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Recap, Reorganization and Moving Forward

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Well, we didn’t win.

Lamar Smith won re-election.  I’m not happy about it and I’m not going to rehash the results – they are publicly available on the web and this is about moving forward, not staying stuck on one election.

Some of you have suggested that we keep working on unseating Lamar in the general election this fall.  TestPAC is unlikely to do so.  Why is that, might you ask? First off, the district is hugely conservative.  The likelihood of a Democrat winning, especially against a very entrenched incumbent such as Mr. Smith, is highly unlikely.  We had our best shot in the primary, but Mr. Smith won.

Secondly, Candace Duval isn’t a candidate we would care to endorse.  More information is available on this thread.   I’d also like to take the opportunity to remind everyone that Andy Posterick is our Treasurer and named on our documentation.  We need to operate within the law or Andy and others will be liable.  Further, this means that we need to be careful of who to associate with.  I and many others of the membership do not believe that associating with a candidate who has alienated her family and regularly uses a psychic healer is the direction we want to go in at this point in time.

With that out of the way, what did we learn from facing off against Lamar Smith and what have we accomplished? To both questions I would say – a lot.

As detailed in this blog post, TestPAC has successfully put out a TV ad, a billboard, raised thousands of dollars and more. We’ve continued to garner media attention  and now we need to figure out the best way to move forward and ascertain our future goals.

One thing that is necessary for us to move forward is to learn from the campaign we just took part in.  There are several issues we had with the campaign which I believe are key and need to be addressed; they include our organization, the lack of speed in decision makings, communication between membership, officers and volunteers, understanding of on the ground circumstances and feasibility issues.  On the bright side, we have raised awareness of internet issues, showed the possibilities of a new model of fundraising and began to successfully put together an organization.  TestPAC sprang virtually out of nowhere and

In that light, here are several things for us to work on in order to improve going forward and to push our capacity for influence and action:

First off, before we move forward on another campaign we need to stop and think about what our mission is going to be.  Our core is this- we are a PAC which is ran by our members.  Members decide where we focus our energies. However, not only is membership not very strictly defined, we don’t have a core goal in mind.  Personally, and let me stress that this is my opinion and mine alone, I think we should focus on internet defense and internet issues.

Sure, if something absolutely crazy happens elsewhere we can switch gears however our focus should be technology and internet issues/net freedom.  We have branding there already, it is the core issue that brought the PAC together and it is something that we all care about.  Agree or disagree? Great, please give us your thoughts on the subreddit.

Next, we need to better define our structure to allow for greater flexibility and faster decision makings.  We need a way of getting membership feedback faster- a great way to do that is to enhance our committees.  We put out a call for volunteers and got some responses, however during the midst of the campaign this project fell by the wayside to some extent.

Not so now, we need to reorganize.  We are working on an organizational structure to propose to the members for alterations, comments and critiques.  However it isn’t quite ready – we’ll try to have it out to the membership as soon as possible, stay tuned.  In the meantime – throw out your own ideas and help move the process along or put your name down now to volunteer for a committee.  We want to ensure each committee has creative idea oriented thinkers and also people with expertise in the necessary topics.  We’ve been blessed with some great production people and minds so far and we don’t want to dilute that.

Additionally, there also needs to be a better way to define membership.  Is it everyone who donates? Signing up for the website? What is membership and how do we retain committed people – we’re working on that and are looking for fun and interesting ways to keep people involved. Please don’t hesitate to add your own input!

In summary, the biggest things we are focusing on are:

- well defined mission

- organizational structure

- addressing membership

In order to do this we’ve got some ancillary tasks that need to get done.  We also addressed a couple of ideas.  Some people have mentioned a name change – not happening right now, the IRS paperwork required to make the change from TestPAC Please Ignore to just TestPAC has taken enough time and energy.  Plus, re-branding everything would be detrimental.  However on that note – the website will be moved over to the testpac.org domain name soon.  Jeromie is working on that, please stay patient as he is swamped with work.

In addition to this we are looking to do an overhaul on some of the site and keep the standards and quality up.  Message an officer or post in the subreddit to get involved with this effort.  Further, we’re looking to better define our goals and put together a growth plan to ensure we stay on track.

