Required Reading (why this is the war college)
I've had people ask me before - If I want to run for office, what's good reference material out there to teach me how to campaign or how to run a campaign. That's a tough one. Anything you read is typically not geared towards a state like South Dakota.
Dr. Alan Clem's book The making of Congressmen: Seven campaigns of 1974 is worth reading, as are any of his other books about South Dakota. (Sometimes they get a little dry, but this is SD political history and analysis, not Tom Clancy). While I don't always agree with Dr. Clem (I thought his comments here were really off-base and more than just a little snarky), his book about the '74 elections remains one of the premiere references of South Dakota politics.
I was working for the state party when I met Diane Malavolti, who worked at Minnehaha County as thier executive secretary. I was later the Pennington Co Exec. Dir., while she was an Exec. Sec. - we never could figure out the difference in positions for one to be a secretary, and one a director, but that's a post for another time. Nowadays, Diane is one of those political figures in the background who does most of her work out of state. On one occasion, Diane recommended to me Sun Tzu's the Art of War as required reading for anyone working in politics. In reading it, many of it's lessons can be adapted to politics, because instead of a war of bullets, politics are really the battlefield of ideas and ideology.
Much of the Art of War is about knowing your enemy. I find that many times in modern South Dakota political campaigns, that's one area that people tend to ignore. Now, I'm not lumping the federal campaigns into this, but the constitutional offices and lower offices really have a tendency to not do thier homework. But again, that's a post for another day.
What else would I recommend? The Campaign Manager by Catherine Shaw is an excellent beginners reference for structuring a campaign and doing the basics. If you follow this book's recommendations, you'll find that you are doing more background and prep work than 75% of the political campaigns run in this state. South Dakota campaigns are notorious for being run by the seat of the candidate's pants. Once someone is an incumbent, you can coast for a while, but I've also seen long time incumbents decimated at the polls by some new kid on the block because they thought "everyone knew them."
Why these references, when there's many other things out there? These references are mainly about 2 things - strategy and organization, which tend to be over looked. If you've got those bases covered, you're ahead of the game as you travel down the campaign trail.
Dr. Alan Clem's book The making of Congressmen: Seven campaigns of 1974 is worth reading, as are any of his other books about South Dakota. (Sometimes they get a little dry, but this is SD political history and analysis, not Tom Clancy). While I don't always agree with Dr. Clem (I thought his comments here were really off-base and more than just a little snarky), his book about the '74 elections remains one of the premiere references of South Dakota politics.
I was working for the state party when I met Diane Malavolti, who worked at Minnehaha County as thier executive secretary. I was later the Pennington Co Exec. Dir., while she was an Exec. Sec. - we never could figure out the difference in positions for one to be a secretary, and one a director, but that's a post for another time. Nowadays, Diane is one of those political figures in the background who does most of her work out of state. On one occasion, Diane recommended to me Sun Tzu's the Art of War as required reading for anyone working in politics. In reading it, many of it's lessons can be adapted to politics, because instead of a war of bullets, politics are really the battlefield of ideas and ideology.
Much of the Art of War is about knowing your enemy. I find that many times in modern South Dakota political campaigns, that's one area that people tend to ignore. Now, I'm not lumping the federal campaigns into this, but the constitutional offices and lower offices really have a tendency to not do thier homework. But again, that's a post for another day.
What else would I recommend? The Campaign Manager by Catherine Shaw is an excellent beginners reference for structuring a campaign and doing the basics. If you follow this book's recommendations, you'll find that you are doing more background and prep work than 75% of the political campaigns run in this state. South Dakota campaigns are notorious for being run by the seat of the candidate's pants. Once someone is an incumbent, you can coast for a while, but I've also seen long time incumbents decimated at the polls by some new kid on the block because they thought "everyone knew them."
Why these references, when there's many other things out there? These references are mainly about 2 things - strategy and organization, which tend to be over looked. If you've got those bases covered, you're ahead of the game as you travel down the campaign trail.
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