What is the right timing for running for office?

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Ron Faucheux is one of America's top political and public affairs analysts. Contributor-at-Large for Campaigns & Elections magazine - a nonpartisan publication he previously published and edited - he writes a column on politics and public opinion.

Currently head of government affairs for the American Institute of Architects, Dr. Faucheux is a former state legislator and cabinet secretary. He's the author of the acclaimed book for candidates, Running for Office; editor of The Debate Book, a manual of standards and guidelines for political debates; and editor of Winning Elections, a treasure chest of the best campaign advice ever published.

He's handled 116 candidate and issue campaigns as a media consultant and campaign strategist. He's worked on a wide range of issue advocacy, association, corporate and grassroots lobbying campaigns.

Since the early 1990s, he's made over 350 national television appearances and has anchored his own national cable TV news show. His network appearances have included the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Lou Dobbs Show on CNN, ABC's Nightline, NBC's The Today Show and ABC's Good Morning America.

He's trained thousands of political candidates, issue advocates, corporate executives and association leaders. The campaign "message development" process he created has been used successfully by many campaigns, large and small, around the world.

Dr. Faucheux graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, received a law degree from the LSU Law Center and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of New Orleans.

He teaches courses in Campaign Management and Running For Office at The Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University and at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute.

He was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives at 25 - at the time the legislature's youngest member. He was re-elected twice, once with 84 percent of the vote and once without opposition. He also served as state Secretary of Commerce.

Dr. Faucheux resides in the Washington, D.C. area. His office is located at 1735 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20006-5292

What is the right timing for running for office?

In this video, expert Ron Faucheux shares his tips and techniques on how to run for office.

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Host: What is the right timing for running for office?

Ron Faucheux: Timing is the most difficult move in the political business. If I knew what the right timing was for everybody to make every political decision and to announce every candidacy, put it in the box and sell it. Obviously, you can't do that. There is no magic lines in political campaigning; there is no magic formulas. There are many people who ran for office, who were the right candidates for the right job, but because they ran up the wrong time, they weren't able to get elected. We have seen people run for President of the United States like that, who were very well qualified, who were very popular, but because of the timing of the situation, they were never able to get elected to office. So, it's very difficult to know what the time is and that's one of those things where really the art and the science of politics come together and it really takes the instinct of a candidate to figure out whether it is the right time.

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