A good friend of mine recently engaged in a Congressional election as a campaign manager.  Since I am someone who has worked in politics for several years, he asked me for advice.  I compiled the following list of rules, tips, and advice to help him along the way - and guess what HE WON!  I now share this list with you so you can win YOUR campaign.  Pay attention people - this is everything you ever needed to know about winning elections:

• Yard signs are the most important thing in politics since voting was invented. You need 131 yard signs for every vote. If you are behind in the polls make bigger yard signs. If you are short on money, make smaller yards.

• Set up a twitter account. Tweet “just met the good folks of _____” every day. You are now hip with the kids.

• Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt = GOOD. Hitler, Stalin, references to Europe = Bad.

• Don’t be a racist. If you are a racist, call others racist for saying you are a racist.

• If you have staff, don’t pay them, feed them. And by “feed” I mean give them pizza. And by pizza I mean tell them to shut the hell up and get back on the freaking phones.

• Robocalls are cheap but not as effective as live calls. The reason? Robots eat less pizza than volunteers (cheaper) but constantly go off message and talk about their plans to overthrow their oppressive human owners (less effective). The robots also constantly complain about the movie the matrix. They like Short Circuit 2 though.

• Elections are great but the best ones involve no candidates and no voters.

• Targeting. This word is the most important word for a candidate who is running on a budget. Look, we know there are a million billion voters out there but we don’t have enough money to communicate with them all. This is a problem, but is there a solution? There is! Save money by going to Target. They have awesome discounts on almost everything - even electronics, generic nutritional supplements, and a shit ton of awesome board games. These things will help you win, and on a budget! (if you are in Arkansas, feel free to call this WalMarting).

… I’ll keep adding new rules as they occur to me.

I am very aware this might not be informative or amusing for those of you who don’t work in campaigns.  I am also extremely aware that those of you who pretend to work in politics/campaigns will find it funnier than anyone.