Opinion: Some advice for first-time candidates

Political consultants like me are an inescapable part of the fabric of campaigning. New firms emerge on a near-daily basis. Some of us are decent at our jobs. Others range from downright bad to scam artists preying on first-time candidates for quick cash.

As a campaign-winning consultant, I’m going to give you some free tips to consider before starting your journey as a candidate in a political primary contest. When choosing your consulting team, these tips double as a checklist to see if you’re dealing with an honest and informed consultant before signing on the dotted line.

Let’s get the hardest one out of the way first.

You’re probably going to lose

Harsh, I know. But the reality is that the vast majority of first-time candidates lose. It’s just the math. And that’s okay! What matters most is not whether you win on your first time out, but how you introduce yourself to the public and your party for the long-term.

Some candidates implode as they lose, becoming vicious or consumed by infighting. Maintaining a sense of professionalism and joy – being a good sport – will put you on the radar of local leaders and can bump you right up to front-runner status for your next race.

Don’t take my word for it, ask some elected officials in your area about their first races. Most will have a story about getting knocked down before rising up to their eventual wins.

Most of your job will be raising money

There are two central components to a winning campaign: physical mail and field organizing. Both of these cost money – an undemocratically large amount of it. Until we have major campaign finance reform, this is the reality.

You will spend significantly more time securing money for your campaign than convincing people of your platform or ideas. Your job is to raise so much money that you can flood mailboxes with fliers and buildings with door knockers to spread your message – and more importantly, your name.

This means hours and hours of calling down lists, doing fundraisers and texting every distant family member and ex you have in our beloved United States. 

Email blasts, text blasts and the like won’t make up the majority of your funding. Almost every new candidate believes they’ve found the magic solution to avoiding one-on-one fundraising. 

They’re wrong every time.

We’ll know if you’re viable months in advance

Most consultants dance around the hard conversation, but I choose to have it with my clients because they deserve it. At a certain point, a picture will emerge of money and local support. You’ll have a snapshot of every candidacy, including your own. This snapshot is informed by expenditure reports, donor reports, endorsements, club vote totals, positive IDs from the field team and a host of other elements.

Honest consultants are often able to tell you way before election day if you’re on track to be a viable contender or lose – often months before. I call it the “silent primary.” And good consultants know how to read it.

Don’t choose a consulting team that won’t tell you if your viability window has closed.

You should probably stay in the race if you lose the “silent primary”

While knowing you’re going to lose can be emotionally tough, you should probably see the race through anyhow. Unless you have a fellow primary contender you desperately want to see win and are worried about being a spoiler, there is often no upside to leaving the race.

Choosing to finish a race can have a lot of upsides. You’ll continue to build a base of support for future runs. Voters will see your name on a ballot, which helps cement you as a leader in their minds. And a loss handled with respect, dignity and grace is widely noticed by local leaders, often even the primary winner.

You can set up your own future win through the way you lose. There’s a decent chance the person who bested you did this years ago themselves.

You might pull it off and win big!

First-time candidates may be more likely to lose than win, but many still do win. And the only way to find out if you’re one of those winners is to run. 

If you love the idea of public service, believe in your message and aren’t horrified by everything you just read, there’s a decent chance you’re one of the precious few who are well-suited to this work. 

So talk to your most trusted local political leaders and, if the time feels right, get out there and participate in democracy by putting your name forward for public office.