Campaign Boot Camp: Lessons from the Campaign Trail for Candidates, Staffers, Volunteers, and Nonprofits

by Christine Pelosi

Attorney, author, and activist Christine Pelosi presents leadership lessons from the campaign trail for anyone who wants to run for office, advocate for a cause, or win a public policy issue. In Campaign Boot Basic Training for Future Leaders — A 7-Step Guide to Launching Successful Campaigns for Candidates and Causes , Pelosi uses a boot camp model to provide practical advice and  “get real” exercises so that individual readers can integrate these leadership lessons into their own public service efforts on political campaigns, ballot initiatives, or non-profit ventures.

Right from the stroller, Christine was campaigning with her mother, Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  She has served candidates and party alike, and she knows like few others about the nuts and bolts of winning in politics. Distilling best practices from across the political spectrum, Pelosi shows aspiring leaders how to master the fundamentals of campaigning—management, message, money, and mobilization. 

She lays out a 7-step program for effective campaigning at all levels of public service, from community initiatives to congressional

1. Identify your call to service
2. Know your community
3. Build your leadership teams
4. Define your message
5. Connect with people
6. Raise the money
7. Mobilize to win

Along the way, Pelosi features successful campaigners with their diverse backgrounds and experiences. Among the public servants and political professionals quoted in the book Donna Brazile, David Brock, Willie L. Brown, Jr., Max Cleland, Bill Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., Rahm Emanuel, Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kerry Kennedy, Frank Luntz, Ellen Malcolm, Gerald W. McEntee, Markos Moulitsas, Nancy Pelosi, Carl Pope, Bill Press, Ronald Reagan, Ann Richards, Karl Rove, Jack Valenti, Tim Walz, George F. Will, and Jim Zogby. Their writings and practices help make Campaign Boot Camp both a helpful guide to participatory democracy and an inspiring collective memoir.

 

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Activism

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[Will Atkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just wasn’t very good. The last chapter on GOTV was by far the most detailed (and longest), but also just fit a bunch of unrelated stuff into it. The book says a lot, but doesn’t provide very usable guidance.

[Kim Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides lots of great nuts-and-bolts advice for launching and running a campaign, whether for a candidate or a cause (although it's heavily weighted toward the former).

It covers everything from fundraising to messaging, with detailed information--including checklists and sample schedules. Whether you're new to campaign strategy or you have some experience, this is a great guide. Having grown up around campaign politics, Christine Pelosi has lots of road-tested tips to share, and she also profiles several people who've run successful campaigns, from Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, to politicians like Senator Max Cleland.

On the downside, I'd say that the approaches in this book are pretty standard fare. I didn't notice any especially creative suggestions. Also, I picked this book up a few years ago, and it's a little outdated at this point. As I came onto Goodreads to write this review, I noticed that Pelosi has written an updated version of the book titled "Campaign Bootcamp 2.0," which evidently includes more social media tips. Damn it. Wish I'd known that.

Lots of great information and helpful lists, but if you're going to check it out, it's probably best to get her new book.

[E.H. Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ll tell you right now, if you’re not a Democrat, you’re not going to like this book. It was written by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. She proudly references her mother’s campaigns throughout the book as examples, and obviously she wouldn’t have had any sort of political career if it weren’t for her mother’s success. So, if you’re a liberal college student, wanting to learn the political ABCs, this is the book for you.

I took two years of undergraduate political science classes, as well as a semester of graduate classes, and this book was required reading during one of them. It’s a very good start, and I don’t mean that to be insulting. It’s not particularly detailed, but it walks you through the basics of deciding to run for office, assembling a campaign team, and figuring out how to reach your base of potential voters. This is not a hard-core book for people who actually want to hold office; this is for students. If you take her advice to heart, you should be ready to run your first mock campaign in class.

Also, keep in mind, this book was written in 2007, and the political landscape has drastically changed since then. But if you’d like to read about a, let’s say, “simpler” time, it’s a good one.

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[Cassidy Cassidy · Rating 1 out of 5]

"How to" political books face a tough task: take the completely unsexy minutia of winning political campaigns (e.g. managing voter files, polling, etc.) and magically transform this into something digestible. This should have been written as a manual without any of the inspirational speeches. But the info is good for anyone needing an introduction

[Maureen Flatley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great handbook for anyone who wants to know more/understand politics from someone who knows the system from the inside out.