Orange County Plan: 2005-2006

Orange County Democratic Committee
2005-2006 County Plan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Mission, Goals, and Structure
   
2. Relationship to Others
   
3. Participation Activities
   
4. Headquarters, Persuasion Mail, and GOTV
   
5. Budget and Fundraising

I. Goals

A. Mission

Orange is Blue! Having gone from one Democrat to eight in our delegation in the past six years, we want to hold all those seats and take the four remaining legislative seats, including Orange-1 as well as the Orange-Caledonia House and Senate seats, turning Orange County into a solidly Democratic county.

We will work in cooperation specifically with counties that share districts and media markets with us, including Windsor, Addison, Washington, and Caledonia to achieve these ends. We will support judicial candidates, and elect Democrats at the “top of the ticket.”

The OCDC will provide resources, logistical support, and advice to all local, county, state, and national candidates. We will use our funds and identified pool of volunteers to assist with the following efforts, activities, and materials:

• District team building and support for candidates.
  
• Candidate identification and training.
  
• Campaign planning.
  
• Assembling materials.
  
• Voter identification.
  
• Voter education.
  
• Getting out the vote.
  
• Communication of clear messages (“framing”).
  
• Sponsorship of forums and “debates.”
  
• Increasing participation.

The OCDC will also assist the Vermont Democratic Party to help sustain control of the Vermont Senate and House and to elect our people to statewide and federal positions.

B. Policy Goals

We will sponsor a biennial discussion of policy issues and adopt a platform that will promote the election of our people at the local and state levels.

C. Purpose and Structure

The overall campaign is coordinated by the Orange County Democratic Committee, which will reorganize in October and continue into 2007. The OCDC will work closely with candidates and their campaign managers as well as town committees.

The County Chair and other advisors will be responsible for locating the resources necessary to execute this County Plan (candidate recruitment, county events, fundraising for the county party, county campaign offices, county phone centers, volunteer pools and activities, etc.)

We will fill the statutorially mandated positions: Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and Asst. Treasurer, but more than that we will develop working structures that will fulfill the functions of a modern political party:

• Fundraising
  
• Voter identification and database maintenance
  
• Communications and publicity
  
• Compliance with legal requirements, particularly financial
  
• Liaison with associated interest groups

II Relationship to Other Entities

A. Vermont Democratic Party and Coordiinated Campaign

We will work closely and cooperatively with the Vermont Democratic Party and the Coordinated Campaign as well as other county committees.

B. Town Committees: Organizations, Functions, and Relationships

Orange County has seventeen towns, five of which have over 1,900 people and need strong town committees. The twelve towns need basic town committees and could benefit from stronger ones.

Functions of Strong Town Committee

• Voter Identification and Voter File data entry
  
• Meetings several times a year
  
• Fundraising
  
• Internal Communications (Email, mailing list)
  
• Publicity and advertising
  
• Events and issue forums
  
• Local Issues and Town Votes
  
• JP nominations
  
• Transmittal of information on activities to county and state committees
  
• Candidate recruitment
  
• Candidate teams

Functions of Basic Town Committee

• Voter Identification
  
• Meetings at least once a year
  
• JP nominations and BCA representation if no JP elected
  
• Participation with district teams
  
• Cooperation with county committee

C. Relationship to Candidates

The County Committee exists to elect Democrats and endorsed allies. It provides OCDC resources and volunteers to all Democratic candidates as well as to such allies as the state and county committees may endorse. The OCDC has a dedicated volunteer base, many of whom work for state and local campaigns through the County Committee.
During the campaign, the County Chair and other coordinators will maintain contact with candidates or candidate teams to maintain optimal relationships that best serve the election of each candidate.

All Orange County candidates may expect equitable assistance in funding, publicity, letters to editor, voter file utilization, office use, volunteer mobilization, and so on. We recognize that there will be differences between campaigns and exactly how much each will need or want from the county campaign.

A candidate is also free to act much more independently if he/she feels that is in the best interest of the candidacy. In those cases, the County Committee still offers whatever financial support it determines it can afford.

The expectation is that communications by the county committee will be strategically determined as well. In general, communications (electronic and print) directed toward Level of Support (LOS) 1 voters (activists) will focus on county-wide objectives, including volunteer recruitment, letters to the editor, event notifications, and fundraising. County contact with LOS 2 (loyal voters) will be more directed at upgrading them to LOS 1 and toward ensuring that they vote a general Democratic ticket. County communications with neutral and unknown voters will be limited to identification, while candidates will be encouraged to contact these voters directly and independently.

Get Out the Vote calling will be strategically determined based on the needs of candidates and the overall county strategy. The primary object of GOTV is to get identified voters to the polls and the names mentioned in the calls will be strategically determined for that end.

