Need cash for bills? Launch a voters' guide
Looking for a profitable business to run from your Yorba Linda home?
Need extra cash for your mortgage payment, the kids’ college fund or to buy gas for your SUV or Hummer?
Forget about stuffing envelopes, transcribing doctors’ medical tapes or selling on e-Bay.
Just launch a new voters’ guide or, as they’re known in the trade, a slate mailer. You’ll rake in thousands of dollars from individual candidates and ballot measure groups hoping your paid endorsements of their causes will impress gullible voters.
All you need is an impressive-sounding group name, a reliable local print shop and an attitude that there’s money to be made from selling endorsements to the highest bidder.
You can model your guide after the many mailers you received prior to this past Tuesday’s balloting. If you’ve already tossed them in the trash, you can count on receiving an even larger number of samples before the November election.
Sure, some notable names already are taken by those selling endorsements, such as Parents’ Ballot Guide; Family, Faith and Freedom Association; Coalition for Senior Citizen Security; COPS Voter Guide; National Tax Limitation Committee; California Taxpayers Alliance; Orange County Property Rights Coalition; and Team California.
But the possibilities are endless. How about Police Officers, Firefighters, Teachers and Health Care Workers for More Services, Lower Taxes, Controlled Growth and Property Rights Protection in an Illegal Immigrant-free & Child-safe Environment Voting Guide?
And don’t worry about competition in a saturated marketplace. Campaign managers will pay for sound-bite-type messages on as many mailers as their clients can afford.
You don’t even have to worry about checking the accuracy of statements you’ll be paid to print in your mailer. You’re trading space for cash, not providing a genuine service to voters.
Of course, plan two versions of your guide, one to mail to Republicans and another for Democrats. Candidates for City Council, school trustee, water district and the numerous judicial and county offices will pay to appear in both, thus increasing your profit margin.
Just include a picture of Ronald Reagan--preferably on horseback--on the Republican guide and a photograph of a youthful John F. Kennedy on the mailer aimed at Democrats.
How much money can you make?
In 2002, Keri Wilson bought several council endorsements, paying $200 to Parents’ Ballot Guide, $400 to Voter Information Guide and $1,000 to California Voter Guide.
In the same election, former three-term Councilman Mark Schwing paid from $100 to $814 for endorsements on 12 different guides, spending a total of $5,664.
Multiply similar dollar figures by hundreds of campaigns at the federal, state and local levels, subtract printing and postage costs, and you’ve tucked away a tidy sum of cash.
A FINAL NOTE
In my March 16 column, I asked, “Can two longtime Lions Club buddies seeking the same state Assembly seat run positive campaigns focusing on the issues? Or will they resort to the negative attack mailers so often used by candidates fighting for voter approval in hotly contested party primaries?”
Sadly, the race was politics as usual: both Mayor Mike Duvall and Brea Councilman Marty Simonoff sent out mailers--campaign managers call them “comparison pieces”-- which mischaracterized each other’s positions on several issues.
Need extra cash for your mortgage payment, the kids’ college fund or to buy gas for your SUV or Hummer?
Forget about stuffing envelopes, transcribing doctors’ medical tapes or selling on e-Bay.
Just launch a new voters’ guide or, as they’re known in the trade, a slate mailer. You’ll rake in thousands of dollars from individual candidates and ballot measure groups hoping your paid endorsements of their causes will impress gullible voters.
All you need is an impressive-sounding group name, a reliable local print shop and an attitude that there’s money to be made from selling endorsements to the highest bidder.
You can model your guide after the many mailers you received prior to this past Tuesday’s balloting. If you’ve already tossed them in the trash, you can count on receiving an even larger number of samples before the November election.
Sure, some notable names already are taken by those selling endorsements, such as Parents’ Ballot Guide; Family, Faith and Freedom Association; Coalition for Senior Citizen Security; COPS Voter Guide; National Tax Limitation Committee; California Taxpayers Alliance; Orange County Property Rights Coalition; and Team California.
But the possibilities are endless. How about Police Officers, Firefighters, Teachers and Health Care Workers for More Services, Lower Taxes, Controlled Growth and Property Rights Protection in an Illegal Immigrant-free & Child-safe Environment Voting Guide?
And don’t worry about competition in a saturated marketplace. Campaign managers will pay for sound-bite-type messages on as many mailers as their clients can afford.
You don’t even have to worry about checking the accuracy of statements you’ll be paid to print in your mailer. You’re trading space for cash, not providing a genuine service to voters.
Of course, plan two versions of your guide, one to mail to Republicans and another for Democrats. Candidates for City Council, school trustee, water district and the numerous judicial and county offices will pay to appear in both, thus increasing your profit margin.
Just include a picture of Ronald Reagan--preferably on horseback--on the Republican guide and a photograph of a youthful John F. Kennedy on the mailer aimed at Democrats.
How much money can you make?
In 2002, Keri Wilson bought several council endorsements, paying $200 to Parents’ Ballot Guide, $400 to Voter Information Guide and $1,000 to California Voter Guide.
In the same election, former three-term Councilman Mark Schwing paid from $100 to $814 for endorsements on 12 different guides, spending a total of $5,664.
Multiply similar dollar figures by hundreds of campaigns at the federal, state and local levels, subtract printing and postage costs, and you’ve tucked away a tidy sum of cash.
A FINAL NOTE
In my March 16 column, I asked, “Can two longtime Lions Club buddies seeking the same state Assembly seat run positive campaigns focusing on the issues? Or will they resort to the negative attack mailers so often used by candidates fighting for voter approval in hotly contested party primaries?”
Sadly, the race was politics as usual: both Mayor Mike Duvall and Brea Councilman Marty Simonoff sent out mailers--campaign managers call them “comparison pieces”-- which mischaracterized each other’s positions on several issues.
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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