Before you qualify: Essential First Steps before your run for Public Office

As our guarantee puts it, you will get clarity and a game plan or you get your money back.  

This weekend long challenge is designed to provide you with both

• clarity on whether a run for public office is right for you at this time and
• enough of a game plan to inform your next steps for a campaign launch.

For details on the schedule and logistics of participating, see the FAQ below related to program logistics. 

This program will use the pre- announcement preparation process for potential candidates for public office as a vehicle for training anyone engaged in public service whether as a candidate for public office or not. 

Public service takes many forms.  They too serve who are:

• volunteers or staff members on the campaigns of others; or
• seeking to serve in leadership or key volunteer roles for community, labor or congregational organizations engaged with advocacy or service delivery.

While some of the material covered will necessarily focus on the needs of potential candidates for public office, half or more of the material covered might be easily adapted to the use of others engaged in public service, particularly for those engaged in organizing focused on public policy advocacy. 

Enrolling in this program does not obligate you to run for public office.  It provides you instead with:

• an opportunity to clarify for yourself whether you are ready for a run for public office,
• to guide you in making yourself ready for such a run in the future; and
• to provide enough of an overview that should you be ready to take the next step along that path, you will have a game plan to prepare you for the campaign launch. 

This weekend long challenge is designed to provide you with both

• clarity on whether a run for public office is right for you at this time, and
• enough of a game plan to inform your next steps for a campaign launch.

The material covered in this program is necessary, but not sufficient to mounting a successful campaign for public office.  Those who (1) complete this course, and (2) are clear that they are or will soon be ready to launch a campaign for public office will be invited to participate in a twelve week Waging a Viable Campaign coaching program intended to prepare candidates to effectively campaign for public office in the coming election cycle.  Enrollment in our Waging a Viable Campaign can not guarantee you victory at the ballot box.  Much is left to what you do with that opportunity, how effectively you apply what you learn, the opposition you face, how well funded your opposition is and the temperament and preferences of the voters in your district.  But our coaching is intended to position you and your politics in the best light for success in your district; to share with you the skills and strategies which can potentially overcome the the power of corporate money financing your political opposition. 

The challenge anticipates that you will spend perhaps half an hour once you register on on-boarding tasks (marking your calendar, scheduling reminders, subscribing to our support channel and reviewing a brief video and pdf to outline expectations for both your participation and our deliverables). 

After that, the training will be conducted across a weekend over three sessions, plus an opportunity to check in Wednesday evening for a debrief and to discuss next steps.  We will meet Friday evening at 8pm, Saturday and Sunday mornings, starting at 12noon.  After a couple of days off to contemplate what you have learned in this program, our Wednesday night event starts at 8:00 pm.

It is my aim that no session go will longer than two hours (but see the caveat in the next paragraph).  These training programs are hosted in the Eastern time zone and you will need to make adjustments for your local time zone.  On Wednesday evening we will gather one final time to check in and discuss what has opened up for you from the training you participated in across the weekend.  On Wednesday evening, we will also take some time to share with you a brief introduction to our 12 week coaching program, Waging a Viable Campaign.   

During our beta-launch of this new program, as I am still working the kinks out, please expect the sessions to last as long as three hours.  As the expression goes, if I had had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.  It is my intention to eventually cover the material in two hour sessions.  But in the interest of managing your expectations and allowing for the development of this program to unfold as I present it before a live audience for the first couple of times, please allow for three hours in your schedule.  This is part of the reason I am offering the beta-launch discounts. 

In addition, as part of your onboarding process and after each day we will offer homework exercises that are each designed to be completed in an hour or less. As soon as you register you will get access to the first homework assignment I am asking you to complete before our first session. 

VIP-Access

For those who upgrade to the VIP-access, I will be hosting Ask-Me-Anything sessions on Saturday and Sunday evening.  These are expected to run an hour or ninety minutes each.  In addition the VIP-access upgrade includes additional training intended for you to invite your campaign treasurer and manager, for a total of four additional group training sessions, during which I will go into further depth about their roles in your potential campaign.  These events will usually take place on the weekend, but at any rate will be scheduled as best I can to accommodate those who are eligible to participate.  The VIP-access also includes a one hour consultation with the key leadership where we can focus exclusively on your local campaign. This consultation will be scheduled at the convenience of your key campaign leadership. 

