Ari Melber Quotes

I want to step up our voter-registration activities. Not every branch does it, and not all the time. I want them to go back and get out the vote because I want us to have a big impact on the Congressional elections this year.

You sell your candidates and your programs the way a business sells its products.

The weakness that our campaign and that I had is we weren't effective in taking my message primarily to minority voters.

In terms of the ability to go out and win - this is why you have campaigns. You go out, and you take your issues to voters, and you put them out there, and people respond, or they don't.

All presidential elections will ultimately be a fight for the middle.

Low turnout in off-year races is always a challenge for Democrats. Many of our voters require information and must be contacted way ahead of Election Day - and reminded of what's at stake.

I'm not against T.V. advertising for campaigns, but we need to emphasize field campaigning much more than we do.

Influencing voters is the crux of all poll campaigns.

The key here is that we're not going to beat them on commercials: They're always going to have more money than us. So what we have to try to do throughout is just ask people to make sure they vote.

The basic job of any campaign is to translate grassroots energy into turnout.

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.

I think any good government will target on the finishing date, that is, the polling day and make sure that their strategy is strong and in place to get them successfully re-elected.

So few people vote these days, and I think it's partly because they don't feel like the institution really means anything to them. If you want them to vote, give them opportunities to do something else other than vote, to help.

No candidate dares to look for a new campaign model that could really enhance the democratic process. Instead we are left with the current one which makes our candidates look like hucksters.

Arkansas is a state where politics is retail.

You're really earning the support of New Hampshire voters, and you've got to do that one-on-one grassroots campaigning here, even if you have the most money.

I'm passionate about mobilizing young Latinos to get to the polls, so I'm involved with Voto Latino. Latinos are a vital but underrepresented force in this country.

My focus as part of the leadership is to keep talking about the independent voters, independent voters - how do we get the independent voters back?

If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down.

I reject the notion that a high turnout helps Senator Kerry. I think in Florida at least, it's going to help President Bush because we have gotten more registered voters than the Democrats, and our base is just fired up - thanks to your help and a lot of others.

It takes ground activity to stimulate that Black vote.

The important things that in a campaign we talk about, let us not forget that once the election is over.

Nobody understood better than Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates. Something must also be done to elect them.

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.

[On political campaigns:] Get an elbow, give an elbow.