On February 24, 1836, Colonel William Travis sent a call addressed to “The People of Texas and All Americans in the World.” The call was for help in a major struggle.
Consider this a call for help to the Republicans of Georgia for the runoff special election in House District 23, Cherokee County. The runoff is between Bill Fincher, the Republican, and a democrat.
Now you may wonder why Cherokee County, a strong Republican county, needs help. After all, Donald Trump carried Cherokee County with nearly 70% of the vote.
The painful truth is that all over the country, Democrats are winning these special elections. It is not that the general population has turned against the Republicans.
The simple answer is that the Democrats got their voters to the polls while Republicans did not bother to go vote. I suppose there was a general feeling that someone else would go vote and the Republicans would win as they always did in the past. Therein lies the problem – someone else.
The problem is not that Republicans did not like their candidates, the problem is that Republicans did not vote for their candidates while Democrats turned out the vote.
I would not rank this call for help for Cherokee county at the same level as the call for help with Texas independence. It is a call for help though.
How can you help? I’m not asking for money. I’m asking if you would be willing to make a few friendly telephone calls to ask Republicans to go vote early. It’s that simple.
Here is what I know does not work. Posting and liking social media posts begging people to go vote does not work. It may make you feel better but it does not move the needle.
A personal contact, with a specific ask, “Would you go vote on the first day of early voting?” will be more likely to move someone to go vote than anything else.
There was one marching order for people who made phone calls:
“Your job is not to convince people to vote for our candidates. Your job is to talk to people who would be voting for our candidate and convince them to go vote.”
If you are interested and willing to learn more about how you can help, then just reply to this e-mail and I’ll be glad to fill you in.
This isn’t 1836 and I’m not William Travis, but I am tired of Republicans giving up ground to Democrats when we do not have to. Consider yourself called.
“Your job is not to convince people to vote for Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary. Your job is to identify people who will vote for Joe Joe and George and convince them to go vote.”
Those were the marching orders for more than 20 volunteers who signed up to help Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary win an election against overwhelming odds.
The Playing Field – Cordele Demographics
Cordele is the Watermelon capital of the world and the Gateway to South Georgia. The demographics for the city are 72% black, 23% white, with a small percentage of hispanics and other ethnic groups.
The City Commission consists of one Commissioner elected at large and four Commissioners elected from four wards. One ward is majority white. The other three are majority black. Prior to this election, four of the commissioners were black and one was white.
Eight years ago, the city elected the first black Chairman of the City Commission which was the at-large post. The vote was not strictly along racial lines as a significant number of white voters chose the black candidate over the white candidate.
While racial issues did arise on occassion, for the most part, the key issues were ones that impacted the general population across all races. That changed in 2021 when another black candidate took on the incumbent black chairman and made race a key component of his campaign. The challenger was elected in a runoff.
The next four years, the chairman made practically every issue a racial issue. Meanwhile the general welfare of the city slowly deteriorated. Mandated audits and financial reports were late. Tax bills were behind which severely impacted financial operations. The city was hit with multiple racial discrimination lawsuits for which the city was in an indefensible position.
Joe Joe Wright, who happens to be white, announced that he would challenge the incumbent. Joe Joe works for the Crisp County Recreation Department and had invested his life into the lives of all young people in the city. George Singletary announced that he would challenge the incumbent commissioner in Ward 3.
With a 72/23 black advantage and with the perception that blacks would only vote for blacks, the odds were not in favor of the two challengers.
The Strategy – Target Voters and Flood Early Voting
This is where the marching orders come into play. When it comes to elections, people will often express their support, offer encouraging words, put a sign in the yard, and even write glowing comments on social media. Believe it or not, some do all these things, yet never actually cast a vote. Without the vote, none of these other signs of support matter.
Fortunately there is a way to encourage voting and track to see when the vote was cast. It takes place during the early voting period In Georgia that’s a whopping 3 weeks.
Most people do not realize that the Secretary of State maintains a web page that reports on each day’s activity in the early voting phase. it records requests for absentee ballots, the return of absentee ballots, and early voting activity for each voter. Anyone can log on to the page and find the date that the individual votes as well as the style of vote, absentee or in person.
While I am not able to tell how an individual voted, I can tell that an individual voted. This readily available information, coupled with three weeks of early voting, can provide a strategic advantage to one who organizes and plans to get as many early voters as possible. This is exactly what the team supporting Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary did and it proved to be the winning edge.
Days before early voting began, we started with the volunteers who said that they would call their friends and neighbors to encourage them to go vote. We then took the voters list and asked the volunteers to identify specific voters for whom they would be responsible to encourage them to go vote early.
Those voters were labeled as “Target” voters. This gave us a specific targeted voter with a specific “tracker” who would track the actions of that voter from initial contact through casting a ballot or turning in the absentee ballot.
Once the target voter cast his or her ballot, the target voter was moved to a status of “voted” and no longer tracked. This vote was considered highly likely to be for our candidates. We spent no more energy trying to get this voter to vote because we knew that the vote was “in the bank.”
The process of targeting, assigning a traker, and monitoring voter activity allowed us to work smarter, not harder, in encouraging voters to go vote. The added advantage was that on election day, we had fewer people to track because we knew who had already voted. In some cases those who voted became “trackers” themselves and helped expand the net of potential voters.
The Victory – Amassing Early Voting Advantage that Could not be Overcome on Election day
When election day rolled around, we did all the normal election day activity of offering rides to the polls, standing near the polling place, waving signs and making phone calls to get people to the polls. The key difference was that we began with a huge lead because of the votes for our candidates that had been cast days earlier.
Our game clock did not begin at 7:00 am on election day. It began at 8:00 am days earlier when early voting opened. We had a head start, in this case just a 3 day early voting period, but we took full advantage of these three days.
Before early voting opened, we began to call the targeted voters to confirm that they were strong supporters of Joe Joe Write and George Singletarty. We asked them to go vote on the first day of early voting Many readily agreed. During the three days of early voting, we flooded the elections office with voters who would cast their votes for Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary.
On election day, the voters for the incumbents showed up in strong numbers. As strong as they were, their numbers fell short of the overall total needed.
Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary would have been handily defeated had they waited until election day to get the vote out. The key to their victory went right back to the marching orders given at the first campaign organiational meeting.
“Your job is not to convince people to vote for Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary. Your job is to identify people who will vote for Joe Joe and George and convince them to go vote.”
One important factor cannot be overlooked. There was a small but significant number of black voters who refused to vote merely along racial lines. These voters cared about the city and knew that the divisiveness was destructive.
These voters created a coalition that looked beyond race and looked at fellow Cordelians as wanting the same quality of life they wanted. While this percentage was small, it was significant.
The race would not have been won had it not been for the core group with the core values that they had. They just needed the encouragement to go vote at their first opportunity and fulfil their civic duty.
Their job was not to convince people to vote for Joe Joe Wright and George Singletary. Their job was to convince people to who supported these two candidates to just go vote.
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