Election Preparation Quotes

I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.

Pass legislation. When Obama signs, you've shown seriousness and the ability to govern. When he vetoes, you've clarified the differences between party philosophies and prepared the ground for 2016.

Maybe you want to look at the most recent polling or you want to pull up a data set on early voting in Ohio, but when you cover politics day-to-day and you've been doing it for many election cycles, you're prepared. You either know this stuff because you've been doing it so long or you don't and that shows real quick.

We fail to continue to talk to, to court, to engage our voters. And then we look up and expect our nominees to look up and go from 0 to 100 in a matter of two months to try to secure a victory.

Ukraine is going through a difficult time. There is nothing extraordinary of the resignation of the Ukrainian government ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections

National campaigns are tough. Yes, you have to be prepared to be attacked, and I have to tell you, if you get elected, you have to also be prepared.

It is amazing how soon one becomes accustomed to the sound of ones voice, when forced to repeat a speech five or six times a day. As election day approaches, the size of the crowds grows; they are more responsive and more interested; and one derives a certain exhilaration from that which, only a few weeks before, was intensely painful. This is one possible explanation of unlimited debate in the Senate.

What's the job of the candidate in this world? The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous.

When I first started talking about running for office, a lot of people said to me, 'Don't let the consultants change you,' and I'd always assured them that I wouldn't allow it to happen. But like it or not, I had to change. Not because of a consultant, but because I started to understand the cost of a stupid mistake.

Elections should be prepared as well as possible and raise as little doubt as possible

You know a Senate race is obviously a much smaller deal than a presidential race. What I think makes a very hard job considerably easier when you're going to debate is if you have reminded yourself - or somebody has reminded you during the course of your campaign - that consistency is enormously important. That people don't want to hear you say one thing in one part of the state and another thing in another part of the state.

I find I have less time for everything. The assembly elections came so soon, and there is still so much work to be done.

I really want to train Hillary Clinton.

In democracy, every election is a learning process. You learn from every election, the one that you win and the one that you lose. And then you prepare for the next one.

A cardinal rule of politics is that if an issue has the potential to cause problems for a candidate, it is best to deal with it well before the election so the dust has time to settle.

I think people should start to practice the words 'President Romney.'

There is a political process which we are trying to achieve through what is called the Vienna Group. That involves the establishment of a governing council, which is to take power away from Bashar Assad, to write a constitution and to open the way for elections. It is important that Bashar leaves in the beginning, not at the end of the process. This will make the transition happen with less death and destruction.

When you're in elected office, you always have to operate under the assumption that you're in a dog fight for re-election. It's when you don't prepare for a tough battle, when you're caught flat-footed, that you're vulnerable.

Naming a transition team varies with the intentions of the candidate; some candidates have been careful to name a transition team as much as a year in advance.