How can you learn the issues you have to talk about in a campaign?

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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

How can you learn the issues you have to talk about in a campaign?

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

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This series: 10,537 views

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Transcripts

Host: How can you learn the issues, you have to talk about in a campaign?

Ron Faucheux: When you run for office it's not enough just to have opinions on issues. You have to have real knowledge about issues; you have to know something about how the economy works, the tax system works, about how the public education works, about the criminal justice system, about the transportation systems, about foreign policy if you are running for federal office or defense policy. You need to know important things and real things, so you can talk about these issues and out of that knowledge often times comes intelligent positions on these issues. There are lot of sources of research for that. There are organizations at the national level the state and local level that do objective research analysis on different issues, you can certainly benefit from that. There is a whole series of advocacy groups that have positions on issues that you may agree with and you can look at that background and research to get some benefit from it. You can also go to the people in Government themselves and ask them if you are running for the State Legislature and you are trying to develop a position on transportation, then go talk to the people at your local transportation department or if you are trying to develop a position on economic development, go talk to local people on economic development; listen, listen try to get the information, get a variety of people's opinions and also get the data, the facts, the statistics that are necessary and also go to the voters and see what voters think about this and often times, they are just a wealth of information in any constituency on issues if the candidate will spend the time and the effort to reach out, get that information and to listen.

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