email mailbox

Open your physical or email mailbox during a campaign year and you may find hundreds of unsolicited, political handbills funded by individual campaigns, Political Action Committees (PACs), and Super Political Action Committees (SPACs). Handbills may include endorsements and/or condemnation from interest groups, public policy concerns, and snippets of news coverage favorable and/or unfavorable to a candidate and/or office holder. Handbills may also contain information about a person’s voting record and their public policy concerns.

As you can imagine, creating a favorable handbill that fully articulates the strength of the candidate’s character, public policy concerns, and endorsements takes a bit of research and finesse. In this assignment, you are going to give this kind of work a try.

Following are some suggested resources for creating your handbill:

• Ballotpedia’s website on political parties in the United States.
• Data on Campaign Finance, Super PACs, Industries, and Lobbying. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.opensecrets.org/.
• Candidate’s official website, which you can find by googling the candidate’s name + official website.
• Local, State, and National News Media.
• On the Issues’ website about candidates and elected officials’ political positions.
• Pew Research Center’s website on public opinion polling and data-driven political research.
• Vote Smart’s website database on candidates and elected officials.

Directions: Select a recent candidate or officeholder at the federal level that you considered supporting with your vote. Craft a handbill that advocates your person’s candidacy. Include the following:

• The Individual
  • Does this person’s moral and professional capacity make this individual capable of serving “we the people” ethically and well?
• Political Party
  • Does the person align well with the political party?
  • Does the person have a political party endorsement?
• Public Policy
  • Select two specific examples of public policy that your person advocates from the following fields:
    • Economic policy – for example, U.S. budget deficit spending.
    • Education policy – for example, the implementation of charter schools.
    • Environmental policy – for example, the Clean Air Act.
    • Foreign policy – for example, the interplay between civil liberties and the Patriot Act.
    • Healthcare policy – for example, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
    • Welfare policy – for example, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
  • Why are these public policies important to this person and the potential voters?
• Endorsements
  • Individuals?
  • Interest Groups? Note: PAC donations illustrate support.
  • News Media?
  • Others?