There was a time when political candidates had to rely on daily newspapers and magazines for staying current on the issues, but the Internet has made it easier than ever before to keep up with local news.  I use a free tool called Google Alerts to have instant notifications sent to my email inbox anytime an issue that affects my district gets published online, and you can easily do the same.

Google Alerts takes only a moment to set up, and it’s an extremely useful online tool.  To use it, simply go to the Google Alerts interface, then type the keyword phrase that you want to be updated on in the box labeled “search terms.”

One of the first terms that you will want to create a Google Alert for is your own name, since you’ll want to stay informed about any website that publishes information about you or your candidacy.  Make sure that you enter your name surrounded by quotation marks–for instance, “Phil Van Treuren,”–so that you are only notified when your entire name is mentioned, and not just part of it.

Next, you have the option of specifying what kind of search results you want to be notified about–news, blogs videos, discussions–but I simply choose “everything” so that I don’t miss any online mentions.  You can also choose how frequently you want to be notified of new results (every day if you want) and how many results you would like to see in every email.

The last step is simply to enter the email address where you want the results to be sent, and you’re all set.  Every time your specified Google Alert keyword phrase shows up in the search engine’s index, you will be sent a link to the page in the Internet where it appears.

A couple of tips: first, if you have a common name, you want to make sure that you narrow down your search specifications so that you are only notified when it’s sure to be referring to you.  A Google Alert for the term “Bob Jones” would probably return hundreds of irrelevant alerts every day.  But if you were to set a more specific Google Alert for +”Bob Jones” +”City Council” +”Ohio”, then most of the alerts would probably refer to you personally (putting the “+” symbol in front of phrases means to only return results that include that phrase).

You can set as many Google Alerts as you want, and the service is very reliable.  After setting an alert for your own name, you might also want to set alerts for your political opponent’s name; the name of your town or city; and plenty of other keyword phrases that you might want to stay educated on.

Of course, you should still keep an eye on the daily papers to make sure you aren’t missing anything, but Google Alerts makes it much easier for political campaign candidates to stay current on issues that might play a role in their local election.

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I’m a former journalist myself, and I realize that it’s fairly uncommon for a local newspaper to have its own cartoonist on staff and publish cartoons that have to do with local political campaigns, candidates and elections.

The lack of local editorial cartoonists isn’t so much because there aren’t enough people with artistic talent to draw cartoons.  The problem is that political campaign cartoons need a special kind of wit, humor and comic subtlety in order to work, and few artists are able to pull it off.

A good political campaign editorial cartoon can poke fun at candidates without resorting to juvenile or crude humor, and is usually funny on many different levels.  In fact, I think that artistic talent is the least important talent that a political cartoonist needs to possess.  Some of the funniest election cartoons that I’ve seen featured pretty crude drawing skills.

Does your local newspaper have its own political campaign cartoonist who draws caricatures of candidates and election issues?  If so, are they effective in their satire or do they miss the mark?

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The Dominion Post apparently used Photoshop to manipulate the picture and remove the images of Marion County House of Delegates members Mike Caputo, Linda Longstreth, and Tim Manchin.  Here’s the before and after:

So, why the photo manipulation?  Because The Dominion has a policy against running pictures of political candidates running for re-election during campaign season.

How moronic is that?  A newspaper, whose job it is to report the facts in an unbiased and unfiltered fashion, decides to basically lie to its readers by publishing a photograph of a situation that never really happened.

But why stop there? If The Dominion thinks that it’s morally superior by Photoshopping out the images of office holders during election season, then wouldn’t it be even more moral to get rid of images of elected officials all together?

I’m sure that The Dominion’s readers would have appreciated it if the paper had erased the image of the governor signing the legislation in that picture, too.  We need more photos of  ghostly, floating pens signing documents without the help of  a human.

Here’s a heads up: when the media starts manipulating images to show situations that never happened because they think they know what’s best for their audience . . . then we have a big problem.

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“In general, endorsements are worthless and don’t often lead to victories for most candidates, even when the individuals giving the endorsements are extremely popular,” says Powell, who teaches in the UAB Department of Communication Studies. “There always will be some voters who don’t like the individual making the endorsement, and those voters will be more likely to vote against the endorsement rather than for it. And newspaper endorsements often hurt candidates, costing them as much as 3 percent in the polls.

“Endorsements by large organizations that can pass on the endorsements to their membership, however, can be effective,” Powell says, “particularly in minor races where voters haven’t really thought about who is the best candidate. So they are more likely to check the endorsement and go with that candidate. But if it is a high-profile election for governor or lieutenant governor, an endorsement usually will have little impact on voters because they often have thought a lot about the candidates.”

