Primary Your Candidate (A Short Guide)
This guide was made after Jim Jordan had two votes for speaker.
How do we primary a political candidate?
This question arose when some Republicans refused to vote for Jim Jordan without any clear good reason.
On the first vote these voted (near 10/17/23) against Jim Jordan:
-Don Bacon of Nebraska: (202) 225-4155
-Ken Buck of Colorado: (202) 225-4676
-Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon: (202) 225-5711
-Anthony D’Esposito of New York: (202) 225-5516
-Mario Diaz Balart of Florida: (202) 225-4211
-Jake Ellzey of Texas: (202) 225-2002
-Andrew Garbarino of New York: (202) 225-7896
-Carlos Gimenez of Florida: (202) 225-2778
-Tony Gonzales of Texas: (202) 225-4511
-Kay Granger of Texas: (202) 225-5071
-Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania: (202) 225-5406
-Jen Kiggans of Virginia: (202) 225-4215
-John James of Michigan: (202) 225-4961
-Nick LaLota of New York: (202) 225-3826
-Doug Lamalfa of California: (202) 225-3076
-Mike Lawler of New York: (202) 225-6506
-John Rutherford of Florida: (202) 225-2501
-Mike Simpson of Idaho: (208) 334-1953
-Victoria Spartz of Indiana: (202) 225-2276
-Steve Womack of Arkansas: (202) 225-4301
Then there was another vote (around 10/18/23):
Bacon - (202) 225-4155, (402) 938-0300
Buchanan - (202) 225-5015, (813) 657-1013
Buck - (202) 225-4676, (720) 639-9165
Chavez - (202) 225-5711, (503) 387-8651
D'espito - (202) 225-5516, (516) 739-3008
Diaz-Balter - (202) 225-8576, (305) 470-8555
Ellzy - (202) 225-2002, (903) 602-7860
Ferguson - (202) 225-5901, (770) 863-2033
Garbarino - (202) 225-7896, (631) 541-4225
Gimenez - (202) 225-2778, (305) 222-0160
Gonzalez - (202) 225-2531, (956) 682-5545
Granger - (202) 225-5071, (817) 338-0909
James - (202) 225-4961, (586) 498-7122
Kelly - (202) 225-5406, (724) 342-7170
Kiggans - (202) 225-4215, (757) 364-7650
LaLota - (202) 225-3826, (631) 289-1097
Lawler - (202) 225-6506, (845) 743-7130
Miller-Meeks - (202) 225-6576, (563) 232-0930
Rutherford - (202) 225-2501, (904) 831-5205
Simpson - (202) 225-5531, (208) 334-1953
Stauber - (202) 225-6211, (218) 481-6396
Womack - (202) 225-4301, (479) 464-0446
In order to primary a candidate you will need to use something like ballotpedia and probably wikipedia to begin finding out about them. Scorecards and voting records and such are certain possibilities to research.
Now I went and checked the Congressional Districts for some in New York:
Michael Lawler is in New York’s 17th District.
Andrew Gabarino is in New York’s 2nd District.
Nicholas LaLota is in New York’s 1st District.
Michael Lawler won 50.3% to a democrat’s 49.7% in 2022 and appears to be the most vulnerable.
I then looked to see where these districts are. They are in places like Westchester and Long Island … close to New York City. I am several hours away so what could I do? Together there is over a million people in those districts alone. I started to think. I thought about this for hours.
First, if you want to primary these people you need a decent candidate. You have to vet this candidate lest you replace a problem with a worse one. To find and vet a candidate could really be helped by a team effort rather than a solo effort. Is there any organization working on this kind of thing?
Then, you need people to actually vote for your candidate. How do you get people to vote your way? You need to convince them to see things your way. That really takes an education. You can certainly use media and publications. You can also have conferences and speakers in the area. For example, you may get a building owner to temporarily rent a vacant space, a library to host a talk, a church, or find a platform outside somewhere. All this takes planning, speakers, support, and raw manpower.
If you have conferences you will need to know what you talk about. You can certainly tackle issues. For example, “Is our economy good or bad?” You could talk about Judeo-Christian-”traditional” values. You could talk about what it means to be an American. You could talk about the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, or any number of classic or relevant writings. You could talk about relevant history. The United States has been losing it’s soul for decades and it will take conferences like these to re-educate people. It may be that some can be high enough level to attract and convince academics and enter university discourse. You might even be able to get some talks hosted at some universities.
Even if you have a threat of a primary many lobbyists can interfere by promising rewards. Hence, these lobbyists will need to be identified and boycotted. Many of these strategies will require you to be in this for the long game.
For example you can scroll down and see Rep Michael Lawler’s donor’s in 2022 here: https://www.opensecrets.org/races/contributors?cycle=2022&id=NY17&spec=N
You can try search engines like google, duckduckgo, qwant, and swisscows. The search engines produced a little using “Michael Lawler lobbyist”
May I suggest that if your party is not playing along then all you can do directly is starve them of money. Winred is a pain and asks for money always … everything seems to be about money to them and much of the party leadership as a whole. A good idea is to look for candidates directly and see if you can donate to them directly. Let me give you an example of how political parties have disenfranchised their constituents.
If you are a Republican did you vote for Ronna McDaniel? If you are a Democrat then did you vote for Jaime Harrison? It appears to me that they want your money and your vote but the leadership in these parties doesn’t want you. When was the last time they asked you who you wanted as RNC or DNC chair? So this will take manpower but I don’t think you should rely on your party. It will probably require an independent club or organization. It is time to get candidates that want you in their party and that you want.
To repeat, I suggest this means a separate “club” will be necessary. Do you know of a club where the goal is to educate people and find candidates? Let me know if you find one. As I spent hours thinking about this I realized this will take team work.
In this we stated the obvious, that to primary a politician you will need to find a candidate. We also addressed getting that candidate and other candidates elected over the long run. Certainly money and advertisements and such help win races, but I tried to design a guide for a regular person who is just starting to think about this like me. I hope this was helpful. If you know of any resources then please let me know.
Vote number 3 10/20/23 here are the rep Jim Jordan no votes:
BREAKING: 25 Republicans voted against Jim Jordan for Speaker on the latest ballot:
Bacon
Buchanan
Buck
Chavez-DeRemer
D'Esposito
Diaz-Balart
Ellzey
Ferguson
Fitzpatrick
Garbarino
Gimenez
Gonzales
Granger
James
Kean
Kelly
Kiggans
LaLota
Lawler
Miller-Meeks
Molinaro
Rutherford
Simpson
Stauber
Womack
from https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1715397331791601745?s=20
… and if the shoe fits, let them wear it https://youtu.be/C7PlMqsc5Cc?si=Dcnh3A5t6LhFgal-