By Holly Robichaud
While most Northeast states lost Republican legislative seats, one GOP candidate was able to squeeze out a victory in sea of blue success. And, believe it or not, in one of the most, if not the most, liberal states in the union – Massachusetts. So, how did this candidate win a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives?
Answer: Messaging, Targeting and GOTV.
Background
Like all Massachusetts districts, Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans and unenrolleds make up the majority of voters.
Our Democrat opponent, a retired school teacher, ran a well-organized and strongly-financed campaign, with a heavy emphasis on door knocking. As a retiree, she had the time to door knock the district several times. Her operation was so sophisticated and funded that it would send out a postcard announcing her pending visit and after each visit the household would get both a call and a letter.
On the other hand, our Republican candidate had a business to maintain and could only door knock a few nights of the week -- a huge disadvantage. Early on it was easy to assess that we would not be able to match the opposition's door knocking efforts.
Adding to our dilemma, the Democrat opponent came from the larger town in the district while our candidate resided in the smaller town of which half had been cut into two separate House districts. Not only did we have the huge hurdle of being a Republican in a blue seat in a blue year to overcome, but we also had a major disadvantage in geography.
Message
In order to win, we had to develop a winning message that would position our opponent as being unacceptable to unenrolled voters but also to his hometown Democrats We had to neutralize her one-on-one door knocking efforts since we couldn't match them.
Our overall message was developed to emphasize our candidate being a lifetime resident of the district and his long-term community service. He had been Chairman of numerous boards including the Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA when it built a local facility. However, he had never been elected to office.
Our opponent's community service was limited. She had mainly been involved with the Democrat party and other election oriented organizations such as the League of Women Voters.
We logically positioned our candidate as the person who cared about the local issues. He was the ‘hometown' candidate for all three towns in the district. Our opponent helped us significantly with our messaging and positioning when she published her web site and campaign material.
As a former school teacher, she won all the endorsements of big labor including the Boston Teachers Union. Basically we used her web site for our opposition research and her own endorsement page against her. It was not hard for us to make the case to voters that she was not going to be a local representative, but another Boston Representative.
She had taken thousands of dollars from these “Boston Labor Unions” obligating her to vote for legislation and funding formulas that favored Boston over our district. Her message was the standard used across the Northeast: He is a Republican. I'm not.
Targeting
To be successful, we started early with an extensive phone program to identify voters on their issues. We microtargeted the district on issues and targeted voters on geography and age. Our mail program reflected this targeting.
In the beginning voters received positive mail highlighting our candidate's background and commitment to the district. We launched our mailings on issues two months out from the election. This proved to be effective. About seven days after our pieces hit on certain issues, our opponent mailed on a massive blitz on the same issues – no targeting.
One of the most notable mimics of her campaign was the senior mailing. You would think that as a retiree she should have been able to win these voters, but we reached them first with our mail and had our candidate's mother follow up with an electronic call. (It should be noted that our opponent refrained from electronic calls and attempted to make our usage an issue.)
We also sent out several comparison pieces on commitment to the district. We knew our message was working when she changed her web site claiming to be the local candidate, but she never took down her endorsement page.
As a last resort she had the district's Democrat state senator send a letter to all voters claiming we had engaged in a very negative campaign. The senator's mail hit on the same day we went back to positive.
GOTV
From every vantage point it looked like our opponent had a significant edge with Democrat turn out and her extensive door knocking efforts. So we concentrated on motivating Republicans, who were depressed over the pending loss of the Governor's office, and, of course, went after our candidate's hometown voters.
Our GOTV efforts consisted of phones, mail and absentee voting, even including turning out Democrats from his hometown. Our plan was to break even or slightly lose in the other two towns and overwhelm our opponent in his hometown. The strategy worked.
On Election Day we lost the two big towns, but crushed her in our man's hometown. She won the Democrats by a big margin, but had failed to convince unenrolled voters she was the right choice.
Lesson to be learned:
By using the right combination of tools in a campaign, even an underdog Republican can win in a strongly-liberal state. But the same is probably true for the other side when the occasion arises.
Holly Robichaud has over 20 years experience in helping
Republicans get elected to office. She specializes in strategy,
direct mail, voter contact programs, and campaign fundraising.
She can be reached at Click here to contact this Author
