Saturday, February 14, 2009
HOW TO DO MORE THAN JUST SAY YOU ARE RIGHT AND EVERONE ELSE IS WRONG
| This post is not a commentary on u4prez or society. It is the first installment of a series of weekly, weekend posts that will outline a campaign which does more than claim that everyone in Washington or your state capital is wrong. It is a campaign that goes beyond complaining about the effects of the political process on us. Instead, it effects the political process. As the Republican party licks its deserved wounds from the last election cycle, many of us see this as a time to replace the old with the new and to rebuild the party. It is viewed as an opportunity, for those who truly believe that our core Republican principles are best for the nation, to try to reinvigorate the party by having those principles restored. The first step in that direction starts with the grassroots. It is from the grassroots that a new generation of leadership will grow. The grassroots is where change will come from and from where the establishment can be shaken and reformed. With that knowledge, many concerned Republicans have gone into action. Be it identifying and addressing voters turned off by the current state of affairs and bringing new blood into the process or establishing a network of contacts to organize and spread the word, many have swung into action to help assure that the political beliefs which strengthen this nation, are reinvigorated. It stems from the belief that government is too important to be left up to the government. Rather than having the Washington political class', policy shop dictate how they should lead us and who should lead us, the grassroots needs to have our leaders buy into the ideas and process that we present to them. We need to revitalize the party with participation from the bottom up. It is a rebuilding process. It is a process that begins at, and spreads out from, the local level and grows out of a realization that we must utilize technologies, blogs, and pundits to coordinate our efforts and sharpen our message. It begins with telling a story about why we should lead and who those leaders should be. One of those fronts involves identifying individuals who best embody the ideological source to our parties strength and who are most capable of advancing the cause and policies that can reinvigorate the party and ultimately strengthen our nation. In the state which I reside in, New Jersey, I have chosen to take advantage of our coming statewide elections by putting one such person forward. Her name is Jennifer Beck and she is a state senator. She is also a relatively young, conservative oriented individual who instills much of the anti-establishment sentiments that grass root Republicans believe in. Articulate, energetic, hard working, innovative, Jennifer Beck is the type of individual Republican leader we need to rebuild with. So I have interjected Jennifer Beck into New Jersey’s race for Governor. For the first time in state history, New Jersey will be electing a Lieutenant Governor. Since 2000, our state has seen many instances where the Governor has not been able to carry out their responsibilities and so the position of Acting Governor fell to the Senate President. That led to an unfair consolidation of power which allowed the Acting Governor to preside over both the state and the state senate. In 2004, voters changed that and passed an amendment creating the office of Lieutenant Governor. The Lieutenant governor is chosen and elected the same way that a President chooses their Vice President. The nominee for Governor selects their Lieutenant Governor running mate and the two run on the same ticket in November. I firmly believe that no matter who ultimately wins the Republican nomination for Governor, Jennifer Beck is best suited to be their running mate. So I have begun a grassroots effort designed at demonstrating to the eventual nominee, that they would be wise to pick Jennifer Beck to be their choice for Lieutenant Governor. Properly run, the effort accomplishes two goals. It helps to shape and strengthen the Republican ticket in November by influencing the nominee’s choice of a running mate with someone who is capable of being Governor if called upon and maintains the thinking and values that we feel are needed for New Jersey and the G.O.P.. It also sows the seeds for cultivating future success. By getting Jennifer Beck’s name out their and demonstrating that she is someone with grass root support, Senator Beck becomes someone to watch. It is a form of the bottom up strategy that the Republican rebuilding process needs to implement. Rather than having party leaders put their preferred politicians before us to choose from, we, the people, are telling them who we want them to get behind. Although it is early in the process, this draft Jennifer Beck for Lieutenant Governor campaign is going as scheduled and is garnering attention. Recently all of New Jersey’s major daily newspapers have publicized the effort. One of those articles, is included in this post. The effort is an example of how people can shape the process. Instead of a bunch of people who have never put their own names on a ballot, sitting around and complaining about the process and what our leaders are doing, this campaign demonstrates how you can try to turn your hopes into reality. It demonstrates how we can take measures to help insure that we rule over circumstances rather than have circumstances rule over us. It is a grassroots effort and such efforts involve more time than money. Grass root efforts are how America was created when colonists got together and created a revolution that eventual overthrew an irresponsive and overbearing government and created their own. Done properly, efforts such as this draft campaign can have a surprising impact on the politics that we spend so much time complaining about. In my case, even if Jennifer Beck is not selected for the Lieutenant Governor slot, my efforts are making others take notice of her and her leadership. It is making both the political establishment and voters look twice at her and that, in and of itself, helps to advance our cause to rebuild and reinvigorate the party. It helps promotes Jennifer Beck as an example of the type of leadership we need and sets the stage for a new and more conservative oriented generation of Republican leaders for us to turn to. The first step began with the creation of a web site. Not being George Soros or a rich, beltway, insider or special interest lobbyist, I can’t spare much in the way of financial resources and I hope to avoid having to file