Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
A The Candidate
1. Candidates run for office for any number of reasons, including personal ambition, the
desire to promote ideological objectives or pursue specific public policies, or simply
because they think that they can do a better job than their opponents.
B The Campaign Staff
1. Paid staff, political consultants and dedicated volunteers work behind the scenes to
support the candidate.
2. Collectively they plan general strategy, conduct polls, write speeches, craft the
campaigns message, and design the strategy for communicating that message in the form
of television advertisements, radio spots, Web sites, and direct mail pieces.
Volunteer Campaign Staff
1. Volunteers are the lifeblood of every national, state, and local campaign.
2. Voter canvassthe process by which a campaign reaches the individual voters, either by
door-to-door solicitation or by telephone.
3. Get out the vote (GOTV)a push at the end of a political campaign to encourage
supporters to go to the polls.
The Candidates Professional Staff
1. Campaign managerthe individual who travels with the candidate and coordinates the
many different aspects of the campaign.
Key paid positions in addition to the campaign manager:
2. Finance chaira professional who coordinates the fund-raising efforts of the campaign.
3. Pollstera professional who takes public opinion surveys that guide political campaigns.
4. Direct mailera professional who supervises a political campaigns direct mail fundraising strategies.
5. Communications directorthe person who develops the overall media strategy for the
candidate, blending free press coverage with paid TV, radio, and mail media.
6. Press secretarythe individual charged with interacting and communicating with
journalists on a daily basis.
7. Internet Teamthe campaign staff that makes use of Web-based resources to
communicate with voters, raise funds, organize volunteers, and plan campaign events.
8. Fund raising remains the most valuable use of the Internet by political campaigns.
Candidates Hired Guns
1. Campaign consultantsa private sector professional who sells to a candidate the
technologies, services, and strategies required to get the candidate elected.
2. Media consultantsa professional who produces candidates television, radio, and print
advertisements.
III Coverage of the Game: The Medias Role in Defining the Playing Field
1. What voters actually see and hear of the candidate is primarily determined by the paid
media, free media, and the new media.
2. Paid mediapolitical advertisements purchased for a candidates campaign.
3. Fee mediacoverage of a candidates campaign by the news media.
4. New mediaNew technologies, such as the Internet, that blur the line between paid and
free media sources.
A Paid Media
1. Positive adadvertising on behalf of a candidate that stresses the candidates
qualification, family, and issue positions, without reference to the opponent
2. Negative adadvertising on behalf of a candidate that attacks the opponents platform or
character.
3. Contrast adsad that compares the records and proposals of the candidates with a bias
towards the sponsor.
4. Spot adtelevision advertising on behalf of a candidate that is broadcast in sixty, thirty,
or ten second duration.
5. Inoculation adadvertising that attempts to counteract an anticipated attack from the
opposition before the attack is launched.
B Free Media
1. Candidates have little control over what advertisements are run (paid media), they have
little control over how journalists will cover their campaign and convey it to voters.
C The New Media
1.
2.
3.
4.
Candidate are more able to reach voters more quickly than at any other time in history.
One plus of the new media is a candidates ability to employ a rapid response.
The first use of the internet in national campaigning came in 1992.
The newest internet tools are social networking sites like facebook and myspace.
2. The campaign stages media events: activities designed to include brief, clever quotes
called sound bites and staged with appealing backdrops so that they will be covered
on the television news and in the newspaper.
3. Campaign staff and consultants have cultivated a technique termed spinthey put
forward the most favorable possible interpretation for their candidate ( and the most
negative for their opponent) on any circumstance occurring in the campaign, and they
work the press to sell their point of view or at least to ensure that it is included in the
reporters stories.
4. Candidates have found ways to circumvent the news media by appearing on talk
shows such as Oprah and Larry King live, where they have an opportunity to present
their views and answer questions in a less critical forum.
5. Candidate debatesforum in which political candidates face each other to discuss
their platforms, records, and character.
6. The face to face presidential debate did not occur until 1960 and did not become a
regular part of presidential campaigns until 1980s
7. In most cases debates do not alter the course of a presidential election but rather
increase knowledge about the candidates and their respective personalities and issue
positions, especially among voters who had not previously paid attention to the
campaign.
IV Rules of the Game: Campaign Finance
1. Successful campaigns require a great deal of money.
2. Between the Democrats and Republicans nearly 2 billion dollars was raised in the 2008
elections.
A The Road to Reform
1. 1907 the Tillman Act prohibited corporations from making direct contributions to
candidates for public office.
2. The Corrupt Practice Acts (1910, 1911, 1925), Hatch Act (1939), and the Taft-Hartley
Act (1947) all attempted to regulate the manner in which federal candidates finance their
campaigns and to some extent limit the corrupting influence of campaign spending.
3. 1970s Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) and its later amendments established
disclosure requirements, established the Presidential Public Funding Program, which
provides partial public funding for presidential candidates who meet certain criteria, and
created the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent federal agency tasked
with enforcing the nations election laws.
4. March 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA)
5. The Supreme Courts ruling in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003) means
that federal government is now regulated by the federal government under the terms of
the BCRA which supplanted most of the provisions of the Federal Election Campaign
Act.
6. The BCRA outlaws unlimited and unregulated contributions to parties, known as soft
money, and limits the amounts that individuals, interest groups, and political parties can
give to candidates for president, US senator, and US representative.
7. The goal of all limits is the same: to prevent any single group or individual from gaining
too much influence over elected officials, who naturally feel indebted to campaign
contributors.
8. Soft moneyvirtually unregulated money funneled by individuals and political
committees through state and local parties.
Individual Contributions
1. The maximum allowable contribution under federal law for congressional and
presidential elections was 2,300 per election to each candidate in 2007-2008, with
primary and general elections considered separately.
2. Individuals in 2007-2008 were also limited to a total of $108,200 in gifts to all
candidates, political action committees, and parties combined per two year election cycle.
3. These limits will rise at the rate of inflation in subsequent cycles.
Political Action Committee (PAC) Contributions
1. When interest groups such as labor unions, corporations, trade unions, and ideological
issue groups seek to make donations to campaigns, they must do so by establishing
political action committees.
2. Political action committeesfederally mandated, officially registered fund raising
committee that represents interest groups in the political process.
3. Under the current rules a PAC can give no more that $5,000 per candidate per election
and $15,000 each year to each of the units of the national parties.
4. PACS have influence disproportionate to that of individuals because donations from a
small number of PACs make up such a large proportion of campaign war chests.
5. Read pg 512-513.
Political Party Contributions
1. In competitive races, the parties may provide 15-17 percent of their candidates total war
chests.
Member to Candidate Contributions
1. In congress and in state legislatures, well-funded, electorally secure incumbents often
contribute campaign money to their partys needy incumbent and non-incumbent
legislative candidates.
Key Terms:
Campaign consultant, campaign manager, candidate debate, communications director, contrast
ad, direct mailer, finance chair, 501(c) (3) committees, 527 political committees, free media,
general election campaign, get out the vote (GOTV), hard money, inoculation ad, Internet team,
matching funds, media consultant, negative ad, new media, nomination campaign, paid media,
political action committee (PAC), pollster, positive ad, press secretary public funds, soft money
spot ad, voter canvass.