WOMEN CANDIDATES

Earlier this month Chicago Sun-Times' columnist Carol Minor wrote a piece called 'Why aren't women running for office?' In the article she lists each of the state-wide offices and how many woman are running for each of those offices (if any are running at all). Seven offices, numerous candidates- six women. To be clear, Kathleen Thomas is not running just because she is a woman, although she does bring this up from time to time. But this article got me thinking, why aren't more women running in Illinois?

The article mentions that one of the biggest obstacles for women is becoming part of the political structure. This is something Kathleen Thomas says she has felt. She mentioned that she sometimes feels as though people don't know what to do with her and it doesn't help that people don't try to figure out what to with her. She mentioned to me that after a speech someone came up to her and basically said, "wow, I had no idea you were so smart." Well, why didn't you know that? The only answer I can come up with is that they didn't even look into voting for her based on exterior factors.

Overcoming the negative mindset and entering the political male-dominated arena you would think are the only issues for a female candidate, but apparently there are still neanderthals out there. This summer volunteers for the campaign were at the Duquoin State Fair collecting signatures. A volunteer approached a man and asked him for his signature. "Oh no, I never vote for women," he said. The volunteer thought he was joking and said, "But really, can we have your signature?" His response, "Really, I never vote for women." This really happened? What? I wouldn't expect this to happen in the 21st century let alone the United States, but it did.

Hopefully, Kathleen Thomas will inspire other women in Illinois to realize that it can be done. Gender should not be an issue anymore.

DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Yes, its a picture of Illinois' favorite citizens, har. When coming up with a campaign slogan it seemed obvious enough to Kathleen Thomas. She is running in an state known for corruption and for a seat known for corruption. Chicago Breaking News put it best this Sunday,"It's a seat with a famous -- and infamous -- pedigree. President Barack Obama held it. Disgraced ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich stands accused of trying to sell it. And his beleaguered appointee Roland Burris opted not to run for it."

So what is one to do? Kathleen Thomas decided to "Do something different" and this is her campaign slogan. Campaign slogans can be powerful, it is what people remember about your campaign; for example, "Change you can believe in", "Give 'Em hell Harry", and "I like Ike". So it is important that the slogan reflects your message because the slogans can stick.

Kathleen Thomas reflects her message by running a "different" campaign.

RESEARCH

Kathleen Thomas' brother said, "It is better to say nothing at all than sound like a fool." Politicians either forget this or don't know about it as they vaguely dance around a question they don't understand.

Research is Kathleen Thomas' strong point. After all she is a historical researcher and former humanities professor. She researches a lot. She started her campaign after she read the entire health care bill this summer. This week she has been doing intense research on immigration laws. The research she does pays off, especially when she is speaking at a forum setting with other politicians. As the other candidates will always give an answer, Dr. Thomas will not give an answer unless she knows about the issue and how she feels about it. She states numbers and studies while while other candidates continue to give sound bites.

It seems like a basic rule: only give a stance on something you're certain of.

PUBLIC SPEAKING

Campaigning is talking to people while getting out your stance on the issues. When deciding what to talk about there are several things Kathleen Thomas takes into account: how long she has to speak, who she is speaking to, and little bit of what she wants to talk about.

How long she speaks: When she is part of a larger forum and only given a little bit of time to speak she starts with a short 30 second biography, why she is running, and what sets her apart from the other candidates.

Who she is speaking to: I'm not going to talk about this because it is obvious why this is important and you readers are a smart group of people.

What she wants to talk about: Dr. Thomas usually writes out her thoughts on issues that she has been thinking a lot about on a half page paper. She brings the half page paper up with her to speak so she remembers to hit those points. Not all politicains do this. Patrick Hughs has his cheerleading speal memorized and he always gives it, "Do you want a true Reagan conservative in the Senate?" Oh gees... Dr. Thomas does not do the cheerleading, sound bite thing because most of the events she speaks at are informational and these people want to be informed not pandered to.

Campaign rhetoric is the norm and as crazy as it sounds having informed debate is abnormal in politics, but Kathleen Thomas is different.

ITS ALL ABOUT THE...

Everyone has been asking Kathleen Thomas what she is going to do about money... because apparently that is all you need to run for office, well- money and rhetoric. Her response has always been "It is not about the money." More recently she has taken the stance that it would be unconscionable to ask people for money in today's economic environment. These are statements people have rolled their eyes at. Funny thing, though, because it turns out her statement "not about the money" is not that far off.

