Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana, where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics, and empower you to join the mission, because victory for Louisiana requires you.
This week, we begin a two part conversation with Amelie LeBreton, who has been a fundraiser, a finance director and a development director, which are all ways of saying she raises money for awesome causes. On this episode, we discuss what attracted Amelie to fundraising as a career path and get into the general theories of how to effectively ask for donations. In part two, we'll explore specific methods and best practices for less experienced candidates and campaign staff who are just learning to create finance plans and setting up fundraising calls.
Amelie LeBreton! Thank you so much for joining me on Louisiana Lefty today.
Thank you for having me.
Well, you have the distinction of a couple of firsts for me. One being you were the first person I went out and had coffee and lunch with after vaccination. So back in the days when we actually could go do those things, you were the person that I went out with. And we actually got together specifically to talk about this episode about fundraising for politics. But also you have the distinction of the first person in the history of the podcast so far that I've had to re-record because even though we're trying to do all these tech updates, I've had nothing but tech issues in season two. Every single episode I've recorded so far has had some major issue. So I am very grateful for your generosity of time, that you're willing to record with me a second time.
Well, as I told you, anything for you, Lynda, I'm happy to do it. And I'm sure it'll be even better on the second take.
We're very practiced at this now. Well, I always start the episode with how we met. And you and I met at a fundraiser here in New Orleans where Speaker Nancy Pelosi came, and then-Congressman Cedric Richmond was there. But it was for the D Triple C.
Yes, which is how everybody refers to it, because the name is very long, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So those who aren't familiar with it, there's the DNC, the DCCC for Congress, and the DSCC for the Senate. There's an exact parallel for the Republican Party as well. So those are your federal campaign committees.
What's great is that because we had to re record this podcast, I slipped in a podcast the week before this one airs that is on the Democratic alphabet soup, where Professor Handwerk, as I call him, and I go through all the different Democratic alphabet soup organizations in Washington, DC, so people should be primed to know what your job was.
The alphabet soup part is real. It's not just like a couple of people who talk like that. It's everyone.
I do want to talk about that event where we met a little bit. Meeting Speaker Pelosi was an amazing thing. And as you and I have discussed before, before I got involved in politics, I was not a huge fan of Nancy Pelosi. I have become a tremendous fan of hers just by watching her work, how amazing she is, how effective she is. And she told us the long story, which I won't recount here, I don't even know if all of it's supposed to be public, on the efforts to save the American economy from a crash in 2008. And it was a remarkable tale, but she was so integral to saving this country from depression.
I don't often meet people, when it comes up that this is who I worked for, who are like, "No opinion," and "I don't know anything about her." People have very strong opinions about her, but whatever those are, she is incredibly effective. And she is the best fundraiser for the Democratic Party in history. And, you know, obviously, I don't know how to compare that to something from like 150 years ago, but in the modern history of the party, she is the best fundraiser. And so to get to learn this particular skill under that leadership was unbelievable.
But yeah, she is able to share, especially in those settings. That event was probably about 50 to 60 people. And that was, you know, probably average for the kinds of events that I worked on in that role, maybe actually even a little bit bigger then some of the other events we worked on. And in those settings, she's able to really drill in to that level of detail and, and give that narrative to folks about what really was happening behind the scenes, which isn't something that they're going to let you park at a press conference and just tell these stories, you know, the q&a part is different. So what people get to see of her on television, and what people get to see on her when they're face to face and interacting with her in person is totally different. You are not the first person to say, "Oh, my goodness, I met her and I was not expecting that."
Because she has that kind of mental dexterity to go back and forth between the way in which you're building a vote count the policy pieces, the data of it, like she can hold all of that in there. And again, whatever people may think of her, she is effective for that reason, that she can think through, "This is the goal for the strategy; these are the pieces in play," and make something happen with that where, you know, there may be people who don't believe this, but it's not about her ego. She is always set on whatever the goal in front of her is. And that's one of the reasons she's so effective. She keeps that eye on the prize.
Well, tell me about your political origin story. How did you first get involved in politics and what got you interested in it?
Yeah, so I have been interested in politics from a strangely young age. Our family dinner table was often talking about these kinds of things. My grandfather was in the state legislature, great grandfather was an elected official, on my mom's side, there's a DA, all kinds of things. But it was really much more that conversation about what so-and-so thought about what had just happened right here, especially in local politics. I think they were really much more mindful of that. This was something I was interested in, and they said, "Go for it!" And I was very lucky for that.
