After winning the general election, it was off to Sacramento for Candidate Training School. We had lots of meetings with professionals in the field. We had professional fundraisers come in and they taught us about the importance of fundraising. Money from within the district shows that people are invested in your community. They also taught us how to message to donors. The next biggest seminar was communication. It is important to find 3 or 4 core issues that your candidate is comfortable with and knows very well and use those as talking points from media. It is also important to find issues that resonate will everyone in the district, regardless of party preference. Next, they told us about vote targeting. It is important to look back at the past three elections to calculate how many people come out to vote. It is a presidential year, so I am expecting more people will come out to vote than they did in the primary, especially with how polarizing the presidential race seems to be. Calculate the votes you need to win by 53% and make a plan to contact those constituents. They also recommended that we have surrogates who can contact constituents on your behalf. Since there are a lot of registered independents in our district, it is important to contact those voters first in order to win the election. We will not win by only targeting Republican homes. The Minority Leader of the Assembly and Senate spoke to us as well, discussing important issues in Sacramento. Additionally, we had many seminars with lobbyist who gave us policy briefings. We focused on mailing pieces and how we should advertise. We talked about budgeting and how to make the most of our resources. Overall, it was a great trip that got me motivated for focusing on the general election.
lsa summer vocation 2016 