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over the back of your campaign stationery, and you may use it in display advertising. A personal
endorsement from almost anyone is likely to drag in another vote or two. You may decide to suppress
some names when you know that the persons concerned have numerous enemies and very few friends.
This is legitimate; you have not contracted to use the names.
If caught out, I would take refuge in a social fib. "Your name isn't on the list? It must have been skipped
when the list was copied for the printer. It's too late to add it, I'm afraid-that printing bill was $26. But I
certainly will tell Mr. Upright that you wanted your name on his committee."
Follow your own conscience. My own will stand a few polite evasions when another person's feelings
can be saved without damage to anyone.
The public committee will be headed by officers
TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT! 157
whose duties are nominal unless they serve in the same capacity on the working committee. These de
facto honorary officers should be selected to be as broadly representative as possible and for maximum
prestige. The following set-up would be ideal for the typical American community:
The Citizen's Committee for the Honorable Jonathan Upright, Candidate for Congress, Umpteenth
District
Dr. Colin MacDonald, Chairman
Francis X. OToole, Secretary
Isadore Weinstein, Treasurer
Muriel T. Busybody, Field Director telephone Grant 0361
Mrs. Busybody (yourself) is the only working member of this list, although the others are all loyal
supporters. The names have been selected by you as being conspicuously Protestant, Catholic, and
Jewish. For maximum effect each gentleman should be very prominent, and highly respected in the
community by all groups. If Dr. MacDonald is a prominent Presbyterian and Mason and a stylish
physician noted for his charities, Mr. OTbole a distinguished lawyer and an active Knight of Columbus,
and Mr. Weinstein both a Scout commissioner and well known in B'nai B'rith, then your cup runneth
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over.
Special offices can be devised to permit other prestige names to stand out-chairman women's division,
vice-chairman, director speakers' bureau, public relations, liaison, chairman finance committee, chairmen
for various small communities in the district, director of research, chairman study groups, etc., without
end.
It is advisable to list the rest of the committee in strict alphabetical order to avoid hurt feelings.
There is no reason why any of these prestige officers should not be active campaign executives. It is
some-
Robert A. HeirMn
158
159
TAKE BACK YOUR GOVERNMENT!
times possible to get a busy, able person actively into the campaign by getting him first to agree to letting
his name appear at the top of the letterhead, then calling him into war councils.
The working committee consists of the following- by any titles: Candidate, manager, money raiser,
publicity person, office girl, field supervisors, and precinct workers. Some of these people will double in
brass and all of them should do some precinct work, in order to keep their roots down. The office girl
and publicity person may be paid professionals-they certainly must be professionally skilled and
experienced whether they are paid or not. There is no need for anyone else in the campaign to be paid
anything.
The best place for members of the candidate's family on the committee is the chairman of South America
and the Eastern Hemisphere. The candidate may need and want a member of his family as a confidential
secretary and this may be tolerated, but relatives of candidates are subject to an even more virulent form
of candidatitis than are candidates - it is very discouraging to have to drop real campaigning in order to
go around patching up gaps in your fences left by unpolitic relatives of your white hope.
Headquarters: It does not matter in the least whether you have swank offices or good equipment; the
voting public will neither know nor care. A telephone call from a private phone in a modest home
soundsjust the same as one coming through a switchboard in a suite of fancy offices. You need a
typewriter, file boxes for 3 x 5 cards (shoeboxes will do), a cheap letter file, a two-bit scrap book, the
use (not the ownership) of a duplicating machine, a telephone which is not in reach of the casual
dropper-in - and nothing else - nothing! Use furniture at hand, or improvise it out of scrap wood. Place
the headquarters in any heated, rent-free space, your own spare bedroom, somebody's rumpus room,
or a donated second-rate office over a store building.
Campaigns customarily have public offices fronting on commercial streets. The usefulness of such
so-called headquarters is questionable; the vote-getting power is not better than border line. If you can
get an empty store building, or space in an occupied store belonging to a supporter, and in either case
absolutely rent-free and if you can get someone to remain in such donated space to answer questions and
hand out literature on an unpaid but faithful basis and if such person is unable or totally unwilling to do
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precinct work instead, it is then worthwhile to invest in signs and printing to advertise the campaign by
advertising the space as a "headquarters." Otherwise it is better to wait until the final campaign when such
space is more readily available for the entire ticket
There are distinct advantages in not having public offices and in avoiding a swank, expensive
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