Only one in 600,000 people will ever actually win a congressional nomination. You need a specific type of person who even wants to apply, and of this number, the number of people who can actually win an application is miniscule. Most of the candidates are well educated, well diction and well connected, hard working and smart, but personal characteristics only carry a candidate so far. A successful candidate will have funding, personnel, party support, and a favorable political environment in addition to the personal strengths that they bring to an application.
Steps
Method 1 of 4: Apply to Congress: The Basics
Step 1. Meet federal and state requirements
Candidates for Congress must meet certain conditions required by the federal and state governments. These requirements are found, at their most basic level, in the US Constitution, state constitutions, and federal and state election laws.
- All congressional candidates must be 25 years of age, have had citizenship for 7 years, and live in the state they will represent.
- In some states, candidates are required to collect a specified number of signatures. For example, Florida requires candidates to collect 2,298 signatures.
- In all states, candidates are required to pay a filing fee of some kind. The median state fee to run for the House of Representatives is $ 1,465. This fee ranges from $ 100 in states like Alaska to $ 10,440 in states like Florida. A candidate's political party may be responsible for paying their filing fee.
Step 2. Fill out the important paperwork
Every candidate and his campaign must complete and submit a variety of paperwork to various government authorities. This paperwork resolves the legalities and formalities associated with running for Congress. The most important paperwork includes the following:
- Register with a political party. In case you intend to run without being affiliated with any party in states like Florida, you must submit the proper paperwork and inform the state electoral commission.
- Provide signatures and other required paperwork to the state in which you intend to apply and are representing.
- Report your finances to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) after raising $ 5,000 for your campaign.
- Register with the FEC within 15 days of raising $ 5,000 and running a formal campaign. You should also appoint a treasurer for your campaign.
- Provide financial reports to the FEC each quarter and before the primary and general elections.
Step 3. Collect money
Once you have verified that you meet the basic requirements to run for congress, you need to raise the money necessary to finance your campaign. If you don't raise money, your campaign will never take off and you are likely to have an electoral failure. If you want to raise money, do the following:
- Set up a fundraising committee for your campaign. This committee can be large or small, but it needs to have a designated treasurer.
- Use direct mail to raise funds. For example, create a flyer announcing your candidacy and soliciting donations and mail it to potential supporters.
- Hold fundraisers, such as benefit dinners. For example, you can charge $ 100 per person to dine at a banquet you are attending.
- Raise funds using the internet. Create a website, use social media, and request financial support through emails.
Step 4. Take a stand on the important issues
Before campaigning, you will need to take a position on the issues that are important to the people who live in your congressional district. This is important because your opponents, the press, and the voters will want to know where you stand. Each district has key issues that are extremely important to the voters there, but there are many issues that transcend districts. Some of them are the following:
- Taxes: do you support higher or lower taxes or do you think they should stay the same?
- Foreign policy: do you support intervention in global conflicts?
- Social Issues: Key issues like abortion, gender issues, and the legalization of marijuana may interest your constituents.
- The Environment: Depending on your district, you may need to take a position on climate change and government regulation that protects the environment.
Step 5. Work with other people to manage your campaign
If you do not have an organized campaign, you will not be able to spread the word about your candidacy and, therefore, it is necessary that you dedicate time, effort and money to put together an organization and campaign apparatus with which you can obtain votes and spread your message.
- Establish a central office for your campaign. This is where you, your staff, volunteers, and others will come together to plan and execute your campaign. You may need to rent an office space of some kind.
- Recruit volunteers and hire staff. Depending on your choice and your resources, you may need dozens or even hundreds of volunteers and paid staff. Volunteers, including interns, can help with clerical tasks (for example, copying memos or going door-to-door informing voters of your candidacy).
- Get experts, polling companies, and others who can provide important advice about running for election in your community.
- Choose people to direct, lead and manage your campaign.
Step 6. Actively campaign
Campaigning is perhaps the most important part of running for Congress. However, this requires a great deal of work as you will have to visit different constituencies in your district. Ultimately, active campaigns that can reach many people are the ones most likely to be successful.
- Visit churches, synagogues, and other places of worship.
- Talk to civic groups (for example, Rotary Club, League of Women Voters, Lions Club, etc.).
- Hold town hall meetings where voters can ask you questions about your policy positions.
- Go door to door introducing yourself to the voters.
- Ask your volunteers and staff to put up your campaign posters and buy advertising time on radio and television.
- Convince local political and civic leaders to support your candidacy.
Method 2 of 4: Break through
Step 1. Get an education
There is no specific educational prerequisite to serve in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, but both houses of Congress are involved in writing laws and creating public policy. The actions of these legislators have real-time consequences for large numbers of people, and many of the skills required of legislators are too important to learn on the job.
In 2015, almost all of the 535 members of Congress had a bachelor's degree. Slightly less than half of them had law degrees. About 100 of them had master's degrees and another 20 had doctoral degrees. There is no single educational path to congress, but most congressmen have advanced degrees
Step 2. Meet the minimum federal requirements
There are three constitutionally mandated requirements for serving in the House of Representatives or the Senate, and they are the unique qualifications for the position. They are as follows:
- Age: a representative must be at least 25 years old, while a senator must be at least 30.
