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Labels for cards and letters : Do you support the Tea Party movement?
If so, mention it when you send out cards or letters to friends.
Let them know how to find your local group or sites like this one.
Buy labels at your local office supply store and print some up with the
logo and website of your favorite Tea Party group. Stick those
labels on the back of any cards, letters, or handouts at events.
A simple alternative is a rubber stamp with a simple image such as the
Congress 2010 target. |
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SurgeUSA Avery 8293 round
1.5" high visibility target label PDF (20 / sheet, 400 labels /
package)
SurgeUSA logo - Avery
5960 label PDF - 30/sheet - image as shown in the header above
SurgeUSA return
address Avery 8167 label PDF 1/2" x 1.75" - 80 / sheet -
simple website name
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If you support
the Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, The 912 Project, etc., you
can combine their image with a link to promote their national website or
your related local website or social networking site. It's a
simple way to inform or remind your friends that you support the Tea
Party movement.
Example:
Tea Party Nation -
Avery 5960 1x2.63" label PDF - 30/sheet
or
8167 return labels
- 80 / sheet
912Candidates.org Avery 8167 return labels PDF - 80 / sheet
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Other action ideas for the 2010
election cycle |
| A simple
option is to add Tea Party link information automatically at the end of
all your e-mails, and encourage social networking contacts to become
actively involved as volunteers or donors in specific local campaigns.
Pick the candidates who you can enthusiastically support, and do
everything you can to help them win their primaries so that voters are
not left with a "Hobson's choice" between lousy candidates in November.. |
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Please also consider doing the ICED Tea Voter
Survey, or something similar, to reach out to voters in your
area and develop trusted relationships among those who are sympathetic
to the Tea Party movement.
Sample PDF |
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Another idea is to reach out to local business leaders and charitable
individuals to develop a local "Donors Forum",
such as a "Committee of 100", or similar group. It need not be a
PAC which actually gathers donations and then distributes them to
candidates as agreed among the leadership of the group.
For example, it can be a network of principled donors who
can respond quickly, through individual donation decisions, to surge
financial support to favored candidates in targeted campaigns.
The idea is to support greater
accountability to independent voters in support of traditional
American values, such as limited government. The advantage of a
PAC is that money can be raised far in advance and be ready to use
quickly at strategic points in targeted campaigns, but it can also be
complicated to put together and administer properly to have the desired
impact and remain very cost-effective for donors (so that more money
goes to the intended purpose, rather than high overheads for staff and
other costs).
The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
You can raise money for a PAC as well as separately for targeted
campaigns, and also organize networks of individual donors in advance
for "surge" appeals. |
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Screening candidates - organize your
own independent events with the candidates |
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traditional candidate forums, "town halls", or debates can also
be done in more creative ways than with a moderator who asks the same
easy, pre-selected questions of everybody. That approach is
typical of party primary events in which the organizers don't want to
risk making any candidate look bad. Instead, try
organize an event with large banquet round tables and have the
candidates move around the room with perhaps 10 minutes per table to
talk privately after brief opening remarks to the entire group, and then
conclude with brief closing remarks by the candidates. This works
well when there are many candidates - such as a dozen candidates for a
couple of key races circulating among as many tables. In this
manner, each candidate gets to personally meet perhaps 100+ voters in
two hours, plus the opening and closing remarks to the group.
Let them face a dozen or so voters at each table with
unpredictable questions, and see how well they handle themselves when
they are "off script" and are being grilled face to face. Have
they really thought through the issues, or are they just trying to echo
back what they think that voter want to hear?
Ask about their "ground game" for winning the
election. Do they really have the money it takes to pull it off?
How well do they know the election process, and what they must do to
win? Do they really have a good plan, or are they just hoping to
get lucky? If this were a business plan, would you invest
enthusiastically in it? Does the candidate really have the
necessary skills and experience? Don't trust the news media to vet
them for you. |
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are many ways to organize candidate events, whether for individual
candidates or a group of them, but the key point is to take control of
the process. Reach out to voters and do the work to organize the
event, instead of trusting the campaigns or the local party organization
to arrange for useful events. If the local party organization is
good, then support it and work with it. If not, do it yourself, or
get together with other local groups in the community (not necessarily
political ones) to help sponsor or organize an event. |
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