And you had a grandfather, Eddie LeBreton, who served in the legislature as Moon Landrieu's floor leader?
Yes, he was. I mean, he had a long career. So he's involved with a lot of different mayoral campaigns and administration's, but that was one piece that I know. There's a lot of more stories from that time in his career.
Very good. Well, tell me your mini bio, and how you ended up in fundraising. It's not what you started out to do, right?
No, and I haven't met a fundraiser who's like, "Yeah, that's what I wanted to do as a little girl," or even like, "Once I was in high school or college, this is what I was going to do." I think we all kind of find different ways to fundraising. So like I said, I had always had an interest in politics, and always a high interest in having a lot of opinions myself. So I wanted to write about politics, so I was a journalism major. And I really thought that was the thing I'd want to do. I had some incredible internships that were really fascinating, but also taught me this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. This was a really cool thing to do for a summer, but I couldn't see myself doing it long term.
So after graduating, I was trying to get a job on Capitol Hill, along with a million other people, and so wound up interning along with about 1000 other people. I was trying very much to find how to go from intern to staff on the Hill, which is always a hard leap to make. Everyone kept telling me, "Go campaign; you'll get experience for your resume. You're in competition with too many other people who have more on their resume here than you do. You've really got to go campaign." Now I had this conception of campaigning like, I'm going to just wind up stuck some snowy place in the middle of November that I don't know anybody and just stuck like knocking doors in the snow, and I grew up in Louisiana, and I can't handle that. It was probably from movies or something that I got that concept, but I was just dead set against it.
I wound up moving back home and interning on Charlie Melancon's Senate campaign against then Senator David Vitter. Then I got pulled into a tax assessor's race here in New Orleans, which is the very last thing on the ballot before you get to the constitutional amendments. You can't get any more down ballot as an elected official. But it was eye opening. And it was exciting and it was awesome. And it taught me so so much. And I was like, "This is what I want to do! Campaigning is everything! Forget all the staff jobs on the official side, I don't want that anymore."
One of the biggest pieces there was that of all the people who were involved with this fantastic candidate, Janis Lemle, who's no longer with us, but she's a fantastic person, Mario Zervigon was the consultant on that and is a phenomenal fundraiser. His portfolio has grown. But he was able to teach me actual things about how you fundraise. So in that experience that was the most direct, kind of like skill work that I got. Anyway, I wanted to do that. And then of course, now I'm in love with campaigning, and I want to go try to find a job on the Senate campaign.
Instead, I wound up with the opportunity to work for then-Congressman Melancon's DC office on the official side. So as soon as I wanted one end of the work, I wound up with an opportunity on the other. And I am not complaining here because I loved all of it. But it was just kind of a constant joke. It's like, so if you want that, the other thing is gonna come up.
Unfortunately he did not succeed against David Vitter. So that office was closing, and I wound up at the DCCC, which was the perfect kind of combination for me, because you're working with campaigns, raising money into the committee to invest in campaigns, but you're also living in DC. And I will totally admit this, I grew up in New Orleans, so I'm a snob about where I live. I want to live somewhere fun, so I loved that part. And I had the South as my region, so I went Texas to Oklahoma, to over the Carolinas down to Florida. And as a Democratic fundraiser in the South, I absolutely spent most of my time in Texas and Florida. But we got to come home to New Orleans for that event.
So you have a broad range of experience, then, with some journalism, some policy, and campaign experience. And then from the D Triple C, you moved back to New Orleans.
I stayed with the D-Trip for two years. I always knew I wanted to live here in New Orleans for the long haul. So I came back in the Planned Parenthood role. I was the development director for Louisiana for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which is the affiliate here, headquartered in Houston and covers all of Louisiana. That was also a perfect place to land because I wanted to transition to nonprofit but obviously Planned Parenthood has an undeniable political piece to it. So I kind of got to transition in really just the right environment, from political to nonprofit fundraising. After exactly another four years in that role, I moved from Planned Parenthood to the Louisiana SPCA. I've been there for about two years as development director. And when it comes to these titles, I'm sure it's true in other areas of work, but with fundraising, they can just mean so many things, because those have been completely different jobs. But they've all been some sort of director.
What appealed to you most about the fundraising piece, then? You went onto campaign work and instead of all the other options in campaign work, you decided you really liked fundraising.
