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How do you develop a campaign message when running for office?

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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 you develop a campaign message when running for office?

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

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    Run for office, Political campaign, Politics, Campaign message

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  • Transcripts

    Host: How do you develop a campaign message?

    Ron Faucheux: Political candidates need to have a campaign message. Political messages are about what you are conveying to voters. Every political campaign has a message, whether if ones want or not. It's a matter of how you put that message together and a political campaign message is really the rationale that a candidate gives to voters as to why they think you should vote for them versus the opposition. So when you put a campaign message together you have to look at the public mood, you have to look at the demographics of the constituency, you have to look at the attitudes of the electorate and what the voters are looking for; you have to look at the qualifications of the various candidates, the personal qualities of the candidates and contrast those. You have to look at the political situation, the people want change, do they want the status quo, do they want stability, do they want congruity, do they want something different, do they want perform, what's the big picture that they are looking at and you also have to look at how you compare and contrast with your opponent in terms of your philosophy and your positions of issues and out of this comes a message statement that positions your candidacy in terms of what you stand for, relative to the political environment and relative to the political opposition and that's a very important part of any modern political campaign to do that in a very disciplined focused way from the very beginning.

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