756: Winning Hearts & Votes - The Power of Persuasion in Political Campaigns

Brian Nichols  
overthrowing the establishment how to turn blue seats red and how to take out traditionally red establishments, seats in very red seats. We're gonna discuss that all and more on today's episode. So let's talk about that instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Oil Hey there, folks, Brian, if you're on The Brian Nichols Show, thank you for joining us. For another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host, joining live from our B and C Studios here in lovely Eastern Indiana and join me to discuss how we can in fact flip blue seeds red and get the establishment out of red seats and get more pro Liberty candidates in from Shane LLC. Joining us today, wood row Johnson. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Brian, thank

Woodrow Johnston  
you so much for having me on. It's it's Johnston with a tea but close enough.

Brian Nichols  
Did I not say stung? i My apologies, Johnson Johnson. It was funny. I actually had a teacher that was Johnston and a good friend in high school. That was John's son. So it was always confusing for me back then. So apparently so fast forward, you know, decades later, I still can't get it. Right. But what John says Ron, yeah, thank you for joining the show. And my apologies there at the beginning. But let's start things off. You're doing us a favor, right? We had your your cohort Rory McShane here on the program back I think, three, four weeks or so ago. And we were talking about how individual candidates in the respective GOP and democratic fields could win for the presidency, looking at RFK Joe Biden, and then on the Republican side, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Vivec Ramaswamy. But today, we're going to be talking about some different things that you know, in the world of politics, specifically, some local elections and state elections and flipping some blue seats red, but first, who's a favor again, introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and for the folks who are unfamiliar with McShane LLC. What do you guys do over there?

Woodrow Johnston  
Brian, thank you so much for the introduction. So my name is Woodrow Johnston. I'm a Republican political strategist. I'm the Senior Vice President at a firm called McShane LLC. We're based out of Washington, DC, Austin, in Las Vegas, where I live. We've We've take pride in our kind of charge the hill mentality, we've won over 55 awards for campaign excellence, been part of over 160 elect winning races across the country. We've only been around for about five years, but we're the fastest growing Republican consulting firm in the country right now. And you know, we really just take pride in that and and, and, you know, right now I'm in Nashville, working on a race right now. Last night, I look a little tired, because I spent all night putting up yard signs. I can go on all about yard signs, if needed, but but, you know, people like so you guys are doing

Brian Nichols  
great work. And frankly, that's why I want to have you on the show because I want to focus on the great work you're doing and hopefully give the audience here The Brian Nichols Show some actionable advice. Now, for the folks who are joining us for the first time here in the audience today that the audience tends to be folks in the greater Liberty camp. We have had elected officials, we've had folks who are campaign managers, we've had folks who work for respective GOP LP party infrastructure. So it's a bunch of mish Mosh of individuals who listen to the show that are vested in their interest in terms of electoral success. So there's kind of two things I want to address today. Let's start with the first being how do you flip a traditionally safe name color here Red Sea Blue Sea to a different color, and let's in this case, focus on the blue to red or blue to gold, whatever we might do in that world? What's the best plan of action you have found in your experience? When you're trying to figure out what what election to focus on? And to actually go ahead and get the I guess the wheels turning to actually get it to go from from blue to red?

Woodrow Johnston  
Well, it's quite question Brian. That's like asking me how to build a house. Right? What kind of house how many stories? You know, what's our budget, right? What's, how many people are gonna live there? How many rooms? How many? How many bathrooms? I'm gonna say master bedrooms. I don't know if you can say that now, right? That's not PC enough. But no, no thing

Brian Nichols  
by the way anymore. I was looking for houses a couple years ago and I was like, oh, I'm not allowed to say that anymore, right? Yeah. Yeah. The room, sir.