Yes. Certain things happened at just the right time to lead me that way. That assessor campaign, having somebody as fantastic as Mario Zervigon to be able to introduce you to how this works and how to do it successfully, was a huge element to it. So when I got to that place where I was looking for "What am I going to do next?" after working with Congressman Melancon, the opportunity for the DCCC came through. Some friends I'd made there were like, "If you've done those things, you can do this." And I was like, "No way that sounds way too intimidating." And they were like, "No, if you've had this experience, you can do this role." Also, this part was always very funny to me. I had used NGP very lightly in that campaign. And because I'd used it, they were like, "Okay, cool. She knows NGP." Apparently that was a big leg up.
And just to clarify...
Right, it's not NGP anymore. It's been bought by VAN.
It's NGP-VAN now, and a little trivia: NGP are the initials of the guy who invented that system, Nathaniel Pearlman, who has his own podcast, (Great Battlefield Podcast) which I've actually done. He came to Louisiana and did a bunch of podcasts with folks here.
That's awesome. It's a good database,
I was like, "I know who you are. You're the NGP of NGP-VAN! I'm a fan of yours." He thought that was a little funny that I actually knew that.
I'm being very transparent about when all these things happened. So it's not like it's a secret. But I have also made myself feel very old that I can say I worked with NGP before it was purchased by VAN. And the very first time I logged into it, it had an icon that was like the donkey. And I was like, that's such a weird icon for a tech company. Because it hadn't dawned on me yet that even the tech is partisan.
And we talk about that a lot with folks when we're training them on, specifically the Votebuilder side of VAN. It's a proprietary database, that's for Democrats only, so that we're not collecting data and then sharing it with people who might be competing.
So that's kind of how I wound up in fundraising. But what really appealed to me, why I stuck with it was, it's so people based and clearly I like to talk. So being able to do work that produces such a critical resource, the funding, and do that in a way where you're engaging people, building support, building those relationships that help on a long term level, there's a great deal of satisfaction about like, what the work product or fundraising is. Something I like doing on the day to day is talking to people. And that's a big part of what you do, you know, a lot of research and a lot of talking to people.
And I think I've heard you talk about this enough now to say, I think what you'll say is the most important thing to know about fundraising is that it's about building relationships.
Yes, definitely. And I think I would have said something to that effect if you'd asked me that while I was still in political fundraising, before I had nonprofit experience. But now it's even more true for me. Because with campaigning, you have an urgency, there's a deadline. You have the primary scheduled and the general. There's a million things that build into campaigns that's like, "Okay, this is the next target. This is the next thing." And it keeps you on that pace, and that's important. But the nonprofit experience has taught me that, when you're building things out for the long term, the relationship piece is what becomes so much more important. So you're always supposed to be building relationships in political fundraising, too, but I think it just helps cement it for me. Because I've moved out of this place where every 30 days we're publicly reporting how much we raised to like, there's a list on the 990s of 25 donors and the rest of it is building your own deadlines and your own finance plan on the organization's schedule. But at any rate, the building relationships part is what's so important, because if you approach fundraising that way, then you're going to be more successful, because you're going to connect someone with the resources needed, with a cause or candidate that they can invest in, and their resources can help make a difference that way.
Okay. And you've called the DCCC, the D Triple C, the D-Trip, all of those great things, you've called that, like your fund raising college. And I just wanted to say I felt the same way about the Obama campaign that as far as Organizing University went, I really felt like I had the opportunity and the freedom to learn. And P.S. great educators to teach all those wonderful things that have served me so well in politics since then. So you've kind of had the same experience with the D Triple C.
Absolutely. I have to give credit: My mother is the one who coined that as Fundraising College. So she was right. But I had a really incredible set of fundraising mentors there. I started in an assistant job. So the south region would have a director and an assistant. The person in that roll was incredible about how much of a skill set and the the little tricks of the trade that she taught me. But much more so, she taught me why what we were doing was important. I would love it if everybody had to work on a campaign, because it just teaches you to go figure something out, come back with a solution and not 10 other questions.