- Citizenship: A representative must have been a US citizen for at least 7 years, while a senator must have been a citizen for at least 9 years.
- Residence: both representatives and senators must be residents of the states they represent.
Step 3. Choose the appropriate district (or state)
It doesn't really matter how charismatic, attractive or well funded you are if you are not going to apply in an area where you can be successful. There are some very partisan areas (districts or states), some that lean towards one party or another, and others that can go to either extreme. The party loyalty of an area can be measured by the Party Voters Index (PVI). The PVI of a jurisdiction indicates how much more partisan it is compared to the country as a whole.
- For example, if the US has a party ID of 55% Democratic and 45% Republican but your district voted for the Republican candidate by 55% in the last two cycles, your district PVI is R + 10, which means that your district is 10 points more Republican than the country as a whole.
- In the event that your district or state PVI substantially disagrees with your own political leanings, it is highly unlikely that you will win. If you're trying to run to "make a statement" or "send a message," that's up to you, but running for a seat in Congress is hard work. It strains personal and family relationships, demands countless hours, and can expose you to all kinds of shame, humiliation, and antagonism. Think very well if you want to undertake an unsuccessful mission.
Step 4. Get the support of your party
Political parties offer support with fundraising, efforts to increase voter turnout, volunteers, and a rich network of people who can help you win the nomination. The times when a non-incumbent has run against his own party and won are very small, and the candidate almost certainly had a special quality (eg celebrity) that gave him an advantage.
In case you consider that you have that "special" factor, the party leaders are weak and the people in your area do not like them, and also you are going to apply for a vacant position, you may have a chance to win.. However, it would be a difficult battle anyway
Step 5. Don't run against an incumbent
An incumbent is a person who currently has a position. Whoever is currently occupying the position you are considering applying for is the incumbent. When an incumbent retires, is challenged, is assigned to another position, dies or goes to jail, the position is vacated. This makes it a "vacant position".
It is much easier to win a vacant position than one held by an incumbent. The incumbents are re-elected 85% of the time. When they don't, they are often beaten after their first period
Method 3 of 4: Start your campaign
Step 1. Collect money
In most states (27), you'll have to pay something to even be a legitimate candidate, plus filing fees are just the beginning of a variety of expenses. The average running for the House of Representatives cost more than $ 1.6 million in 2012. When spread over the course of a regular election season, this amounts to about $ 2000 a day. If you're serious about running for Congress, you need to consider fundraising before just about anything else. It's time to get on the phone.
When you start fundraising, turn to your friends and relatives first. While it may make you uncomfortable, this is where any fundraising operation begins, and most of the time, they will be happy for you and willingly donate. Just tell them why you are applying and what kind of effort it takes and ask them to help. You will be surprised what you will achieve. You can say something like "Hey, I'm running for Congress for these reasons … I'll need to start fundraising right away, and I wanted to know if you could contribute $ 100 to get started."
Step 2. Obtain the required signatures
In many states (27), you will need to obtain a certain number of signatures to support your application in order to stand as a candidate. Check here to find out how much you will need.
You can either pay the poll workers to collect signatures for you, or you can depend on yourself and a few volunteers (who are likely from your family) to get them. It is clear that paying vote solicitors costs more, but it is much faster. Whatever you do, aim for 150% more signatures than required by law, as this will help compensate for invalid signatures
Step 3. Pay the state filing fee
After obtaining the necessary signatures (if you live in a state that requires them), register as a candidate with your state's board of elections. Pay the filing fee that you must pay to formally register. These state filing fees vary greatly in cost, but can be substantial in some states.
For example, in Florida, you will have to pay $ 10,440 to run for the House of Representatives or Senate with a major party (although Florida is a separate case in cost)
Step 4. Register with the FEC
After receiving or spending at least $ 5000 for your campaign, you must register as a candidate with the Federal Elections Commission or FEC. The registration process has two steps. First, you file a statement of candidacy and then you submit an organization statement. The first authorizes you to form a main campaign committee (which will technically be the one that collects and spends donations, rather than you doing it), while the second informs the FEC about the relevant details of the committee.
- You must submit the declaration of candidacy within 15 days after reaching the goal of $ 5000. The declaration of candidacy is a simple form that you must fill out, but you will need to know the exact district and position for which you are applying. In case you've never done it before, leave blank for the Number of Federal Elections. After submitting the declaration of candidacy, you must open a bank account on behalf of the committee.
- Submit the declaration of organization within 10 days after submitting the declaration of candidacy. The organizational statement is a bit more complex, as you will need to include your committee's bank account number and appoint a committee treasurer and deputy treasurer. These are the only critical positions on a campaign committee because the committee cannot receive or spend funds without permission from the treasurer.
Step 5. Raise more money
After submitting your top applications, you may need to redouble your fundraising efforts, as most candidates find it very difficult to meet their fundraising goals early in the campaign. After all, you will need to hire staff as soon as possible, and staff like to get paid.