In my experience, candidates running in local elections put way too much stock in political campaign endorsements . . . both from individuals and newspapers.

I’m especially befuddled at candidates who react to an endorsement from the local newspaper as th0ough they have won the election.  The fact is that newspaper endorsements don’t predict the winner of elections with any kind of reliability, and they’re becoming even less consequential as traditional news consumers decrease.

I’ll say it again: newspapers routinely endorse the weakest candidates–and the eventually losers–in political campaigns.  If you’re running in a local election, don’t waste time celebrating a newspaper endorsement and bragging about it.  Instead, get back on the campaign trail and concentrate on the hard work that really wins elections.

The same goes for endorsements from popular politicians and community leaders: they’re nice to have, but they aren’t going to win the election for you.  While you should never turn down an endorsement from well-liked entity, don’t make the mistake of basing your entire campaign–or even a part of your campaign–on it.

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Kudos to both Blogging Blue for being so professional and gracious in their interview, and to Westlake for having the chutzpa to go on-the-record with a liberal blogger.  It made for a good interview, and I’d like to see more bloggers and candidates do the same.

I especially like Blogging Blue’s closing paragraph:

“Dave Westlake may be a likable guy who’s passionate about what he believes in, but ultimately he faces an uphill battle (to put it mildly) if he’s going to beat his Republican opponents for the chance to lose to Sen. Feingold in the general election.”

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Of course, most candidates who are running in smaller local elections will never have to worry about this kind of thing, but it’s still good to practice watching what you say if you want to have any sort of career in politics.  The further you go as a politician, the more your opposition and members of the media will try to catch you saying something politically damaging.

Getting caught saying something you didn’t intend people to hear isn’t always a career-destroyer, but is can lead to a lot of embarrassment, backtracking and apologizing.  It’s better to try and follow the rule that our mothers taught us: if you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all.  At least until you are back behind closed doors!

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“Thank you so much for the incredible mass of information you provide on the site. It’s been quite helpful.  I’ve been receiving questionnaires from various groups considering their endorsements for my race. Among them are organizations I respect but who I have philosophical disagreements with and who will definitely be endorsing the incumbent. Is it better to respond with answers they don’t want or ignore them entirely?”

Thanks for the compliments Dave, we’re glad you like Killer Campaigning!  Political candidate questionnaires and surveys are one of those inevitable parts of being involved in local elections–and the larger and more hotly-contested your race is, the more questionnaires you’ll get in the mail.

In many cases, these groups obtain the addresses of every candidate on the ballot in a given campaign season from the local board of elections and send out bulk surveys to every person on the list.  Don’t read too much into it or make the mistake of thinking that someone at the organization is waiting breathlessly for your response.

Non-profits, unions, political action groups and countless other organizations send out thousands of candidate questionnaires and surveys across the country every year–ostensibly to help them decide which candidate to endorse in a local election.

The reality, however, is that most of these groups have already made up their mind who they are going to endorse long before the questionnaires are ever sent out (especially in general elections, but to a lesser degree in primaries, as well).  In most cases, a candidate’s political party or status with a particular group has more to do with whether or not they win an endorsement than does their actual opinions on the issues.

Also, keep in mind that one reason many of these groups dole out political candidate endorsements is to get free publicity for their own cause . . . not necessarily to educate the voters.  Endorsements often make it into local news stories, and these organizations love seeing their names in the papers as much as political candidates do.

But back to your question: should you fill out a candidate questionnaire if you know ahead of time that the group is almost certainly not going to endorse you (and in most cases, you will know before you fill it out).

There’s an easy answer to that question and a more difficult answer.  Here’s the easy answer: if it’s an organization whose endorsement you wouldn’t want in the first place, then you shouldn’t fill out or return the questionnaire.  A candidate who is targeting conservative voters, for instance, probably shouldn’t court the endorsement of a group that advocates gay marriage . . . and a candidate whose base consists of progressive voters doesn’t need the endorsement of a concealed weapons advocacy group.

The real difficulty comes when you are weighing whether or not to fill out a questionnaire from a less polarizing group whose endorsement you would like to have . . . but which you know you aren’t going to get.

In this case, there’s a litmus test that I use in my own campaigns that might help you make a decision, as well: are you on friendly–or cordial–terms with any of the leadership or members of the group?  Do you know them personally, and are you likely to continue to interact with them professionally even after the election?

If the answer is yes, then you’re probably better off filling out the questionnaire and mailing it back.  As a political candidate, your allies and supporters are going to fluctuate over the years, and there’s no reason to insult or alienate a group whose support you would like to have in the future.  If they really are an above-the-board and legitimate organization, then they will respect you more for filling out the form and turning it in, even though they are supporting another candidate.

