Reflection On Winning Your Election The Wellstone Way

This reflective writing is about the qualities of good candidates, good campaign managers and campaign workers. Reading the Chapter 1 of the book Winning your Election the Wellstone Way allowed me to further extent my knowledge regarding the qualities of good progressive candidates, campaign managers and workers. For me, the key takeaways from the readings were the need for campaigns to maintain discipline and that campaign strategy must accompany the candidate’s authenticity.
In the book, Winning your Election the Wells Stone Way, Blodgett and Lofy (2008) mention that “along with hard work comes discipline, or staying focused on a plan, strategy, and timetable” (p. 15). I found this lesson quite important. I’ve worked on electoral campaigns
He argues that “authenticity alone doesn’t win elections… this is where strategy comes in, making conscious choices about what to emphasize considering your convictions, values, viewpoints, and issues” (p. 12). He further says, “good strategy can be found in places where the candidate’s values and experiences overlap with the values and experiences of large numbers of voters” (p. 12). I always knew that connecting with the voters is very important to be able to persuade them. However, I didn’t have the knowledge on how to make that connection happen. Now I have a better understanding that in order for that to happen, we must find a way to overlap the candidate’s values and experiences with that of voters. The questions that linger for me are - What are the best practices to find out what are the values and experiences of the constituents? For example, do you survey the district with specific questions tailored to find out what are the values they appreciate the most? Or do you make assumptions about values and experiences of constituents based on the socioeconomic and demographic make-up of the