How to win

Winning a State or County Central Committee seat is not necessarily a hard or an expensive thing to do. The process is made easier (and cheaper) if there is a collaborative effort afoot such as this one. One thing that can make up for a lack of name recognition and charisma - is a popular platform. While the "Promise to Ohio" is popular among those that want to reform the Republican party - there are very few people who know how the party works. Winning with a little money is very possible but it involves work and using that noggin of yours.

The recipe of success to winning an election is to develop 1) a Vision, 2) develop Goals from that vision, 3) develop Priorities for your goals, and 4) develop specific policies or solutions (your Platform) to realize your Goals, Priorities, and Vision. Once you have these core items built out for your campaign it allows you to more effectively communicate with the public and allows you to appear to be the smartest person in the room when talking on these subjects.

But wait, you're not done quite yet. You need to convey 5) your experience that you believe makes you a good candidate -and- 6) what you values and belief system is - so people can infer how you will arrive at decisions. 7) you need to create media content to convey 1-6 and 8) distribution of your media content.

Vision

Your vision can be simple or extensive. It is your 100,000 foot view of where you want to get to. A vision statement may be something like, "I want to end liberal indoctrination centers in Ohio's education system." Again, this is a very broad statement and it is best to not get into the weeds.

Goals

So now you need to develop your goals from your vision. "One of my goals is to have school systems more accurately reflect the political make-up of the local community to ensure that there is not a bias in a school's hiring practices."

Priorities

Give your goals a priority, "As a Republican State Central Committee member I will vote to add to our endorsement policy that we only support candidates that adopt anti-indoctrination policies in their platform. I feel confident that between myself and other candidates running for the State Central Committee that we can implement this in year one after I am elected." Additionally, "By year two, I hope to have an anti-indoctrination requirement in the State Platform."

Platform

You can develop as many platform items as you want but less than 10 items is common. So, if you only had a two plank platform. it would look something like this:

1) Reform of the Ohio Republican Party to make it more ethical and engaging. I want to STOMP THE SWAMP out of Columbus.

a) How will I achieve this? See the Ohio Promise Keepers website for the pledge I signed

2) I want to end liberal indoctrination centers in Ohio's education system.

a) How will I achieve this. See below:

"I am a lobbyist for my constituents. One of my goals to achieve is the elimination of indoctrination in Ohio's schools. I set this goal from feedback I obtained from my constituents. I will use my position on the State Central Committee to influence Ohio legislators to achieve this goal. I will work with legislators to draft a law that reviews a public school or state University when the political affiliations of the staff deviate more than 20% from the communities they serve. A political bias commission for Ohio's public education sector is long over due and will no-longer be a domain exclusive to liberals and Democrats. Such legislation will offer heavy penalties for the school or University administration - which can be a reduction in pay - and even termination. As a Conservative Republican we should all work to ban such things as CRT, Common Core, and Social Emotional Learning from our schools - but things like these cannot get started as long as we have a sufficient diversity of ideologies. If we are going to teach diverse things at our schools it is important that no one ideology have a monopoly - this can lead to extreme views and curriculum that do not reflect the values and sensibilities of the community in which they exist. We have to have diverse people and thinking - to teach these diverse subjects and properly vet extremist lesson plans."

Experience

It is important to list your experiences that will make you a good candidate. You can list your education and affiliations and life-experiences. What are the adversities that you overcame? What are the successes you have had in life?

Values and Beliefs

It is important to tell people what you believe in and what your values are. These are best communicated in bullet points. It is important for effective communication that you don't confuse your values and beliefs with your platform. Your platform is specifically what you intend to do when elected. Whereas, your values and beliefs are what you believe in.

You have limited resources and you cannot accomplish everything. It is important to convey to people the 1-10 things you hope to accomplish during your term. You can believe in as many things as you want that seem relevant. For instance, you may be a 2nd Amendment and Anti-abortion person and want to fight for educational reform. Those three things plus the Reform of the Ohio Republican Party is enough to keep anyone busy. You might also want to reduce spending and taxes - but don't have enough time to devote to that issue. Then you may have the BELIEF that the State Government needs to have more fiscal restraint and reduced spending and will support those issues and measures.

Team up with others that are running and coordinate specializations. So you are making statements like "these are the four planks on my platform and I support John Doe's position on Constitutional Carry and Jane Doe's solution to reducing medicaid costs for the State." Then, ideally, they will reciprocate and make statements about you on the topic you are specializing in. This will help you spread your name and solution to a wider audience than you would otherwise have. Building alliances is very important and trying to not bite off more than you can chew is important as well.

Content Creation

GET SOME PROFESSIONAL HEADSHOTS. Yes, people like to know who they are supporting. Pictures of yourself are essential. If you can't afford a professional get the best photos with the best lighting and with the highest resolution you can. Once you have your pictures you need to set down with a graphic designer and decide on your branding. You can find great Graphic Designers for a very low cost on Fiverr.com. Alternately, Canva.com and express.adobe.com are great low-cost website for DIY's to create content. You will develop your content from the development of your Vision, Goals, Priorities, Platform, Experience, Beliefs and Values.

Newsletter and Website

For a website and newsletter for a State or County Central Committee members race - substack.com is free and easy to use. It is a newsletter and website rolled into one that works like a simple word processor. Every email you make becomes a webpage - all the emails you enter in get a mass email of the page and the page is published to the internet and the link can easily be shared or embedded within social media. Alternatively, you can use products like Wix.com and Zyro.com. These are low-cost DIY website builders that you can find numerous videos on YouTube that can quickly allow you to build a great-looking website for a small fee (less than $100). You can also opt to not have a website or newsletter and go the social media only route - creating a Facebook business page instead of a website or newsletter is perfectly acceptable for those running for Central Committee.

Grammarly

Nothing is worse than creating content that has problems with spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Grammarly.com helps those of us with less than perfect English create acceptable press copy. Utilize the six rules of persuasion. 1)Reciprocity, 2)Scarcity, 3)Authority, 4)Consistency, 5)Liking, and 6)Consensus. So when you are writing press copy - 1) Give the audience a little known fact that they are not likely to know - 2) Let them know it is more important than ever to get done what you are trying to accomplish - 3) Quote an expert in the field on which you are talking -4)Use an allegory or an example of how what you are proposing is not extreme -5)Identify a similarity with your audience use phrases like "I don't know about you, but...." and state the things you have in common with your audience -6)Note any support and endorsements that support your ideas.

Distribution

We intend this effort to print a newspaper that lists all the "Ohio Promise Keepers" and what they stand for. Newsprint is insanely cheap and in most cases a multi-page newspaper is cheaper than a postcard. A newspaper is less often thrown away and more often shared than a postcard.

Hedging your bets

So, maybe you have a really tough race to win and you want to spend some more money than just a basic campaign. For your print material and yard signs Hearld Printing has the best prices in the State and is very Republican friendly. There is no single source to advise you on social media political advertising but A4 Advertising is one of the largest online and television brokers in the nation for small to mid-sized campaigns - they also do social media advertising. Local Ohio Companies like TRZ Communications (Tom Zawistowski) can help you with Robocalls and surveys and the like. If you want to deliver ringless voicemails you can pay a company or utilize Mautic. You can have anyone set up Mautic for you. You have to have a Slybroadcast account- to send ringless voicemails with mautic. Mautic can be used to send mass emails and mass text messages as well and save you thousands of dollars and have your campaign appear to be larger and more professional than what it actually is. Mautic is open source freeware but needs to be uploaded and configured to a server.