This Monday the Tribune/WGN-TV released a poll that had Kathleen Thomas tied for second among Republican voters with Patrick Hughs. So what does this have to do with money? Kathleen Thomas has spent about 1/10 of what Patrick Hughs has spent on campaigning and according to this poll spending that vast difference in money had brought them to the exact same place.

This is exactly what Kathleen Thomas' campaign is about though, proving that you can do things in Illinois differently. Yes, Mark Kirk is significantly ahead with his reported 3 million dollars as is Democratic poll leader Alexi Giannoulias, a Chicago banking heir (I don't know much about him, but "Chicago banking heir" just makes me laugh). Illinois campaigning can be different. And shouldn't spending 3 million dollars on a state primary campaign be abnormal, not to mention morally wrong?

TRAVEL: AN AFTER THOUGHT

A few posts back I wrote about campaign travel. I thought I would break from my usual informative style and mention a few things that those traveling with the campaign have noticed in their travels.

The campaign manager mentioned to me that there are so many areas of Illinois that she did not know about. She said, "Sauk Valley is a place I had no idea existed, and is a beautiful place to live. Molin, which is right by the Iowa boarder has very educated people. Washington Illinois is a very nice progressive town not a lot of people know about."

Kathleen Thomas has noted several times " Illinois is known for dirty politics and corruption. We are better than that." Travel has made the campaign even more aware that not only are we(the people of Illinois) better than that, but we deserve better than that. Kathleen Thomas often remarks in her campaign stops that Illinois is full of honest, hardworking, caring people.

I wish I could travel with the campaign, but as I am at school thousands of mile away it is not possible. The campaign notices what a great place Illinois is and if nothing else all the campaign travel has made them aware of how great, beautiful and diverse the place we live is.

POLLS

"A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought." -Warren Buffet

We can easily be manipulated by polls. At the same time we can easily manipulate the polls. Sure there are more legitimate polls like Gallup etc, but other polls get tossed around too lightly.

One of these polls is the straw poll. A straw poll is taken when a small party group, like county GOP or interest groups, hold an event inviting the candidates telling them a poll will be taken at the event. The objective for the candidate becomes to bring as many people with them to the event as they can so they can win the straw poll. The winner of the poll can then send out a press release saying, "I won the poll."What a surprise you brought the most people to the event. Politicians use these to make it look like they have tons of support when really the poll isn't real and the whole thing is a delusion. Messed up right?

Another type of poll that politicians toss around a lot our online polls or polls that their campaign conducted. These polls are very easily manipulated. I'm sure many of you have tried to manipulate polls on websites that ask you who you think will win a football game or something of that nature. Yet politicians use these to make it look like they are ahead.

Learning about these polls made me feel manipulated. Its not to say a campaign should disregard the polls(this one doesn't), but voters should make sure they understand where the poll is coming from.

ADVERTISING

After Kathleen Thomas was officially registered and on the ballot everyone had access to her website and the campaign's e-mail. Inevitably right after registration the campaign's e-mail began to be flooded with advertisers trying to sell add space. (Something this campaign has really made me aware of is how much money there is to be made in campaigning whether in print, radio, signs.) Lots of money goes into advertising.

Kathleen Thomas' campaign has started to decide where her advertising money will go. Most recently they chose radio.

A couple days ago Dr. Thomas recorded a few 15 second blurbs for radio that will air mostly in the Chicago area before traffic reports ( I think Chicago is the only place in Illinois with traffic reports). These blurbs may very possibly branch out to the rest of the state, but for now it looks like northern Illinois. The campaign felt that this was the most bang for buck, so to speak. One of the reasons for that is that radio stations have a cheaper deal for politicians 30 to 40 days into the campaign.

Advertising is tricky stuff.

TRAVEL

A few weeks ago Kathleen Thomas was driving home when her car started to make some funny noises. After getting it checked out she discovered that her break pads were completely gone and all four tires needed to be replaced. Scary to think she was driving all over Illinois without break pads!

The car troubles were a direct result of campaigning. Campaigning requires a lot of travel, that is a given. A huge percentage of the voters in Illinois live in Chicago, which of course means Dr. Thomas needs to go there a lot. Chicago is about a three and a half hour drive from her home in Springfield, and these days she is driving up there several times a week as well as other places around the state. I'm sure she sometimes wishes Illinois was the geographic size of Rhode Island, Oh well.

Part of her traveling is making sure she is traveling with someone. It is usually her campaign manager, fundraiser or her husband. When for whatever reason someone can not go with her the campaign arranges for a supporter to meet her there. You always need a travel buddy!

In all this traveling the most used devise is the GPS. Dr. Thomas finally broke down and bought one, although blames it for making her 30 minutes late to a meeting by telling her to take the back roads.

