Knocking on people’s doors and blowing up Congressmen’s phones can help make the difference between victory and failure for political issues or candidates’ campaigns.
Rising political stars shared that lesson at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 1, during pre-conference sessions at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center just outside Washington.
Roman Garcia, who became a city councilman in Kerrville, Texas, described a heartfelt encounter with an older woman whom he encountered during a door-knocking campaign. She handed over what little spare cash she had in hopes that it would help him win the election, he said.
Garcia told her and others that he knew he would be outnumbered as the lone conservative on the city council. But he pledged: “I’m going to be one voice and one vote for the people. But I'll be one loud voice and one loud vote for the people.”
The crowd applauded when he said that, in his eyes, the main ingredients for political success are: “a good work ethic, an open mind, and a servant’s heart.”
Joe Alexander, co-founder of Run Gen Z, which seeks to empower young people seeking political office, said “we may not have the money,” but younger people may have more energy to do the rigorous door-to-door campaigns.
Aaron Miller, a young county commissioner in Maury County, Tennessee, said he also relied largely on door-to-door campaigning.
Congresswoman Sees Proof
U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) said that, during her first two years in Congress, she has seen multiple instances in which phone campaigns were effective in killing pieces of bad legislation.“There is a very, very misunderstood power of the grassroots—hugely underestimated and misunderstood,” she said.
People may mistakenly believe that their phone calls to Congress go unheeded. But “there is absolutely nothing more terrifying to a ’swamp creature' than a constituent who calls and knows what they’re talking about.” said Cammack.
She has seen a flood of phone calls cause fellow lawmakers to get nervous and walk around saying, “Oh my gosh, what’s happening?!” Then they have been known to cave in and acquiesce to the will of the people, she said.
“That is the power of your voice. That is the power that you have.”
Cammack described an effective strategy that can yield hundreds of influential phone calls: Make a video. Include the bill number and why your Congressman should support or oppose it. Then provide the Representative’s number and urge your video’s viewers to call.
“Even if you just got five of your friends or family members to make those calls, five minutes of your day, that adds up,” Cammack said. “And I’m telling you: Washington is not ready for activism on a scale that you guys are prepared to bring!”
Conservatives Need to Focus
Cammack warned conservatives that they need to stop “tearing each other apart,” labeling each other “RINOS” (Republicans In Name Only) and whackos and “everything in between.”“The circular firing squad will take us down faster than Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer,” she said.
She noted that Republicans now outnumber Democrats in the House of Representatives by four seats–which equates to only 6,000 American votes.
With that small of a margin, “We don’t have the luxury of turning on each other. All that energy all that fight has to be focused outward,” she said.
She said she understands that a lot of people get frustrated because they don’t see wrongdoers held to account in Congress and they groan, “Oh, another hearing.” But “the thing that we have to remember is that, unfortunately, Congress can’t arrest people.”
That was one of many remarks that made the audience laugh. Cammack captivated the crowd with her sharp wit, self-deprecating humor and passion for righting political wrongs.
Susan Cox of Loudoun County, Virginia, who has been involved with parental rights campaigns at school boards, said she found Cammack’s story incredibly inspiring.
A first-time attendee at a major political event such as CPAC, Cox said she felt an emotional connection with Cammack because she seemed “so down-to-earth” as she shared her personal story.
At one point, when an event organizer began signaling that Cammack should wrap up her talk, a couple of people in the crowd responded, “Keep going!”
Complacent No More
Cammack described how she went from being a complacent, nonpolitical person to a fired-up activist.Her story: She grew up on a cattle ranch in Colorado. Life was going along just fine. But then, in April 2011, her family got a phone call a month before she was to graduate from college. Lawyers were telling the family that the U.S. government was seizing their farmland; they had 23 days to get out.
“It was like a bomb had gone off, and we didn’t really understand why,” she said.
“I’m broke. I’m a college student... trying to graduate, working part-time gigs...Now we lost our home,” Cammack said.
“So we ended up staying in an extended-stay motel for months, effectively homeless, and it wasn’t a great part of town.”
Frustrated because no one would explain how this happened to her family, Cammack started doing internet searches.
“And I started finding all these articles from around the country about this government program,” she said. Instituted under President Barack Obama, it “essentially paid the banks the interest on all the mortgage loans in this program up-front.”
“That was a turning point for me,” she said. “I had this moment of: ‘Well, I can be mad about it, and then I can just turn around and rebuild my life and hope that nothing ever happens again.’”
“Or, I can take that program down and all of the bureaucrats and swamp creatures who built [it].”
The latter route was the one she chose.
Cammack said it bothered her that several million families lost their homes the same way. She still gets messages every couple weeks from another family who had lost their home under that same program.
She learned the program was included within an 1,800-page bill that most Republicans and Democrats didn’t bother to read.
Another Call to Action
Another pivotal phone call followed. A family friend phoned and told her about “an uncle in Florida who hates government like you hate government,” urging her to go to work for him.Cammack connected with that man and decided to go help his campaign. She drove all the way from Colorado to Florida, “with my fishing gear and every piece of clothing I can stuff into my Nissan Maxima.”
She worked on a political campaign that unseated a 24-year incumbent who had $2.3 million in the bank. Later, Cammack decided to run her own campaign. But she decided to do it on her own terms. Political consultants urged her: “Oh, you’ve got to talk about being a woman.”
Cammack refused. “I don’t ever want someone to vote for me because I’m a woman.” She also refused to tout her youth.
“I know I’m going to outwork people, but I’m going to prove it through my actions, not talk about it,” Cammack said. “People should vote for me because I’m the best person for the job, not because I ‘checked a box’” for a certain demographic.
She believes her campaign was successful because people hunger for authenticity.
If conservatives remain true to who they are–and go out and do the grunt work of knocking on doors and making phone calls–they will succeed, Cammack stated.
“We in this room are charged with a very simple mission,” she said.
“In ‘24, we grow our margin in the House. We take the Senate, and we take back the White House!”
