Cogitans' campaign thread

[cogitans]

Well I owe some people here to make this thread about my whereabouts for the short time I were MIA in terms of PP.O.

The short story is that I have been campaigning for our national election that was held here in Denmark last Tuesday the 13th. As it has been a week now, I’m ready to write a little about what transpired for those 3 weeks in my life.
If you don’t really care, just stop reading here. But if you do want to get a look at a local election campaign in Denmark from the inside, please continue.

I should also put a disclaimer that I do not consider this a political thread in the sense that I will talk about what I have been doing, and about running a campaign, but will keep it clean of political statements.

*****************

Background
In Denmark the Prime Minister can call for a general election at any time he pleases, with the only restriction that one has to be held at least every 4 years.
Our Prime Minister did so Wednesday October 24th, with the minimum of 3 weeks for the campaign. 9 parties were to compete for in 10 regional constituencies for 175 seats in parliament (+2 elected at Faroe Islands, and 2 in Greenland). Those elected will then form the government coalition afterwards.

The Beginning
At the time I heard the news, I were sitting at home, with no confirmed attachment to any candidate. I should not that I have been member of a political party for many years, and have been a member of more than one election campaign before.

I have had a few candidates enquire about what I would do in case of election being called earlier this year, but I have held all off, because I’m still hunting for a job, and could be about to move.

But as the Prime Minister dropped the bomb, and I were still unemployed, I pondered for a few hours, then picked up the phone and made a call to a young female candidate who has her local constituency in a suburb of the town I live in. She were one of the once that had asked me earlier, and I felt that when I could make my own choice about what candidate to run for, I would take that opportunity.

She was very happy to hear from me, and I felt right away that I had made the right choice. Some of the other candidates had more good people I knew running for them here in the big city, but she were standing more on her own, with only the party members in her local area, so I felt that my work would be appreciate the most in her campaign. Most of these other people were older or had jobs to attend to, so the day to day help I could provide would be much needed.

The First Week – Getting Things Started
As I came in so late in the campaign, a lot of things were already up in the air, and I just had to grab the balls I could and make the best of them.

There were many things that had to be taken care of right away. Mainly getting a lot of debate meetings set up. My candidate had a set panel with a group of other young candidates from other parties. They had sent out letters offering a debate, mainly to educational facilities. My first order of business, were therefore to call some of these places, and follow up on these, and trying to put together a calendar.

That meant that the very next thing I had to do were to set up a layout for a calendar, and find out how the easiest way were for me to keep that updated for the coming weeks, and distributing copies of it to people who needed to know what were going on at all times.

Also I had to get an overlook over our budget, our materials and our advertisements. The budget was maintained by a local guy, and we also talked about fundraising.
As for materials to be handed out (roses, balloons, candy, pamphlets, flyers, etc.), much of it was already in the making. But we did have to think about constructing texts for some of the flyers that we printed along the way.
As our budget was not final, we didn’t know how much we had for adds, but we did start to construct some of the print adds we wanted, and put someone in charge of ordering them.

Week Two – The Long Haul
Once you get into the second week you get a lot of the early stress away, and you can start focusing on the actual elements of the campaign.

I still had to keep scheduling debates and other activities and maintain the calendar for the remainder of campaign.

Other than that the new focus was two things. No. 1 I had to help my candidate evaluate her performance in the debates with others, and the second to get to focus on media.

We got some good press early on. We were lucky enough to benefit from getting our former Prime Minister to back our campaign. When we found out he would be in our area I convinced his secretary to clear a few hours of his schedule to go on campaign with us. That gave us some TV and written press.

[img width=450 height=337]http://www.sitecenter.dk/morellen/nss-folder/scrapbog/Nyrup.jpg[/img]

Next we benefited from my candidate being our party’s spokesperson on agricultural production. So we got media on launching a new policy on animal welfare.
Here is a picture from when we visited a farm to promote the proposal.

[img width=450 height=337]http://www.sitecenter.dk/morellen/nss-folder/scrapbog/PA315649.JPG[/img]

Finally we got lucky, even though it happened on a sad background, as some scandal hit with some pig farms suffering from neglect hit the press. We got a lot of attention on criticizing the secretary in charge of the area.

Week 3 – Keeping the Final Momentum
As we hit the final week it were a lot like week two, except that the calendar were getting final. I had to turn down a lot of things the closer we got to the end, and the trick really is to not tell your candidate everything. It will only drive her focus away from being present at her public events.

As we still tried to get in the media whenever we could, with the things we had planed, what really is the main thing is to try and keep momentum up. I could tell that my candidate were getting still more tired towards the end, and you just have to try keep her going. Get her to smile once in a while, make sure you take as much off her hands as possible to give her time for sleep, and remind her to get some food.
The candidates, who die down here, are the ones that end up not making the cut.

The End – Getting the Results
As we got to the Election Day the campaign were over. I had to be at one of the polling stations as an appointed observer of the election. So after we got the polls closed, and got our local result counted were I raced down to our local election party for my Party.

Unfortunately there was not much to celebrate. Much as expected our side lost again, and our Prime Minister had ensured another term in office. So pissed as I was I decided to drink my brains out with a lot of other young campaigners.

I got home around 6am and slept for a few hours. When I got up I jumped in the shower and went downtown to have lunch with my candidate. We had set up a radio interview in the afternoon, so I followed her out there, where we got some coffee and did an interview about still not being sure about the personal results. We knew our Party would get 7 seats in our region, but as the personal results were not in know one knew who of 11 candidates would occupy those seats.

Next stop were the suburb of her local constituency where we met with the local Party members, and some of her family members. We waited for the result there, but they kept pushing back the deadline. Finally after sitting there a few hours, we got the word that my candidate got in, with 3rd most votes among our Party candidates.

So that day we did get to celebrate a little, and we all got out for dinner.

Afterwards in the past week I have only tried to consume the result as a whole. I started by sleeping for about 24+ hours, and have now worked myself into a normal routine again.

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I hope you got a little out of my little campaign story. I’m sure I left some things out here and there, so if you’re interested don’t hesitate to ask questions.

[COJOMAY]

Are you in any of the pics?

[Marrdro]

Thanks for the update my friend.


Very interesting.

By the way, IMHO, you were missed by a few on here.
;D

[BadlandsVikings]

Who's the chick with the calf?

[COJOMAY]

"BadlandsViking" wrote:

Who's the chick with the calf?

I think that's the candidate. Can you blaming him now for working her campaign?

[cogitans]

"COJOMAY" wrote:

Are you in any of the pics?

No I'm not.

The pictures we took were of the candidate

In the first one it's our former Prime Minister along with my candidate. And a couple of the young kids who tagged along.

The second one is in fact me, no wait that is a calf.

[cogitans]

"COJOMAY" wrote:

"BadlandsViking" wrote:

Who's the chick with the calf?

I think that's the candidate. Can you blaming him now for working her campaign?

You would be right, that is the candidate I worked for.

[Marrdro]

"cogitans" wrote:

"COJOMAY" wrote:

"BadlandsViking" wrote:

Who's the chick with the calf?

I think that's the candidate. Can you blaming him now for working her campaign?

You would be right, that is the candidate I worked for.

Well, silly me, I left the whole "she is hot" part out of my post going for the "we missed you crap".

Ok, Old Marrdro.......She is hot, did you do her, if not are you gonna do her, if not why
;D

[marstc09]

I would do her!

[NodakPaul]

Very cool to hear that you are involved in your government cogs.
Here in the US it kills me that we cant even get 50% of the nation to vote regularly, much less get involved.