Yesterday, I was attending a meeting in Sacramento. While there, Eric Hogue, a talk show host in Sacramento was lamenting the lack of turnout in conservative parts of California. You can read his blog here.
Below are some hints at motivating conservatives. Feel free to pass the on to whatever consultants the Governor is still listening too. It is clear to me they and others don’t know how to motivate conservatives.
Before I start, CRA and myself were committed to the four initiatives. I went out an debated 74, 76 wherever I could. That said. Here is the primer:
1. Fight. Conservatives love to fight. They will follow people who fight. Conservatives supported big spending, amnesty wanting Bush in 2004 because he was fighting the left.
The Gov. didn’t start fighting for these Propositions until September. Months after the war had begun. Nothing demoralizes conservatives than seeing someone get beat up and not willing to fight.
Another strain of this thought is that conservatives don’t like talk of compromise or negotiations. Clear through August there was talk of making a deal. Why get revved up so some politicians can make a deal? Especially, as in the case of the Gov., it has happened several times before.
2. Fight for something real. That’s right real. Let’s be honest small changes to tenure rules isn’t the big kill. Prop. 77 divided some conservatives. Prop. 76 was only a little better than what we have now. Conservatives wanted a hard and real cap of state spending. John Campbell had introduced and promoted such a measure. Which, by the way would have been easier to explain. And would have been a fight over principle and ideas .Prop. 75 was real and the Gov. didn’t endorse it until September. So was Prop. 73 while endorsed in September received scant attention by the Gov. and his machine.
And yet surprise 73 and 75 did better than the 74, 76 and 77. Also adding an initiative on issues like illegals would have energized conservatives. Read about that here.
3. Embrace conservatives. Quick name the conservative consultant that is helping the Governor? Finally at the end they started using McClintock on the budget stuff. I know from personal experience that some of Arnold’s people would not return phone calls about helping to get a CRA newspaper to 1 million households. In one trip to a local area, the staff set it up at a local house and told the CRA leader in the area they weren’t welcome and either was the local conservative Assemblyman. BTW that CRA leader was one of the organizers of the regular GOP headquarters in the area.
To their credit, Duf and the CRP did try to energize voters over Prop.73 but again it didn’t get going until way late in the game.
Fight. Fight for something real. Embrace us. It isn’t that hard.