The hunt begins. I’m researching the political market. I met with Tom Engel a few weeks ago to brainstorm how to get started researching this new target market. I had a We came up with a couple parameters:

• Focus on Oregon’s political landscape
• Email all Republican state legislators
• Email lobbyists
• Engel suggested I reach out to Tom Hughes, Pamela Leavitt, and Betsy Johnson.

Here’s a list of all I’ve reached out to as of now:

1. Betsy Johnson
2. NW Advocacy-Pamela Leavitt
3. Metro Council President and Former Hillsboro Mayor-Tom Hughes
4. Bob Terry
5. Senator Dennis Linthicum
6. Senator Dick Anderson
7. Senator Lynn Findley
8. Senator Fred Girod
9. Senator Bill Hansell
10. Senator Bill Kennemer
11. Senator Tim Knopp
12. Senator Kim Thatcher
13. Senator Chuck Thomsen
14. Representative Daniel Bonham
15. Representative Shelly Boshart Davis
16. Representative Vikki Breese-Iverson
17. Representative Jami Cate
18. Representative Jessica George
19. Representative Christine Goodwin
20. Representative Cedric Hayden
21. Representative Bobby Levy
22. Representative Rick Lewis
23. Representative Raquel Moore-Green
24. Representative Lily Morgan
25. Representative Ron Noble
26. Representative Mark Owens
27. Representative E. Werner Reschke
28. Representative Anna Scharf
29. Representative Greg Smith
30. Representative David Brock Smith
31. Representative Duane Stark
32. Representative Kim Wallan
33. Representative Suzanne Weber
34. Representative Boomer Wright
35. Representative Jack Zika
36. Oregonians for Liberty in Education
37. Oregonians for Medical Freedom
38. Oregon Dairy Farmers Association
39. Associated Oregon Loggers
40. Oregon Christian Education Coalition

Only two people have responded to my emails. I suspect that may be because I emailed from my business email and sometimes business emails automatically go to the junk mail. I’m going to talk to Rep. Breese-Iverson’s Chief of Staff Mark Cruz tomorrow (4/1/2022) at 12pm via Zoom. These are the questions I’ll ask him and others:

• Who handles local campaign management?
• Who are the big players statewide and locally for certain races?
• Who’s doing judicial campaigns?
• Who’s campaigning for school board races?
• Do you think there’s an opportunity for my training services?
• Who are the vendors? like PR and Marketing
• (Specifically for State Reps) Who are the consultants? who are your service providers? PR and marketing? campaign management?
• Do you think campaigns would pay for trainings?
• What kinds of skills gaps are there in campaigns?

I spoke with Tom Hughes, Former Mayor of Hillsboro, Former President of Metro Council and Senior Policy Advisor for a law firm, this week. That conversation was super helpful. We met at The Coffee Station and talked for about 2 hours. I appreciated his time and knowledge. He said I’ll have to make a strong case to candidates about why their fundraising money should be put towards training volunteers instead of PR or marketing which makes sense. Hughes said he raised $1 million in campaign funds and had a campaign manager (Stacey Dycus), campaign finance director (Jef Green), and a campaign office manager. I think that’s pretty impressive and reinforces my idea that there is money for training in politics. I just have to convince the campaign managers and finance directors that training is worth it.

Here are some tidbits of knowledge I got from Hughes:

• Candidates need help with their elevator pitch/ doorstep speech
  • Explain why I’m running and why it’s important to the person you’re talking to
• Canvassing works well if the candidate is doing the canvassing. People don’t respond as well to candidate’s volunteers canvassing.
• He suggested I contact League of Oregon Cities, Association of Oregon Counties, Oregon School Boards Association, AFL-CIO, OEA, and PIE. He also said I should talk to Deanna Palm and Lyle Sumek
• Budget campaigns and school district campaigns spend a lot of money
• Phone banking training might be worth looking into. It’d be good to teach people how to:
  • find volunteers, write a script, find phones and location, and make phone banking a good experience so the volunteers come back
• Canvassing training you need to know how to do two things:
  • know how much of the city you have canvassed/ need to canvass
  • the mechanics of canvassing. i.e. organize people, recruit volunteers, getting material
• What you need to know when organizing canvassing
  • Which precincts has the highest of your party (R, D, etc)?
  • Which precincts have the highest or lowest voter turnout?
  • How many voter to nonvoters are there in the precincts?
• off year elections need more effective canvassing like voter turnout for a school bond levy
• How do you know your volunteer training works? Success of a campaign=get more votes than your opponent
• When he first was part of city council he had to learn the acronyms and Robert’s Rules

I plan to contact all the people and organizations he suggested. I’m a little worried talking to Oregon School Boards Association, AFL-CIO and OEA because those organizations are all Far-Left. I’m clearly a conservative so I’m worried they will be mean and try to say bad things about my business because I’m a Republican. However, I figure since I’m doing market research I might as well talk to every subject matter expert in Oregon politics. These organizations won’t be my clients, but they may have some insight into how to tap into the political training market.