And then I think one of the other pieces is, in the role I was in, I'm Amelie from New Orleans, I live in DC, and I'm trying to raise money in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Miami, Tampa, no one knows me there, right? And so you're trying to figure out how you build those relationships with the people that are going to be working on these events with you. Yes, you have to sit there and make some cold calls. And that's another thing you learn is that just takes experience and time. It's never like the most fun thing you're going to do. But you get comfortable with it. And you figure out how to make that successful. But beyond that, and what will give you more long term success is figuring out how to build relationships that help you network. So in this case, there would usually be for these events, a Member of Congress who was helping host or co host. They have one of their local supporters host it at their home. So you'd be working with a Member of Congress's chief of staff or their campaign team, and then an individual who is going to help reach out to their networks. And you can't just call them and say, "Where are the numbers?" and "Where are your commitments?" Sure you could do that, but it's not gonna be great. And so you have to figure out how to build relationships with these folks, keep them motivated, and make sure you're getting them the support that they need for what you're supposed to deliver.
So what I mean by building relationships with people in all these different cities that didn't know me initially, is that you're asking them to reach out to their networks. This person is going to host the party, so they are going to reach out to folks saying, "I'm having this elected official or Member of Congress in my home, and I hope you'll come and support this because we want to see more Democrats in Congress," right? That's the the mission of the D-Trip. And you're trying to support them in doing that.
Now, some of these folks have done that, or for the DNC for ages, and they know what they're doing. But that's not going to be most the people you interact with, right? There's a precious few who have operated like that, and continue to do it for over a long period of time. So when you're working with someone who hasn't done that before, you're talking through with them, "Who are your networks? And who are you? What are you involved in? Okay, you're an attorney, but you're an environmental attorney..." or what have you. And so you're figuring out where those networks might be and working with them. So again, that's what I mean, when I say building relationships. It's not just calling them up and saying, "Who have you called? Where are the commitments?" You're saying, "How can I work with you to help you help us achieve this goal of raising the funds needed?"
If you're asking people to give up their time, or to contribute financially, and you walk up to the person off the street, you're not probably going to get a great response from them, because they have no idea who you are or what you're talking about. So when you can do this through a network of known relationships, where you're walking into a conversation where trust and common knowledge already exists, then you're going to get a lot farther a lot faster.
So the D Triple C is really just a fundraising arm of congressional campaigns, or does it do other things?
I was a member of the finance department in the South, but really what it's set up as is like kind of mini campaigns. So there was somebody working on data, somebody working on research, somebody working on field. I was raising money into the committee so that it could spend and invest on all these competitive races. And then there was a different counterpart in each region, who was helping candidates raise directly for their their campaign. So competitive races were nicknamed "red to blue," for the challengers who were trying to flip a district from red to blue. Our "frontline" were incumbents that had competitive races. And then there's a political role that kind of that operates like a campaign manager, who earlier on is really involved in helping recruit candidates and if there's a district where we don't have a candidate, they're gonna find somebody.
Well, a slight digression. Everybody knows one of the things about the D Triple C is the emails, and they are fundraising emails for the most part. But where did that come from? Where did all the crazy amounts of emails come from?
So this is the part where, no longer working for the D-Trip, I'm very glad, because now I can just say, "Yes, they're annoying, and do with them what you will." But they are an incredibly successful piece of fundraising for for the D-Trip, and that model that kind of got blown up by the D-Trip team has been copied by a lot of other folks. The original model, though, was the Obama campaign. Digital fundraising, as we think about it today just didn't exist until the Obama campaign. They just blew it out of the water. I did not work the Obama campaign, so I don't want to pretend to be able to speak to it. But they accomplished something huge and brand new.
So when I came to the to the D-Trip, it was January 2011, everyone was in the best mood because obviously, the Tea Party wave just happened. And I'm trying to be very sarcastic here. But it was definitely a rebuilding moment. For the whole party, but specifically on the on the digital front. That team was two guys and an intern, and the intern had one of these a half desks around a corner, like it literally couldn't have been a smaller department at that time. And by the time I left, four years later, there was, I don't know, a dozen or more people. I think I feel like in my head, it was 20 people over on the side of the office that they cleared out. There was a whole team of people that were operating, not just to do the committee's fundraising work, but they started a program where for, especially for those red to blue and frontline incumbents, they would take over your campaign. And I think it was called the mothership program or something like that.
So not only were you getting these emails from the D-Trip, but then you were starting to get them from all the different candidates saying, "We're knocking on doors and doing all these things; contribute $5 and get these guys some pizzas" or something. Those are actually my favorite emails, because those are the ones where I almost want to give, because you're talking about the people doing all this work. And so people ask all the time, "How do I get off them? And how on earth do they make any money? Like they're just obnoxious, they can't possibly produce anything." And the the second question, they actually do, they raise a huge amount of money. They're very successful.
