How Politicians Can Win In A Tight Race

Both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina are in tight races in California. The following appears on Meg Whitman’s website. It’s a direct marketing idea we created for the 1984 George Deukmajian campaign from the distant past that worked like gangbusters.

Headlined …. “Learning From The Past”, it says:

TO: Meg Whitman

Study the campaign of George Deukmajian in 1984. He narrowly defeated Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley by some 55,000 votes. Bradley went on Good Morning America two days later saying what contributed to the defeat was a very clever California Republican Party mailing that included a personalized absentee ballot.

We were the one who produced that mailing. It was when Tirso del Junco was the Chairman of the California Republican Party. The challenge was they were afraid Bradley would win and they wanted to do something big to counteract the Democratic ground-swell. Our concept was ... voters are basically lazy. No matter how many times you plead with them to vote, they are lazy and don't .... especially in the era of Ronald Reagan who was up for reelection. So, we devised a very strong mailing asking for donations and providing an absentee ballot, personalized with the receiving California Republican's name and all the proper candidates for their district. The mailing was a howling success. Enough donations to more than pay for the mailing plus 65,000 absentee ballots sent in for Deukmejian.

Some new challenges: 1.) California may now have more stringent absentee ballot mailing regulations. In 1984 they had none, because no one ever did this type of mailing before. 2.) You need to do a lot of work on your database. The voting districts are not the same as the zip codes. Mailings are governed by zip codes. In 1984 we mailed 465,000 pieces a month before the election. We got a 14% response. That's unheard of!

Meg needs something spectacular like this for a final blow. Study the California Republican Party files for this mailing. Really, all you need to do is copy the concept. Need to coordinate all of this with Carly Fiorina and her campaign for the senate. You both are in tight races where this concept can be a great benefit.

We are happy to consult both of your campaigns if you need to have expert advice in pulling a mailing like this off.