While traveling can be a headache it is the best campaign tool to actually meet people, which is kinda fun. At the end of all this however, Dr. Thomas is going to need to get a new car.

(note: the car pictured is not Dr. Thomas' car, but a helpful volunteer's)

USING THE MAIL

We've all recieved letters in the snail mail from politicians asking for money or invitations to an event from politicians where they will inevitably ask for money, but most of us don't think (at least I never had before now) about the process that resulted in that letter ending up in your mail box.

Unless you have unlimited funds mailing letters to every address in the state of Illinois is just not possible. You have to take into account the cost of stamps, envelopes, paper, ink, etc... It adds up. It therefore becomes important to make sure these letters are being sent to the right people. The best place to start in terms of mailing lists is the addresses given on petitions. To be honest when I was collecting signatures people would ask me if I was going to send them something and I thought the campaign couldn't use these addresses and told them so (I'm sorry! I unknowingly lied). The only problem with using these is that they are hand written. Kathleen Thomas' campaign has found that about 25% of the addresses on their petitions are next to impossible to correctly make out. Other than the petitions, you can also obtain mailing lists from services (this is what advertisers use).

For different people the campaign sends out different letters. Recently Kathleen Thomas sent out a more personal letter to those that know her on a personal level. These people know she is running, and the letter simply asks for them to review her positions and also asks for their support. These letters are hand signed 'Kathy' (as she is known by friends) instead of 'Kathleen'.

The letters that are sent out to the public have to be much more, well, strategic because you need to get these people to actually open and read these letters (usually fundraising letters). One way in which the campaign tries to meet this objective is by hand writing the addresses because people are more likely to open a hand addressed letter. The way in which the letter is folded also has an impact. If you fold the letter in a nontraditional way so that the header is on top it makes any fundraising slips within the letter fall out creating the reader to actually pick it up (sneaky).

Its a well thought out process, but the main goal is to make sure you get more fundraising letters returned then you actually spend on the cost of mailing these or else its a wasteful process.

KICK-OFF PARTY

This blog is coming soon...

TECHNOLOGY IS STILL GOOD

This is a bit of a continuum of my Facebook post from yesterday. A tool that the campaign has been utilizing on Facebook is the ability to post and link to other sites. There are couple of links to Youtube clips of Kathleen Thomas speaking at different events. This is a great way to get out the message for those that are not able to hear her speak in person. I have posted a Youtube clip of Kathleen Thomas speaking to a group of citizens at New Salem State Park.

FILING

Last Monday was filing day in Illinois. Every candidate for any office needed to file on this day(October 26) in Springfield IL. Luckily Kathleen Thomas and her campaign are based in Springfield, so there was no long drive to get there. It feels good for all the Chicago politicians to have to come down state for a change.

The line to file was fairly long (out the door and down a few blocks), so the goal here was to get a good spot in line. Some people slept in line over night and that is what a volunteer from the campaign did. He slept all night third in line (what a sport!). We were surprised to find out later though that the person number two in line was saving a spot for 30 or so house democrats. This didn't seem fair to us, but Kathleen Thomas ended up being 33rd in line anyway.

The filing process was fairly simple and it ran smoothly. Dr. Thomas simply filled out paper in a few different rooms, and as it turns out the waiting in line is the most tedious part of the process.

Kathleen Thomas is now filed and will be on the February primary ballot!

FACEBOOK, DUH!

This one will seem obvious to most. Use Facebook! All politicians are on it these days because that's where the cool kids are. Seriously though, one of the first things the campaign did was set up a Facebook account. I set one up for Kathleen Thomas, and later a politician fan page was set up. The fan page has been a great way to get out the message about upcoming events that Dr. Thomas will be attending, and the personal page has been a great way for Dr. Thomas to express her views on issues through status updates and message boards. With 200 million people on facebook and half of those logging on at least once a day, it is by far the cheapest way to get the name out.

PARADES

Parades are a fun way to get a name out. (Here is a picture of Kathleen Thomas and her grandson at the Barry Apple Festival parade).

The campaign decided to give out balloons along the parade route for name recognition. The thought behind balloons is that if you give a kid a helium filled balloon they will keep it for a few days until it finally deflates. In the meantime the parent of a kid will see the words 'Kathleen Thomas for U.S. Senate' repeatedly until the helium dies out.

Something smart the campaign did was have volunteers walk the parade route before the candidate got there. The volunteers would talk to people about her and her stances so that by the time she got there people knew who she was and were excited to see her.

