Tips and Tricks that will Help Give You a Competitive Edge.

Tip #4. Your campaign strategy will be determined by three things. Your Resources. Your Opponent. The Political Environment.

This seems so fundamental that we should not have to discuss it, but too many candidates get it wrong.

Resources? They have a lot to do with your strategy. You can’t run a million dollar campaign if you don’t have a million dollars to spend. And if you try to keep up with someone who does when you don’t, you’ll spend yourself into debt before your campaign gets off the ground.

Can’t match your opponent’s resources? It does not mean you should not run. It does mean that you are going to have to out think, out wit and out strategize your opponent. It does mean that you’ll need to be very prudent with your money, very careful about how and on what you spend your resources.

The best-funded candidates don’t always win. In fact, there is a political graveyard in the United States filled with rich people who tried to buy their way into office and came up short. How much money must you have? Just enough to tell people who you are, what you believe, why you want the job and what makes you a better candidate than your opponent.

Your Opponent? Who you are running against has everything to do with your strategy. It determines what you should tell voters about your biography, your values, or issues positions and what, if anything, you are going to tell voters about your opponent.

For in putting together your strategy and deciding when you are going to tell voters what, you will necessarily want to use information that provides voters the clearest and most compelling contrast between yourself and your opponent.

Think about it. Obama ran against John McCain in 2008. Does anybody really think he’d have run the same kind of campaign against Mitt Romney had Romney been the nominee?

The Political Environment. Notice how everybody is talking about jobs this year? Little wonder. Right now 25 million Americans can’t find work. All other issues—education, crime, the environment seem to be secondary.

Now imagine the dialogue if unemployment was at 4% and the economy was humming along, the budget balanced and government coffers streaming with revenue. Politicians would be talking about their plans to spend it instead of what government programs we need to cut.

That my little tutorial for the moment. And it illustrates an important point about your strategy. No two campaign strategies are the same. Don’t assume that what worked for Sam when he ran against Bob is going to work for you when you are running against Scott.

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