c-span 2. leading republican and democratic strategists talk about framing political issues followed by a discussion on lobbying. this is hosted by american university's policy institute. >> your parents are paying for this or at least most are and we want to be very serious. . .

>> he has worked with all three of republican committees in high-level positions. he was with the republican national committee has held it -- as head of field operations. he was the head of republican senatorial committee as political director and he was that the national republican congressional committee during the takeover, which did happen one time, you may remember, the take over of congress. as i say, he has been in politics for 30 years and it does not seem that long. he is an expert in the field and we're delighted to have him with us to talk about framing your

message. >> thank you, carol. >> thank you, carol. it is good to be here today. as carol said, i am old and i've been around the block a couple of times. what i have been asked to share with you is how to share your message and how it is that we take issues that are before us today and talk -- turn it into something the campaign can use and make the proper end result for a campaign and get 50% of the vote come 2010. what i thought we would do is to spend a little bit of time talking about what makes good political communications and then spend some time on the underlying income that goes into the message and talk about choosing issues. i will show a series of ads that will demonstrate the thinking behind what it was that we have

chosen to do and how it affected the public and why they were successful. then we will do a case study with mashal buttons campaign. that is where the topsy-turvy back-and-forth race occurred that she was able to pull out and win. the president of fox news was once a media consultant as well. he did richard nixon's television ads. he did ronald reagan's television ads and then he said i and the message. in that book, he was the first to encapsulate the idea that a walking and talking human being candidate was the totality of

who he or she was. roger took that image and eventually develop some of the most famous moves. he tied or reagan's leadership values and his issues that he had used to win the white house and eventually win 49 states against what from mondale in 1984. -- against walter mondale in 1984. it was taught that a good political campaign is like having a conversation with the voters. having a campaign that was successful was somebody that could interact with the voters.

it was interesting to the voters. it was something that was important to the voters and they felt they had some feedback to. it meant that there were joining some kind of cause. it was with those two pieces of thinking and that influenced a lot of republican communications and practices and influenced a lot of what people thought about. ending about issues,q)e really are three levels of political communications that take place. three levels of the way people think about making decisions on who they are going to vote for. the first is the most basic. that is a campaign specific

issue. something that is taking place that is very legislative if you're running for congress. it is very particular and very specific. it usually has to do with stopping the one thing that is going through the congress. it then leads to -- from those issues, you develop ideas. the public been absorbs those ideas and takes it to one hire a set communications and that is values. altman communication is a communicating shared values. when you have captured that, did

you have hit the home run. if you think about the great communicators we have had in our industry, we had president obama and president clinton and president reagan. they did not speak just on this level. they were able to take those concepts and take them up one more level i wanted to take a second and walk through eight values that we have tested over and over three years. we have tried to crystallize what values are important to the american public. this was true in the 1970's and remained true last time i saw it tested in the mid 2000's.

these eight values have remained the same period of value #one, your personal safety and health that is why health care tests so high overtime. it is why crime tests so why all the time -- so high all the time. second is having a better relationship with your family. republicans are always willing to talk about family values. the reason it works for us is because it is consistent.

the third and most controversial is a better relationship with your god. now, this is not meant to be a relationship with a specific religion rather than a sense of well-being. do is more like jimmy stewart in a wonderful life. inside a republican primary or a democratic primary, it is different. no. 4, i always found this interesting because it was so high.

everyone wants a better job. believe it or not, it is not about making more money. it is often about somebody's sense of self-worth. it is about doing something that contributes to community. that is why hillary clinton chose the "it takes a village" approach they were trying to connect the family and village issues. the democrats flocked to hillary because of that. >>#5, i want a better place -- a large part of the american dream

has been based on a each generation doing better than the generation before it. those of us that our parents, if we could have one wish in life, we want our kids to succeed and to have done better than we have. no. 6 is being able to afford your own home. that is why his numbers popped up -- that is why obama's numbers popped up when he started talking about home ownership. this is a concept that is very american in nature. it is of value that has been up there forever and ever. no. 7 is a better quality of life.

that is very materialistic. can i take a vacation, can i have a second car? can i have been wii machine? from the materialistic standpoint, it makes the list at no. 7 committed number a is it there or to have a good and happy retirement. that has made the list forever. it is the reason the social security and medicare are issues that are always available to be tapped and used in campaigns. these eight values have been part of the american fabric of who we are for the 30 years that i have been involved. the order has not changed much. the first three have been the first three for as long as i can

remember. keeping those values in mind as you develop your campaign issues is more to be of utmost importance. what is it that i can do in thinking about developing my campaign? i have always thought that the winning campaign is the campaign that is best able to answer what question is that voters think they are asking when they walk into the blues on election day. at some level, i am voting for ed or i am voting for carol. let's look at some of the presidential elections. sometimes it is pretty easy to discern those.

obama wanted more change than hillary did. mccain was sort of anti bush and ended up winning the republican nomination. if you will remember, after the republican convention, but kane was actually ahead for the first two weeks of september. september 15 came along and lehman brothers collapses and people see that things really are bad. obama shoots ahead becomes -- it becomes a heavily democratic year. in 2004, there was a big question that voters were asking which is which president

will make us more secure. terry did not realize that. he got torpedoed by use of his military record. in 2000, we had a close election and we were still not sure what? or try to answer. republicans were trying to say -- -- still not sure what we were trying to answer. go all the way back to ronald reagan. ronald reagan two alexian's -- elections, -- ronald reagan won

two elections asking the same question. as you are thinking about your senate races for congressional races -- for congressional races, i think the congressional question was kind of easy. for republicans, it was all trying to change the question so that the question became something other than the national question. going into 2002 and, -- 2010, there seems to be a buyer is developing -- a bias developing.

part of what you're going to have to decide is if you still want to question to be the big question, should change take place in washington d.c. one more time, or will you change the question that is being asked. you always want your candidate to be the answer to the question. the way to do that is to control the questions being asked. what we're really thinking about is trying to convince voters of what it is they are deciding when to walk into the polling place and deciding if they are born to vote for it or carol. so, if that is the fact, -- this

is how old fashion line, use a chalkboard. if this is the fact about what question is being asked by the voters when they get to election day, that is a series of phases that have to take place for the public to understand enough about my candidate before they can even make that decision. who has been involved in a campaign in the past. how about -- to anybody work on the hill. any advocacy groups? those of you that worked on the hill, how many wrote speeches for their member. in writing speeches, did you write one minutes? one minute --