Woodrow Johnston  
Bedroom? Oh, yeah. Right. It's like, all right. But But here's what I'll say. I mean, you know, it's interesting you leave, you leave the conversation about presidential races. And what people don't seem to understand is that presidential races are not a model to run statehouse, they're not a model for how to run for Senate, or how to run for Congress. For one, especially at the highest level, you usually have such a high budget, and so does the other side, once you're in the kind of, you know, major leagues to that point where you're running for president where a lot of stuff is sometimes out of your control. And a lot of it is you're responding to national trends. With a State House race or a local race, you still have to kind of respond to national trends, but you're also not really driving the trends, like, you know, they're doing at the presidential level. And, you know, you'll often see at the presidential level, you know, really, it's, you know, there's so many different issues they're talking about. And the reality is for most elections, people kind of think, especially libertarians, because libertarians like to think they're so smart. And they like to think that they know everything, and they know that solution, all every single problem. And, you know, and usually just as you know, some version of the SAP basically, but the

Brian Nichols  
brain just blew up. All Mail for you,

Woodrow Johnston  
guys. So here's the thing, right? It's, they think that voters are like them. For one, every single person that exists thinks they are an average person. If you guys ever talked to a high net worth individual, rich person, and you ask them, do you think you're you're middle class, low class, high class, they always think it doesn't matter how rich they are, unless maybe you're talking to literally like Elon Musk, they always think that they're middle class, that they're average. It's bizarre, I every rich person I talked to they're like, Oh, I guess you know, we're upper middle class, but I wouldn't say we're like super rich or anything. It's, you know, of course, of course, if you make more than half a million a year, you're in the top 1% of people. So that's to say, you know, even libertarians tend to think, well, you know, if we just explain our ideas, then people will get it. And they'll want to be libertarian, or whoever, you know, that's, that's why we'll win. And that's just not the case. For the most part, your campaign is not going to have the resources to dramatically change people's point of view, it is easier to convince someone to do one thing. It's harder to convince them to do two things. And it's much harder to convince them to do three things. So I find that often people think, okay, everyone's a voter, so, or could be a voter. So we got to convince them to vote, we got to convince them to agree with us on this issue. And then we have to convince them that we're their champion for that issue. And I was, and, you know, one, why, why try to convince the three to three things just picked one, right? Find your voters who already agree with you already plan on voting? Now all you have to do is just convince them that you're that you're a champion for that for that issue. And often those issues aren't the same issues you care about.

Brian Nichols  
How about that? Is it here? Well, we'll do it one more time for the folks who aren't paying attention. Instead of focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues, they care about the issues they care about, right? Because at the end of the day, doesn't matter what you care about. It doesn't matter what your your bed bug issue is, it doesn't matter how right you think you are. And trust me, you hit the nail on the head libertarians, they'll tell you how right they are. And they'll do it very frequently. And loudly. But but that's a conversation for a different day. But but they don't care, right? The voter does not care about how confident you are in in your solution. They want to they want to know what's in it for them, right? Everybody's tuned into that same radio station wi I fm, what's in it for me. And that is just the reality of the world we live in. So and I want to just go back to one thing you did bring up there, Woodrow, and that is the focusing on one solution. Thank you. Right. I I've had so many candidates here on the program, local candidates specifically, and they're running on like 13 different issues. I'm like, What are you doing? Why? Why? Because Because that doesn't resonate with anybody. But if you become the person with that one issue, it sticks today becomes your thing. Like everybody remembers Jimmy McMillan from New York, because the rent was too damn high. Right. And it stuck. And that's something that I think we've lost in a lot of our political discourse, especially coming from the right side of the political aisle. So how would you recommend

Woodrow Johnston  
that one he's not he's not mayor, Jimmy McMillan. He's not former mayor they're not very bend you know, I can go on the whole thing that doesn't matter how good your issues are. If you don't have the basics that a campaign needs. Fair. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  
but like But let's go back to that one issue that right, like, how does somebody figure out? What's that heartbeat issue? What's that one issue? I should make that the focal point of my campaign and really drive that home?

Woodrow Johnston  
Sure. I mean, really depends on your audience. Right? If you're in a Republican primary, you gotta

Brian Nichols  
come to the Brian. Sorry. No worries.

