Tuesday, March 23, 2010

What Does a Republican Precinct Committee Person Do?

The role of Precinct Committee Person (precinct chairman, precinct leader, etc.) is a self-styled creative marketing role for the local Republican Party. You can acquire computerized access to precinct voter lists from your County's Republican Executive Committee (or your District Captain).

You can think up different ways and different reasons to contact local voters. Until you start gathering email addresses, this will mostly be by phone, or door-to-door.

At your leisure, spend 5 - 60 minutes here and there contacting local voters and finding out which political topics and volunteerism they're interested in. You can offer them:

...invitations to conservative/GOP events, meetings, rallies, debates, protests...
...hand out flyers re: such events or issues (e.g. healthcare, TABOR, guns...)....
...hand out pocket Constitutions....
...plug people into political campaigns...
...make introductions between the voters and candidates, legislators or group leaders...
...ask them to march in parades....

etc.

Collect email addresses and take notes on the people you meet. Find an organized way to keep track of these people on your computer. Send them a relevant email every two-four weeks.

One key aspect of this role is that you want to find a way to stay in touch with the people you meet. Otherwise, your first contact with them is almost pointless.

I took down email addresses and notes, and started a newsletter. That was exactly two years ago. I now have 800 names on my mailing list and sort of became famous just by opening my mouth and saying stuff to this audience. Crazy, huh? If you don't know what to say to your new audience, always offer a short variety of information. You can invite them to the next monthly GOP meeting, invite them to a political event, forward something interesting from a political email, and ask for a specific type of volunteer. People will slowly start to respond after each newsletter goes out.

The folks who respond will become your precinct volunteers. They'll help you when it's time to go door-to-door and make phone calls for a specific purpose.

Call later when you're ready for more ideas, and also add me to your brand new political mailing list.

Good luck!

Crista Huff
District 6 Captain
Douglas County Republicans

2 comments:

Ken & Jane Riley said...

Crista's methods work!

My Wife and I found Crista through her email newsletter, attended one of her intro. classes on how to get involved and I am now a Committee Person and my Wife is a Delegate!

We are now planning to start a database of emails for our Precinct and beyond. We've already started walking our precinct and are planning more ways to get our Conservative message out!

Ken and Jane Riley
Precinct 19 Committee Person and Delegate to Assembly

Crista Huff said...

message from Crista: I received a comment that was a bit of a diatribe against a particular candidate, while presenting opinion/misinformation about other candidates as fact. I didn't publish that comment. Please try to stick to facts, and to one topic, so that I can publish your comments.