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How to Run for Office: Things to Consider

How do I know if I can win?

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Ron Faucheux

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

How do I know if I can win?

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

This expert: 34,809 views

This series: 17,412 views

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Host: How do I know if I can win?

Ron Faucheux: Making the realistic assessment as to whether or not you can win an election is a very important part of the decision to run. Running for office is very difficult. You have to ask friends and supporters for a lot of help, for a lot of efforts, for a lot of resources for running and to ask them to do all that without having an opportunity to run a real race, to make an important statement and they have an opportunity to win an election is something that is really very selfish. So you need to assess in a very objective way whether you could win. Obviously, you can look at former election and the data and election results to get some sense of it. The most common things that political candidates do is they take polls to determine what the political opportunities are; what the right messages are; what the public mood is; what are the pluses and minuses of the possible candidates for each office; whether or not you have the resources to wage your campaign; whether you have got the time, you can make the effort, whether it's the right office at the right time. So there are lot of factors that go into making a decision whether or not you are elecatable and even after you do that you never know for sure.

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