Woodrow Johnston  
So I'll give you an example. Specifically over in Idaho, I had this great client. He's now you know, at the time candidate, Scott Herndon. Now he's Senator Scott Herndon. And you know, Scott's a really smart guy. He can go he is probably one of the most intellectual people I know. I mean, the guy is, is frankly, he is he is, he is really smart. And he, you know, one of the reasons why he decided to run was because he didn't like the government shutdowns. And he didn't like that. The emergency powers were expanding under the government. And you know, I agree with him and a lot of people maybe you've watched the show would agree with him, but to a lot of people and where he was in Idaho, that's kind of a kind of a boring issue. Hold on a second. I'm sorry. My apologies. I thought I sent us my phone. So I, you know, the, the reality isn't in Idaho, the shutdowns were short. They were relatively mild compared to the rest of the country. Loosely enforced, the shutdowns. Were just not that big of a deal. Over there, I mean, I think they're terrible, but a lot of people do. But at the end of the day, you had to pick an issue that the that the people who are voting are outraged about. So what do you do you look at Fox News that at the time, that's what most Republican prime still at the time Republican primary voters? That's what they're watching? What are they mad about? They're mad about illegal immigration, they're mad about men and girls sports. And we did polling to confirm this. They, you know, most people, we, you know, we're more, you know, sure, they might be mad that the, that the guy we were running dance against, you know, didn't want to restrict the governor's powers. But they were more upset about driver's licenses being given to illegal immigrants they were more upset about, they were more upset about, you know, men competing girls sports. Bra, Brian, I'm sorry, I can't hear you.

Brian Nichols  
helps my mics on does that equate to votes? Necessarily, like somebody being angry about something, does that necessarily turn into a vote? Or is that not necessarily always the case?

Woodrow Johnston  
Well hates a stronger motivator than love Brian. And here's what I'll tell you. I challenge anyone who's listening to find an example where this is not true. But I don't believe any incumbent. And incumbent has ever been defeated. Because a completely positive campaign was ran against them, right? I don't think anyone's ever won a race where they said, Well, you know, the guy who's there right now he's doing a perfectly fine job, I just think I could do a little bit better. And that's that person, you know, people will take the devil they know, you have to make if you're running, if you want to run a successful campaign, you have to make the person who's already there who has the advantage of being the incumbent will have more name, ID, you have to make that person seem unpalatable to voters, or else you have zero literally no chance of beating them. And people will say, Oh, well, I ran a positive campaign. And then they failed to mention that there was an independent expenditure that also campaigned and ran a very negative campaign. And that's always ideal. You always prefer the the ie the independent expenditure to do the negative stuff. But sometimes a lot of times you can't do that. And there's just I can't think of one single time in all of election history where an incumbent was defeated, and was actually running a race. And they were, you know, they lost due to a another positive campaign. That's why often you'll see incumbents like try to get challengers to sign pledges saying, oh, you know, once you sign a pledge, we'll fight you know, Reagan's 11th commandment, we won't do any negative campaigning whatsoever. Yeah, that only benefits the incumbent.

Brian Nichols  
Right. Well, and that goes into, I guess, the next part, right and talking about taking out some of these more established folks and the right and focus on some of the, you know, the folks who are not maybe as on board with the more liberty oriented approach that we're seeing the new GOP, hopefully fingers crossed continue to take on. So I guess you digging a little bit more deep in terms of taking on these individuals, sometimes it gets risky, because for whatever reason, their constituency still likes them. So how do you balance that with, you know, the like of the constituency, but still trying to be aggressive? How do you turn the constituency not necessarily away from the person maybe just enough towards you that they'll cast their vote for you instead?

Woodrow Johnston  
Well, I mean, it depends on the situation, right? I mean, if there is a If it's a one v one matchup, you know, one less person voting for them, that person is just as good as them not voting for, you know, not voting or not voting at all is almost just as good. So, you know, I mean, you have to drive up your own positive ID to but, you know, often in the last few, you know, you know, they call it an October surprise for for a reason, because it's effective to use that kind of at the last minute.

Brian Nichols  
Interesting. So, I guess, looking at incumbents, right, one of the biggest issues we hear from challengers is the war chests that incumbents traditionally have what are some ideas to a candidate who is facing a candidate who has this war chest behind them, almost like guerilla style election tactics that you would recommend for them to maybe do some unconventional things that don't cost as much money, but still have some driving impact?

