Planning the Kickoff

The official start to a political campaign is normally a party, in which the candidate invites over as many people as possible, gives a speech, and asks for money. We just finished with that today. Here's what the planning process for that looked like.

Part of running for office is meeting with other politicians around the area. Last month, I met with Kit Collins over at Oasis Cafe to talk about how my campaign was going. The subject of a kickoff came up. Kit had originally had her kickoff during COVID, so it was all over Zoom. She had some musician friends of hers play music and hype her up, encouraging all attendees to donate to her campaign.

"Yours will probably be in-person, though," she said.

"My kickoff?"

"Yeah, your kickoff."

Right, I thought. My kickoff. That was something that was totally on my radar. Duh.

"So, what do kickoffs usually look like?" I asked. (Note that I'm paraphrasing the conversation.)

Basically, she explained, it's an event in which a bunch of people come along to learn about your ideals, your background, your platform. It could be a lawn party, it could be an event at a restaurant.

I'm the type of person uncomfortable with telling anyone when my birthday is. Running for public office is a crash course in going outside one's comfort zone, so I had to start thinking. But the idea of getting...twenty, forty, a hundred (?) people to give up an afternoon and congregate into one area for my campaign, seemed intimidating. Necessary, I told myself, but intimidating.

I went home after that cup of coffee and just started putting together email lists. I went through my email and parsed through different groups I'd been part of — churches, social clubs, city groups, everything — and put it on an Excel spreadsheet. I included the local politicians in the area as well. At the end, the list comprised about two hundred names. I went ahead and paid for an e-vite invitation to blast email reminders to all those two hundred people. Two hundred dear, sweet friends, who I would annoy constantly over the next several months.

My roommate, stealing extra food after the event, in a photo where I could not get the camera to focus properly.

When you're trying to do a good thing, I learned, people sort of pop up and want to support it. They like being a part of it. There was no way I could host a party in my small apartment, with no backyard to speak of. But a friend from church, who had just gotten hip surgery, asked a friend of hers, Ilene, if she would be interested in lending her house to host, and she agreed. Ilene had a very, very nice backyard to host, and she had worked on campaigns for decades. About three weeks before the event, I picked her up from the library, drove her back to her house, and we spoke for an hour about my platform, my background, and my ideas for being a City Councilor. She asked me for a few fliers to hand out to her friends, so I designed and printed some off and handed them to her the next week.

Otherwise, event planning is about details. Food (I ordered catering from Whole Foods), chairs (rented those), and the speech (I drafted something, collaborated with a friend to clean it up, and practiced it in front of Ilene, a former English teacher, who critiqued everything about it.)

For the planning that went into this, I was anxious. When I was twelve years old, I had a bad experience in which only one friend showed up to a birthday party; this left a deep-seated fear of these sorts of events, and I'd had to manage that ever since. Every time I got an RSVP, my mood went up or down depending on whether it was a Yes or a No. People had good reasons to cancel — Tufts graduation was also that day, and a funeral came up that drew away a lot of people in my group. I would rather go to a funeral than a campaign kickoff, personally.

The day before the event, it rained hard. This made me uneasy (on top of everything else), but it also turned out pretty well in the end: the rain cleared the pollen out, making the air clearer for a very sunny Sunday.

And the event itself, of course, turned out just fine. That's usually how it happens — it's the anticipation that's the worst part. I ran around all morning, collecting catering. About thirty people, give or take, showed up. Good-sized crowd. After overthinking the playlist for the event, we just played the White Album on repeat. The first person to show up was one of the hostess's friends, and she came in on her walker. Then people from the Unitarian church started coming in. Then a few folks from Bay Staters, other City Councilors, and soon we had a lawn party going.

Me, giving the speech.

The crowd of awesome people who came to our event!

The political B-roll: me, explaining things.

After about an hour, I gave my speech, asked for donations, and let everyone enjoy themselves. Zac Bears, the Vice President of the City Council, seemed to enjoy his role as a photographer, and both the Mayor, Breanna Lungo-Koehn, and her challenger, Rick Caraviello, showed up. Jaclyn Torres Roth, another newcomer to the Council race, and Justin Tseng, a current City Councilor, were also there, as well as Paul Ruseau, a member of the School Committee.

A few older women, Ilene's friends from the West Medford Community Center, arrived later, after my speech had concluded. After most people had departed, they stuck around around to chat. I realized that, besides Ilene, nobody else had heard my speech. So I pulled out my papers and gave the speech again, for an audience of four. I think I did better the second time, since I was a bit calmer. That might've been the most fun I had had all day.