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The Message Box: How to Accent Your Strengths—and Your Opponent’s Weaknesses to Frame Your Race
One way to persuade voters to vote for you is to accent your positives while highlighting the negatives of your opponent. This is an necessary step you must do early in the campaign and be an integral part of your campaign. Neglect to do this and it will be done to you and you will be on the defensive and reacting all the time.
Generally, those who can successfully frame the race and frame the opponent wins the race.
You want to differentiate yourself from your opponent as early as possible. A polar opposite. This polar opposite provides a stark contrast, which, if portrayed properly, provides voters a clear, concise choice. Because that’s what voters need: a choice that makes it easy for them to decide. Make sure you provide that choice. You want to find the one position in the voters’ minds that highlight what you are and what you want to do and hold that position. At the same time, make the voters hold a less than desirable position of your opponent.
This article looks at the message box and how it can help you find your strengths and weaknesses, and that of your opponent. From there it’s easy to position yourself, the issues, and the race.
Step 1 – Draw a box with four sections.
Label the upper left box “My Strengths”, the upper right “My Weaknesses”, the lower left “Opponent’s Strengths”, and the lower right “Opponent’s Weaknesses”.
Step 2 – Cataloging Your Strengths and Weaknesses.
Pull together your trusted campaign cabinet and have a very frank discussion about yourself. Write down all of your strengths and weaknesses as they come to you. Don’t edit at this point. Merely write down everything, good or bad. This is the time to write down your community volunteerism, support of the Boy Scouts, and any negatives.
Negatives have a way of finding themselves into the public spotlight once you announce your candidacy. That’s what it’s best to perform this exercise and at least be prepared for its coming.
These negatives can include a bankruptcy, a nasty divorce due to infidelity, support of an unpopular law, a fib on your resume, late taxes, problems paying bills, etc. Absolutely anything that can find its way into the public and be used against you in a whisper campaign or a full frontal assault. Write them all down.
These are the weaknesses that your opponent will likely use against you. This step helps you prepare for it.
Step 3 – Cataloging Your Opponent’s Strengths and Weaknesses
Do the same with your opponent. Write down anything that is public record, good or bad. The good points you write down are what he will or will likely say about himself. However, don’t go beyond the opponent to the opponent’s family. This is unethical, irrelevant, and will backfire. Concentrate on the opponent and the opponent only. Document that he supported a partial-birth abortion law when constituents in your district staunchly opposed it, that he is a supporter of gun rights, he has a tax lien on his property, that there is currently an employee-employer dispute resulting in a lawsuit, etc. These negative points are the points you want to stress.
Don’t confuse the “negative points” with negative politics or mudslinging. If what you find is accurate, documented, and relevant, it is simply comparative and provided voters the information they need to make a decision.
Again, don’t edit yourself. Write them down as they come to you and your assembled staff.
Step 4 – Edit Based on How the Issue Will or Could Resonate with Voters – Use Only Salient Issues
Now, here’s the hard part. You must edit, edit, edit the list down to just those items that you believe will or could resonate with voters and make them draw a distinction between you and your opponent. It must also compliment your overall campaign theme and message.
For example, it your campaign message is business development in a downtown area, your list of issue points to businesses may be:
- Lower property taxes for the first few years for new businesses
- Designation of enterprise zones
- Working with state legislators to boost education spending for worker training
To potential voters, it may be:
- Better jobs with better pay and benefits
- Increased county or municipal services because the overall tax base is enlarged
- Development of a brown-field or a strip of closed store fronts that blight a downtown area
Other examples include your support of gun rights and your opponent’s opposition to gun rights when 80% of potential voters support gun rights. Your opponent could have supported the sewer plant in the middle of a neighborhood, while this move was extremely unpopular.
But make sure that whatever you narrow the list down does, in fact, resonate with voters and is relevant to your race. If it doesn’t, your message will fall on deaf ears and you will get lost in the everyday clutter voters hear and see.
For example, the sewer plant from the above example. It’s relevant. It’s recent. And it might now be too late to do something about it. Voters are still furious. It resonates. Now hang that sewer around your opponent’s neck.
Step 5 – Position the Race
From here, you’ll see how you need to position the race. You want to put yourself in the upper left box, while placing your opponent in the lower right box. That way you are in control of the race and your opponent is on the defensive, explaining himself. And the more he explains himself, the less time he has to communicate his message.
But, as I mentioned: if you don’t do this, it will be done to you.
From this, you’ll know that when you talk to voters that you need to mention that you support gun rights and that your opponent put the sewer plant in the middle of voters’ neighborhood.
The message box reinforces your overall campaign theme and message and shows what you need to emphasize for yourself and what you need to emphasize for your opponent to draw a clear distinction for voters. Do this early on and you will be well on your way to framing the race, issues, and debate. And maybe on your way to victory.
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