Woodrow Johnston  
So your question is, what are things that don't cost as much money, some kind of guerrilla tactics that candidates can use to, I guess, fight when they're when they're less funded? Yep. Well, I mean, it's an interesting question, Brian, and I often find that candidates who are supposedly less funded or less funded, I mean, you're always gonna be less funded. Most the time you're running against an incumbent, but you can route you can win outspent two to one, three to one. I have one outspent 10 to one before it's happened. But it's rare. And you have to have a lot of other things going in your favor. So one, let's start off with stop being underfunded. Stop being outspent. 10 to one, pick up the damn phone, pick up the damn phone and ask for money. All right, let's just start there. Right? I know, so many candidates out there who instead of instead of, you know, calling, they're calling donors where they want to do they want to go to every single county party meeting, they want to go to every single community meeting, anything to get out of call time. Right. So let's start there. Right. Now, as far as things you can do to, you know, in your outspent you know, spend your money smarter. I talked about yard signs, look, campaigns love yard signs, it's probably the least expensive, it's the least effective thing you can do. You want to start with more targeted methods before you expand the less targeted methods. Anyone can see a yard sign a yard sign is not really typically a persuasive piece of material. But it costs a lot of money. But you're you're really you're paying for people who might not even vote in your election. So let's start with the most targeted methods, what's the most targeted methods, knocking on someone's door, you know, knocking on, you know, sent sending a text message. I don't really like robo calls as much. But those are at least you know, you put your list your list of people, and you call only those people. A lot of times people want to say, Oh, well, it's about yard signs and TV and TV is, you know, you target the best you can, but it's really expensive. And you really only target based off demographics. You know, you pick a tee, you know, you pick, you know, certain TV stations that, you know, your voters tend to watch. Right, but it's not. That is like, I like to take an approach of let's start with the more targeted methods first and then expand from there. So usually yard signs. Usually large signs are like the last thing I get. I mean, I remember Ted Cruz's campaign got so much criticism because they took forever to get yard signs out. But I mean, frankly, I agree with the strategy.

Brian Nichols  
What about local candidates that stand true for local candidates as well wait for the yard signs.

Woodrow Johnston  
I think that you get enough yard signs to kind of keep your people happy, maybe enough to get your volunteers going. But yard signs, they don't want elections. I mean, there's literally studies on this.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, I dread driving home up to Northern New York every election season because every lawn has, you know, 15 yard signs every single year. And it just doesn't really do anything. I mean, I think there's an idea that it visualizes support. But to your point, are these your voters, right? If you're doing local elections more often than not probably not right. To your point you have a better means of going out knocking on that door making that face to face connection. Now, let me go back to something you raised up about dialing for dollars. I hear this from a lot of candidates. It's uncomfortable, right? And I know you said you suck it up, hit the phone start start talking to people I say yes, preach. Yes, yes, yes. But to those candidates who this is like this is a big bugaboo for them. They just they hate the idea of asking for money they hate the idea of putting themselves in a position that they feel like they're groveling, you know, what, what would be I guess some recommendations to folks you'd you'd make based on candidates you've worked with in the past who were in a similar situation and you were able to help them kind of get over this. What phone phobia?

Woodrow Johnston  
Sure. So let me start off the easiest way to probably get out of phone calls is to sell fun the entire campaign right? If that's asked your you ask your campaign manager consultant, what's the budget gonna be for the for this whole thing? Right check, right and then and then you don't need to worry about phone call. then you could just focus on doing all the fun stuff, right? That's option one. I think people have this idea that oh, if I run if I have great ideas, someone like, I don't know, the Koch brothers are gonna come in and they're gonna give me a bunch of money. Oh, you know? Or if you're on the left, oh, you know, oh, maybe the, you know, the right keeps talking about George Soros, man, maybe, maybe that guy will write me a check. I gotta imagine, that's how these people think, right? How do you get out of that just do the work. I mean, frankly, just do the work, take it, everything that's worth doing sucks. I mean, that's, that's just the reality, everything that is worth doing is not fun. You know, most people, you know, don't enjoy their work, and or there's lots of parts that they don't enjoy about it. And but you have to do those things, you have to be motivated by the end results. And if you want care about this country, and you think that it's worth fighting for, then, you know, guess what you're gonna call donors, you're gonna ask them, you're gonna ask them for money, and it's uncomfortable. But people, you know, did things that were much less comfortable than sitting in an air conditioned room and making phone calls to get to this point.

