Winning on the Ground

In politics it is not the production of the message that costs campaigns money. It is the delivery of the message that runs up the price of campaigning. Consider the production and delivery of Common Sense, MCDAC's Democratic newspaper. It costs MCDAC approximately $0.05-$0.08 an issue to print Common Sense. That is the production cost. The delivery cost, assuming that we use the United States mail is approximately $0.21 cents per copy, assuming that we use a mailing house that can get us a cheaper rate by using bar-coding and bulk rate permits. As you can see, the delivery cost is more than twice the cost of production.

This is not just true for printing a newspaper, it is also true for newspaper advertising, direct mail, radio, and television ads. All of those delivery mechanisms cost far more than the cost of producing the message. In our opinion, this is why Democrats have had trouble winning elections, especially at the local level over the last 30 years.

During that time there has been a steady drop in the number of people who identify themselves as members of one political party or another. This means that there has been reduction in the number of people who depend of party identification to tell them what candidates to support. This leaves name identification as the one of the primary means that voters use to decide what candidates to support. Name identification can be purchased by advertising. This puts candidates with more money at a distinct advantage. Usually, in local campaigns, that means that Republicans have more resources to put into buying name identification. This, in turn, translates into winning elections.

What Democrats need to do is develop alternate means of delivering their political messages. This means developing a core of volunteers who are willing to work on the ground by doing things like door to door canvassing, literature distributions, putting up yard signs, and making phone calls. All of these are effective in delivering political messages, and all of them cost much less than using paid delivery mechanisms.

MCDAC is attempting to build a network of such volunteers in Medina County. We need your help to build this network, we can't do it alone. We want you to help us deliver Common Sense to Medina County voters before the November 7th election. If you are interested in volunteering, please send your name, address, and telephone number to joycekimbler@medinacountydemocraticactioncommittee.org. We guarantee that we will put you to work.
____________________________________________________________________
MCDAC authorizes the use of the above without attribution.