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One thing that not too many people realize about campaigns is that once someone declares him or herself a candidate for office, the volume of their incoming mail increases dramatically. All of sudden, they're getting more brochures than a high school senior with 1400 SATs. Much of this mail comes from different interest groups and advocacy organizations that are curious about the candidate's opinion on specific issues. Each group sends surveys or questionnaires with very specific questions about various policy proposals and pieces of legislation.
And that's where the lowly Issues Director and his or her staff come in. On each of the campaigns I worked for, part of my job was to take this myriad of questionnaires, read through them, research the topics that they were asking about and sit with the candidate to bang out answers. I'd provide him with the information that I found. He'd either make me aware of parts of his voting record or give me anything from his private sector career that might be relevant to the issue and we'd draft the answer. After checking to make sure all of the answers are consistent with our message and the candidate's past statements, he'd sign off on them and we'd send them back to the organization that submitted them.
As far as I can remember, this process was repeated 90-100 times on questionnaires that ranged from 1 to about 20 pages. That's not to say that we got to all of them or got them all done before their deadlines but we tried. A candidate's time is very precious, considering that in order to have an effective media campaign, a candidate needs to raise about a thousand dollars EVERY HOUR of every day. We did as many as we possibly could because I felt it was important that a candidate's campaign reflect the responsiveness that he or she would have as an elected official. Afterall, if you can't count on someone to respond to your questions about an issue when he or she is trying to get your vote, what hope do you have when he or she is in office?
That said, it appears that survey season for the candidates for mayor has begun. As you may have seen In the Spotlight on The Next Mayor, each of the likely candidates and candidate Nutter received a survey from The Technical Assistance Center for Emerging Contractors. I've already made arrangements to get copies of the surveys filled out by Michael Nutter, Dwight Evans and Jonathan Saidel so that you can see everything they wrote. According to the press release announcing the results of the survey, Brady, Fattah, Dougherty and Knox failed to return their surveys.
Often, once these surveys are sent back, they get very little attention. A group like TAC may send out a press release. Other groups mail the results to membership lists, use them to determine whether they will endorse a candidate, or post them on their website. I hope to be able to get a hold of or link to as many of these surveys as possible so that we, the voters, can have them all in one place. Likewise, we can use this to gauge the responsiveness of the candidates to simple, straightforward questions about their positions.
One caveat: these surveys should be viewed very skeptically. We're all aware of a candidate's tendency to promise everything, knowing that he or she probably won't follow through on all of it. As you look through them, pay special attention to instances in which the candidate actually says no and the explanation that he gives.
It's easy to tell everyone yes. With a city that continues to have, by most accounts, a high tax burden, a city worker pension fund in crisis, a crumbling infrastructure and several other priorities, we need to learn if the next mayor knows how to say no and still get people behind him.