Campaign Training in Modesto

This weekend the Campaign Slut, aka me, drove the 103 miles from Marin to Modesto California to do a training with the  Women's Democratic Club of Stanislaus County. This is a fairly red part of the State, Central Valley agriculture hit hard by the drought. Represented in Congress by Jeff Denham, a right wing Republican who has had a lock on the District for 4 years.  Last cycle, a former astronaut Jose Hernandez was the challenger, this year it's Michael Eggman, local farmer and bee keeper.

The very energetic group of active Democratic women, and a few good men, group was eager to learn how best to help their candidate, and, of course, there were varying levels of campaign sophistication and experience in the room (some elected officials, some candidates, one woman who is very active with the Brady campaign).  I did a power point that was fairly general (I think I bored a lot of people, sorry!), then hit a specific bit of campaign advice which I would have imparted to the candidate if he was there:

    "Dude," I wanted to say, in my slutty snarky way, "When you head a section of your
     website,'Why I am running,' you need to be specific. Answer that all important question on
     every voter's mind: 'What can you do for me?' It's great to want to clean up Congress,
     work for bi-partisan co-operation and all that 'Can't we all just get along?' stuff, but how
     will you accomplish this lofty goal, and how will this help the Central Valley and your
     constituency?"

Of course, if he was there, I would have said this in a very adult way, with no snark whatsoever. In fact, I found some specifics on another website, for the Democratic candidate for Assembly, Harinder Grewal,  who discussed some very specific issues which provided a good example of how to answer the question..

In this mostly red area of our State, which has been targeted by those with the purse strings, notably the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or D Triple C, or just D Trip). the right message delivered with the right materials to the right set of voters (in this case, low propensity turnout Democrats and Independents) can make all the difference.

The right message will answer that all important question on every voter's mind.