How to Win a Local Election: A Complete Step-By-Step Guide

This book is a great guide for running a smooth campaign (if that's possible!). Plenty of well thought out instructions and tons of tips and reminders! I WILL use these tools to help a friend of mine WIN an election next term! I gave this book four stars, BUT if we follow all of the instructions provided and "we" are victorius, then change it to a five star rating!!!

Reads as a how-to book for aspiring politicians. As a veteran of two political campaigns and just gearing up for my third it touched on everything I have experienced before and added a few new ideas.

This is a good book for a first time candidate to know what they should be thinking about.

Someone who wants to be a first time candidate for local office would do well by reading Judge Grey's book. He's actually run and won. As someone else who has won local elections (six for the State House), I can attest to the usefulness of this book.Grey breaks down campaign functions and issues into small bite sized paragraphs. It's all pretty much covered: fundraising, candidate recruitment, campaign organizations and staff, use of volunteers, election day activities, media, etc., etc. Each chapter focuse right in on the subject with a check list approach to executing each facet of the campaign. The author also provides useful examples of forms and other organizational tools your campaign will want to utilize to organize itself and campaign data.The style is breezy and matter of fact. Grey uses some of his personal experiences to illustrate his points. This is helpful, since it increases the credibility of the points he's making. The only other book I've found that rivals this "How To" is Beaudry's "Winning Local and State Elections..." Her book is as practically focused but perhaps provides a little more solid framework for the issues presented and is more tightly written. On the other hand, Grey is probably as accessable a book on the subject as one is likely to find.His appendices are helpful, also. One can pretty much be on their way to structuring a campaign including the campaign plan and schedule thanks to this book. If followed, I suspect candidates will not be able to blame their loss on themselves or their campaign. Some will win due to the promise of superior organization and focus using this book's model will provide.I'm teaching a course in elective politics at the University of Pennsylvania's Fels Center of Government. This is one of the required reading books for the course and is also used by some other teachers in the field at colleges and universities around the country.

I have worked in several congressional races where money was plentiful and paid media was the name of the game. However, low budget races were a mystery to me until I read this book. Judge Grey gives great tips for getting the most out of every campaign dollar. He helps you work from the mindset of "What do I need?" rather than "What can I buy?" This is a great book for anyone making the transition from "big dollar campaigning" to grassroots campaigning.