At this particular parade Kathleen Thomas was the only politician, which can become a big deal to the people watching. While Barry Illinois is not a big town, the festival is a big deal and so is the parade. People like knowing that a politician took time to come. Kathleen Thomas and the rest of the volunteers sure had an enjoyable time.

TIME

"Lost time is never found again." -Benjamin Franklin


Benjamin Franklin was a master at managing time. He had his day planned out to the minute, and never wasted time (a fact that made me sick with guilt when I first read is audobiography). I don't need to tell anybody that there never seems to be enough time.

Right now the campaign is in a time crunch. The last day to file is in 11 days. The campaign has the minimum 5000 signatures, but needs to get another 1000 as a safety net within the next 11 days. When we first started gathering signatures back in August is seemed that we had all the time in the world to gather all those signatures, but each signature takes time and the deadline is approaching-fast.

While currently time equals signatures in the big picture time equals votes. Time is everything! When Dr. Thomas is given three minutes to speak everything in that speech needs to be pertinent. When there are events all over the state priorities need to be made on what events would be worth the time because if that time is wasted there are wasted opportunities and wasted votes. The campaign's advise is this- manage your time and make sure you concentrating on the things worth spending the valuable time on.

MY REASONS FOR BLOGGING: A MESSAGE FROM THE WRITER

I feel that I need to clarify my reasons for doing this blog because until I am being honest, I am a poser.

I am a college student and for my technology for professional writers class I have to keep a blog about anything, so long as the purpose of the blog is specific. After receiving the assignment it didn't take me long to decide writing about Kathleen Thomas' senate campaign would be fun. As an English major minoring in Political Science this topic was right up my alley, writing about politics. I made a call and badabing! I'm writing about this campaign (although in a way a little different than originally planned).

I decided I would write about politics without getting political, which is to say writing without a right or left leaning agenda (if you want that kind of information you can go to just about any other 'news' source to find people yelling at each other or acting like the world is coming to an end). I wanted (and still do) to blog about the inners of a campaign, a part of politics we rarely see. I have learned that the inside is kinda messy, and if you have a sick sense of humor, kinda funny. I hope to continue to blog about the messy, yet rewarding part of campaign politics along with some amusing stories.

A PICTURE IS WORTH...

Several weeks ago when I first started this blog a member of the campaign was telling me about her camera woes, explaing that she kept forgetting to bring the camera when she went to campaign events with Kathleen Thomas. Because Dr. Thomas is grassroots (and not Mark Kirk) she doesn't have a guy with a camera following her around, so if the campaign wants a picture someone needs to remember to bring the camera.

The concept of taking pictures however, did not even become an important issue until Dr. Thomas was taking a tour of a building. The person giving the tour was surprised they did not have a camera with them, remarking that candidates had been through before only for a photo op. It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in the world of politics a picture is simply posing for the constituents.

VOLUNTEERS

There are a lot of little things that have to get done in campaigns. Little things like stuffing envelopes and making copies can even get done by the candidate. The other day our candidate was the one to go to the tee shirt company and put in a new order. She has also made many trips to Office Depot. So how do you get this stuff done when there are no paid staffers? Volunteers of course. Ask everyone if they want to help (we do), the smallest amount of time one can volunteer can make a difference. One effective way we have learned to get volunteers is to farm things out for people to do on their own time, like stuffing envelopes. People are often more free to volunteer if there are no time restrictions for when they can. Campaigns are dependant on volunteers, so get involved!

To find out how you can get involved with Kathleen Thomas' campaign click on the following.

http://kathleenthomasforsenate.org/

STATE FAIR AND WHAT HAPPEND THERE

In early August I found myself standing in the republican tent at the Illinois state fair. Hot, tired and acting as though I was oozing with confidence I walked up to those wandering in and asked them if they would like to sign a petition to put a candidate on the ballot for U.S Senate. When people asked who the candidate was I would say her name, get blank stares and then explain who she was (as she was a complete unknown). I stood among a group of politicians hoping to win various spots that are up for election in 2010. They all looked like they knew what they were doing, even the politician's volunteers. I was new to this, in fact we all were. At this point in the campaign everyone involved was learning as they went along. I gathered 42 signatures that day, but that day we also learned a lot more about what had to be done to play this 'game'. We all have a hope and belief that in this country we the people can be represented by our peers and not by the career politicians that dominate Washington. As romantic as this sounds the campaign has learned it is not that easy. I hope this account enlightens people to the going-ons of campaigns, and gives some advice to those that are also starting local or grassroots campaigns so they can be a step ahead of those who make winning elections their career.