Yes.  We have homework assignments for each step of the challenge.  The information and experience shared with our lecture material is valuable, of course.  But it can not be nearly as valuable as your taking the steps to put that learning to work.  The Challenge is not in sitting through virtual lectures.  The Challenge exists if your consideration of what we cover in those virtual sessions and your application of those ideas and concepts to your local situation, your local community, your own potential candidacy for public office.  Each homework assignment is designed to be completed in an hour or less. 

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No, for our Before You Qualify Challenge, we ask for payment in full and up front for this weekend long program. 

For the first fifty registrants who participate while we are still beta-testing our program, we do offer a discount if you register with the coupon code: BYQ-50-beta.  

No, we do not provide scholarships.  We believe our rates are reasonable.  Given our costs for identifying and enrolling participants, our margins are small and frankly we are concerned if we can afford to offer this program at this rate.  

We are ready to support you in your examination of whether a run for public office is right for you.  There is too much at stake, which relies on our ability to build and sustain the capacity to offer this opportunity to potential candidates.  We are fully invested in the success of participants enrolled in this program.  We need you to have some skin in the game, too.  

If you already have a campaign committee registered with your campaign finance compliance agency, it is likely possible in most jurisdictions to fund your participation out of campaign funds.  But we understand this creates a chicken-and-the-egg delimma for many though perhaps not all folks who would be considering this program. Even if you have already created your campaign committee, consider please joining us.  You might find what this program offers to be a valuable contribution to your campaign development.  And of course if this describes you, then yes, in most jurisdictions the training and consulting we offer is a completely legitimate campaign expense. 

If you really cannot afford to fund this expense out of your own back pocket, write us please about how you can create a campaign committee to pay for your participation in this program as a campaign expense.  You can then (1) loan the registration fee to your campaign committee, (2) have the campaign committee pay your registration fee and (3) use what you learn in this program to raise the campaign funds necessary (4) to repay the personal loan you made to seed the start-up of the campaign committee. 

My name is Hugh Esco.  I hung out a shingle in 2005 as Campaign Foundations.  

I have participated in one or more electoral campaigns in one capacity or another every year since 1989.  From 1989 until 2004 I worked part or full time in every regular session and intervening special sessions at the Georgia General Assembly, where I did legislative monitoring and advocacy work for a number of not-for-profit community organizations.  I did some limited contract work for state legislators conducting research, organizing hearings and such.  For one session I researched, wrote and published each morning a daily briefing for the Legislative Black Caucus outlining the contents and highlighting concerns for every bill on the Rules Calendar, scheduled for debate and vote that day.  In the 109th Congress, I served as a Special Assistant to a member of the U.S. Congress, working in her office on the Hill in DC.  

I have engaged with with advocacy campaigns on matters of public policy at the Federal, state and local level every year since 1988, working on a wide number of issues and developing subject matter expertise in several areas of public policy.  I have drafted bills, amendments, reports and testimony throughout this experience.  As a lobbyist for the local bicycle community, I sheparded into the Georgia Code uncontroversial rules-of-the-road changes.  I have participated in multiple efforts, many of them successful, to defeat or amend bad legislation.  I have organized and led at least two statewide coalitions to advance the legislative priorities of organizations I have served.  

I have litigated ballot access barriers in Georgia facing candidates of emerging political parties or otherwise independent of the corporate parties.  I engaged our legal team on appeal, authored two affidavits and consulted with our counsel at every step on strategy in our successful challenge, Georgia Green Party vs. Kemp, 171 F. Supp. 3d 1340 (N.D. Ga. 2016), which overturned the 1% petitioning barrier for Presidential candidates seeking access to the Georgia ballot.  

I have myself run for office four times, twice for the state Assembly and twice for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia.