A ‘Fresh Perspective’ on Winning a Public Office

At the age of twenty – two, most young adults are just graduating from college. They are testing the waters of adulthood as they start their careers, move out of their parents’ homes and set off on their own – NOT running for public office.

For Councilman Daniel Degner, a graduate student at the time, he had plans similar to most 22 year olds. While in school, he received his first American Majority training, Campaign-In-A-Day, at Liberty University. From there, he interned in our Wisconsin office and had the opportunity to learn about how to run an effective campaign and ensure the election of conservatives to local office.

When he looked at his own community back home through the lens of the knowledge he had gained from his internship, he saw that there were holes in local government that could be filled by conservatives who cared about their neighbors’ quality of life.

“I wanted to make sure that we had a conservative, liberty-minded candidate run for city council,” he said.

From his dorm room out of state, Degner waited for someone who shared those ideals to volunteer as a candidate, but no one did. 

“I didn’t want my city to completely lose itself to a liberal majority that was going to focus on increasing taxes and increasing wasteful spending.”

So on his 22nd birthday, he filed to run for public office.

He saw that, “People don’t want to have a government that’s overly intrusive or overly large… They want to make sure that they have freedom and liberty when it comes to their day to day lifestyle choices.”

After the semester ended, Degner moved back home and hit the campaign trail. He put the tools learned from his time at American Majority trainings to use by strategically targeting neighborhoods for door knocking and creating a relatable message to share with voters – a message he called a ‘Fresh Perspective.’ 

American Majority taught him “how to do the hard work, learning how to do doors but also learning how to map out districts, target doors and learn all the specific aspects of fundraising.”

Degner says that it was “truly by the tools of American Majority” that he was able to win his election.

“I can’t think of any other organization out there that does what American Majority does,” he said. “They really help at the grassroots level and at the state level [to] train candidates that are going to make a big impact at the local levels.”

He sees the vital importance of local and state elections because those are the politicians that have the most impact on the daily lives of their constituents.  Degner saw these positions routinely snatched up by liberals who cared more about raising taxes on the people than the people themselves. 

He said that anyone running for office has to “have a really good principal reason for running and it has to be something that promotes their  community and the constituents they’re going to serve.” 

For Degner, that is what conservatism is all about – instituting government to improve people’s lives, not intrude on their lives. As a nation, we need more people who believe in conservative ideals to step up and run for public office and those individuals need to be equipped with the necessary tools to win those offices. 

“We need to make sure we continue to support conservatives at local levels because otherwise we are gonna see our country very vastly fade away to socialist principles and policies,” Degner said. 

That is what we are doing at American Majority and that is what we will continue to do. 

 

Interested in receiving in-person training like Degner’s? Click Here. 

Interested in running for office but don’t know where to start? Click Here. 

Interested in helping us continue to train conservatives? Click Here.