The other option is to elect rich people who could finance their own campaigns. Yes, we would be happy to take donations, and Brew and I were working on some fundraisers, but if you can write the big check yourself, or get a few rich friends to help, it becomes vastly easier. Congress was rapidly becoming a millionaire’s club; the Senate had been one for years. Brew was figuring I would need to raise more than the average, because Andy Stewart was a power on the Banking Committee and was going to have a fat war chest courtesy of the banks who liked him. We would need almost a million dollars, he thought.
What does the money get spent on? At the heart of every campaign is a small group of paid professionals, like Brewster and our accountant, Mike Finnegan. Add in a few media consultants and pollsters. Stir in a few lawyers for extra flavor. You have expenses related to a campaign headquarters — ours was in a strip mall in Westminster that Andrea found for us — plus office expenses related to that. Somebody has to pay for flyers and banners and posters and billboards. A huge expense is advertising, specifically television and radio. Realistically we were going to have to match Andy Stewart ad for ad. He had a campaign fund of at least a mill and a half, although he’d probably have to spend at least a third of that fighting off Bill Worley. We even joked about donating to Worley, to force Stewart to spend more!
So, with the official race not starting until the end of February, we spent the time until that point getting ready and preparing. For instance, I started hitting every pot luck dinner and pancake supper in the district! I wasn’t sure how much Stewart was aware of me, and we didn’t get hit by any reporters in the meantime. We assumed that once we started getting volunteers, at least one of them would be a plant from the Stewart campaign. We would return the favor. Need-to-know stuff was held closely by me and the professionals and the long-time party people like the local committee chairmen.
I asked Brewster if I would need to debate Stewart at some point. They are always on the schedule for Presidential campaigns, and even the Vice-Presidential candidates could be expected to debate. What about Congressmen and Senators? Brew laughed. “The last thing in the world Andy Stewart wants to do is stand up next to you and be caught in photos. He’s sixty-three, going on a hundred and sixty-three, and just had a hip replaced. Without makeup and airbrushing, he looks like death warmed over! You, on the other hand, are young and vigorous and studly.”
“I don’t feel that way in the morning, let me tell you. You’ve noticed the cane, right?”
He laughed again. “So what!? You’re a wounded military hero, and he’s a lawyer. He says anything, and you can smack him with the cane.”
“I was injured, not wounded. There’s a difference.”
“Po-tay-toe, po-taht-toe. Nobody cares!”
The Maryland Ninth had a northern boundary of the Pennsylvania line. Below that we had a rough semicircle shape. It encompassed Northern Baltimore County to about Cockeysville, and then went west through the middle of Reisterstown and on south of Westminster, before turning north again around Thurmont. It was mostly northern Baltimore and Carroll Counties, with just enough of Frederick that I needed to campaign out there. There are some changes in the electorate as you traverse the district, as well. Baltimore County is relatively suburban and sophisticated, Carroll County similar though more rural, and northern Frederick County can be very conservative. You go much further west and you end up in the Appalachian counties, and parts of those look like Deliverance is still playing.
Shortly after we filed in January, I began speaking to some of the Republican groups, working my way west. A typical one might be at the local high school. I was introduced as ‘a decorated soldier and local entrepreneur, a man who lives in the district and not one who has moved out of state, and somebody whose children probably go to school with yours. He is nationally known, and you’ve probably read his books and seen him on his appearances on Meet the Press and This Week with David Brinkley.’ I suppose there was a semblance of truth to that. I would then come out on stage, or from wherever they had me stashed, waving and go to the podium. We had blocked out a fairly standard stump speech, which didn’t say much, but had some wonderful sound bites to it.
I would give my speech, and then, in a thoroughly scripted ‘impromptu’ move, would come around the podium with the microphone to take questions from the audience. Depending on what was there, I might lean against the podium or sit on the edge of a table. Then, towards the end, I asked everybody for help. I couldn’t do this alone, I needed their help, I needed their money, I needed their support, I needed their time. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…
When the audience was first collecting in the room, everybody was asked to sign in and give their name and address. The volunteer sheets did the same. Brewster said we could expect to follow an 80/20 rule with the volunteers; out of every 100 people who signed up to help, 80 would duck out and 20 would help. Still, you always got their names and numbers. We could call them for donations and sell or give their names to various Republican fundraising outfits, and anybody who helped would go into a special category to be called on during re-elections.
There were some basics that had to be learned and obeyed. Fortunately I knew several of them already, from my experience as a salesman on my first go. Every donor got a thank you, from a form letter up to a handwritten note. Big donors got the note plus a phone call. If they volunteered to help, I was to personally call each one and ask how and when they could help. If I couldn’t reach them, I needed to leave a message. Brewster had a computer system installed in campaign headquarters with some rudimentary software to follow this stuff, and he gave me a daily phone list of people to call and thank/beg/plead/cajole.
I wondered what Larry Ellison would think if I contracted Oracle to develop the database software needed to track donors and volunteers, and automate communications. Was I thinking ahead of the curve or behind it? I had never paid attention to that in the past. It would take too long to help me now, but in the future? Who knew? We would just have to survive this election first.
Brewster gave me a rundown on what the volunteers would actually be doing. He said, “Everybody thinks they are in charge of the bee hive. Some of them are real worker bees. They will make signs, wave signs, put signs up, make phone calls, drive people to the polls, trail Stewart’s appearances with tape recorders, you name it… You never get enough worker bees.”
“Worker bees — got it!” I replied.
“The next best category is the queen bees. These guys actually have some management chops to them. They can figure out where to put signs, how to run a phone tree, supervise the worker bees. They can also work with the worker bees without pissing them off. Very useful,” he continued.
“Queen bees,” I said, nodding.
“The worst category is the drones. They volunteer for whatever damn reason, maybe just to say they worked on a campaign, but they don’t actually work, and they occasionally piss off the people that do.”
“So why keep them?” I asked.