Perspectives on Environmental Politics
Developing a Political Campaign on the Local Level
by Joshua Feldmark
The key to a candidate's electoral success lies in basic addition and subtraction. A politician who has not done the math - in other words, figured out exactly how many votes she needs to win - will not win. It seems so simple, yet is so often forgotten. As an example of how doing the numbers can help win a campaign, I'd like to describe a simple case study: my first race for the City Council of the Village of Wilde Lake in Columbia, Maryland, in 2001.
Wilde Lake has 6,500 residents, of which 2,600 are eligible to vote. Unfortunately, though Wilde Lake has some of the highest turnout in the city, we still manage an embarrassing 15% average, or around 400 voters per election.
As I started my campaign, I needed to determine simply how many votes I would need to win. Wilde Lake's 15% voting average climbs to 20% when a City Council race is contested, and in 2001 four of us were competing for the position. With city politics in the news on a near daily basis, I predicted a turnout of 620 voters, or 24% of the electorate.
In a standard election with two candidates, determining how many votes one needs to win is a simple process. In this case, it would have been 311 (50% plus 1). With four of us, I had to do more guessing. After assessing the two weaker candidates (we'll call them Randy and Hank), I believed strongly that, together, they would not get more than 25% of the vote. That left 465 votes to be won between the other main contender (we'll call her Mary) and me. Therefore, my goal was to get 233 people to vote for me on Election Day.
I created a list of voters that I talked to, with a ranking from 1-5, one being very unlikely to vote for me and five being very likely to vote for me. With two weeks to go in my campaign, after a barrage of typical voter outreach efforts, I had a list of 650 likely voters: 350 individuals that I put as likely or very likely to vote for me, 100 unlikely or very unlikely to vote for me, and 200 in the "I have no idea" column.
When the results came through, there had been 598 voters. I received 276 votes (46%); Mary, 194 votes (32%); Randy, 66 votes (11%); and Hank, 42 votes (7%).
From this campaign, I learned a few lessons about influencing politics on the local level. First, though Wilde Lake has fewer voters than most municipalities, the majority of local elections are small. This means that local politicians are approachable and easy to influence, because their constituency is small. Mobilizing folks locally will have an impact. There is a great deal of environmental protection to be achieved at the local level, so generating support in the community is crucial.
Making environmental issues visible in local politics, and getting the attention of a local politician, is not that hard. For example, if someone came to me during my campaign and said, "I have 50 people who are very interested in issue x and what will you do about it", how could I possibly ignore them? If I could successfully persuade those 50 people that I would stand up for them and their issues, that already gets me 20% of the way to my goal for votes.
Many people look at me with some sort of awe when I tell them I was elected to City Council when I was 26. The truth is, it simply wasn't all that tough.
As I talk to other people in the environmental field, I am amazed at their strength, passion and commitment, but often my heart sinks when I hear that many have no interest in being an elected official. I had a professor tell me once, "If all the good guys think only a**holes serve in elected office - only a**holes will run for office."
It's time for more good guys to run for office.
Joshua Feldmark, ELP Fellow 2003-2004, is executive director of the Center for Environmental Citizenship, where he coordinates programs to train a national network of young leaders to protect the environment. He also serves in local government as the Wilde Lake representative to the Columbia (MD) Council.
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