>> one minute or two . >> what topics? >> honestly, i don't remember. it was about two years ago. >> what was the challenges you face. >> the message. who has been involved in campaigns in developing brochures? >> what exactly brochures, but standard campaign emails -- not exactly brochures, but standard campaign emails. >> did you have instructions? >> 150 words. these were fundraising emails there were going out two weeks

before the deadline. >> did you do the issues sections? >> it was general. we tried to work some issues in. >> anybody else? >> was there much overlap? >> i would say that in thinking about your campaign messages,

there used to be a series of faces that we would teach about how a campaign would develop. this is thinking about the campaign and it was much more prevalent before the access of electronic data where the public can go click on my campaign website and find out as much or as little as i want to put up there. for the longest time, the only thing was what we had to put out there. so, we had these series of phases that we would build up. the phases when something like this. phase one, it was to build the name id. that is pure and simple. back in the day, you still see a lot of yard signs and billboards which can do nothing

but build name id. phase two was starting to develop your image. are you a nice guy or not? what is it about myself that makes me attractive to somebody beyond just knowing my name? >> what issues is phase 3. what is it that i am talking about? what is it that i want people to understand about me in relationship to my office? phase four was drawing a contrast with my opponent. this is who i am and what i believe and what issues i am

going to promote. how is it that you should let me versus my opponent. i think i will see -- take a sidebar right now and talk about negative advertising. i am sure you will hear more about this in the strategy section. to me, negative advertising is inherent in american culture. who has seen the advertisements for at&t but look wilson? those pariahs and adds a kind of nasty. the rise in is accused at&t of not having coverage and wilson has attacked back by not being able to use their phones. it is a pretty nasty stuff

taking place and they are asking you to make a decision on not what the product does, but on what the other product doesn't. wendy's accused mcdonald's of not selling quarter pounder hamburgers. she would pick up the mcdonald's quarter pounder bonn and lifted off -- lifted up and say that mcdonald's was not selling quarter pound hamburgers. the american culture is inherent with people making decisions not just on what they are going to buy, but what they are not going to buy. politics is no different. did they do the grid? you saw that gribbin in the

strategy session. what am i going to say about myself? what if my opponent or to say about him or herself. what is my opponent on to say about me, and what will i say about my opponent. you're leaving a 25% of the decision making information that is available. kendeigh as good too far? yes -- can they -- canon ads go too far? >> the -- can ads go too far? >> yes. they have to be based on something that people already believe and have to be understandable. when you talk about contrast

advertising and you get to some incumbents that you work with that are ahead in the polls, at some point in time, it is probably going to build up enough name i.d. when that is not their problem anymore and you will frame your opponent in such a way that is more on your terms than with his. if part 4 is drawing a contrast, part 5 is your report section where you get to hit back. no. 6 is the close. for years, we were running on six phases of communication. first i am going to introduce myself at 5 will eventually get to attack my opponent.

the couple of things have changed that. member one is the amount of money involved in campaigns today. there is a lot more time involved in how much information will be put out there to the public. you'll have senate races in connecticut and missouri and pennsylvania. some are going to be running ads this winter for a cult -- for an election next fall the amount of time that we have begins to distort this sort of block of time that i am going to use to go through these phases of the campaign. then, you add to that the fact that you go to any website today

and all you had up there with your name, it would be kind of silly and irrelevant. in today's world, there is a different set of criteria that you want to use in thinking about the entirety of your message. it is kind of based on the same kind of background. there are four things that you always want to be thinking about. no. 1 is who and why. the total amount of my persona ge. no. 2, what do i believe about me that i am going to put out there for my background that makes me attractive to others.

number three, what am i going to do about the problems are facing the public of today? and number four, what is it that makes me different from my opponent? i would say that in virtually every piece of campaign communications that you do, you need to keep all four of these in mind as opposed to building towards these things slowly. it doesn't mean that you attack your opponent in everything that you do, but what it does mean is that from the time that you stand up and say that my name is ed and i am running for president, i need to be thinking about what makes me different from my opponent as we move forward in the campaign. so, if what we believe is that we need to develop a message

that is going to include issues that will set up the answer to a question, and that we keep these four background thoughts in mind, how is it that we choose issues that we are going to use in promoting? have you got your groups already? have you started research? is anybody from ohio? which side are you doing? >> portman. >> portman. had you thought about what mr. portman issues are going to be

-- portman's issues are going to be? >> i was covering more of voter returns. >> where have you had so far? >> basic research >> is anybody here doing mr. specter? there is a specter back there in the corner. had you guys started thinking about what you will talk about? >> pretty basic. job support and health care, the issues that everybody is thinking about. >> we will have to think about the fact that he switched his party. >> then we are born to aimed to

state that he has always represented the moderate voter in that state. that is where he will hang his hat. >> this anybody had ms. monahan? you have the democratic side? >> no. >> have you talked about issues? >> we are focusing on opposition research. not just general health care but special interest groups. is the blood group together? there is no blood group? you have the primaries involved.

and what are we doing with mrs. brenner? >> healthcare, the jobs, and we will try to tie portman back to washington. >> one of the challenges that we all face is that if you just do a survey list and it would be hh care. the national security staff will pop up once in awhile. this is not based on what is on everybody's mind. when everybody agrees with the number one issue is, you ask how

you make that issue mind. let's face it, are you going to accuse mr. portman of the fact that he thinks people should not have better jobs? that is tough to believe on the face of that all. -- adel. -- but it all -- on the face of it all. the challenge for us is taking the issue of the economy and jobs and passing health care as the number-one issue. how is it that we will do something for my campaign that makes me what the voters will be asking what they are answering.

what issue is it that we should use to promote our campaign? part one is [inaudible] is that personal enough? is there a solution that you are promoting that that family or that person -- going back to no. 1, what makes me believe there what you're talking about is: commit much situation better -- that what you're talking about is going to make my situation better. you add that to the -- is this

an issue that i can talk about in a big enough away that i will be able to grab a lot of people in a short period of time. remember, even in today's electronic world, most people are still " to get their information in 32nd burst of advertising. maybe a bit longer online, but they will be producing for minute ads -- four men adds. the best way to get that is to go back to shared values. you need to get back to issues like jobs. then, you add that to how that is different from opponent.

just saying that i am for better jobs for ohio is not enough. mr. fisher will be saying that, mr. portman will be saying that. you have to ask what it is that i believe about that issue, that subset of the issues, that we will choose to highlight that is one to me all three of those tests. if you can do that relevancy, then you will have what we think is a winning issue. now, how do i figure this out? do you have that service presentation? i am a big believer in research of all kinds. not just what my opponent

believes, but what it is that my candida believes. i am not a consultant that ever thinks that we should be telling our clients what they believe. i want a client that understands who he is and what his beliefs are. we may help them with words they will be using. we also want to understand who our candidate is and what they are all about. in survey research, we can take those positions and test them in such a way so that we can figure out which one of our issues will meet these tests. we came up with the aid b.c. test -- the abc test. you can test three pieces of these issues about what is going to billone.