But what people don't realize is that, at any given time, you have something like 3% to 5% of the list giving anything, and then 1% to 3% of those people giving the majority of the funds. So it's not the same person over like a five year period, sitting in that 1% to 3%, who's giving the most, but they're constantly cycling people in and out. So for a couple of months, you get really jazzed about a certain candidate or fired up about something, and you start giving $10. And then you'll be like, "No, I can't do this anymore." And you'll kind of cycle back out of that. It's a absolute numbers game. So you may never give and still be on the lists. And that's fine, because they are building out the numbers they need to achieve those goals.
The how do you get removed piece, the truth is, you can hit unsubscribe, and you will be unsubscribed. But then there's a lot of list renting back and forth in political giving. So another candidate will have your name on the list. And that has already been sent off before you hit unsubscribe. That's a big part of how you'll wind up on other people's lists and then back around. But the other thing is every time there's like a Facebook post that says: Sign President Obama's birthday card, when you sign it, in the fine print, you're signing up for these emails, and now you're back on the list. So I want him to get all the birthday wishes in the world. This is not a state secret. People know this is how it works. But the truth of the matter is that you're probably not getting off those lists. So just figure out where to send them in your email or give! You should definitely be giving to the D-Trip. They do very important work to get Democrats elected.
You told me the same thing, that I was on one of your lists, because I appeared to be a large dollar donor because I had maxed out my credit cards for Barack Obama when he first ran. I did not have that money, I just essentially took out credit card loans to give to Obama.
I will say this again. And I will say it many times. I personally think he needs to know this, like he personally needs to know this, because that is a high level of commitment to a candidate. The story of how we first met in person was when you came to the D Triple C event with Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Richmond. All our titles changed multiple times in the years in between, but I first was aware of you because you popped up on a prospect list. We we managed to make that event happened, but it took me years to get that event in New Orleans to happen, because we hadn't done it as regularly. So I was building out new lists and new stuff takes a lot of work, and know that you're going to be able to produce the that kind of revenue. And so anyway, so in the process of that, anytime somebody popped up from Louisiana, I got really excited. And so when your name came up, I was like, "Oh, I've not seen this person's name before brand new, I gotta learn." And so you know, first thing you do is plug the person's name into Google, and it popped up because you had the petition about the NFL commissioner and the Saints. That's the first thing I learned about you. And it was just, you know, my love for Lynda Ward started there and has never stopped. "Who is this person? I love everything that they are doing online!" Like everything that you were putting out and posting, I was like, "I have to meet this person, she fantastic."
Side note: I did start a petition to get the NFL to give up their tax exempt status. And we were successful with that.
That's what I mean, I was like, "This woman knows how to get something done, I gotta meet her."
Well, I know you did say that eventually I would roll off some lists.
Yeah, I mean, you're probably never going to come off the email list. But eventually, you can't look at every prospect who's ever given to anything. So most fundraisers will be looking at a certain scope of years. So you'll start popping once the those years go by.
And then the other thing you mentioned to me when we had lunch, was that people spend big money to figure out what works and what doesn't work for fundraising. I know, I must certainly be on all the lists for merchandise and events. Because if there's an event I like going to the events. If you're going to sell a t-shirt, I'm going to buy the t-shirt. I need to get rid of t-shirts, I have so many. But what in your experience is the thing that really gets people to donate?
As you were setting up with that question, this is not talking about direct mail strategies, or direct marketing strategies. They have tested everything six ways. And I have learned direct mail is never going to be my favorite part of fundraising. I have learned, like, don't try to edit the letter, this is what you're paying them for. They've tested the language, leave it alone. So my work has been much more individual fundraising based, right? And you need all these different methods of communication, to set yourself up for good success.
So you need an organization that's communicating really well, I will definitely put a plug right here for the Louisiana SPCA communications team is amazing. So when I'm introducing myself to somebody now in this role, they know they saw some great video of an animal that we were doing a special procedure for, or something like that. But in this case, to bring it back to the political, you need a comprehensive communication strategy. That helps with the introduction. People are like, "Okay, that's you. That's what y'all are doing. I heard so and so talking about this," or "I saw your email." That is incredibly helpful, because when they've never heard of you before, it's really hard to get started. But what is gonna make a difference between somebody taking a meeting with you or in saying yes to a contribution or in especially a significant contribution is - and I will sound like a broken record here, but that's kind of on purpose - it's about building a relationship.