The County Chair and other advisors must make decisions about financial resources based on candidate need and other factors. These matters should be discussed frequently among the leadership of the County Committee.

D. Working with Interest Groups

The Committees Liaison must identify contacts in all relevant interest groups: “Section 527” committees and other activist organizations as well as environmental, labor, education, and other issue-oriented groups. These groups are vital to the success of Democratic campaigns. They often provide us with tremendously motivated volunteers. They also support our candidates through independent mailings and the like.

III. Participation Activities

A. Events

A key to keeping volunteers motivated and getting our message out is to hold events. Events can include issues forums, talks by political figures who are good draws, conversations among primary candidates. The Tunbridge Fair is a major event for the county each year and receives priority investment of energy by the county committee.
One task that is not designated to one of the officers it to keep a calendar of events, but the emergence of the OCDC blog should facilitate this. Town Committee members and activists should scour their communities for events and routinely pass the information on to the blogkeeper. All candidates—local, county and statewide—will have access to the calendar. The Vermont Democratic Party circulates an online newsletter which includes a calendar weekly; all event information should be sent to the VDP.

The County Committee will participate in events attracting significant number of local voters that are scheduled in greater Orange County and may organize other events in order to promote Democratic candidates and ideals. Such events are listed and discussed in section VII.

B. Voter Registration

The OCDC will schedule a number of voter-registration efforts, coordinated through town committees. These events should take place at general stores, recycling centers, etc.

In addition, all candidates and any willing volunteers should become notaries. It’s a very simple process that costs $20. Call the county clerk at 685-4610 for more information. And if you become a notary, make sure to get lots of voter registration forms from the town clerk, county clerk, or Secretary of State. Justices of the Peace and Town Clerks are the other people authorized to register voters.

C. Targeting

The Coordinated Campaign of the Vermont Democratic Party will make targeting decisions on local, county, and statewide campaigns.

The County Committee will strategically determine the resources to be applied to local, county and statewide campaigns in consultation with those campaigns and the State Committee. While it is the ideal to devote those resources equitably to all, the County Committee must be free to focus those resources on those campaigns with a combination of greatest need and greatest chance of victory.

D. Letters to the Editor

It’s often said that the letters-to-the-editor page is the second-most-read section of the paper after the front page. The OCDC has traditionally had an effective letters-to-the-editor campaign: drafts are written and sent out to the OCDC e-mail list, and people then volunteered to “adopt” a letter. This tradition has been taken up by our candidates and should be continued at both the candidate and county levels.

IV. Voter File and Voter Identification

A. Voter Identification

Voter identification in the voter file is one of the best ways for campaigns at all levels to share resources and reap the benefits of economies of scale.

All Voter Identification programs of the VDP and County Committees rank voters on the following generic scale of 1-5.

1. Strong Democrat:	a person who votes Democratic or Progressive and actively and consistently supports the party’s views; a person who volunteers and attends party events or donates to the party or its candidates.
2. Leaning Democrat:	a person who usually votes for Democratic candidates.
3. Persuadable voter:	a person who is know to the reviewers as a swing voter or has no discernible party affiliation.
4. Leaning Republican:	a person who usually votes Republican.
5. Strong Republican:	a person who actively supports Republican candidates.
0. Null:	Unknown or whose affiliation is unknown.

Each Town Committee must designate a Voter File manager who will have the responsibility to

• conduct two voter identification sessions each year no later than April 30 and again by September 30 in which those who know the town review the town voters and their assigned ratings
  
• arrange for the input of the data in coordination with the county (or state) Voter File manager
  

The intent is to turn out over 8,000 voters who will support Democrats in federal, state, and local races on Election Day. The plan is to call all 1's and 2's to urge them to vote and to use candidate-specific persuasion mail with all 3's.

Note that candidates can do their own ranking. One individual may be a 5 for the party and a 1 for the candidate. There will be a need to coordinate the handling of GOTV calling with regard to such people so that we do not urge a known opponent of a local candidate to vote.

B. Voter File

The Vermont Democratic Voter File is a product of many years of work at the local and state levels. The essence of the file is its ability to track information on each voter and that voter’s individual proclivity to vote for Democrats in general and for particular candidates.

Orange County has led in the creation of the Voter File system and has maintained its database independent from that of the state party. With the advances made by the state party, we should consider whether such independence continues to be required.
The Voter File is intended for use by town, county, and candidate committees with the ability for special tracking so that the various users can keep track of variations in voting support as well as any local issues that may influence voting.

We will use the voter file for the County Committee’s GOTV, persuasion, absentee-ballot, bulk-mail, phone-banking, and voter-registration efforts. We expect that most participating campaigns will use voter file products (communication lists, walking files, etc.).

