"Heinlein, Robert A - Take Back Your Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)
There are, then, 70,000 members of your party. Of these about 25,000 will vote in the primary. You need 13,000 to win a clear majority in the primary - less, if there are more than two candidates and your state permits plurality nominations.
What does it take to get the 13,000 votes? Well, if your organizational activities - the clubs we talked about in preceding chapters - can show one hundred active volunteers who are not afraid to punch doorbells and will work on election day, I'll bet the rent money on the outcome.
Cost? Anything you want to make it. Volunteer campaigns should not cost much. Can you bank $1,000 before your candidate files his nominating petition? If so, you should never have to worry about unpaid bills - provided you have an absolute veto over commitments and expenditures. If the candidate's wife is permitted to order printing, you're sunk! The same goes if you have a campaign committee which can overrule you without digging down into their pockets personally to spend money in ways that you do not approve.
The campaign will cost more than $1,000 but the excess can be raised by passing the hat as you go along, and by nicking the very persons who want to make expenditures not included in your budget.
Still, a thousand dollars is a lot of potatoes to most people. Where are you going to get it? The answer lies between two extremes: A thousand men at a dollar each and one man with a thousand dollars. Of the two the first is by fer the better; volunteer campaigns come to life when the workers themselves, and their friends, foot the bill.
Suppose your first tentative campaign meeting, long before the campaign, has twenty people at it. You ought to be able to clip them for an average of $10 a head (some at twenty-five, some at nothing), cash and checks, paid on the spot. Perhaps the candidate is sufficiently well-heeled dial he can put in $300 (but don't let financial condition be any criterion in selecting a candidate-a rich man can lose an election for you just as fast as a poor one).
Your clubs should be able to raise a little for you. Then perhaps you know some people who will kick in once they see earnest money in the pot. But get the thousand before you make any announcements to the newspapers; you are going to have to have it and it is much easier to raise it first when you have time for such matters, than later, when time is everything.
The opposition may spend many thousands of dollars, but don't let that worry you. Elections are not won with dollars. The only reason you have to have any money is because printing and postage take cash. One thousand dollars is, of course, an arbitrary figure. More is convenient, if you can raise it; you may even get by for less if you have real talent for making good soup out of vegetable tops and left-over bones. Most of the things that cost big money in campaigning are almost useless for vote-getting purposes in the local campaign. (And, come to think of it-what campaign is not a "local" campaign. Votes are in the precincts!)
After the primary, money - dean money - will be much easier to raise. In addition to local sources, the National Committee is always anxious to subsidize a local organization which shows unexpected signs of displacing one of the opposition, without help in the primary and with a live, volunteer organization. Each national organization has a fund to be used only on congressional districts "in the balance" - which is not to be spent on hopeless districts nor on sure districts, but on ones such as yours. There may be only a hundred such in the country, but the fund comes from all over. Present your figures.
Now let's tabulate the situation. We are assuming that the Honorable Horace Swivelchair is not of your party; you may want co displace an officeholder of your own party, but the circumstance is less usual and the task should not be attempted except for the most grave reasons. (Are you quite sure you know all about the voting record of your co-partisan whom you wish to displace? Have you tried all methods shortof war? Don'tgetsucked into such a campaign simply because someone is ambitious to hold office. The minimum reasons should be nothing less grave than proved moral turpitude or a consistent refusal to support party measures.)
The Situation:
District population................................... 320,000
Persons over twenty-one......................... 200,000
Registered voters..................................... 140,000
Registered strength of your party.......... 70,000
Number voting in your party primary.... 25,000
Required to cinch party nomination...... 3,000
Your assets are:
Volunteer workers................................... 100
Cash on hand........................................... $1,000
The problem is to turn the assets into 13,000 votes.
For simplicity we will assume that there are just two candidates out for your party nomination, Jack Hopeful and your own candidate, Jonathan Upright. If there are more, you are a cinch to win, but let's do it the hard way.
Thirteen thousand votes divided among 100 people means an average of 130 ballots in the box per worker. But it is not that bad; your candidate, in a two-man race, will get 10,000 votes just for having his name on the ballot. Your workers have to locate one hundred and thirty votes apiece, but one hundred of them will get to the polls in any case under their own steam and vote for your man. The precinct worker must sort out the other thirty votes and get them to the polls - perhaps half by phone calls and the other half by providing transportation.
It begins to look easier - one man to haul fifteen voters to die polls, in order to gain control of a district containing a third of a million people, in order to seat a congressman in a Congress where the draft law was extended, just before Pearl Harbor, by a majority of one vote.
But if you aspire to manage a congressional contest you will find, before you are through, that it requires all of your intelligence and diplomacy. While the job can be done - many have done it-it will call into use your highest human faculties.
Choosing a Candidate: All too often your choice is very narrow. In this country people who offer themselves for public service get a shameful kicking around. The pay is so niggardly that an honest man usually leaves office poorer than when he accepted it, and the dead cats and rotten eggs far outnumber the pats on the back for work well done - to our collective shame!
The sober, able citizens whom we need in public office know these things; very few of them are willing to make the sacrifice that public service entails. We have indeed been blessed that enough able men have always been willing, thus far, to forego their own interests that the Republic might survive.
You will probably have to persuade the candidate of your choice to make the race. If he is bright enough for the job he won't be very anxious to have it.
