/campaign. In a recent survey, more than 40% of respondents said that a TV ad contains enough information to buy a product. Have you ever seen an Apple advertisement? Car advertisements? Pharma and household product ads? They contain almost NO information, but have enough impact to get people to spend their money on a product. TV is essential to winning an election.

Phone Calls Are Worth Something, but not Everything

Phonebanking was far more productive than I could have imagined, helping to increase Schiff's name recognition and developing a dialogue between the grassroots and ordinary voters. Schiff polled at 15% before the election was held, and then came in at 22%, a 50% disparity between the the day before the election and the day of. I can't help but think this gain is due in a large part to phone banking.

Phone banking, however, needs to be used in unison with other media. Let TV and Radio be the cannons, and phone banking the sniper rifle. With a larger media buy, and continued phone banking, I bet Schiff could have pulled off at least 30% at the polls. The simple fact of the matter is that people didn't know his name, and hearing his name for the first time, from a telemarketer no less, is probably not the best marketing strategy. Make do with what you can, I guess.

One Term Candidates are a Bad Investment

Peter Schiff would have probably lasted just one term in the senate representing a state like Connecticut. Compare that to Rand, who will have that seat for as long as he desires, and Amash, who won't lose a general election unless he murders someone in his heavily GOP district.

This movement will take time. There is no sense in putting candidates in the senate representing states that go from dem to republican with each election cycle. We need to focus our energy in places where, after winning the for the first time, we can just sit back and win each and every year without much energy.

 

[Jordan]

Things We Can Learn from All Candidates​

Polls are Legit

I thought after Ron Paul performed just as well as the polls had predicted that we would drop the idea that polling company numbers are BS. They aren't. We need to understand that everything can be quantified and that finding a sample that matches the general population is not rocket science. There are far more difficult things that statisticians do on a daily basis.

Education Campaigns No Longer Provide a Good ROI

Education campaigns are no longer a good investment for the liberty movement. We simply don't have the time or resources to educate people with candidacies that aren't meant to win. Sure, we're all here because of Ron Paul's 2008 run, but should he run again in 2012, he'll be blasting his message to the very same people that heard him the first time. Those who would be in our camp, for the most part, are already in our camp.

We have to start winning to get any credibility. And we can't just win 10 out of 100 races. For credibility/feasibility purposes, we would be much better served with 4 out of 5 wins than 8 out of 50. The GOP will never, ever take us seriously until we win with consistency.

State House Races Should Be Priority

With the funding and organization of the modern liberty movement, we should be able to win at the very minimum 50 state house seats per election cycle, no if ands or buts about it. If we play our cards right, and do some very basic risk/reward modeling, two years after big wins in state house seats we could have 50 Justin Amashs in Congress. Tell me that won't give us a serious voting block, and a huge amount of pull in DC.

The Midwest provides us the best opportunity to enact this plan. We can, for less than $100,000 each, set ourselves up for huge victories that will provide us with residual representation in Congress. Is this plan as fun as running 2-3 huge campaigns? No. Does it provide the instant gratification we seem to long for? No. But for a movement who could probably write a fucking book on time preference, why can't we understand that this movement will only work with a long term strategy?

The biggest idea behind libertarianism is decentralization and localized control. This should be a piece of our electoral strategy, as well.

There is Nothing Wrong with Dumping Losers

Let's stop being David and start funding our Goliaths. I understand it is fun to fight the machine and back underdog candidates, but all we're really doing is pissing our money, resources, and credibility down the toilet. If a candidate isn't performing well, or is the kind of person we'd rather not have associated with the liberty movement, then its probably best we just cut ties and support.

“But, but we begged them to run!” Sorry, we don't have the resources. Cut your losses, and redirect the resources to places we can win. Again, losing gets us nowhere.

40% of the vote means 4% of people actually know where you stand

Just because a candidate captures a certain percentage of the vote does not mean, in any sense, that that percentage of people has a single clue about where the candidate stands on key issues. Most of them don't even know what a libertarian is.

I would venture to gamble that most of the 2X% of voters who voted for Schiff/Kokesh will go on in later elections to vote for total warmongering, big government, neoconservatives. That is just simply how it works. People vote for candidates they "like," issues are too big of concepts for most people, and many have probably spent all of 10 minutes to define their own little political philosophy.

 

[Krugerrand]

I may be blinded by optimism ... but I can't help but think sometimes it's worth throwing common sense out the window and shooting big.

I'm talking about John Dennis. We will never have a better opportunity to sound the power of the Constitutionalists/Libertarians than taking out Nancy Pelosi. The prize is so big. The message would be so loud.

What better way is there to declare the GOP of Newt and Bush is wrong. The GOP of Ron Paul is the way to move forward.

Yes, Nancy is in a solid DEM district. She also is not liked running in an election year that already has the true DEM supporters dismayed and less likely to go to the polls.

JD has views that can and will attract those DEM voters. While he holds many views not in-line with traditional GOP voters ... they sure as anything will not vote for Pelosi and will vote for him when the smell blood in the water.

