WITHOUT QUESTION, this election season has given everyone plenty to get emotional about. Between a monsoon of questions surrounding the nation’s highest elections, another two years of a bitterly divided Congress, and a country every bit as tense as it’s ever been, it seems as though the present drama and confusion could not constitute a more fitting grand finale for the long dark that has been 2020.
We’d like to thank Cliff Maloney for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you would like us to consider please submit it to Skip@GraniteGrok or Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
As this month’s election results poured in, however, Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) found itself at the center of a rather profound anomaly. While President Trump, GOP Senate candidate Corky Messner, and both GOP congressional candidates all lost their bids for the Granite State, both chambers of the New Hampshire General Court flipped red.
In fact, New Hampshire was the only state in the entire country where this happened.
While it’s certainly true that such a sudden and monumental upheaval of the status quo can only be explained by a wide combination of factors, I believe we would be remiss to neglect the pivotal role that YAL’s flagship program, Operation Win at the Door, played in securing 55 of the Republican victories seen across the state legislature.
As its name would imply, this program understands the real bread and butter of politics: grassroots. Unlike flashy programs that spend exorbitant sums of money on TV ads and direct mail, YAL deploys young, energetic student activists to knock doors and persuade voters directly.
The research doesn’t lie: Even in an age where social media reigns supreme, door-to-door canvassing stands as the single most effective strategy for winning votes. In their book “Get Out The Vote”, professors Donald P. Green and Alan Gerber share 20 years of metadata analysis to substantiate this. According to their research, while door-knocking earns an average of one vote for every nine voters contacted, phone-banking (the second-best technique) requires 36 voters be contacted.
Aside from the data, however, this strategy was proven to work in New Hampshire this year, with victories including outspoken lockdown critic Jason Osborne in Rockingham 4; a clean sweep of 11 legislators in Hillsborough 37; and recent college graduate and YAL alumnus Tim Baxter in Rockingham 20.
And with half of all sitting members of Congress having served in their state legislatures before ascending to higher office, it’s safe to say that many of the local leaders like these will one day become the champions for liberty our country needs in Congress, in our governor’s mansions, and perhaps even in the White House.
We either believe in liberty in times of crisis, or we don’t believe in liberty at all. Or, as General John Stark put it: “Live free or die; Death is not the worst of evils.” New Hampshire adopted this state motto in 1945, and the liberty wave that swept the Granite State has created an opportunity for local leaders to reclaim that motto.
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Note: they were here even in my little hamlet. Every candidate they assisted (separate from the candidates’ own campaign – strict firewalls), they won. They ARE a real deal and a boots on the ground troop that had amazing results. -Skip