If he is the man you need for the job he will be aware that some citizens have to give up their natural desire for privacy, peace of mind, and financial security in order to keep democracy alive. The motivation is the same which causes men to volunteer to meet their deaths in time of war; it exists in peace time, but is a little harder to stir up.
You can expect him to be reluctant but willing to be convinced - convinced that his personal sacrifice will not be in vain. You must convince by showing him that he can be elected, in terms of district statistics, local factors, availability of campaign funds, your proposed budget, and your organization - organization above all. Since he is neither a nincompoop nor politically naive he knows that organization is the controlling factor. If you can show him a fighting chance, he will probably go.
On the other hand you will be beset by hopeful, potential candidates who are just waiting for the lightning to strike. They will come smirking around, digging one toe in the dust, and murmuring that "Barkis is willin'." These people are usually political light-weights whose only assets are consuming ambitions to hold public office and to receive a public salary.
They will look you up - of course they will look you up; you have an organization-and get in your hair.
They will be hard to handle. It is a hard thing to tell a man bluntly that you don't think he has the character, or the intelligence, as may be, to hold public office. Furthermore you might be mistaken; some unlikely people have served the public well. I suggest that you use a counter-attack.
Ask him if he is willing to refrain from running if the organization chooses some other man to back. Press this point and press it hard. Insist that he must commit himself to support and campaign for the candidate chosen by the organization before his name goes into the hat. This commitment should be in writing.
His commitment probably isn't worth anything but it may keep him from doing what he can to sabotage your efforts.
Don't promise him anything at all except that he will be allowed to present his case before the organizational caucus which chooses the candidate - provided he binds himself to the caucus. This is the essence of caucusing, that no one shall participate in it who is not bound by it; it is an entirely fair, democratic procedure.
The pipsqueak will probably jump the caucus if he loses in it. You are then morally justified in sending several of the more influential members of the caucus to see him in order to coerce him back into line. If they are his business customers, so much the better. A caucus is a contract and should be enforceable, but the law gives no means. You are entitled to improvise means, as rude as necessary, as long as you don't step outside the law. ("Look, Joe - you signed that caucus. If you break your word to us between now and election day, your name is going to be mud in this community. We'll see to it that everybody and his brother knows just what kind of a heel you are when it comes to keeping your word. You won't be able to do anything about it, because every word of it will be true-in feet, we'd love a libel suit because that would spread it around to more people. If you don't toe the line as you promised, you are finished politically - and it's not going to do your business any good either. People don't like to do business with a man who isn't honest-starting with me!")
Your own candidate must agree to the caucus, and you yourself. This may be a little hard to take, but democracy is not a one-way proposition. Require from him also a written commitment that he will endorse, support, and make at least one public appearance on behalf of the straight party ticket and in particular on behalf of his successful opponent, in the event that he is defeated. If he won't do this he is not your man, no matter how well you thought of him. Don't waste your time on prima donnas.
A word of warning - when you bind yourself to the caucus, do not bind yourself to manage the campaign of the successful candidate. It is likely that you will be willing to undertake the grief of managing only for the candidate whom you hand-picked. If another candidate is selected, itis all right for you to drop back to the status of a precinct worker, there to do honest work but considerably less of it, if, in your opinion, the candidate is not electable or not completely satisfactory to you.
But you must bind yourself to endorse and campaign for the candidate selected by the caucus, at least on the minimum level of canvassing and carrying your own precinct.
I can almost hear your doubts and misgivings about this. Isn't such a commitment likely to land you some day in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between breaking your word or supporting a candidate you know to be unworthy of public trust?
No - not if you know your procedure. In the first place, these are your friends and associates, aren't they? Can't you count on Tom and Art and Dr. Nugent
and Alice and old Mrs. Krueger to back you up in keeping any real jerk from getting the nod? If not, you are probably in the wrong pew and should be more careful in picking your political associates.
But let us suppose, nevertheless, that there is a chance that a certain party will pop up as the choice of the caucus; you are among friends but, while you are convinced that this person is a moral leper, you can't prove it. However, he is a very personable chap and many of your staunch friends are still taken in by him. This can happen-it's happened to me.
You need only insist that all the potential candidates be listed before die caucus is bound and that the caucus be limited to consideration of the listed candidates. This gives you a chance to thresh it out before you are bound.
Let's run over a typical caucus-it is one of the least understood and most necessary of the democratic techniques. We'll make it the caucus to select the organizational candidate for congress for the party primary in your district. Caucuses can be used for any sort of joint action; this one will illustrate all the principles involved.
In the first place membership in a caucus is strictly by invitation. The man, or group of men, who call the caucus is the sole judge of the membership. No one has a natural right to be a member of a caucus. You are no more obligated to invite a man to caucus with you than you are obligated to invite him to be a guest in your home. It may be politically imprudent to exclude someone who wants in-he may form a rival caucus of his own-but you don't have to. A caucus has no existence until it votes to bind itself; up to that time, if you called it, you can exclude anyone merely because you don't like the way he parts his hair.
After the caucus comes into formal existence by voting to bind itself, it may add to its own membership any person who agrees to be bound by it by either of two methods, by majority vote (or greater majority vote, as may be required) provided the original terms of the caucus permitted it, or by unanimous vote of the entire membership - not just those present - if the original terms of die caucus failed to provide explicidy for increase of membership.
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |