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| Eugene C. Brune |
The Somerville News reports that Maria Curtatone recently held her first organizational rally in her bid for the Middlesex County Registrar of Deeds. Mentioning a "
a packed room full of over a hundred supporters" it is clear that the Mayor's sister is finding strength in numbers.
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| Photograph by The Somerville News |
Maryann Heuston, on the other hand, is choosing quality over quantity, as she published a picture taken on the steps of City Hall with members of the Board of Alderman, Representatives Denise Provost and Tim Toomey, and (most importantly) the current registrar Gene Brune.
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| Photograph published by Maryann Heuston |
This proving to be one hell of a race to watch! Currently, neither have websites.
3 comments:
This is really interesting, Courtney. Maria Curtatone's rally represents a "more people" campaign strategy, whereas the photo of Maryann Heuston is a clear "key people" strategy. Both more-people and key-people strategies can work at either the individual/personal level or at the socio-political level. In other words, whether you are engaging more people or key people, you are either trying to change their minds (from "I do not know how I feel about Candidate A for Office X" to "I like Candidate A for Office X"), or you are trying to get them to change their behavior, for example get someone to put up a yard sign.
I would say that the latest events in both the Curtatone and the Heuston campaigns are working at the behavior-changing socio-political level: Curatone got a lot of people to come out on a Friday night to a rally, and Heuston got local politicians to pose with her in a publicity photo. Both are efforts to get these people (more people in the case of Curtatone, key people in the case of Heuston) to work for the campaign in winning more votes.
Ultimately, as a candidate for election the behavior you have to influence that one: what voters do in the voting booth (more people at the socio-political level). From the perspective of someone with experience in social-change initiatives (and elections are a type of social-change initiative), the surest way to achieve a goal at this level is to have an overarching strategy that engages BOTH more people and key people at both the individual/personal level and at the socio-political level, linking initiatives to one another.
Whichever candidate is most successful in mobilizing the linkages between the "more" and "key" levels will, in all likelihood, win.
Michele, you ought to write a book/teach a class! Very well thought out, but how do you define "key people"? Just elected officials? Or other well known people in the community like Officer Capobianco and his family, who's pictured with Curtatone?
The Capobiancos and the Curtatones are related.
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