On the other hand, if members of the group in question have been openly hostile to your candidacy or have gone out of their way to be rude to you or your supporters, then don’t give them the satisfaction of filling out their questionnaire.  You aren’t likely to gain anything from it, and sending in their survey will only allow them to paint you as someone who desperately wanted their endorsement but wasn’t good enough to earn it.

Of course, these are the more extreme examples–these solutions aren’t going to fit every endorsement questionnaire scenario.  Above all else, keep an eye on your future political aspirations–not just those in this particular election–and use some pragmatism to make your decision.

Of course, I could go on to tell you just how little these endorsements really help a campaign, after all  . . . but we will save that for another post.  Just make sure you don’t concentrate too much on winning endorsements, and instead dedicate your valuable time to good old-fashioned campaigning.

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I won’t be talking about political campaigns and local elections during my presentation, but I will be covering the topics of Search Engine Optimization and writing for the web.  As a former beat reporter (I started my career at a local newspaper right out of college), I’m looking forward to the event.  Hope to see you there!

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The unfortunate truth is that most candidates in local political campaigns are only going to get election coverage twice from the local newspapers and media: once when they toss their hat in the ring, and once when the election results are announced.

A lot of local candidates take it personally that the newspapers, radio stations and television networks won’t cover their events or press releases.  Some candidates even go so far as to form conspiracy theories about editors and reporters having a personal vendetta against them.  In the vast majorities of cases, this simply isn’t the case.

Remember: as candidates, we always think that are own political campaigns are much more important than anyone else does . . . especially the media.  Local reporters and editors have dozens of races to cover each election season, and they just don’t often have the time to give each campaign the attention that the respective candidates would like to have.

Regardless of whether the local media has something against you or not, it’s really counterproductive to spend any time brooding about your lack of election coverage.  If you aren’t getting the amount of media attention that you would like, there is only one thing you can do: campaign harder, raise more money, and get your name out there using good old-fashioned hard work and shoe leather.

It’s important that the new local political candidate fully understands the real value of election media coverage, as well.  While it’s great to have your name in the paper on a regular basis if your running for office (as long as it’s not for your arrest record), earned media won’t win a campaign by itself.

I’ve seen many prospective candidates focus way too much effort on getting their name in the newspapers in the months leading up to the election, only to lose badly when the votes are tallied up.

Don’t get me wrong: earned election coverage is great to have, but only if it is in conjunction with a well-run, comprehensive campaign effort.  In other words, people aren’t going to vote for you just because your name is in the paper.  They need to see you in their neighborhood, shake your hand, read your literature, understand your platform, and feel that you’re working hard for their vote.

And believe me: most voters are savvy enough to know when you are making up issues just to get your name in the paper so you can run for office.  If you become too much of a publicity hound, or chase after too many “causes” that demand media coverage, then the voters will see through your game pretty quickly.

So don’t get too upset if the local papers, radio stations and TV channels don’t do a story about your press release or event; it probably isn’t because they have something against you, but rather because they just don’t have the resources to cover it.

Look at it as a gift: their lack of election coverage should make you work even harder in the field, which will help guarantee victory on election day.

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While reading election news in your local newspaper is fine, you shouldn’t stop there.  The Internet puts thousands of online publications at your fingertips, and there are great political sites out there that aggregate the best political campaigns stories from around the country every day.

You can get your election news from websites and blogs that lean in one political direction or another; there are countless examples of unabashedly partisan political opinion sites online, and there’s nothing wrong with following what they have to say.

Regardless of what your political leanings are, though, make sure you do your election news gathering pragmatically.  If you’re interested in learning about the art and science of political campaigning, try to find news sources that report election news as impartially as possible.  If you get details about a particularly interesting race on a right-leaning website, then try to see what some of the left-leaning sites are saying about it, as well.

Remember: as a potential candidate, you need to look at election and campaign news with a much more scientific eye than most armchair fans of politics.  Take note of political campaign tactics that appeal to you–even if they’re used by candidates on the other side of the aisle–and think of ways to apply those strategies to your own future campaign.

If you think that the strategies used by Congressional, Gubernatorial or even Presidential political campaigns can’t be applied to your local election, think again.  If you like something that a large campaign does, then there’s probably a way to apply something similar–albeit smaller and less far-reaching–in your own local campaign.  Remember: many of the best ideas in political campaigning are just adapted from other campaigns (some would say “stolen” from other campaigns, but I guess that’s semantics).

Making a habit of following election news from around the country isn’t just entertaining for those of us who love political campaign updates; it’s also a great way to get brilliant ideas to use in your own local election efforts.  Start taking a few notes on what’s working for other candidates around the country and “adapting” their techniques for use in your own campaign.

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