any financial statements with the state board of elections, so the draft Jennifer Beck campaign does not have any of the recurring fees or expensive costs that a real web site has. In fact it does not have a web site. It has a blog that was created for free, has multiple pages and serves the same purpose as an expense driven web site. Once an online headquarters for organizing and the dissemination of information was created, creating awareness of it was next. Once again, with no budget to speak of, the best way to get attention was through the creation of press releases. Carefully phrased, well timed press releases. I chose a traditionally slow time for news. Not being a person of any political significance, I did not want to compete with the likes of assemblymen, senators or congressmen. So I chose to take advantage of a time when lawmakwers were getting ready to leave town and create a void for a story starved media. That was a day before a holiday. In this case it was Thanksgiving. By Friday, the papers were calling and by Monday, they were running with the story. The following was the first news story published as a result of my initial press release. ------------------------------ ------------------------------------- ASBURY PARK PRESS Voter Wants To See Beck In Higher Office ~ By Larry Higgs • COASTAL MONMOUTH BUREAU State Sen. Jennifer Beck, R-Monmouth, has a cyber admirer, at least as a candidate for the newly created office of lieutenant governor. An Ocean County man who has worked on other legislative campaigns started the site last week with several purposes — to convince the Republican nominee for governor next year to make Beck his or her running mate, to woo Democrats who might vote for a moderate Republican and to collect signatures on a petition. “We’re electing a lieutenant governor for the first time and no matter who gets the nomination for governor, they would be best served with Beck on the ticket,” said Anthony Del Pellegrino of Manchester, the Web site’s creator and a former Monmouth County resident. “She has great appeal, not only to Republicans or Democrats, but to voters.” The Web site at http://jenniferbeckforltgovernor.wordpress.com/ has a tally of Beck’s votes in the Legislature, news articles and press releases about her and an online petition. “Beyond her appeal is her voting record. I agree with her stances and the initiatives she’s made in (fighting) corruption and trying to establishment government fiscal responsibility,” he said. “At a young age, she has a future the party can build on.” The Web site is unofficial and Beck is not connected to it, said Tom Fitzsimmons, Beck’s spokesman. “We have no connection to the site, and I’m not even sure she knows him. He did it on his own,” Fitzsimmons said. “There is a lot of speculation (about the lieutenant governor’s post) and we can’t control that. She’s (Beck) busy being a good senator for the 12th District.” Del Pellegrino said he’s never met Beck, but he has followed her career since 2000, when she became the first Republican to be elected to the Red Bank borough council in 10 years. “She was the only Republican in Democratic-controlled Red Bank and won re-election,” he said. Last fall, Beck, then an assemblywoman, beat incumbent State Sen. Ellen Karcher, a Democrat, in a campaign in which Karcher spent millions of dollars on the race. Del Pellegrino believes Beck would have wide appeal throughout the state. “She won while Republicans in New Jersey were losing,” he said. “She doesn’t come across as a Republican politician. She comes across to people as a fighter for them.” Exposure and building name recognition in other parts of the state for Beck is one of the Web site’s goals, he said. “That’s why I’m starting now,” he said. “I’m starting a grassroots action now to get recognition for the effort. I believe in time, Beck’s own work will raise to the forefront, she’ll get (statewide) coverage and word will spread.” Fitzsimmons said Beck currently has no plans to run for lieutenant governor. ----------------------------- ----------------------------------- As intended by a carefully crafted press release, the writer of this article, Larry Higgs, focused on exactly that which I shined the light on. With control of the story, I was able to insure that the author conveyed that which I wanted. Among that focus, and most important to my campaign, is the populace angle. This is a grassroots efforts, not some inside politics, campaign organization. To accentuate that fact, I distinctly pointed out that I have no idea how Senator Beck felt about this movement. That led to a curiosity which caused the reporter to dig deeper and get a comment from Senator Beck. The second intended and achieved goal was to get the web site mentioned. As one of the five major daily newspapers in New Jersey, the story’s appearance in the Asbury Park Press along with the online address of the campaign, provided the Jennifer Beck for Lieutenant Governor web site with over 3,400 hits in one day. At one point, shortly after lunch hour, the site received 975 hits in just one two hour period. Not bad for a little known State Senator and an even lesser known political activists. It is what we call earned media. It costs us nothing but can receive as much, if not more, attention than a paid advertisement. The third accomplishment of this first step in the process was to shape the agenda. With a media that is always looking for a new angle, our draft effort for Lieutenant Governor became an issue that other news outlets also picked up on. Pretty soon, "if you win the nomination, who will you pick to be your running mate?, became the question of the day after initial reports of this draft Beck campaign appeared. And, in light of our push, Senator Beck’s name was the first name thrown into the mix. After I announced this draft campaign, New Jersey’s premier political web site, PolitickerNJ.com, ran stories regarding the newly created Lieutenant Governor position and they even posted odds on Beck’s chances of getting picked for the job. This grassroots effort essentially helped to set a tone and it did so with my key focus.............Senator Jennifer Beck. In the coming months I intend to post a weekly outline of my draft campaign that will include each step of the process and their rates of success and failure. Hopefully some will find it interesting and see that short of running for office yourself, there is more that you can do, other than run your mouth off and claim that you are right while everyone else is wrong . |
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