I am very excited to see so much interest springing upon social media over school board elections, which take place in a majority of states this year. Local Facebook pages in my home town of North Huntingdon, PA have been alive with chatter of people—many seemingly new to politics—who are exploring runs for the local school board on the heels of a contentious year with zealot board member slamming minorities and Democrats and a truly mystifying parent-led protest to send everyone back to school in person, public health consequences be damned.
It is extremely important for people to run for school board positions and do it the right way. Personally, I have volunteered on several school board campaigns in the Norwin School District in Pennsylvania during my time as a student there, written a PhD dissertation on school board politics at Temple University, worked in state and local government in two states, taught electoral and local politics at the college level, and worked on almost 50 political campaigns in different capacities from consultant to manager to field director to grassroots volunteer.
With that said, I have compiled a list of the top ten most important things anyone who wants to run for a position on their local school board should consider before deciding whether to run. This list is not in any particular order and is built around my own experience and insights from dozens and dozens of local election campaigns. Some of the items here may vary from state-to-state while others have appointed boards in certain types of districts.
1—A Base. I’m not just referring to your friends and family, but rather about being cognizant of where your core supporters will come from: the small business community, political activists, party officials and leaders, labor unions, veterans’ groups, church groups, firefighters, community organizations, and the like. These are the people you know are waking up on primary election day with a plan to vote for you and have already activated their own networks of friends and contacts to do the same. People who run and lose tend to not have a well-defined base and don’t know how to build one. Do this now!
2—Money. Even local campaigns aren’t run on the cheap, at least not the good ones! Even though the school board is a very localized office, it still costs money to run a real campaign as expenditures add up: food for your volunteers, money for printing, handouts and palm cards, trinkets, paying poll workers on Election Day, renting a facility to hold a fundraiser, and more. Many first-time candidates are encouraged by others to spend money on yard signs, which are very expensive. Yard signs don’t vote and are a colossal waste of resources that could go into other forms of voter contact that actually reach people. Get some signs, but don’t put them anywhere but in actual yards. Don’t go crazy here. You need that money for actual voter contact.
3—Data. You need to be able to get your hands of voter lists that are broken up by precinct with the names and addresses of voters (at a minimum). Candidates should be able to buy a basic digital copy of this from their county or pay for hard copies. Check out how this works where you live before getting too far along. The more advanced and useful data sets can be purchased from vendors and includes phone numbers, email addresses, age and race information, party identification (when applicable), and voter frequency data. This is the most important part because it allows you to focus on the people who are high-turnout voters in “off-year” elections when turnout tends to be the lowest. You can’t do this effectively without this data as it enables micro-targeting. A benefit of running as a “ticket” or team is that the team can invest in this instead of just one of you doing so.
4—Mail. It may seem antiquated, but direct mail that arrives at the homes of voters still works best, especially in low-turnout local election contests. Think about who turns out for these elections: older voters and those who follow politics most closely. These are the people that read their mail every day when it arrives and are not casual voters like those who show up in a presidential year. If this is anything like most off-year, local elections turnout will be alarmingly low, so just prepare yourself for that disappointment now. Doing professionally produced campaign mail frees up your volunteers for other work so they aren’t just stuffing envelopes and are actually out talking to voters directly.
5—Volunteers. Start recruiting now for folks to knock doors, write postcards to friends and neighbors, help raise money, and put signs in their yards. Build a good list in Excel: names, contact information, home precinct, specific interests in what they want to do, etc. Also, you’ll want to use them to work outside at polling places on Election Day. The main lesson here is that it’s usually not good to treat your volunteer base as donors, but in some cases local elections require that. Here’s the disappointing part: for about every ten people who say they will help you can count on about two of them to follow through, but that matters a great deal for getting the work done and you’ll quickly learn who you can count on!
6—Training. Your volunteers need to be well trained on a) your own bio, b) the reasons you are running, and c) a 20-30 second elevator pitch when they are talking to voters as to why they should support you. Using volunteer labor without training them first is definitely a disaster waiting to happen. They’ll also need a tutorial on door knocking, how to start conversations, where to place and where not to place palm cards, and more. As for poll workers, keep close track of covering all shifts at all precincts for Election Day, but remember that 99% of the work gets done before Election Day if you want to be successful.
7—Know the Rules. Get your petitions and statements of candidacy done correctly so you don’t get removed from the ballot. This is the single most important part of the entire process. Talk to people who know what they are doing here: election lawyers, candidates who have run and won in the past, and county party leaders.
8—Precinct Captains. You’ll need at least one per precinct to keep their eyes and ears on the ground in their neighborhood for you. This should be someone who knows the people around them, wants to help by volunteering (phone banks, doors, postcards) or donating, and can be involved whenever you are campaigning in their precinct. Get a good precinct map your entire district so you can visualize “who you have” in those places as your campaign’s core leaders. These folks are volunteers, but they are the next level up: they are your go-to people in each precinct and they are the ones you can most count on for help and information.
9—Party People. The actual, official party structures in many counties seem to have withered over time, but each political party tends to at least have a minimum number of seats for “official” Democratic and Republican committee people. For example, in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania the Democratic County Committee has two seats per precinct for Party Committee people while I believe the GOP County Committee has a two seat minimum per precinct, but has been allowed to add seats per precincts based on positive party performance. You can get a list of currently elected committee people for each party from most County Election Commissions, but you may want to contact the county party chairs as they are permitted to fill vacancies with appointments which may not be kept on file.
Meanwhile, in Hinds County, Mississippi the county parties have 30 members chosen countywide by supervisor district within each county. The bottom line is that you need to reach out to these folks because they tend to be more politically active and experienced than the rank and file voter or even the most excited volunteer. In states like this you need to contact the designated county party chairs to get their committee lists, should they choose to provide them.
10—Campaign Veterans. This may seem overly simplistic, but talk to people who have done this before including those who have run successfully and unsuccessfully for the school board, people who have run campaigns, and those who have been the most deeply involved in races for positions like county commissioner, county offices, supervisors and commissioners, council and alderman, tax collector, and other localized positions. They’ve been through it and can tell you what worked best for them and which strategies did not. Likewise, they are inevitably going to have a mental, digital, or physical rolodex of people who helped them—or in some cases subverted their campaign efforts—and they will probably be more than happy to share that information.
Lastly, there are some books that can help. The first three are usually assigned in my Campaigns and Elections class at Millsaps College while the last one about school boards helped me as I was conceptualizing my dissertation on school board politics:
All Politics is Local and Other Rules of the Game by Speaker Tip O’Neill (1993): https://www.amazon.com/All-Politics-Local-Other-Rules/dp/0812922972/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=all+politics+is+local&qid=1609428388&sr=8-3
The Campaign Manager: Running and Winning Local Elections by Catherine Shaw (6th Ed, 2018): https://www.amazon.com/Campaign-Manager-Running-Winning-Elections/dp/0813350794/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=campaign+manager&qid=1609428438&sr=8-1
Get Out The Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout by Donald Green and Alan Gerber (4th Ed, 2019): https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-Vote-Increase-Turnout/dp/0815736932/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=get+out+the+vote&qid=1609428504&sr=8-1
Ten Thousand Democracies: Politics and Public Opinion in America's School Districts (2005) by Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer: https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Thousand-Democracies-Districts-Government/dp/1589010760/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=10000+democracies&qid=1609428608&sr=8-1
Nathan R. Shrader can be reached at
DoctorShrader@gmail.com
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