Posted on 08/08/2020 7:08:11 AM PDT by The Houston Courant
With under 70 days until early voting begins for the upcoming general election, now is the time to get to work.
Elections can be wonor lostbased on how many active volunteers hit the streets, knock on doors, and talk to voters one-on-one about a candidate.
Of course, in this age of technology, campaigns use many methods to get in touch with voters. A well-funded campaign may run ads on TV, radio, and social media, in addition to flooding the district with mailers. But while these advertisements can have a major impact in a race, they can still be overcome by personal conversations.
Voters respond to human interaction. They want to hear your personal experiences with the candidate youre promoting. You make an impact when you share from your heart why you care about this election and why youre voting for a specific candidate.
Volunteers who make this personal contact with voters are the ones who turn a candidate from a name on a ballot into a living, breathing human with a compelling storyoften compelling enough to make the voter excited about turning out to vote for him or her.
Shelby Slawson is a candidate who understood this principle. She knew that her campaign to oust a long-time incumbent State Representative depended on her making contact with voters and sharing her story. So, she started serious campaigning nearly a year before her primary election.
Shelby identified voters who were likely to vote in the Republican primary in all eight counties of her district. And she took her job seriously: she and her team of dedicated volunteers knocked on doors and talked to as many as they possibly could, sharing why she was different and why she was the best choice to represent the districts conservative values.
The hard work paid off. In a 3-way primary, she easily made it to the run-off, where she won against the incumbent in a landslide.
In a primary election, where the voter pool is very small and the work can begin a year in advance, its entirely possible for a hard-working candidate and a small team of volunteers to knock on every single door of likely voters.
But in a general election, everything is different.
The voter pool grows exponentially because the parties are no longer separated, and a much larger percentage of voters show up to vote in a general election.
In addition, there is far less time to campaign. The primary run-off election was delayed until July 14, and early voting for the general election has been moved forward to October 13. This means that candidates are now inside of a very short three-month window after the primary run-off to get their voters to the polls for early voting.
For all these reasons, volunteers are critical, and time is of the essence.
But heres the unsettling thing about volunteering for an election: you never know if it will be enough. There are times you can be sure you have it in the bag but end up behind by just a few points. At other times, you may think theres no chance, but actually pull out a victory.
No matter how good your polling is, its impossible to know ahead of time exactly how many doors you need to knock on or exactly how many hours you have to work in order to secure an election. In a close electionwhich many of them will be in Novemberwe wont know if we did enough until the results come in. We can only give it all we have.
The thought of the consequences should inspire us to give everything we can.
On November 4th, do we want to wake up to find that we, the great state of Texas, failed to re-elect Gun Owners Champion Chip Roy to Congress and that we instead sent Wendy Davis, the darling of Moms Demand Action, to represent Congressional District 21?
Or do we want to see, as election returns come in, that Constitutional Carry champion Jonathan Sticklands seat did not go to his hand-picked gun owners choice successor, GOA-endorsed candidate Jeff Casonand instead went to the candidate who staunchly opposes Constitutional Carry?
Those election results could have terrible consequences for gun owners. Yet those are two of the many races that are so close they could go either way.
People like you who step up to help could be the ones who determine the outcome in November.
Its not just the politically-involved who need to show up. Normal, everyday Texans who have plenty of other things to do, who really dont want to get out in the heat, and whose Saturdays are already fullthose are the ones who have the ability to turn the tide in these races and put gun rights champions in office.
Of course, sending gun owners choice candidates to the Congress or to the Texas Legislature is not a silver bullet to restoring or protecting our gun rights. But its a necessary beginning. It gives us representatives with whom we can work in January during the legislative sessioninstead of handing Bloomberg a rubber stamp for all his gun control dreams.
If we dont want them to Virginia our Texas, we must take this election seriously. If we care about our gun rights, the time to work is now.
Join the GOA Texas Facebook group to stay up to date on blockwalks, meet-and-greets with candidates, and other election events for Gun Owners Champion candidates.
The article is correct. This kind of canvassing, volunteering is all the more important in the non-red, purple state of Texas.
I still cant believe that states have such early voting like North Carolina September 4th. And yet we will be twittering our thumbs 5 days from the election waiting on North Carolina and 49 other states counting votes. I think if they can start early voting by mail on September 4th then the mailing deadline to get all ballots mailed in should be October 20th. Thats plenty of time. And if you miss it, then get in line to vote. Allowing for Mailing them the day of the election is insane!!!!
Even though the two biggest cities and some of the border areas are blue, Texas is still very red. Texas is a big state and the larger cities, Austin, and some small border towns are still greatly outnumbered by the rest of us. If we can keep the commies from coming here from California we can stay red.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.