-- going to go on. we are always looking for a 7% no. to provide better jobs. if we were to read that issue, we would say that we found step one as something we would want to talk about. step two would be the believability of the issues. believability of works on a couple of levels. is a believable that that candidate is going to be able to actually do something about the issue we have chosen to promote? >> if i am on city council and i want to go around and talk about the middle east peace

process, i maybe looking at things that will be in the far extreme. do people believe that i will be able to pass legislation that produced hair covered -- health- care costs would it make a difference? the double block -- the believability scale makes sure that it will pass the test for the public to buy into it. the hardest one to get to -- what we're saying is that even if they believe we can get it done and it would make a difference, do they care enough about that issue that they would make their voting decision based on a?

is there a difference between my position on that issue and put it up against my opponent and lead to their vote intent. from a campaign perspective, i can have the greatest solutions and the world and the greatest answers and the world, but it is not going to something you would vote on, i should not be be spending my valuable campaign resources to promote it. daniel was asking bif there was an issue the public may not care about and can it be done? if it is ever going to be done,

where you will create an issue, if it is negative about your opponent and the entire country was worried about jobs, but my opponent is drastically different, i might be able to say that this is something you knew you don't know about my opponent and introduce that to them to say that they do not care about anything else. no. 2, it is on the positive side, it has to be linked to a shared value very easily. it has to be something you can take a past issue with and convince the public that not that they are wrong about the issues, but there is something bigger about this campaign that i want to run in terms of pulling off.

no. 3 is that you have to have a high degree of being able to get it done. it just cannot be pie in the sky stuff. it can't be that you have the answer for world hunger and this is the secret plan and i will not tell it to you until i'm done with the campaign. you have to go outside and i think it is difficult to do in a positive way. we usually try to drag them back towards including that in a list of things and try to get that to a list of values. let's say that we have a social conservative this time and social issues will be high on the list. i would try to link that to a value and bring it back. it would allow them to express

personal feelings, but then you bring it back to what it is worth to the public. the situation of the public decides the issue. political consultants are compared to use card salesman -- you -- a used car salesman. part of that is because we like to say that we decided this campaign issue when it was really what the public was thinking about and we are most often representing our candidates if we're doing our job correctly. for those of you that want to think about entering this business, in terms of a campaign

as a profession, get prepared. if you're getting into this business because you believe that you want to expand second and it rides, then the big argument is taken and that all the time. there are many interest groups that promote both sides of the issue. i get involved on the public affairs side of this big debate as opposed to the campaign side because the gun issue is the number-one issue. you go up to western kansas and i will guarantee you that you will find a republican that will agree. the public decides what the

issues are born to be. the candidates decide their position -- issues are going to be. one more set of tests to use in addition to this abc test in looking at your message. there are four parts to this test as well. you have to apply both tests because the first test picchi through the intellectual side. is this an issue worth using? it is something that you will be able to put into a direct mail piece to get things done. is it simple to understand? .

does it have a personal impact on the voters? are the facts easy to use and transferable for the candidates and [no audio] now, standing up to an attack does not mean that 70% of the people have to agree with you after you haps started down this path. standing up means that if there are enough folks in the middle core of voters that you are aiming most of your campaign at in terms of these issues will still believe my side. don't ever assume or believe that no matter how deeply --

reducing taxes on health care that somebody is not going to care. you can talk about myself employers bursa's large employers. -- talk about self employers reverses large employers -- versus large employers. a couple of more thoughts on choosing your issues and then we will start looking at what it is that we do in advertising apollos these principles. we have always thought that it is more important what people say and believe about your candidate after you have seen their ad and what you actually

say inside the head. it is more important what people say and believe in what you actually say inside your ad. you have had class is in psychology. i am more of a simplistic guy. i prefer to say that there are things that we project based arm what we're talking about that will allow the voters to learn a whole lot more about the candidate then what i say in that 32nd advertisement. i will show you an ad in a moment about tracking actual survey results about how people's minds changed on issues that we're not talking about based on what they have seen in one particular piece of advertising. what you say and what you talk about is important.

that is who you are. you were going to see some michelle bauman examples. she was first elected to congress in 2006. she was a state senator prior to that. she had promoted a traditional marriage amendment, which she tried to get past but did not get on the ballot. second, she promoted the taxpayer bill of rights. when she was at the republican convention and won the nomination for congress in 2006, her promotion got her the most support. she was running against three other members. we got to the general alexian

without changing who she was and we stopped talking about traditional marriage amendment and started talking more about the taxpayer bill of rights. she became what she was talking about to those voters. she was still a staunch conservative, but she became more in economic conservative. i think that is a pretty good example of taking the issues that are important to the electorate. you take her core values and then make a decision. what gets frustrating is that

shift of gears that takes place after you get through a primary. the pennsylvania campaign had a huge shift the gears. -- shifted gears. -- shift of years. when you get to the primary, you see if he's running against the other candidate. those of you with your candidate, will be looking at candidates. it is probably his path to victory in terms of running the democratic primary in pennsylvania. you can shift gears and not change what he believes. the last note i would like to

make about this whole communications is that the special -- the higher up you go, your candidate has to be able to carry the message you're putting a. there are youtube -- you are putting out. there are you to videos and you are putting out things that your candidate is not. there is more information out there. to voters, it is going to seem very overwhelming. we're going to be hounding them with different website to go see and having all kinds of different alternatives. it is going to be good in the long run because the more that

voters know about candidates, the more informed decisions that will make it will get what they want out of their government which is what we are all about. i have a set of beliefs of what the government should be doing. what we want is a fair exchange of those ideas. as we are thinking about these campaigns, think about what it is that your candidate will be able to carry. when you are thinking about developing a message, think about what it is that that candidate is gored to be -- how that can it is or to be carrying this message. mr. allen made a statement

about the personal felony. the final thing i would say is to be thinking about who your candidate is and what message they can carry over the entire campaign. before i move into the next section, looking at ads and in talking about the ads and how they lead to the issues in the campaign. i want to stop and see if there are any questions were things that i have left out. >> could you talk about the transition from a primary to the general election? is that or to change the strategy? >> that they could change the strategy. in an ideal world, you will

choose your set of issues and the primary you want to oppose. if you believe that health care is an issue that could benefit you both but you'll be talking about different aspects of it, then i did to me to begin thinking about that when you for your primary election. -- for your primary election. -- a former -- forme your primay election. i would start with step 1 to figure out what issues can be beneficial. step two is to take a little bit about what you want to communicate in terms of a target audience through on-line

advertising and more targeted this year's you can probably be a little bit more partisan or any logical in nature that he might be on television. again, not changing what you believe in, but changing the tone of your advertising. during the primary, choose your issues wisely did then, as soon as you win a primary, you have got to be quick and allow it in trying to define what you think the differences between you and your opponent. -- the difference is between you and your opponent.

that speech is not about looking backward, is about looking forward. from that time forward, your speech should be about what you think the general election issue is going to be. change your web site if you have to. if you happen to change the issues you're dealing with, you will want to have a rationale as why you are talking about that issue. if you have to make a change, you have to do it right away. you do not want to give your opponent time to say that the steeple talk about something that is that important to the rest of us. >> would you suggest that

advertisements on youtube be different or should you still have the same amount of things? >> i think that you -- if you are -- if your message is targeted somehow, or you have been able to obtain e-mail lists, i think that they can be different than a general electronic message because of the target audience. that will be based on who is receiving it. intern's -- i would always try to come back to the shared values. there is only so much that the public is going to be able to absorber throughout the campaign. so, let's think about what

you're putting out. the truth is, if they're very active, they're getting the information already. there is only so much fear or to want to hear from us. we send them this much mail. you can learn something about them. i think you can do that if you can target it. i had an on-line consultants say to me last year something that really impacted me. he said that the future of communications in this new world will start to come down to thinking about this in three ways. . .

