Anatomy of a (successful) campaign

So as those of you who have followed me through any other media (Twitter, Facebook, my website, or local print/online news) know by now, the election is over and I won my race - the vote was 466-288 in my favor and I will be taking office on January second. I've gotten a lot more local attention than I really expected with the win, and I've used all the other places I post to thank my wife, Matt Veno, and all the other people who helped me. I thought here in longer form I could discuss the dynamics of the race and also why I believe it is we won. This isn't an all-purpose blueprint for local politics, but it worked here.

I think most would-be politicians wouldn't necessarily share most of this, but I'm trying hard to do things a little differently. I want to be as transparent as possible (of course I'm not going to share things told to me in confidence), and help people understand how I'll work, and why I'm voting the way I will. This, to  me, is part of that process. Also of note, though: When you are an actual in-office politician, there are legal and other reasons for being careful about what you say in print and online. I'll still be maintaining this blog, but I'll likely be posting pretty rarely and sticking to non-political subjects. Not that I write a lot of political and/or local issue stuff here, but I'll be doing even less of that and mainly sticking to things like sports and tech.

I also haven't been a major poster on Patch, but I've participated in some issue discussions as a candidate that I won't be able to do as an elected official. I haven't posted on Salemweb in about 6 years, but I won't be starting now... My Facebook page will still be a place to keep people informed, but mainly targeted to residents of the ward I'll be representing. A lot of city officials have some form or another of electronic presence, but I think I'm pretty much the first to use it so heavily. So there's going to be a period of finding a balance. Don't expect any postmortems of Council meetings here, though.

About the race itself - Councillor Ronan (my opponent) is a good person - and I actually like him, but in office he was much more conservative than I think most of the ward expected from him based on his pre-election talk two years ago. There's plenty of places online where you can look up specific policy issues over the last two years, but I believe that voting away from the ward's interests opened up an opportunity to challenge (it is what galvanized me - before this June I had no interest at all in getting into politics). Similar things happened in Ward 3, and there was also a successful challenge there.

The next factor was our campaign strategy. Our early effort was to get support from families we knew were aligned with us politically. We also tried to place as many signs early as possible. We started in early August with stickers and signs - at times it seemed like our house was full of them but over the four months of the campaign we placed about fifty signs and got almost a hundred stickers on cars. Lawn signs and stickers don't move many voters. What they do is solidify supporters psychologically (after all, they care enough to display support in public) and they also help you establish a level of credibility to the rest of the voters. Without signs you're an unknown. We had signs out over a month before our opponent, and I believe that provided a show of strength early. We also got crucial early support from Councillor (at large) Furey, who knew me well enough to expect the sort of change on the council he was hoping to see.

We also obtained the registered voter list from the city and put it into a spreadsheet for analysis and into a Filemaker database for reporting. That was roughly 3200 voters. We also bought the list of voters that came out in 2009 to the last municipal election. That list was our bible. 2009 had only about 830 voters show up. They were likeliest to show this year as well, assuming they were still living in the ward (most were). And we had a very good turnout among that group, despite not having a mayoral race on the ballot this year. So our strategy was to target the heck out of the 830, make sure I met as many of them as possible, and got exposed to them as much as we could. Then came the hard work. I didn't ignore the other 2370 voters entirely, but I didn't go out of my way to target them - they weren't likely to vote and most didn't.

I walked to almost every door of the 830, and met a good number of them in person. When they weren't home, I generally left a hand-written note on my palm card and left it in their mail slot or door. I also left cards with neighbors who were available to talk to, or displayed a sign for another citywide candidate - even if they weren't on my 830 it meant they were interested this year. We printed well over a thousand cards and there's only a handful left in my house. I finished door-to-door last Sunday, doing it from August onwards and pretty much only taking the Columbus Day holiday off to go on a fishing trip with my son.

We also sent out a mailing of a letter that former Councillor Matt Veno (who was the campaign head along with my wife) wrote along with a copy of my card. This was sent to about 500 households (the 830 - removing hard supporters of mine and my opponent's, and accounting for homes with multiple voters) on Halloween weekend. We wanted to make sure it was seen and the closer to election time, the better. That helped us move the needle.

A few days later, in the middle of the final week, we then followed up by dropping (by hand) a letter I'd written myself introducing me and asking for support. My wife and a number of our friends delivered them to the 830 over a 3-day period. We also guessed that if the Salem News provided any endorsement at all, it would be of me. So we designed a 4-up postcard that we could drop it into if that happened (in the hope it would be something we could use). When it did, we had the text pasted into the postcard by 9AM Friday, and we printed and hand-cut over 800 postcards Friday into Sunday that were delivered right up to Monday morning - again, Jane and all our friends did the delivery by hand. I did all the printing/cutting.

Besides this, we had several friends and supporters making phone calls on my behalf to their friends and neighbors. We had meet and greet events in each neighborhood of the ward over the four months - the last one was the Sunday before the election. Our initial fundraiser was in early August. That was a big success because a lot of people came who needed to know that we were credible. The biggest issue with it, though, was that the cost there was a lot higher than we'd anticipated so we only came out a little bit ahead. That put us in an early fundraising hole but we were able to keep costs down otherwise.

Finally, the electronic portion of the race mattered as well. I used my Twitter account (@joshturiel) as a tool to communicate with supporters and to help find them. I set up a personal Facebook page (I'd avoided it until this year - my wife is the big Facebook user in the family) and then used it to create a campaign page. That proved to be an effective way to help get even information, photos, and even video out to people in the ward and around Salem. Lastly, I also set up an email list of all the people who gave me their addresses - around 50 so far. We sent out a few email list updates during the campaign and it helped with support.