So you're not sitting down and in conversation, kind of waiting until when can I say, "Will you give me X amount of dollars?" You are trying to figure out who this person is and why they care about this. So we'll use an example of somebody who's very passionate about the environment. And say, you have a candidate who this is like their number one issue, this is why they're running for Congress, this is the thing that gets him out of bed in the morning. Well, you want them to connect about that. And you want them to be able to talk about what it is that they see for the future, what it is they see is possible in this next legislative session, or you know, what have you. And that is a meaningful conversation that does two things: You build certainly a personal connection, but much more importantly, this person sees that this candidate not only cares about the issue, but has a plan to do something about it. Right there, you're saying, I believe this person cares about my issue, and that they can impact it. And I think, you know, the "can" is about whether or not they view this person, as a competent person. And the the fact that they will do something about it is that trust, and that is something you can only do with personal one on one relationship building. You can seem competent, you can have a good strategy, you can lay out data, statistics, all the details and be very impressive. But if they don't feel like they trust that this is your number one issue or that you are really committed to doing whatever it is that you're talking about, then that's very swayable.
It's building loyalty essentially.
So I find it ironic that women candidates have struggled so much with fundraising, when most of the bomb fundraisers I know are women. And you talked about Nancy Pelosi being one of the best fundraisers for Democrats of all time. I know you mentioned Mario, but I know so many more of the fundraisers I know are women. So what's the disconnect there? Is it self imposed obstacles? We obviously know some of that's going to be societal and people not just being used to giving to women candidates yet, but...
We've talked about this before. A lot of this is changing, right? There's a lot of different organizations around, like Emerge here in Louisiana. I was so excited when they started because I was like, "Yes, we need this here." Having done a lot of work in Texas, Annie's List is a similarly purposed organization. I'm not sure exactly when they started, but they've been around for decades. Wendy Davis was an Annie's List alum, and many others that you've heard of. It's so important, that training piece is what they're delivering. It's so important, because I think it answers a lot of questions, not just about fundraising, but it's like, "How do you do this?" Because that's not a subject anybody studies in school, right? Like campaigning is pretty much everything you learn on the job. I think, groups that are trying to address this, particularly for women, that's huge.
But, and I've shared this with you before as well, I kind of struggle with the concept of women thinking they are not going to be good fundraisers for that reason that you talked about. I learned all my real basics of fundraising under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and mentors that dominate this field, like when I would tell people I work for so and so they're like, "Oh, my gosh, yeah, she's good." I was so fortunate for that. In my fundraising work, every department I've worked with has either been all female or vast majority female. So I think the biggest thing I can say if someone is considering running and thinking like "I can't raise, I can't do the fundraising, I can't possibly ask people for money," do not believe that. That's a voice in your head that you just need to ignore. Because some of the very, very best fundraisers out there across the country are women.
I hate to like fall into the generalities of women are always nurturing and women are... because women are always not any one thing. That societal expectation of women to do X, Y, and Z, that stuff is starting to fall away a bit, and we're seeing more and more women be successful in their campaigns. Obviously, you're you're asking for money for a campaign, nobody thinks this is going into your personal pocket. But there is a lot of sense of if you're going to go run for something, put your name out there on billboards and a million different flyers, TV commercials and all these things, it does become a personal thing.
But when you're asking for support, and this is true when it's not just financial support, but focusing on that, you're not asking somebody to contribute to your campaign, like, "Give this to me because you like me," or "Give us to me because your friend told me to call you." Rather, you're saying, "You want to contribute to a campaign that's going to elect somebody who is going to achieve these environmental goals, and make sure the environment's a priority," I'm just going to keep the environment as my example. You're saying, "I know you're interested in the environment. And let me tell you, what my plans are, and how deep my commitment goes." So you're sharing something personal about why you care about this, but you're also giving them that level of detail about this is the specific thing that you want to achieve and you want to see done and this is how you think you can do it. "I just need to get to Congress, and I hope that you'll want to help me do that so that we can do this together."
You're not alone on an island as an elected. You don't get anything done unless you have people behind you, supporting you and telling the rest of your community, "We think this is important too."
Thank you for listening to Louisiana Lefty. Please follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you to Ben Collinsworth for producing Louisiana Lefty, Jen Pack of Black Cat Studios for our Super Lefty artwork, and Thousand $ Car for allowing us to use their swamp pop classic "Security Guard" as our Louisiana Lefty theme song.