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i'm sure he consulted a large number of people. in terms of even of the drafting of that bill, the late senator kennedy and max baucus, they met for months with outside groups, consultants, try to craft their product. and so, you know, who was in the room, you know, merging this' manager's amendment, i don't know, quite frankly. i was not there, i tell you. so i was -- but you canning sure, hey, you know, all these -- you know, the key senators, they have their network of allies outside, many former staff people, many former members who are lobbyists, and maybe some of them had an opportunity to make suggestions

about, you know, the manager's amendment. certainly wouldn't surprise me or shock me. in this kind ofñi situation, th leader invites in whom he or she wants as the case might be. and the other -- you know, so that was that stage. you know, emerged the products, so that became a substitute amendment, then after he got the reaction of that, he had the manager's amendment, right, everybody with me? so you had the manager's management and the base bill, and that's why you need the three votes on each of the three so. sometimes it happens that after, you know, you're on the floor,&you find out, jeez, you know, i got problems right here, i'm not sure where my support is, and so you can come up with your own manager's amendment negotiating, you know, private well different lawmakers, you know, and then you offer, as the floor manager, your manager's amendment at some point in the process. or you could also occur, as soon as the committee reports a bill, you thought you had all the votes, where is it?

they're gone. maybe you craft a manager's amendment to accommodate certain people. so i mean, it comes into play at different stages of the law making process on the floor certainly. does that help? >> thank you. >> sir? >> because the senate allows for nongermane amendments, would you say there's a greater opportunity for lobbying in the senate, just based on the fact that you can add anything? >> well, yes, sure. >> anything to the senate bill. >> absolutely. in fact, you got to remember, our whole system is multiple access. i will mean, the framers designed the plan that allows for, you know, lobbyists we call on interest introduce, whatever, average citizens. you know, joe and jane america. they have some voice, we have the federal system, right? checks and balances, you know, all the branches are interwoven and interlocked in many ways. so yes, a lot of people have access. and certainly in the senate,

your point is well taken. harry reid controls the schedule, so he calls up an ag bill, and maybe the banking industry needs an amendment fast to be brought up, at least given vizzsexibblet debated so. hey, you can offer a banking amendment to the ag bill, and you're on talking about banking matters. that's commonplace in the united states senate. harder to do in the house, i tell you. they're strict, and what this does is bolster majority rule principle that i mentioned earlier. because you can't offer, you know, a banking amendment to an ag bill. you're on ag, and that's what you stay on. so it strengthens the agenda role of the speaker, strengthens, of course, the committee pro rag actives. this is the subject, that's the subject we're on. we're want going deal with nonrelevant issues. yes, ma'am?

>> you highlighted several points of entry in the process, some of them more substantive and more comp-temp baseñi and h other points that are a little bit more prui1jez terms of where lobbyists can enter into the process so. in terms of the cap and trade bill moving forward for the side for and against the bill, where do you see lobbyists' efforts going? are they going to be more substantive or procedural on both the democrat and republican side? >> well, that is a good question. you know, i wish i had a crystal ball and could can answer it directly. is it sounds like a research assignment. you know, my sense is, at the moment, it's a matter of how you -- jeez, let's see what we got in front of us. particularly in the senate. i mean, that was a tough vote for a lot of house members, and what's going to happen when 2 goes to the senate, i'm not quite sure. but that was also an interesting relationship between the house and the senate, because senator boxer, who's one of the three

principals, if you will, worked very closely with henry waxman and the prime authors in the house on their version of cap and trade, and so she emulated that to a large degree. but you're having much more difficulty in the senate? terms of coming up with a plan. you know, you've got three all working together to see what they can come up with, and they do have roughly a plan, but whether or not that's going to get agreement -- they're in a stage now of sort of vetting this with all kinds of people, you know, inside and outside institution, to see what can pass, because, you know, it will be a tough vote, another tough vote. the question is whether or not it's going to be postponed till after the election or whether or not they're going to do it. and again, i don't know. actually the question i think i've ducked and weaved enough, i'm not sure.

>> yes, sir? >> this is specifically the provision that was put in for nebraska and also what happened with mary landrieu. is that more of an individual member because of the need for their 60th or 59th and 60th vote, or is thatter more the work of the lobbyists as the whole manager's amend snment >> yeah, i mean, it's probably some correspondence, but my sense would be that it's, you know, more of the view of the individual lawmaker. you know, huee long of louisiana, huee probably more famous than his son, russell. huee long was famous when he was governor and senator saying every person, a king or queen, if you will. when you need 60 votes, every single senator can be the king or the queen, if you will. and, you know, the leader has to bear that in mind. i mean, there's no margin for

error whatsoever. you have to have 60 and you got to hold that 60. and it's an additive process. so if you're close, you don't have quite 60, you go into private negotiations and use whatever outside allies you can to persuade this individual lawmaker. you know, what do you want? what can i -- what adjustments can i make in the legislation that will help you vote for this legislation? you want more aid for louisiana? well, by golly, hey, we're going to work that out. nebraska, you want more aid to help for payments of medicaid, we're going to do that. of course, it gets other states upset, and that's an issue now that probably has to be resolved. >> thank you very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> our coverage of american university's annual campaign management institute continues with sarah simmons, a strategy director for the mccain campaign. she talks about absentee and early voting. this portion is just over 50 minutes. >> okay. alright. hello. hello, everyone. welcome back to american university's campaign management institute. we are very excited to talk about absentee and early votes which wouldn't be very exciting except for our speakers. this is sarah simmons who served the john mccain presidency

campaign. arnold schwarzenegger campaign which i know you will talk about, she is a graduate of american university and a personal friend of mine which shows that bipartisanship can exist in washington d.c.. let them have it. >> thanks for having me this morning. i want to say that if you are serious about working on campaigns, this is the best piece of education you can take with you. i occasionally -- you have better bound books than we had in and 90s. i occasionally go back of i am stuck with a task i am not familiar with to review the course materials i had. there are a lot of great speakers that come through here, people you will remember for a long time. i will talk about making voting work for your campaign. part of what i am going to talk about is from the arnold schwarzenegger example. the john mccain campaign may