I met people during the campaign that I hadn't known before at all, and some that I only had known online. It was really one of the most rewarding experiences I'd ever had, and I surprised myself by enjoying the in-person aspect of it so much. Election Day was nerve-wracking even though we were fairly confident by then. The video of me on Patch that night? Yep, I was exhausted. Now the hard part begins.

It's a heck of a challenge to serve in elected office. Even the people I have political issues with are people I respect for taking on the responsibility. Now I get a turn at it, and I hope I can do my city and my ward proud.

A mighty wind

So there's been a massive controversy here in Salem about a proposal to put a single wind turbine up at Winter Island. It would be a little less than half a mile from the nearest houses (there's a few houses on Winter Island Road), near the shoreline by the Harbormaster's office. It's big (to make power usable you have to be big), and I'm a little skeptical as to how much power it will actually generate, but I'm interested.

The first couple of public meetings that have discussed it created a massive fuss - folks down at the Willows were talking about how you'd have to block off massive portions of the park to maintain a "Fall Zone", how ice would be flung from it like shrapnel, and how a "giant machine" could't help but cause health and enjoyment issues for everyone. Other people complained about vibrations, sound, shadow flicker, and everything they could throw at it. Marbleheaders showed up to complain about the views (except for the Healthlink folks, who love it because it doesn't burn coal).

Now, I'm naturally a cynic - but on the flip side of that I tend to trust technology given that I'm an engineer by trade. So I started doing some of my own research by looking at actual peer-reviewed data. Sure, there have been issues with early-generation wind turbines. Newer (as in the last decade or so) technology turbines run slower and are quieter than the older-generation models that have justified complaints. I'm still going to go listen to one, though.

The biggest thing I was worried about was the potential to close off a large portion of Winter Island. If we had to lose a lot of parkland to support this, I'd be firmly against it. For this, I turned to Google Earth as my friend. So first, I looked at Hull:

Link to Hull Turbine

As you may notice, it's not exactly sealed off. It's a few feet past the outfield fence at the high school. This was Hull's first turbine.

Hull Wind #2 is in a more conventional location - and old landfill:

Link to Hull #2

No special access restrictions appear to be in place there, either, other than it being a place that folks aren't exactly going to for fun.

You can find other sites worth looking at through a DOE site that I found, but the bottom line I see here is that for the most part, wind projects nowadays integrate fairly well with their surroundings. My concerns at this point are based on costs rather than safety. And unless I see compelling data otherwise (from either a cost or a safety perspective), I'd support a turbine at Winter Island.

Though I'd prefer to see a bunch of them out in the ocean by the Miseries.

I kinda understand cultists' thinking

Back in August the Twelve Tribes had their ship "Peacemaker" moored in Salem. They offered free tours (indeed, it's a magnificent ship) and used the ship as an opportunity to quietly proselytize their somewhat offbeat Messianic Christianity. We visited Peacemaker on a Saturday - being a Messianic group they follow mainly Jewish customs and accordingly avoid commerce and most activities outside the home on Saturdays.

I saw happy, quiet people there, trying to live a life of example - both to inspire others and to try and recruit. And you know what? I may be a staunch atheist (actually, I'm probably more of an agnostic in that I do believe there isn't anything that could be described as "god" but on the other hand I can't possibly be sure of it and I don't really care that much whether I'm right or not) but I can see the appeal of a life like the Tribes lead. I wouldn't call them a cult (the headline is more linkbait), but a community of passionate believers who have willingly subsumed their whole lives to their ideals. I think they're somewhat misguided (to be polite) but I wouldn't try and steer them off their lonely path.

It's almost as hard to be passionate believers like they are as it is to be a non-believer entirely. Belief in a Supreme Being is easy. Humans are hard-wired for it due to their innate xenophobia - we are generally intelligent creatures who tend to form small communities that are bound together by race, language, or religious beliefs and fear/hate those who fall outside our community boundaries. Sure, Salem isn't going to declare war on Beverly or Marblehead anytime soon (partly because we all also identify as members of the larger "America" group), but there's still a healthy Them vibe you can see any time the Witches play the Panthers in football, for instance), but it's still Us and Them.

Which is why belief is the easy way out. It's easy to be born a Catholic, grow up in the traditions, remain one as an adult, marry another Catholic, have a church wedding, and bring up your kids as Catholics. By that measure, it's easy to be almost any kind of Protestant. In this country, it's even relatively easy to be a Jew or a Muslim - though most American mainstream Christians have a unhealthy streak of xenophobia about them - or part of any other relatively mainstream religious tradition.

What's hard is to believe something life-altering like the Tribes do - or to publicly believe nothing like I do. Because then you make yourself part of the Other. In a way, though, it's easier in their shoes, since they are surrounded by a community that reinforces their beliefs and function as an island within society. Their God provides their minds with a safety net that keeps their thoughts from going too far off the reservation. Most religious people, too, have that safety net that lets them transgress and then ask forgiveness, lets them justify wrongdoing, and lets them behave badly and then go to church to wipe the slate clean for another week.

Those of us without religion, though, have it tougher. We just have our consciences to keep us on the right path - no promise of an Eternal Reward for goodness or Eternal Damnation for badness. We just need to Do Right for the sake of Doing Right.

Which is far more difficult to pull off - Conscience is a much tougher taskmaster than God, because Conscience doesn't wipe the slate clean.

Yep, it may be tough at times to be a Twelve Tribes member. But the simplicity and mutual reinforcement of their life and faith makes it appealing. It's a lot tougher to just live a life free of it all. Since then, this Halloween the preachers returned to Salem, yelling at passers-by on bullhorns about the lake of fire and Americans' sin. I don't think they won any converts last month, but I can tell you this much: if they were, in fact, right about the non-believers going to hell, I'd line up for that if heaven were a place I'd have to share with them.

Makes one look forward to simple oblivion.