In case you've already reached out to your circle of close friends and family, pass on to your acquaintances, friends of friends, and donors that you have met through the match. It's important that you focus on raising enough money to fund your staff for the next several weeks
Step 6. Hire staff
The candidate is the most important part of a campaign, but the staff as a collective entity may be just as important. Good staff have exalted bad candidates, and bad staff have sunk good candidates. Campaign staff are divided into the following categories: fundraising, communications, data, politics, field, and operations, and are supervised by a campaign manager.
- Those in communications compose messages, write speeches and deal with the media.
- Data collectors monitor voter information (eg, contact history, neighborhood partisanship, and income levels).
- Politicians gather endorsements from important individuals and institutions (for example, union leaders, newspapers, and other candidates) and grapple with party figures, such as local presidents, for replacements, volunteer help, or tips on donors.
- Those in the countryside are in charge of interacting directly with voters by phone, at their doors and in public spaces.
- Operations keep the lights on, paper in the office, pens on the tables, and often balance accounts and issue payroll.
- There is a debate as to which roles are most important. However, for the most part, people should first hire a campaign manager or fundraiser. If the candidate is completely new to electoral politics, the campaign manager should likely be the first person to be hired and the fundraiser the second. If the candidate is not new to electoral politics, you may need to hire the fundraiser before anyone else.
Step 7. Purchase voter management software
Voter management software is a key tool in today's political world. Allow you to isolate households by income, likely nomination, party affiliation, voting frequency, and much more. It also monitors the phone numbers, addresses, and contact history of the voter campaign.
- Both Democrats and Republicans have separate types of software that parties use: NGP VAN for Democrats and Votes Data Center for Republicans. Party nominees and candidates for vacant primary elections can access the databases at a large discount.
- There are other types of software besides the ones exclusively used by parties, and some of them are pretty good, even better than VAN and rVotes (and more expensive). Of these, Aristotle is considered the gold standard.
Method 4 of 4: Run your campaign
Step 1. Define the issues
You must be the one who defines the issues at all times. If you consistently respond to your opponents, this is a quick way to slip into the background and appear smaller than them.
To use a recent example, Donald Trump was a master at this. Regardless of what was in the news during the 2016 cycle (good or bad), it was always about Trump. Sometimes it was Trump attacking, sometimes it was Trump issuing a generic denial of an attack against him, other times it was a discussion about a policy he had proposed. Whatever happened, he kept the conversation focused on him, his character, his temperament, and his solutions
Step 2. Attack without being negative
Very few people can attack their opponents aggressively without becoming obnoxious in the process. This is not to say that it cannot happen. Sometimes someone's behavior is so hateful that justified anger is the only reaction. However, this is rare. It is much safer to attack your opponent through innuendo than to attack him outright. You need to highlight your good qualities while hinting at the bad qualities of your opponent.
For example, imagine that you, a political rookie, are running for a vacant position in the middle of a long-standing corruption scandal in your opponent's party. Your opponent has not been implicated and you would not want to accuse him of something he did not do. However, you could say, "The other party has been in power for a long time, and all this year there has been one scandal after another. Let's leave the old politics behind. We need a new beginning for everyone: in this district, in the presidencies of the committee, in the leadership of the House of Representatives. What my party and I represent is that new beginning… "
Step 3. Contact the media
The media has a greater influence on campaigns than ever before, compared to advertising. The best type of exposure you can get is positive coverage in the news (media you've "earned"). It pays to forge relationships with reporters in your area at an early stage and cultivate them frequently, as this makes it more likely that you will "gain" positive coverage in the media. Give them early access to items, filter something from time to time, and treat them to several rounds of drinks.
Supplement this by appearing at public events, as this gives reporters (who, in theory, should think of you positively) to cover you
Step 4. Cultivate a volunteer base
Having an army of volunteers seems more typical of a presidential campaign than a congressional campaign, since congressional nominations are less expensive and are often not as competitive. However, if a congressional campaign invests in the type of field operation that can recruit a large number of volunteers, this is a powerful statement on its own.
- Your field operation (which, to a large extent, manages and recruits volunteers to engage with voters) is what really drives turnout, so a well-developed field operation can create a kind of atmosphere similar to a movement and an air of inevitability. This energizes your base and depresses your opponents.
- Still, you must use your field operation wisely. Use your voter management software to target the most likely voters first.
Step 5. Pay for the media
After doing all you can to formulate your speech, develop your field operations, and establish good relationships with the media, you should move on to focusing on paid media. Paid media include television and radio advertising, garden signs, direct mail, billboards, and any other type of political advertising.
Today, the effectiveness of all forms of paid media is waning. Television and radio are still more effective than the others, but most studies show that they are actually only effective in the last few weeks before elections. The impact of any other type of paid medium is doubtful
Step 6. Get the votes
When Election Day rolls around, it's time to get voters to go to the polls. The volunteers you have recruited during the campaign season should knock on as many doors and make as many last minute phone calls as possible to remind people to vote.