have the worst reputation compared to the obama votes. some of that was funding, some just the regular challenges our campaign had that was more global. it was not specific tactical things. i have some good examples from john mccain about why early votes helped us make different decisions or inform us on things we did that may not be logical. but why we made the decisions we did. had the tides changed the way we hoped it would work to our advantage. i want to tell you what the tactical things are that you can do that will work for you. 40% of the vote will happen before election day. almost half of the people are voting before election day, this will impact how you deliver your message, whether you put

something in someone's mailbox for a volunteer tries to contact them or you put radio commercials up, all those things. if you underperform, you can lose an election on the margin. one of the things the bush campaign is famous for is turning known supporters into early voters. they did what we called banking their vote. we tried to get those people to vote early so they knew it was in the bank and there was nothing last minute, a bomb drop was not going to affect those vote because they were already cast. in a close race you could impact the composition of the electorate. the makeup of the voting population in your favor. our california model, one of the things we do is the number of republicans who voted in the election, predominately the majority of the electorate in

california is registered not with a party. we are trying to move the number of republicans up from 33% to 35%. if you move that up by making more of them vote than anyone else. if average turnout is 60%, if you turn out 75%, you will change the composition of the electorate. does that make sense? that doesn't make sense to you? i didn't mean to pick on you. banking your votes early, make sure your operation is more efficient and easier. if you know you need to turn out a million households on election day, you can get 250,000 of them to vote early, that is fewer doors you have to knock on or phone calls you have to make. you decrease the universe by

$100,000 that you can put on tv or if there is a group of voters who are getting shaky because their candidate said something inappropriate to a woman. it changes your resources. on that same line, things happen. votes are cast before they can do something detrimental to themselves. say you know there's something out there. if you can get those votes passed before that piece of news drops you can limit the impact on your campaign. this is one of the areas that is most interesting. if you are on top of the race, one of the things early voting can help you do is encourage the hotel affect. part of what we were able to do was help republicans across the

ticket because when we were trying to change that electorate we were able to make it easier for people. we turned out 90% of republicans or 65% of republicans, we turned out all those voters, that makes it easier. of the republican has a ballot, more likely they can check that box as they erase secretary of state where in the grand scheme of things when spending $90 million on tv you might not know who the republican candidate for commissioner of insurance or statewide elected official who may not have the resources to put up a lot of television commercials. does that ok, all right. so i just wanted to show enthuse as an example. this is california. obviously. you guys know the state of cal

cafment i've been doing a lot of international presentations, so i'm like, this is the state on the west coast of our country. so this is california. now, california is a pretty aggressive vote by mail state. it's not oregon or washington. oregon is everybody, right? so it's not quite that dramatic. but still, there are counties in california where the entire county votes by mail. so when you're looking at some of these places down here, huge numbers of the voters are voting by mail. alpine county, where, you know, tahoe is, some of these places obviously not a lot of people live there. i think the vote goal for schwarzenegger was 321 voters, but that's good, right? because you know they vote by mail, you know how they're going to vote, you know when they're going to get their ballot. if you need to communicate with them, it narrows down the window of when you want to do that, because oh, they're all going vote by mail, so it doesn't make sense to do tons of commercials and wait until election day because they're

all going to have their ballot by four weeks by then. so this is an important thing to know. ballot for six weeks. one of the things you need to pay attention to is the most important thing is getting your name on the ballot. the research you are going to do -- state law really matters. state laws are very liberal. you can change how people vote. that is 40% of the electorate. they will vote by mail or early. in terms of making them vote

early, one of the things you need to know is the eligibility to vote early. you don't need a reason. most places are going that direction but in virginia you had to be out of state or have an excuse. you want to know when people register. anyone know you might know when people will register to vote early. when you are going to have volunteers go out to register people to vote early. why might you want to know the votes to build the register? [inaudible] >> you have talked about direct mail? you will not know the answer. part of what you are going to

want to know is the register of voters or county clerks, the largest universe of people who are early voters. it will be a data question. you want to be able to say every person we know is voting early. when are we going to make these crucial decisions? when will we know how big that file is? california, as easy as it is to become a voter, you have to follow pretty specific guidelines if you're going to register voters. you need to make sure you sign back in what you didn't use. all those things. you want to know how you'd do it. set up a table in front of the grocery store or identify your

organization, and someone a piece of paper. when can you start ignoring groups of people, all the way through election day. you can walk your ballot in through 8:00. how long -- do they have to have them in the mail by a certain day because that will affect what you tell people. we know you got your official ballot, joe need your vote or arnold schwarzenegger need your vote, phone that in today because if you don't it is gone. when do ballots have to be returned? how can they return them? can they mail them in person? some other person collect them.

in oregon anyone can take them in. do you know that? it is possible you can send volunteers to turn these in. in a lot of places that is not legal. in other places it might be invalid. i was sitting in headquarters in california and sacramento and very rarely was spending my time in the neighborhood with my volunteers saying don't touch that ballot but every time i talked to my staff 70 people on the field, we drilled into their heads that if you touch a ballot you are screwing up the system. tell your volunteers -- the second most often thing i said was if you're caught with beer in your car and 65 of our opponentss sign i will fire you. i mean it. that is what you need to keep in

mind. how does this impact building a strategy? the best thing you can have in politics is a strategist. it also means nothing. it is kind of fun. you want to think about every aspect of the campaign. your message timeline and delivery, every campaign thinks this out. the first thing we are going to do is go into some issue positions and a series of rollouts. plans on taxes and how to fix the budget mess and what is he going to do about puppies and rainbows? then we start tracking our opponent. this matters because you want to make sure people are getting the right information when you want them to get it. if you wait until the last five days of the campaign to say my opponent was a business partner of bernie madoff you might think about that if people are not going to have their ballots and

the voting. the second thing i want you to think about is a identifying your voter groups. who are these people who are going to vote early? is it a state like california where you don't do anything about it? is a state where you have to register people every year? what kind of people might vote early? democrats are really good at going after senior citizens. i like the background noise. democrats go into a senior citizen home and you have a bunch of people who are not able to drive themselves. those might be good targets to have vote early. i saw a great program in california of young republicans and professional women. if moms are a great group of early voters you think about the

average mother's day peepers little they get up and make lunch and feed everybody breakfast and load the kids into the minivan and have ten minutes to get one kid to day care and they go to work for eight hours and on the way home stop at the grocery store to get dinner, pick of the little one from day care and meet the other kids at the after-school place and find their junior high school kid. get home and make dinner. there is no time to squeeze in a voting. they did a handwritten letter campaign to very targeted women and found women who work outside the home and have kids and targeted them to be permanent voters'. is really successful. not only did we get them to register but they attract the whole thing and 95% of the people they registered voted early. you want to think about your

plans to call these people on the telephone. all you -- affected by who votes early. polling. can anyone think why we would care about pulling in the early vote? go ahead. [inaudible]] those key supporters who are going fgoing. >> to exclude them from the sample. >> yard getting any good point. is your early vote behavior like the rest of the electorate?