 

[Aratus]

john dennis won.
adam kokesh ran well
but did not get the votes
he needed. peter schiif may
decide down the road 2012 is
to be HIS year most totally in full!

 

[Jordan]

I may be blinded by optimism ... but I can't help but think sometimes it's worth throwing common sense out the window and shooting big.

I'm talking about John Dennis. We will never have a better opportunity to sound the power of the Constitutionalists/Libertarians than taking out Nancy Pelosi. The prize is so big. The message would be so loud.

What better way is there to declare the GOP of Newt and Bush is wrong. The GOP of Ron Paul is the way to move forward.

Yes, Nancy is in a solid DEM district. She also is not liked running in an election year that already has the true DEM supporters dismayed and less likely to go to the polls.

JD has views that can and will attract those DEM voters. While he holds many views not in-line with traditional GOP voters ... they sure as anything will not vote for Pelosi and will vote for him when the smell blood in the water.

I just want us to do some risk to reward analysis.

Risk for John Dennis = a few certain wins in state house seats whereas John Dennis has probably .5% chance of victory.

Reward= Knocking out the Dem speaker of the house with a libertarian.

We can't afford to keep playing the lottery for big wins when we need to start putting points on the board. If we keep playing the congressional lotto, we'll get a few candidates in who don't have the weight to make a difference. If we REALLY want to make a difference, we need numbers, and our numbers so far have been mostly losers.

 

[ronpaulhawaii]

A decent analysis. I disagree on the value of running underdogs. I think there are many side benefits (and then there is Alvin Greene...).

I am still of the mind that we should be supportive of any liberty candidate that chooses to take the leap. That is not saying every individual needs to actively "help" every candidate, just that we should not "hurt" those who choose to get behind a candidate, for whatever reason moves them. For certain there are people who will help a local candidate and will not get involved in a distant race. These races provide a great vehicle for many people to get more involved in local politics and learn about the process. Additionally, by running hoards of candidates, we make our enemies spread themselves thin...

I am in complete agreement that we would do well to encourage more people to run on downticket (local) races.

GO GLEN BRADLEY!

 

[malkusm]

I agree with this thread 100%....I think we should be getting behind all of the state house/senate candidates that have been endorsed by the RLC and got past their primaries. I don't have them listed in my General Election candidate thread yet, but so far there are those listed in that thread plus an additional 62(!!!) more that I have yet to add.

I think your estimate of $100K for a state race is extremely high. Many of these races have 15k-20k voters or less. We also have to consider that we should not be the sole contributor to these campaigns - candidates still have to do their part to meet with the establishment, local leaders, business owners, etc. to get the "big money" donations in their races. I think that if we could throw $20-30k into a lot of these races that we can win them (depending on their demographics, etc.)

Good post.

 

[ChaosControl]

I agree with everything mentioned in the OP.
And specifically:

State House Races Should Be Priority

Seriously, we should decentralize. And if we could control some states we'd actually have a lot of power. Get enough state legislatures on board and you can get constitutional amendments in play, without having to worry about the federal congress.

We could then use that to limit the power of the congress. And as mentioned it is cheaper and easier to win state houses. Sure there are more of them, but we can build up our numbers over time. And then we can influence people locally.

Third parties have the problem of often ignoring lower races and running for president or senate and losing. Well we're doing the same mistake, just because we're trying to use the GOP doesn't mean we're going to be successful. So let us focus on the local.

 

[libertybrewcity]

State House Races Should Be Priority

With the funding and organization of the modern liberty movement, we should be able to win at the very minimum 50 state house seats per election cycle, no if ands or buts about it. If we play our cards right, and do some very basic risk/reward modeling, two years after big wins in state house seats we could have 50 Justin Amashs in Congress. Tell me that won't give us a serious voting block, and a huge amount of pull in DC.

The Widwest provides us the best opportunity to enact this plan. We can, for less than $100,000 each, set ourselves up for huge victories that will provide us with residual representation in Congress. Is this plan as fun as running 2-3 huge campaigns? No. Does it provide the instant gratification we seem to long for? No. But for a movement who could probably write a fucking book on time preference, why can't we understand that this movement will only work with a long term strategy?

I've always liked the State House takeover strategy. State house races don't cost much money compared to congressional races and are much easier to win.

I had an idea that would focus on one state where we could get a full state house worth of candidates on the ballot and through the primaries. I would think that in some races many would win unopposed, and some states would have almost guaranteed victories in heavily conservative areas. It could be an extension to the Free State Project if we did it in New Hampshire.

 

[jmdrake]

Very good analysis! Some things I'd like to add.

* I think your point about state house races is spot on. (Go Gunny!)

* We need to know the difference between "liberty movement" name recognition and "electoral" name recognition. I'd never heard of Amash before he had won. But obviously people in his state had. This kind of goes with winning state house races first as you pointed out. What we lack generally is a "farm team".

