Why do you want to run for ________? What issues concern you the most? How are you qualified? What are the specific day to day duties of the position? For a collegial position, how often have you been to public meetings of the __________?
How do you assess the performance of the current incumbent? What would you do differently? Be prepared to ask detailed questions and to discuss taxes, budget, spending, and legal and political issues involving the position up for election.
How have you prepared to run for that office? Can you pass a detailed background check? What issues and negative information would a background check find?
Have you ever run for office before? How would you finance your campaign, and what budget do you have? Do you have a wide circle of friends and family ready to support your campaign? What experience do you have as a public speaker?
How do you assess other candidates for the position? How do you plan to defeat them?
Can you live on the salary for the position? Can you bear the loss of time and income that running for public office imposes? Do your immediate family support your desire to run for office and are they prepared to make sacrifices and accept burdens to do so? Have you analyzed the political demographics of the district you want to run in? Do you have a written out campaign plan?
Those kinds of questions sort out the wishers and wannabes from the serious candidates. They also identify weaknesses that need to be remedied in even the best candidates.
Yet is the candidate someone you actually want to elect? Here is how to find out.
Ask for examples in detail of times when they took a stand for or against something or someone based on principle in spite of the time and effort required and risks to job, career, or reputation?
Did you win or lose, and how and why? What did you learn from such experiences?
What made you into a conservative and a populist? Look for connections between personal events and circumstances and the ideas that animate conservatism and populism. Ask for details of books and articles read and any mentors who influenced them along the way.
The questioner should press for names, contact information, and other details in order to be able to verify what you are told. Most people will stumble badly on this, with even practiced liars unable to contrive supposed examples.
Your response is excellent. My hope is to focus on the issue of their oath of office, what it means, and how they aim to uphold it. Fair game are questions that cull out the purpose and scope of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and any compuctions they may have regarding the latter.
Your post is something out of the already a political player handbook. I don’t want any of that. I prefer the average American, not a lawyer type, a normal hard working person or business owner. I want there to be some skeletons in the closet. As people grow up and learn the hard lessons of life and the consequences of those lessons it builds character and most will garner a constructive approach to problems.
The trouble with our society is that Noone will vote into office anyone who has any bad past. The opponent would exploit that to the hilt and they’d have zero chance.
How about do they love this Country...the USA?