this will turn you ono getting . is your early vote behavior like the rest of the electorate? this will turn you on to if your opponent -- we were freaked out about a lot of stuff but that was something we were concerned about. democrats are much better at this than we are. this is not something our volunteers are accustomed to. we watch the polls every day to see if there was a spike where you look at the people who are early voters and election day voters. is there some differential? is there a difference in who they are supporting in the early vote? why else would that be important? go ahead. >> if you are looking at polling

and where early voting happens and you see 50% and you have 50% of half of those votes you know what your target needs to be. >> you don't need to make it up. if you are ahead this is as much of a butt kicking as we can afford or if it is not worth it, this is what we have to make up. >> in the same vein, if you determine strong support among groups that the vote by early mail, young people or so, you can concentrate on absentee ballot efforts. >> that is the problem. if we think seniors are for us in the early vote and no one is voting early and they are voting for someone else. that is a light bulb moment early enough to do something other than the day after.

on the plane on the way home from phoenix no one said bomber but one person -- you don't worry about the last -- should have been someplace else. i went and threw up. i don't know how much you are talking about this but legal strategies. ohio is a place where the election day is a place where you get these voters, a bunch of lawyers, and the sure they stopped judges from doing dumb things and make sure polling places are operating as they should. make sure you are not seeing a voter irregularities. this is very much opposed to thousand. these teams of lawyers are ready. ohio is a good example. people are registering and voting.

there is a very broad set of circumstances where someone was able to register early and vote on that day. we were concerned they doing it -- you can do a ton of anything. we went to make sure our lawyers were there. this is the second best thing to your voter file in terms of campaign planning, calendar. when do we need to start recruiting so we have people who are ready to go? it won't happen and there will be voting places where it is happening weekly. there are some ideas as you are right in your campaign plan and. some things to think about so you are ready to go. i included this chart. i am doing some work on someone who is running for governor. the great candidate. we were having this back and forth about the early vote. he said i want to know when people vote.

when do we start delivering these messages? the early vote, we have to start earlier. i don't know. we said ok, what happens is may 10th is the day that people will get their ballots. the immediate week after people get them, 7% return their ballots. then it is a slow climb up until may 31st. a quarter of the people vote and then half of the people cast their ballot. it is important to know what this trajectory is. this is california where it is becoming had that for people to do this. they hold their ballots longer this is another thing to think about when you're looking at polling. if you're seeing that it's not matching this, that means something's going on out there, and you need to figure out what that is and why that is happening. i just thought that was

interesting. so this is your normal sort of message timeline, right? you start off quiet, and as you get closer to election day, you're building, crescendoing, so on election day, you're probably delivering the most messages, it's the most pound per square inch on message, so you're kind inform that trajectory. what you really need to be thing about is, when do you start that early vote? does that crescendo need to start and a little bit earlier? just really fabulous graphics. i think the guy who took this was from the al gore movie. ok, so i want to talk a little bit about -- i talked about voter files, and you guys are going to get into this more, but it's really, really important. i think voter files are the most boring thing to talk about, but this is the most interesting thing to work with. i'm a total data nerd geek. i started off as a pollster, and i've built bunches of voter files. it's really, really boring until you start to use it.

and then you tuesday and realize the data is actually very die natural and i can helps new huge ways so. when you think about direct voter contact, you got to think about two things. part of what it's going to be, turning out voters you know support you. the second part is going to be persuasion, going voters who you aren't sure about, delivering messages either over the telephone or in the mailbox that is more specifically targeted to what they're worried about. turning out to voters. you do things they you would never do on you see mail pieces that are like, oh, my god. no one would ever do that. in the first campaign i ever ran was in culpeper, virginia. do any of you know where that is? somebody's nodding. as my family referred to, it the pepah. that is? my very nerdy family asked how

you ended up in the south. halfway between d.c. and charleston, a strong community, a small town. people ask me where are you people from? detroit. detroit, virginia. never heard of that. high am running this campaign, 25 years old. i don't know of from down but i'm figuring out and we're getting beaten in the primary. i did her mother's back surgery, door to door. i don't care. let's go. anyway. a really nice guy but kind of moderate and pretty conservative in the republican primary and our opponents was a right wing w wackadood

wackadoodle. he had his grassroots people who were totally organized. every day in the local paper there was a different letter about how he was going to raise taxes and none of this was true. he wasn't going to be a speaker even though he was pro-life and anti-tax. he was right on all the stuff but it wasn't his style. every day you would read the paper and we are getting the crap kicked out of us. some guy opens his door sobbing. this is kind of weird. he goes do you know what is going on? we said know. there were these kids in colorado who went into the school and shot all these kids. totally horrible. it was columbine. these kids were in second grade or something or not even close.

please tell me it was at least junior high. it is not really appropriate to knock on doors. we had a forum, we walked in and it would be 700 people from the evangelical christian church and four people from the country club and they would be cheering for the other guy asking outlandish questions. i was sitting next to the governor of virginia. one of these guys was there. why is this a better campaign? somebody asks him about columbine, what would you do to keep this from happening in the future? if teachers were allowed to

carry guns, something like this wouldn't have happened. of course in total bunker mentality, he is going to say something on guns that people shouldn't be carrying guns -- this hold gun thing totally going over my head that he ted -- he said teachers should be armed. no one thinks that. everyone has at least one teacher who -- i really wanted the gym teacher or a shop teacher packing heat. i would have been dead. he really said that. i don't think so. i don't think he really said that. now there is a dispatch reporter who is 125 years old and still writes. his name is something like tyler whitney. a real southern guy. he says it again. he really said it. i have to ask. do i understand him correctly?

he said it last night at this other forum. he goes and writes about it. we have it on paper. this is fantastic. we have to say it one more time and then we will use it. it is really in my candidate's backyard. you only have to drive two blocks and will be fine. i am handing out shrimp cocktails. there are a bunch of -- really her bridge buddies and stuff. all of these moderate republican women. another reporter asks -- he goes further. every teacher should carry a gun, the only way to protect our kids and a room -- country club women -- there was a moment of a total vacuum because everyone

gasped. the reporter stands up and walks out. i'm very calm least that they're trying to have my poker face which i am sure was like this. we designed this -- it was so -- such a reaction, so much more so on cable-tv and all the stuff. we had one piece of mail that had a big hand gun on the front and our opponent's name was mike shar charm charmin. this is something you could never do on tv. if you did it on tv it would be what is wrong with him? we did this in a rural area. does anyone know the difference between mail delivery in a rural area or a city area? can you think of the difference? they actually have a mailman. the opposite of that. in the rural areas people have a

post office box. in a rural farm community people go to the post office at what time of day? really early in the morning. as i found out. that morning i was running late. i got in at 8:45 and the phone was ringing. the only person who calls me is my campaign people and they know to call my cell phone. i picked up the phone and it was -- i can and understand the person. they are hysterically screaming at me about how could i do this to mike charmin. this is an atrocity. what are they talking about? all of a sudden, he said this, we have a three newspaper citations. i am sorry you feel that way, i hang up and your voice mailbox is full. 700 messages from all over central virginia. about how atrocious this was.

