AP Government Name:
Mr. Grossman Partners:
Build Your Own Campaign Project
The goal of this project is to provide you and your campaign team with a campaign trail experience.
Imagine you are a campaign manager. Your client (the candidate or group you work for) is sponsoring a campaign to encourage legislative action on their particular issue. For example, your client may work for the casino lobby to legalize of gambling, or the Sierra Club to ensure the passage of a clean energy bill, or Defenders of Wildlife to stop building a highway. Your team will be assigned an issue and a district to run in. For example, you could be assigned to run a campaign in Montgomery County that enables 16 year olds to vote in local elections. You will be in charge of determining your interest group’s strategy, developing their message, raising money and coordinating their campaign. In order to do so you must develop a campaign management plan (similar to a business plan). You will all be running a campaign against an incumbent politician.
There are many different aspects of the campaign management plan you must develop. These different aspects will be completed through the course of Unit 3. The complete product is due ______. Remember to give yourself enough time to do a thorough job. Don’t wait until the last minute!!!
You will need to complete the following tasks for your campaign management plan:
Your group will be assigned one of the following issues:
· Outlaw the legalization of gambling in the state of Maryland.
· Legalize same sex marriage in the state of California.
· Legalize medical marijuana in the state of Maryland.
· Lower the voting age for Montgomery County elections to 16.
· Cut property and sales taxes in the state of Maryland.
· Prevent the construction of the Inter-County Connector in Montgomery County.
· Stop all development projects in Montgomery County’s Agricultural zone.
· Prevent global warming/ increased carbon emissions in the state of Maryland.
· Support the construction of the purple line in Montgomery County.
· Outlaw ownership of semi-automatic weapons in the state of Maryland.
· Legalize the use of trans-fats by restaurants in Montgomery County.
· Outlaw Hummers in the state of Maryland or the entire US if required.
· Change the Maryland state bird from the Baltimore Oriole to the crow.
· Change the Maryland state drink to apple cider from milk.
· Create a tax on sodas and sugary drinks in the state of Maryland to reduce consumption and fund more nutritious school lunches.
I. The Issue: (20 points) Describe your candidate in 2-3 paragraphs:
a. Describe your issue in depth. What do you hope to change? Why is change necessary?
b. Who is for your issue and who is against it?
c. Who has the power to make the decision that that will enable you to accomplish the change you seek? Will you appeal directly to voters, elected officials, petition the courts, etc?
II. The Constituency (20 points) (Describe the people and the area where your candidate will be running in 1-2 paragraphs that include graphs and statistics):
a. Provide demographic information about the area your candidate is running in:
Race
Religion
Average income
Major industries and employers
Average income of voters
Rural v. Urban
Age
Other key demographic information you must consider when creating your ‘message’ when you run for office.
b. Identify
Likely and unlikely voters
Number of registered voters
Number of super voters
Number of Democrats and Republicans in the 2008 and 2004 Presidential; and 2006 and 2002 Gubernatorial elections.
Determine how many votes your candidate will need to win.
c. Describe powerful interest groups, swing voters and party line voters and determine what demographic groups you must win over in order to capture the election.
III. The Message (40 points):
a. Create a slogan, list of 3-4 issue statements explaining why your issue is important and why the government needs to act to correct an on-going problem.
b. Record a 45 second-1 minute campaign spot (video), radio advertisement or web-site based on the information you’ve collected and researched in order to persuade the electorate.
Consider the following factors when creating your TV spot:
· Determine what issues your candidate will run-on (i.e. pro-choice, no new taxes, anti-terrorism, pro-environment). Make sure that your message aligns to some degree with the voters you intend to persuade
· Determine who the key-groups are who your group needs to win over (i.e. soccer moms, industrial park dads, security moms, NASCAR dads, high school drop outs, etc.). Be sure your advertising appeals to them.
IV. Fundraising (20 points) Political campaigns cost money. (Explain how you intend to raise money to get your message across in 1-2 paragraphs):
a) Estimate how much money you need to raise on the budget sheet.
b) Explain your strategy for raising money (i.e. calling and begging family and friends for cash, approaching big businesses and Political Action Committees for money, marrying rich, etc. Which interest groups do you intend to solicit for political contributions (one or two paragraphs).
c) Briefly (one or two paragraphs) describe how you will spend the funds (i.e. commercials, radio spots, staff, billboards, etc (be creative).
V. The Winning Strategy (20 points) (In 2 or 3 paragraphs explain why your group will be successful in pushing for change)
a) Based on your study of demographics and your candidate’s positions and connections, funding, competition, etc., explain how your group will accomplish their mission.
b) Describe your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses and explain how you will defeat the competition
VI. Each group must write a brief statement describing what each member of your group contributed
Resources:
The internet will be your best resource for this project. Make sure to site the different internet sites you use in your annotated bibliography. Some websites you might want to check out include:
Maryland Board of Elections http://www.elections.state.md.us/
Montgomery County Board of Elections http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/eletmpl.asp?url=/content/elections/2008PresidentialGeneral/Results.asp
Maryland Political Blog http://www.politickermd.com/tags/maryland-our-future
Maryland Senate Members- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Maryland_State_Senate
CNN- http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/map/polling
Census Information- http://factfinder.census.gov/java_prod/dads.ui.homePage.HomePage
Candidate Issues- http://www.votesmart.org/index.htm
Campaign Finance- http://www.fec.gov
C-SPAN- www.c-span.org
The Democracy Project- http://pbs.org/democracy
League of Women Voters- http://www.lwv.org
The Polling Report- http://www.pollingreport.com
Gallup Organization’s Politics & Election Page- www.gallup.com/poll/faq.asp
Democrat National Committee- http://www.democrats.org/
Republican National Committee- www.rnc.org
Green Party- http://www.gp.org/
Libertarian Party- http://www.lp.org/
US Census- http://www.census.gov
www.mydd.com/politics/- everything imaginable about politics
Project Vote Smart-http: http://projectvote.org/
Real Clear Politics- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/