Howell Raines Quotes

During the last 20 years the advent of radio changed all the old rules of political campaigning( Now the successful advent of television, available for the first time this year in a presidential campaign, must again influence the planning of the campaign

Elections are not about solving anything. Elections are about winning.

The tactics and strategy of every Presidential election campaign is most influenced by the previous Presidential election.

The time has come for political campaigning, its techniques and strategies, to move out of the dark ages and into the brave new world of the omnipresent eye,

You can't win an election unless you have a message.

Campaigns are about adjustments.

Microtargeting, as its name implies, is a way to identify small but crucial groups of voters who might be won over to a given side, and which messages would do the trick.

One of the rules of running for Congress is no matter where you go, you speak like you're speaking to the whole district.

It is not through any combinations of politicians that the outcome of an electoral campaign is decided.

I've run for office, and I've stood on street corners, while people walked by me and didn't want to talk to me, and did not think I was a credible candidate. And then four years later, I was nearly elected mayor of San Francisco, so I know what it takes.

I think the best campaigns are campaigns of ideas and substance.

In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.

Let's not just look at it as taking votes away from Gore. Our support comes from a lot of people.

The average voter has to hear a point seven times before it registers.

This could be a close election. I can pretty much tell which states are going to be close. If you would start two or three weeks before Election Day and saturate those critical states with [TV Advertising] spots, it could swing the election.

There is literally no such thing as an idea that cannot be expressed well and articulately to today's voters in 30 seconds.

During the last 20 years the advent of radio changed all the old rules of political campaigning. Now the successful advent of television, available for the first time this year in a presidential campaign, must again influence the planning of the campaign. Television, with its triple advantages of sight, sound and motion, can make or break a candidate, a party or a platform. In my opinion television must not be considered as supplementary media but as the heart of your program to “win friends and influence people.”

There is no longer a value judgement on the need to tailor a message to television. It's now a matter of survival, not a matter of ethics or intellectual honesty.

We had the election won. Debates couldn't help us and might hurt.

It is never the case that a surrogate can deliver [votes] like a principle can.

Political advertising works, particularly when it’s unrebutted.

Another important consideration is the great mischief of unintermitted electioneering. When the highest dignity in the State is to be conferred by popular election once in every few years, the whole intervening time is spent in what is virtually a canvass. President, ministers, chiefs of parties, and their followers, are all electioneerers: the whole community is kept intent on the mere personalities of politics, and every public question is discussed and decided with less reference to its merits than to its expected bearing on the presidential election.

When you run a campaign the idea is not to appeal to pundits but to appeal to people.

The reason I lost the Governor’s race to Patterson is that I was out niggered. No one is ever going to out nigger me again.

Without television, Richard Nixon would not have a chance. He would not have a prayer of being elected because the press would not let him get through to the people.