DFAers form new site to help those running grassroots campaigns.

[madfloridian]

Rich Kolker and other folks from DFA have started this site. It sounds like a tremendous idea. The website is up now, and it looks like a valuable resource.

Blog for America

Citizen Campaign 2006
"Have you completed a DFA, LFA, 21st Century Dems, Wellstone or RootCamp training recently and are now ready to put your new skills to use? Are you frustrated that after learning how to create a message, target your voters and build an action plan, that your local campaign has you stamping envelopes? Are you ready to use the Power we have?

Join Citizen Campaign 2006 where we are the campaign!

Citizen Campaign 2006 will run candidates for the US Congress in 2006 whose campaigns will be totally managed by volunteer citizen campaigners, coordinated on the Internet, and based on a set of 10 principles called the American Compact .

Founded by volunteers from Dean for America, Citizen Campaign 2006 is the first project of The Idea Forge, a group dedicated to discussion and action on policy and citizen campaigning, inspired by the candidacy of Howard Dean. The idea first came up on Blog For America in April as a proposal that we staff a virtual Presidential campaign in Iowa or New Hampshire in 2008. The ongoing discussion proposed practice runs in 2006 Congressional races."

The goals are:

To fully understand all the pieces of a major campaign. Until you do it (or at least think hard) you'll miss some, maybe the important ones

Determine a way, using citizen campaign labor, to accomplish each of those jobs in a professional way, from fundraising, to advertising, to field, to running the candidate around the district. Citizen campaigners have the experience. Many of us are experts in our own careers who can adapt those skills to the campaign arena. We may even come up with new ways to accomplish things the "pros" haven't considered.

Actually run the campaign to prove we can do it. If we win, even better, but if we only get press attention for doing the job and doing it "professionally" we will have really proved the capabilities of citizen campaigners."

[zulchzulu]

1. Excellent idea!

Getting battle-tested people to teach the newer people the ropes is absolutely key. It's not as easy as it looks, and from my experience, it's not all on the net.

You still have to get your walking shoes on and hit the streets.

[madfloridian]

2. Our DFA/DEC ran a candidate last year. It was difficult.

Something like this would have been such a godsend. We worked out butts off getting petitions signed, handing out flyers, even had shirts.

You know what, he did pretty well. We think he might have won the primary, but the church community of combined Catholics and Baptists put someone in the last day....anti-gay, anti-abortion. He could not debate worth a flip, while our guy was brilliant. But the church community got the vote out covertly, while we just appealed to voters the usual way. It was sad.

[madfloridian]

3. People can sign for their areas of strength for campaigns.

I really like this idea. Using your areas of strength to run campaigns.

Accounting
Budgeting
Endorsements
Event Planning
Field Planning
Fundraising
Graphics Design
Image Consultant
Message Creation Press Relations
Oppo Research
Ad creation
Speechwriting
Targeting voters
Volunteer Coordinator
Voter File creation
Web Work

Citizen Campaign