Hypothetical Run for Office

Politics & News
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Let’s say I wanted to run for office here in Alabama, state senate 16 or state house 43.

Notes about the districts:
The earliest election for either of these seats would be 2022 so i basically have 3 years from today if I were to do this.
Both districts are 80% white or more, less than 10% Black.
The State Senate district is mostly upper middle class encompassing Vestavia, Hoover, Indian Springs , meadowbrook.
The State house district is similar but does not have Vestavia/Hoover and includes some of Helena which is still middle class but less so. Its also about 1/3 the size of the senate district at 56K people.

Incumbents - State House- Arnold Mooney - R, local commercial real estate, won in 2014 and 2018. He’s actually running for the AL Senate Seat but as far as I can tell doesn’t have a chance at this point. Check out this joke of an ad below for his senate campaign, smh. He won the 2018 race 15K to about 6K in a district of 56K people.

State Senate - JT Waggoner - R, 83 years old, been in the seat since 1990. He won the last election in 2018 37K to 22K in a district of 149K. Looks like he does business consulting or something now.

As far as issues in Alabama, the most important issues I would say are
1)Healthcare - Medicaid expansion which has not been done even though studies say it would bring billions of dollars to the state economically, not to mention give thousands healthcare that don’t have it.
2) Education/School Funding
3)Lottery/Gambling - could help with funding for both of the above but Indian Casinos already here want to keep their monopoloy and some people still think lotto/casinos are the devil.

If I were to run these would be the things i would focus on. My only concerns would be that my districts being on the wealthier end likely don’t give a fuck about any of the above since property taxes cover the schools and healthcare not a problem for the same reason.

My background:

Project Manager at the same company for 10 years now. 3 Kids, married for 11 years. Lived here my whole life, graduated from University of Alabama.

More to come later but wanted to get this out there.

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If you’re going to do it, start building a social media presence that you can leverage when the time comes. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat (yes, really).

My first thought would be to go for the House seat and try to run a relatively low profile race with a big grassroots effort that is under the radar. In other words, he still thinks he’s crushing it with 15K votes, and you’re trying to sneakily amass an extra 10K to win by more than a 3% margin, rather than trying to turn out an extra 16K in the State Senate race to squeak by with a margin of ~1.2%.

My second thought would be to spend next to nothing on conventional ads, and to do your best to put every dollar of ad spend that you could get into social media ads. My guess is you’d be able to spend a lot less $ per potential voter by being extremely targeted.

IF I were going to primary somebody where I live, and IF I had put even a few minutes of thought into it, this would be a big part of my strategy. For me, 2022 would also be the earliest I could possibly consider a run for a number of reasons.

If I were you and I wanted to do this, I’d also focus a lot on my Alabama roots - hope you’re a big 'Bama football fan, for example. If not, it’s time to start. I’d focus on being the common Alabama family man, and telling that story about yourself. If you’re a Christian, I’d play it up, if you aren’t I’d religiously avoid saying so. I’d suggest you run as a pro-business Democrat, and frame every policy position that way, yes even Medicaid expansion. To be clear, I wouldn’t change my actual positions, I’d just frame them in that context.

So don’t focus so much on giving healthcare to thousands that don’t have it, focus on the studies that say it would bring billions to the state economically. For, say, a public option, you would focus on the economic freedom it would give workers and small business owners to not have to worry about healthcare, rather than on the morality of it.

Essentially you want to be the typical Christian, Alabama born and raised, good family man who wants the government to do what it can to help the people in the area have more money in their pockets and to make it a little easier on small businesses, and you want to sell people on some liberal policies that accomplish those goals.

That said, don’t lie and be something you’re not - just play up the parts of your personality that fit the criteria and gloss over the ones that don’t. Except if you’re not an Alabama football fan… You’re probably going to have to lie about that one.

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thanks for the input man, you mirror’ed some of my own thoughts about how to approach it. I graduated from Univ of Alabama so thats no big deal. I’m rather agnostic and dont belong to a church particularly right now so that would be a stumbling block but coming from democrat side it would matter less.

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What (preferably non political or only tangentially political) things can you do to raise your profile in the community in a positive way? Volunteering at your kids’ school or a super anodyne non profit org is a good way to meet a good cross section of people without having to talk politics. Someone might vote for you even they know you and trust you even if they generally vote R.

Do you have a strong network of people to hit up for time/$/ good word of mouth when the time comes?

Do you have a good sense of what / when the big social events are in your community (in the town I grew up in, no one running for office could avoid the county fair, the 4th of July fireworks)?

You said that a lot of the folks in your district might be too wealthy to prioritize healthcare and education as much as you do… So, without giving up the things that you think are important, what is one area that you think (1) they do care about (2) more liberal policies could improve and (3) that has been particularly neglected by the incumbants?