It is the policy of the OCDC that all bona fide Democratic candidates and members of the County Committee may have access to the OCDC Voter File. For the purposes of this policy, a bona fide Democratic candidate is defined as a candidate who has been elected in the primary as the Democratic candidate.

When necessary and appropriate, in order to ensure equity and fairness, or when, after consultation with county committee members and other appropriate Democratic leaders, the OCDC Chair determines that it is in the best interests of the OCDC to do so, the Chair may provide access to the voter file to an allied candidate who might not be eligible under the policy.

C. Campaign Identification Calls and Canvassing

In the weeks before the election, we will want to supplement the previous forms of identification by doing identification mailings and telephoning as well as work on party identification in conjunction with our candidates. The information obtained in this fashion will need to be entered into the Voter File rapidly so as to inform the get out the vote effort – or we may create other ways of using the information may be developed so that it is available in a timely fashion.

IV. Offices, Persuasion Mail, and GOTV

A. County Committee Offices

In the two months leading up the General Election, the OCDC will obtain such office space as may be needed to achieve its electoral ends. This may consist of donated space or rented offices. The OCDC will be responsible for any costs involved in such offices, including utilities and especially phone service.

Given the travel time in this county, we will likely want to have geographically distributed office space available.

As phone technology advances, we will wish to have the ability to conduct relatively large scale phone contact campaigns from our offices.

B. Persuasion Mail

The OCDC has a bulk-mail permit that can be used by individual candidates, who shall reimburse the county for the costs of their mailings. Candidates will determine the optimal forms of mailed campaigns and the county will be glad to assist.
The County Committee has the ability to undertake targeted direct mail campaigns, although the most effective role is likely to be support of individual candidate persuasion mailings

C. September-to-November GOTV

The County Committee will locate donated phone banks for late September through early November.

September mailing and fundraiser: Approximately six weeks before each General Election, the County Committee should conduct a postal mailing to all who have been identified as LOS 1 and 2. The mailing (at the slow bulk rate) should include two absentee ballot forms [or one form per household member if that can be achieved], a donation form, and a return envelope, along with a letter that promotes Democratic candidates in general. Whether there is specific reference to local candidates will be decided in consultation with those candidates. Whether state or national candidates are mentioned will be determined strategically in consultation with local leadership and candidates.

Volunteer Phone Banks: Phone centers will be located in towns around the county wherever multiple phone lines can be located and wherever cell phones may work. In 2004, those phone centers included

• the Allen/Nicholson garage in Bradford
  
• the office of Northern Woodlands in Corinth
  
• the Wolfe family phones in Strafford
  
• Caleb and Trish Rick’s offices in Chelsea
  
• Ann Swanson’s office in Thetford
  
• our rented office in Randolph
  
• Bob Bland’s home in Vershire

The missing location last year was Williamstown, where we were unable to locate a multiple line situation.

For the election, all 1's and 2's must be called – and there must be several attempts at different times to reach the voters. Callers must be provided with a clear script. We have done the majority of the calling over the weekend before Election Day in past years, although some advisors believe that Monday night is more effective.

We accept leaving a message as sufficient contact, which meant that the calling goes very quickly in those towns where virtually all of our supporters has a machine or a service, which is somewhat determined by average income in the town.
Poll watching is an option in certain towns and candidate situations. This involves checking off voters as they enter the polls and then using phone lines to call those who had not apparently voted by about 4pm. The person checking off the voters needs to be identifiable and intrusive.

Poll Cards: In selected situations that depend on the wishes of local candidates, it may work to hand out an information sheet that includes a list of statewide candidates and brief information on all local legislative and judicial candidates.

Early (Absentee) Voting: Many voters are not aware that they can vote by “absentee” ballot quite early even if they are going to be in their hometown on Election Day, and they should be encouraged to do so. By voting early, supporters will not worry about trying to make it to the polls on election day if “something comes up.” Ballots are available about three weeks before elections.

Sign Holding: Sign holding (visibility) should take place at locations such as our interstate exits in Thetford, Randolph, Fairlee, Bradford, and Wells River. We should consult with candidates and local party members about whether they think visibilities are a good idea for their area, and if they are a good idea, what are the good locations.

V. OCDC Budget

For each biennium, the County Committee will develop a draft budget and fundraising plan. That budget will then be revisited at the beginning of the Election Year and again in August before the General Election.

Fundraising: To cover these costs means we will have to do more fundraising than we have ever done before. And we have traditionally done well in comparison to other counties.

We are going to have to be creative and a new post of fundraising chair will need to be added to our existing positions. We will probably have to do targeted phone calling and individual solicitations to meet our high goals.

We should note that donors to the county party will be entitled to all the benefits being created for donors to the state party under the idea of the Golden Dome Society.