[candidate-development] Strategic Plan

[Rob Lewis]

Hi everyone,

I thought our meeting on Saturday was very productive . . . I don't know 
how much time I'll have to devote to drafting a list of possible action 
items to help us achieve the goals we identified, but here are a few ideas 
that we can possibly consider at our next meeting . . . 

Rob 


Three things we may want to do . . . 


1. Building town and city committees.  I think the key to our success will be how well we do in creating viable 
town and city committees.  Once we have strong town and city committes, we 
can rely on these committees to do the following:

-Register voters and build GP membership in their town/city

-Develop and publicize GP positions on local issues

-Identify and support candidates for town/city offices

-Recommend potential candidates for state and federal offices

-Support candidates for state and federal offices within their town/city

To accomplish the goal of building viable town and city committess, I 
think we will need to do the following:

- Define the role of the town and city committees. I think it would be helpful to provide some kind of sample "charter" that 
defines what town and city committees need to do--at least in the areas 
that affect voter registration, party enrollment, and candidate 
development and support; this charter is not intended to be a "top down 
command" but only a suggestion to provide guidance to new town/city 
committees that may not have a clear idea of what they should be doing. We 
can talk to members of active, successful town committees to get ideas 
about the role of town committees and recommended operating procedures

- Identify ways our own committee (and other state committees) can support 
the town and city committees.  For instance, we may want to offer a training session for new town/city 
committees to help them understand "best practices" in voter registration, 
organization, etc.   The state party should be providing some kind of 
support to town committees to help them fulfill their mission.  At the 
very least, we should be creating connections between experienced 
town/city committees and new town/city committees to ensure that the new 
committees are learning from the experienced committees.

- Advertise the need for town and city committees.  Once we define the role of the town and city committees--and describe what 
support we can provide to them--we need to start advertising the need for 
new committees to be created.  Maybe a mailing to all enrolled GP members 
informing them of the need (and value) of these committees and providing 
directions on how to get a committee started would be useful.  Such a 
general mailing would need to be followed-up with phone calls to active GP 
members asking them to take the lead in organizing new committees.  This 
effort should be a major push for us this year, I think.


2.  Building a regional structure.  In addition to creating the town/city committees, I think we should be 
creating some kind of regional structure.  Each region would consist of 
some number of town/city committees.  A "regional committee" could then be 
established which would include representatives from each town/city 
committee within the region, plus a representative from the state party. 
While the town/city committees would focus primarily on local issues and 
elections, the regional committees would be responsible for integration 
between communities within the region, as well as integration between the 
region and the state.  Some of their duties might include:

-Sharing information/best practices among town/city committees within the 
region

- Creating new town/city committees in town/cities within the region that 
are currently without town/city committees

- Identifying candidates for state and federal offices (state rep, state 
senate, and u.s. congress, in particular)

- Serving as the primary link between the state party structure and the 
town/city committees

As soon as we have a "critical mass" of town/city committees, I think we 
would want to organize the regional committees. Once regional committees 
are created, I think the state committee would work primarily through the 
regional committees, since trying to work directly with 351 town/city 
committees (or even 100 town/city committees) would be unwieldy. 


3. Creating processes for identifying and "grooming" candidates for state 
rep, state senator, state constitutional offices, us representative, and 
us senator.  I suspect the party has some process for nominating and approving 
candidates . . . but we need to focus on bringing good people into the 
nomination pipeline, well in advance of the election.   If we develop 
regional committees, I'd see them playing a big role in this process.









 
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