* I do think there is some room for educational races. But if it's going to be an educational race let it be that. Rand tacking away from the Ron's foreign policy helped him win. Peter doing the same thing wasn't enough to get him over the top, but it was enough to discourage some grassroots support. Worst of both worlds. The John Dennis campaign can have an impact even if he doesn't win if Nancy feels threatened enough to debate him. (Admittedly that's a long shot). But if his campaign helps educate some new SF voters that there are republicans who are actually antiwar that may help some in 2012.

* We need a systematic way to evaluate and support state house candidates. Maybe that's through the local Meetups? Glenn Bradley has been here from day 1 so people know to support him. But how to tell early on which state house candidates are viable?

 

[malkusm]

* We need a systematic way to evaluate and support state house candidates. Maybe that's through the local Meetups? Glenn Bradley has been here from day 1 so people know to support him. But how to tell early on which state house candidates are viable?

Simple - we have to go back through the election results to see which districts are competitive, and how much we'll need to push that candidate to victory. It takes a lot of work, but I've gone through it for about 9 of the State House/Senate candidates so far....a lot more work left to be done, but it will get there.

 

[Jordan]

* We need a systematic way to evaluate and support state house candidates. Maybe that's through the local Meetups? Glenn Bradley has been here from day 1 so people know to support him. But how to tell early on which state house candidates are viable?

I completely agree.

The chat punks, namely Matt, Casey, Jer (even if he was a negative nancy), and I were throwing around ideas on how we could organize to deliver a series of sizeable state candidate money bombs.

To these candidates, $10,000 would be like Christmas on steroids. With Matt's ability to analyze political data and number crunch combined with the promotional abilities this forum has, I think we could most certainly fund a big round of liberty-loving state candidates.

As for GOTV, national phonebanking efforts/local doorknocking for state candidates would probably be VERY effective considering so few people show up to the polls.

At this point, we need to start putting points on the board. Once we have the momentum, and the people in place locally, federal elections will come easily. However, without a solid foundation, we'll just have to resort to taking complete stabs in the dark for high-risk low reward candidacies.

I want to win, damn it!

 

[brenden.b]

Localism, I like it. I've been on board for a while with this idea. It's pretty sad that voteres know more about their federal representation than their state representation. We need to change that, we need to make the state legislature significant once again.

Targeting the local races will give us a bunch of small victories at lower costs, and eventually we can turn multiple states into little nullification factories.

@malkusm, $100,000 is probably the average cost for a state house race, so I wouldn't say he is missing the target by much.

 

[paulitics]

I'm on board and will certainly donate for local elections. I think we have a pool of hundreds of potential viable candidates right here.

But do we have enough time?

 

[brenden.b]

I'm on board and will certainly donate for local elections. I think we have a pool of hundreds of potential viable candidates right here.

But do we have enough time?

We need to look around in our own states. A good resource to check is the list of candidates endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus. Once we start compiling a list of candidates in each state, those lists should be added to the local activism forums so that everyone knows the liberty candidates running in their states. We can all support them as we see fit by calling for money bombs via the General Politics forum.

Recruiting local candidates at this point is too late. Let's find the liberty candidates in our own states and support them the best we can.

 

[malkusm]

Here is a list of the candidates endorsed by the Republican Liberty Caucus this year. A vast majority of these are state candidates, and I've done the work to figure out which ones won their primaries so far (62 in total):

http://www.rlc.org/endorsed-candidates-2010/

 

[Maximus]

Okay so let's say a State race in the Midwest costs about 30k

We should pick 5 candidates in different races and do a 150k money bomb for the five of them. Contributing to five races doesn't dilute the average contribution, and it encourages participation from a more national audience.

I remember one time we had a money bomb for like 20 candidates at once, well what was the point of contributing 20 bucks if each candidate only got $1?

Also, for me atleast, it's hard to send money to one person running for the State House of a different state, far across the country. But I would be far more likely to support a "basket" of candidates that can really make a difference if we elect all of them.

 

[Maximus]

Next election cycle we should pick one Federal Senate candidate (ala Rand Paul), in hopefully a small media market state, this would be a big money commitment, but having a US Senator is huge and worth the investment. I know having Rand Paul in the Senate will pay dividends for our movement for years on end.

We should select five House races, and commit 100k to each of them. That is doable.

We should select two or three five person "baskets" of people running for State legislatures. These would cost 150k per basket.

This would cost anywhere from 3-5million... but something I know we could commit too and succeed with

 

[eOs]

babababarumpski

 

[malkusm]

Okay so let's say a State race in the Midwest costs about 30k

We should pick 5 candidates in different races and do a 150k money bomb for the five of them. Contributing to five races doesn't dilute the average contribution, and it encourages participation from a more national audience.

I remember one time we had a money bomb for like 20 candidates at once, well what was the point of contributing 20 bucks if each candidate only got $1?

Also, for me atleast, it's hard to send money to one person running for the State House of a different state, far across the country. But I would be far more likely to support a "basket" of candidates that can really make a difference if we elect all of them.

I floated this exact idea out there last week, but very few people responded to it: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=256280

Although I agree, maybe "less is more" in terms of the number of candidates....so we figure out the most viable candidates who are the most pure, pick 5 or 10 or whatever we get closest to agreeing on, and go from there.