Lessons from a Tennessee election

Written by: Jim Grinstead on Aug 8, 2007 6:59 PM EDT

A week ago nearly all of the 40 members of the Nashville Metro Council were up for election, along with a new mayor. It was an important race for the city because conservatives had pledged to take over as many government boards as possible. In the face of that challenge, Democracy for Tennessee decided to become heavily involved in the race.

It was an ambitious project for us and we learned a lot along the way. With the votes safely counted, we wanted to take a few minutes to share what we learned – including a great idea that every campaign manager should know.

With 40 open seats, we knew we had to pick our races carefully, looking for districts where we felt we could help defeat a conservative and/or help a Progressive win. Because the districts are small, a relatively few number of votes were needed to win. In some cases, fewer than 500 votes would mean victory. In others, where turnout was higher, a winning candidate would need nearly 3,000 votes to win.

The mayor’s race was another issue. There was a great Progressive candidate in David Briley, but we knew we could not mount an effective city-wide campaign while also working in district races. Our members were already on board with their votes, so we supported that race with fund raising and our endorsement.

Democracy for America also recognized David’s potential as a Progressive leader and it provided a vital national endorsement for the campaign. Their support and help in that effort was invaluable and we were grateful for it.

The strategy in the districts was basic grass roots campaigning, going door-to-door asking for support. While we had our own volunteers, we pushed the candidates heavily to recruit among their friends and family. We also provided canvassing training for those volunteers.

We also built own own voter data file. Well before the election we acquired a voter file with voting history. We scored each voter based on their likelihood to vote, to vote Democratic and to be an early voter.

For each candidate we endorsed, we provided free walk lists, phone lists and tally sheets, so candidates could keep track of the votes pledged to them. Those lists were used to get voters to the polls for early voting – Nashville allowed early voting at select locations for more than a week before the election – and for those voting on election day. Electronic versions of those voters rolls were made available for mailing lists.

With those lists, the candidates themselves were trained on campaign management, volunteer management and other techniques.

Our goal was to provide more than just feet on the street. We wanted to add real value to the campaigns.

When the votes were counted, four of the six candidates we endorsed were defeated. Two are in run-off elections. David Briley lost his bid for mayor.

While it wasn’t the string of victories we had hoped for, we believe it was a good effort. All of our candidates met or greatly exceeded their targets for votes. What no one expected was a huge turn out at the polls – the largest ever for a Metro election – with most of that coming from early voters.

Still, we believe the addition of data and training to volunteers is a sound strategy. There are, however, things we need to do better.

Here are some of the things we learned:

• We need to do a better job on pledge tallies. All our candidates failed to keep an accurate accounting of votes pledged to them so they could be recontacted before election day.
• We need better and earlier work on messaging. Because the filing date came so close to the start of campaigning, most of the candidates had already settled on their message. In most cases, their messages were weak or lacked meaning. We need to reach out to candidates earlier in order to help with that process.
• We learned to be bold. Just because someone had a sign in their yard for an opponent, we knocked on the door anyway. In a great number of cases, the homeowner allowed us to put our candidate’s sign in the yard also.
• Immigration is on everyone’s mind. It was a local, non-partisan election, but voters regularly wanted to know where our candidates stood on immigration issues. They had definite ideas about it and pushed hard to get the candidate’s view.

OK, we promised you one great new idea. This one came from Linda Nutial, campaign manager for council candidate Shane Burkett.

She took our electronic data and uploaded it to a spreadsheet in Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets software. It’s free to use. All you need is a Google account.

She then marshaled volunteers to make phone calls from that spreadsheet. When a volunteer started a call, he or she typed in their name. Because everyone could see the sheet in real time, others knew who was calling whom. That avoided duplicate calls.

It also provided motivation. Everyone could see who was working and who wasn’t, so there was peer pressure to meet quotas. Campaign management was also easy because there were no lists to distribute and the manager could easily track the progress being made by the callers. Callers typed in the results of their calls, so managers could quickly determine if any changes were needed to the program.

It was a great idea that made effective use of grass roots technology. Congrats to Linda and Shane!

We hope this information helps you in your election efforts. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at jim@democracyfortennessee.com.

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