Brian Nichols  
Ain't that the truth? And you know, I guess it's my lens as a sales guy. Like, I just, it's like the expectation like 21 year olds coming off College, who they're doing this, they're sitting down dialing, and talking to C level executives. And, you know, they're they're talking about booking appointments with technology they've never even heard of before. So like, if a 2122 year old can do it fresh out of college, then you running for office, you can do it, you can do it, too. Alright, my I guess we're at the point, I look at the clock already over time a little bit here, Woodrow. So we're gonna go towards final thoughts. And if you're cool that I'll kick things off. This, again, is why you're at the show, we take a sales approach to politics, right? Because at the end of the day, everything is sales. You're you're selling yourself an idea. In this case, you're you're selling yourself for an election, right, you're trying to sell yourself to your voter. And with that, you have to build trust, but you have to do so effectively, you have to do so smartly, using your resources, but also using your time, your time is the most invaluable resource you have. So being able to allocate that most effectively and efficiently is going to be paramount to your success. And you wonder you hit it nail that right there with talking about the importance of doing those, those high performance actions that will lead to the success. You're looking at those KPIs, right, touching the voter, individually, one on one, that's huge. And if you're able to get those doorknobs, right, like Young Americans for Liberty, they do amazing stuff operation win at the door help a lot of candidates win across the country. And the reason because it works. So do what works. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel focus on what has been proven to work said that Woodrow has helped win elections by doing so that's my final thoughts for today. Woodrow, what do you have for us on your end?

Woodrow Johnston  
My final thought is events. You know, going to things those are the fun stuff. That's the reason why people want to run. But the most important thing is you get your call time and none of the other stuff matters doesn't matter if you have the best message in the world. But if you're not raising enough money or spending enough money, and it doesn't even necessarily need to be more than your opponent. It just needs to be enough to be competitive.

Brian Nichols  
All right, folks, if you enjoyed today's episode, please do me a favor. Go ahead. Give it a share. When you do tag yours truly at be Nichols. Liberty, you can find me on Facebook and x.com God still feels weird to say, Woodrow where can folks go ahead and find you if they want continue the conversation?

Woodrow Johnston  
Absolutely. Oh gosh, I'm not used to saying that either. I was about to say Twitter. I'm delivering a rant right. I'm Liberty woody on Twitter. I am real Woodrow Johnston on Instagram. And McShane LLC is our website for the company. I work at Mitch Daniels.

Brian Nichols  
Perfect, folks. Thank you for joining us. And by the way, yes, there's two different ways you can watch the show, video or podcast if you're on the video version of the show. Yes, there is YouTube rumble and we are big fans of Ben swans independent media entity sovereign s o v r e n. And if you are watching us over on sovereign wealth Thank you for watching us and congratulations, you get today's episode before everyone else as a sovereign exclusive. But if you are joining us in the more traditional video platforms like YouTube will do us a favor regardless hit that subscribe button, little notification bell and oh by the way, hit that like button. That helps us out more than you would know. And I mentioned that yes, we are a podcast so Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music wherever it is you get your podcasts. Do yourself a favor, hit that subscribe button, but also hit download all unplayed episodes why we have 754 other episodes that I guarantee will leave you educated, enlightened and informed cluding I mentioned earlier we had Rory on the show Roy McShane here from McShane LLC back a few weeks ago. We're gonna go ahead and include that episode here in the show notes or if you're watching us on YouTube, they should be popping up right about here. So stick around and enjoy the next episode. But otherwise, folks, thank you for joining us. With that being said, Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for what wrote Johnston. We'll see you next time. Thank you, Brian.

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