i will say that that election was 3500 people voting in the republican primary. 25,000 people voted in the republican primary. you can do things in the mailbox to the right kinds of voters because the file -- the whole other thing on direct mail. ..

these are who, sometimes get confused but, tuesday in november where you're supposed to vote because it is about the only presidential years or got fused in is municipal election or primary or, say they're working on a bond or other type of issue. low pensty voters are not people who vote every time. you will need to spend a lot of energy to turn them. these are people who you know support your candidate or your issue. third target audience are potential early voters. senior citizens center where somebody might not cast a ballot unless somebody helps them or do a targeted program with moms that work outside of the home. find potential people to turn into early voters. last thing you want to think about persuasion universe. two separate things and

early persuasion universe and an election day persuasion universe. to give you a little bit of visual on this, so you have your voter file. it is a big block of all yourers. this is the favorite part of my presentation. so the second thing you have is people who vote early, just broad, people who vote early. next thing you want to think about is, who are your candidate's voters? that divvies up a little bit further down. so traditional early voters that support your candidate, your low propensity voters. so again, you don't have a really do a lot of effort to turn these people out. you don't the are not going to be early voter and, you're going to have to turn them into it. these are high effort kind of cubes. your persuasion universe, the early part of your

persuasion universe, and your election day. election day and early part of persuasion. that is split up into two separate things. who are the people we're going to try to talk to, you want to divvy up the voter file this way. if your block is that much covered by people who vote for you, you win. okay. i'm going to show you, this is broadly what we did on the campaign and what we did close to mccain. at some point i had paying attention to mail and phones because we were changing our television every 24 hours. so that was effective. pardon? never mind. >> [inaudible]. >> no. interesting like post-election. people what would you have done differently. i remember so many times between like the beginning of the financial melt down and when things started to stablize i thought, why did we do that? it was such a crisis i think we probably think that some days about elections we've lost.

sometimes it is good to lose because you learn a lot. so early voting requests. what we did, we mailed three requests to our broad universe of supporters to vote early. the short case, every republican got three requests by mail and three follow-up phone calls to register as early voter. so we divvied those up. they got three requests we may have done 10 or 15 different pieces they got three requests on specific topics. we used micro targeting, data file and we knew who the people were. our opponent will raise taxes if you don't vote early your taxes will go up. this is really important vote. then they got a phone call. the other we did volunteer specific drives like i was talking about with women.

okay. so i want to truck a little about time lines. this is another fascinating graphic. stolen directly from a, xcel spreadsheet i used to manage our mail program. you see that the first week in october, this is when absentees, the ballots dropped. you see, project number 2-a, 3-a. 9-a. what you can see we basically divvied up. this is all our persuasion. we divvied up into two universes. i'm not trying to make something more complicated. what i'm trying to say this is simple concept a lot of people don't do but it is really, really important. mail piece 2, with un2-a and see unverse 2-b. 2-a dropped first week in october. 2-b dropped second week in october. you're staring at me with blank stares. you're trying to make this complicated. this is not complicated. when you're thinking about mail universe, go through identify who votes early and who votes on election day,

split them into two groups and create two different drop dates for your mail. not complicated. but, not complicated, but people always look at this and say why is it zphrict it's not. we drop the second week, and we drop the third week, you know, down here on election day voters. and on and on and on. so you can see, not complicated. but to people in california, they were like, this is the first time anyone's ever done it this way. well, then you're just dumb, right? so i'm just trying to point out, this is really, really not complicated, but it's a very important way you can take off, make sure people who are voting early are getting our messaging early, people who are voting late are getting our messaging late. ok, so traditional early voters , again, this is your persuasion mail should drop prior to the beginning of the early vote, and states where early vote is happening by mail, you can know the exact date when voters have cast their ballot. did you guys know that?

another fascinating part of the data womplt you can buy from, you know, either a vendor will collect it for you. you can have volunteers go collect it for you from county clerks, but you can get the list of people who already sent their ballot in. so if you guys talk about election day operations where somebody stands or mable you've done it as a volunteer, you stand at the voting place and they call out john smith's name, and you cross him off your precinct list and on and on. you can start that with the early vote. again, why is this helpful? this? >> saves money -- [inaudible] your supporter already voted, you don't have to focus on that person anymore? >> right. you have ever shrinking universe of people to turn out as soon as somebody casts ballot. you sleep easier. john smith voted. i'm so happy. all right. everything is, an effort to make people vote as soon possibly as soon as they have their ballot, right. volunteer activities minute

ballots drop, our volunteer stops i.d.ing people and stop trying to recruit people. they only call list of people who have ballot in their house few weeks bug the crap out of them to send their ballot in. i know we talked to you 18 times. you still have not voted what is wrong with you? they had a script that didn't say that, that is pretty much what they were saying right? again, tracking the data so you know the exact date when they have their ballot and number one objective make sure they turn it out, turn out and actually cast it. in-person voters i think obama campaign kicked our butt on this effort. it can be a volunteer activity t can be paid, it can be coalition-based. somebody said students before. mccain students effort was pretty sad compared to the obama student effort. so i mean that is something where, on a campus, very easy to tell people where to vote. very he is to arrange rides. large group of people who you know support you, kind of like not very specific

targeting but kind of broad targeting. wow!, we're winning 85% of voters under 30. let's go find. they all live this. come get in our car and go vote. even if you turn out a bunch of people, take some people, drive republicans to the ballot place too, you're mostly turning out your voters so it is a really good effort. most important thing understanding what you're allowed to do. i don't know, in year 2000 you guys were all still in elementary school, right? no. not you? makes me feel better. i will now only speak to you. in 2000 i was working in wisconsin, another near victory. we lost, i was working for bush campaign and we lost there by 5,000 votes. one of the things that was really interesting in the early voting stage there was actually very broadly published national story. a woman from new york, manhattan social item, went out with the campaign and gore's campaign handing out cigarettes to homeless people which was kind of

awesome for us. best news story. handing out cigarettes, loading these people into vans, driving them to voting place and casting early vote. you can't give somebody anything more more than a dollar. best part about it, it looked so, so fabulously, tabloid, she was in fur handing out cigarettes and interviewed her outside manhattan apartment. i was trying to make homeless people feel better. or you were bribing them. making sure you know what you can do. you can give somebody a ride but can't pay them. give somebody something to eat but not over a certain dollar amount. make sure you know what you can do to drive somebody to the polls is important. okay. i want to talk a little bit about polling because we talked about it broadly before i want to make sure you understand this. the example i like to point out is, we are in the waning days of the mccain campaign and trying to figure out where we spend our resources. numbers started suddenly looking good in colorado. we went back and looked, i

