(New York) At a brown bag luncheon today, in memory of 1964 Republican Vice Presidential nominee Bill Miller on his birthday, Abolition Party nominee Thomas Walker released the first plank from his campaign platform, in what promises to be the most exciting election of the year.
Walker stated that, "Our campaign needs to Retain, Regain and Grow".
There are many excellent, thoughtful, intelligent and entertaining active users within the OurCampaigns community; and I plan to keep them that way! There have been issues in the past that have driven a wedge through some users and this site. Just last week, I believe it was Robert, a long time user, who said he was disgusted with the way things were going on our site involving one long simmering issue, and voiced the possibility of leaving. That troubles me. Once Robert leaves, who is next? Leroy, Eggplant, Mr. Moderate, PolitixUSA, Randy? We need to strive for a strong and lively debate. Everyone here doesn't have to be friends, obviously, but we don't need to drive people away, either. Thus, I propose a strong and aggressive program to retain those members currently active in our community. You all have added so much to this site, discussion, vote totals, insight, reflection, and so much more.
Second, we need to regain members who have signed up, and for one reason or another, are no longer active at OurCampaigns. During my term in office, I were personally contact every member of OurCampaigns who have provided an email address, with an email, personalized, and those members who are no longer active I will strongly encourage to come back. They had to join for some reason. Those who have lost their user name or password and feel like they don't want to go through the process of resigning up should be provided some way in which to obtain that information, possibly by sending it to the email on record, so that they can rejoin our group. With others, I will strive to find out why they left, and work on ways to encourage them to come back, and once again become a vibrant and vital part of our community. I have noticed many real life candidates have signed up here, never to be heard from again. That is a shame. I will address to them that they are the best source for information on their run for office, and that our community is a great source of information, and could provide many dos and don'ts for a campaign. I have worked on campaigns dating back to 1984, and there are many here who can put that time frame or number of campaigns frame to shame. Candidates for office need to realize the wealth of knowledge and experience we at Our Campaigns offer, and how it will give them the chance for their voice to be heard as well. When elected, I will reach out to those who were part of our community at one time, and welcome them home.
Finally, and perhaps as important as the first two topics of this discussion is the need for our community to grow. This is an area where we can all do our part. I am sure we all know of at least one person who might be interested in this site who doesn't know about it (shocking as it is that not everyone has heard of Our Campaigns). If each of us would invite one friend to join, and even if only 10 or 20% of them would take us up on the invitation, that would be a great benefit for Our Campaigns. We have a pretty strong base with Young White Males, upon which I would like to see us grow. We need to encourage women to join and actively take part in our community. Valerie is a great benefit to our site. There are many women out there who could bring so much to our site. Minorities would bring a much needed perspective and breath of fresh air to Our Campaigns. We have a few foreign members, but could easily prosper from having more. For the second election cycle here, I will be one of the oldest candidates running. As a 35 year old, I don't normally feel ancient, but here at Our Campaigns, many times I could probably be classified as so. We need to reach out to the 30+ crowd, let alone the seniors crowd, who would also be a great boon to Our Campaigns, with their experience and insight.
Retain, Regain and Grow - a formula for victory for all of us at Our Campaigns.
A vote for Walker-Jones is a win for us all.