can't remember exact numbers but we ran the math, basically figured out because of early vote and how bad we were losing early vote, too many people had cast their ballot for the remaining number of voters to overcome what we were already losing by. everyone, colorado numbers are looksing better. people already voted in instant push button polls like rasmussen and those kind of things every day, those numbers were looking better. if you already voted you weren't answering poll question. all was left, six old ladies who live in aspen going to vote for us. so we were, we actually pulled plug on colorado. it was really controversial. a lot of reporters asked us. ly state you have a chance in. we knew we couldn't overcome that challenge. in terms of strategic thinking on a campaign allocating resources last minute that isly important thing. that was probably a dollar a week, expenditure on television that we pulled. we got to, drive it into ohio where we still have a chance.

wrongly but we still got a chance. you have to be able to laugh about it. intention to vote early. this is important before somebody said, part of why you use polling information to do this, identify what kind of people are going to vote early. even on your earliest surveys saying do you intend to vote absentee and intend to vote early, it helps you because what kind of voters are likely to vote early. what kinds of people can we target our message to vote early. where are places we do specific coalition-driven drive? is there someplace to get hispanics to vote early because of a issue they care about or some way they're all grouping together in a survey. okay. ballot question, and i have a little example of this, as you're approaching election day, will identify how much you have to do on election day. do you have a significant lead or not. are you behind? what do you have to do? so, all right, so i did sort of a fake, fake math here for you. made up all these numbers.

so this is not actually taken from anything real. say 42 of the vote going to your candidate and 42% is going to the opponent and 18% undecided. this is sometime during early voting. early vote question, 25% of people have cast a ballot. 75% of people have not cast their ballot. neil is here. i saw him when i was watching c-span. he is my old boss. all right. one of the things your cross tabs will do, split out. you will look at ballot score between people who voted and who haven't voted. of 25% who voted say 38% are voting for you and 62% are voting for your opponent. so you're way behind. of 75% who haven't voted is reflecting your major ballot score, 42-40 with 18% undecided. so, now you can map it and, so you're behind, right? your opponent has 15% of the vote of what, trying to get to their 50% plus one. you have about 10% towards

50% plus one goal. you want to know how we figured that out? who is the math whiz. want to tell us? >> i have a general idea. >> want me to tell you? i'll tell you. >> i don't know if i want to go you there the math of it, but, if you have the 38% of the 25%. >> you're right. >> so, i'm trying to do the math in my head. >> i already did the math for you. 38% of 25% is 9.5. and 62% of 25% is 15.5. does that make sense to everybody? so that's where they are towards their 15%. you're six points behind now in the real poll in actual election. you're kind of getting your butt kicked. figure out what it really means. remaining 75% of the vote which luckily is big chunk. you have potential getting 4% vote you have 1.5%

towards your 50%. that puts you 41%. your opponent is still winning with an additional 30%. they're going to be at 45%. this is really important thing to think about. oh, my gosh if the trend keeps going as it is only winning 2 points overall, that is not enough. you will lose by 4 points. you will be really mad. so this undecided is much bigger factor, 18% of what is left is 13.5%. how that 13.5 breaks down will be really really important. can you identify people specifically in the data file? can you do specific phone calls to groups of them? what do those voters really care about? is that a message you can use to take over? do you need to attack your opponent with those people? what do you need to do? this is a big strategic point, right? you're losing, even though, you open your cross tabs in the morning, still up by two. looking good.

no, actually you're losing by five. this is important thing it think about. wow!, what does it do and what information does it give us how we inform our future actions, right? this is just the math. i wanted to show you how we did it. this is cross tabs. 25%. getting your butt kicked on election day. winning by some. here is our math, right? so if i do 25, 38% of 25 is your 9.5. 4% of 75 is your 31.5 is gets you to 41. 62% of 25.5%. it is 15.5. 40% of 75% is 30% gets you to 45. that 13.5% is make-or-break. does that make sense? i tried to do a little remedial math. i think if you explain it a little better and see cross tabs you might, you might be able to redo the math on

your own. okay. so, tracking systems are really important. updated data is your friend. before i said either buy this from a vendor. have volunteers go collect it from the county clerk. you can have staff go collect it from the county clerk. set up some system where someone on your staff calling getting data downloaded every day. good news about improved technology broadly, one of the good things about even the, way voting has changed, federal laws have changed what states do this is a lot more electronic. which is good then you're actually matching voter i.d. numbers and knocking real people out rather than, when we first started doing this, well, john smith who lives on elm street, is that elm street in arlington or alexandria? is that a same john smith or different john smith? you can identify this really well. you can track people you registered as you're going through. you know you registered somebody because you have that some spreadsheet over here. you can knock out when they voted. small election you can do it

on your own pc which is helpful. okay. you're going to be able to track those who will cast their ballot early. people you've identified because you made them do it. people already registered. figure it out. this will save energy and save money. you can do it in, in california we did it with just a vendor. we sent the download every day. matched up files, kicked it out and new group of people we're calling. comes easier and easier as technology gets more up-to-date. okay. so i legal, i want to make this point. know what the law is. go do research on that. figure out exactly what your people can do. what paid staff can do. have observers ready to go. plan out when you need to start having legal teams go stand at voting places make sure things go the way they ought to. double-check with big localities for a small legislative race, where do all the people live? where your voters are going to be or where your opponent voters might be.

make sure they're following the law in those places. make sure your voters have access where they ought to vote and make sure in your opponent's places they're leting people vote who not vote. republicans get a bad rap. it all too many times day after election wisconsin in 2000, next day we got 5,000 phone calls from voters reporting things that were weird or funky at their election place. well, too bad it was day after, because we couldn't do anything about it. only recourse you have in a lot of states going in saying we think 10 people voted illegally and reach in and pull out 10 ballots. that is not really, that may or may not be helpful. only way to make it helpful go to places where all of your opponents voters vote. in george bush, wisconsin, gone to inner-city milwaukee where mostly african-american voters and disenfranchised people. wasn't going to be winning strategy broadly. wasn't what we wanted to do. being prepared with lawyers present in the place where you can say that person,

that specific ballot needs to be marked some way suspect gives you lot more recourse after the fact to do what you need to do if there is contested election. so that is my [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] >> "american icons," see the detail of the supreme court, go beyond the velvet ropes of public tours of the white house, america's most famous home, and explore the history, art, and architecture of the capitol. "american icons," a three-disc d.v.d. set. it's $24.95 plus shipping and handling. one of the many items available at c-span.org/store. .