If there was anything you learned from the campaign, if you have ideas of what to do next or you want to get more involved please post to the subreddit and keep discussion going.

The officers will continue to move forward with our current ideas and try to get drafts of them out to the members for perusal soon, however at its heart, TestPAC is about crowd sourcing.  We welcome new ideas – many of them may be better than the ones we brainstormed.  Lets continue to work together in order to create a better future.

Thank you-

Conor Bronsdon

TestPAC Officer

Tl;dr- Organizing and focusing in – learning from the campaign and from what we accomplished 

Election Day is Here: Vote now to Unseat Lamar Smith

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Before you read any more – GO VOTE!

Click here to go find your polling place.  Remember, we only need to stop Smith from getting 50% of the vote in order to force a runoff election! Election results should be found here.

For information about Richard Mack you can go to his website or read his Reddit AMA.

For information about Richard Morgan check his website or his Reddit AMA.

 

I want to take this opportunity to once again say thank you to everybody who has worked on the campaign, donated, supported, or otherwise been involved in TestPAC.  The support we have received has been spectacular and the excitement and buzz around this campaign has allowed us to achieve things I never thought was possible.

Over a few short months TestPAC has grown from a nonexistent organization to a genuine player in a congressional primary campaign.

A quick list of some of our accomplishments over the course of the primary:

Our  first campaign has raised awareness of internet issues, may unseat a sitting congressman in a supposedly safe district, and has helped to awaken the sleeping giant of online political activism.  Even so, there is a long ways to go in order to become a stable political force, however the gains from this election have been spectacular.  You can look for further organization and a new set of objectives for the membership to vote on following this election.

I should also note that Richard Morgan will be doing a follow up AMA on Reddit per our request.  Look for him to do it tomorrow or in a couple of days depending on how things fall out.  If the time ends up changing I’ll update it here.

Finally, if you have any ideas on what you would like to see us focus on next, please go put up ideas in the subreddit!

 

Thank you, and don’t forget to vote!

Conor Bronsdon

 

Test PAC Launches TV, Direct Mail Campaigns

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This is a big week for us.

Over the course of the past month, Test PAC officers, volunteers and members have come together to achieve an incredible amount of work in unprecedented ways. Through the generous donations  of average Americans from across the country, Test PAC was successfully able to generate enough funding for a comprehensive campaign against Lamar Smith in Texas’ 21st district.

First, we launched a billboard on San Antonio’s I-10, showing Smith that while he may dismiss those who favor a free and open Internet as the “vocal minority”, our voice would be heard loud and clear. As the month has progressed, we have been in contact with a number of other organizations looking to oust Smith and put an end to his reckless political agenda.

Today, we are proud to announce two new campaigns rolling out this week.

First, Test PAC has confirmed that our direct mailer will be hitting the mailboxes of 8,000 Republican voters on Thursday, May 24th. The mailers were produced using crowd-sourced ideas. Constructive discussion and debate helped hone our message and make sure our point was concise. The direct mailer, which we were able to fund after exceeding our fundraising goal of $5,000 , ended up costing just under $4,000.

In addition to the direct mailer, Test PAC has also purchased a round of television ads which are set to air on three different stations in Texas’ 21st. The breakdown of the airing times is listed below:

KSAT:
Jimmy Kimmel – M-F 1 time per show May 21-25
Indianapolis 500 – Sun May 27th twice
Good Morning S.A. (4:30am-5am) – M-F 3 times total

WOAI:
Leno – Thur 5/24 once, Fri. 5/25 twice (Colin Powell is guest on Friday)
Fallon – Tues. 5/22 once, Thur 5/24 once (Anderson Cooper is guest on Tuesday)
Meet the Press – Sunday 5/27 twice

KENS5:
Letterman – Wed 5/23 twice, Thur 5/24 twice (Bill O’Reilly is guest on Wednesday)
Face the Nation – Sun May 27th once

Prior to funding the television spots, Test PAC members came together to painstakingly produce an advertisement targeting Lamar Smith. As a result, Test PAC was able to create a professional quality commercial with zero production costs(special thanks to Michael Warren, Eddie Belaval, Ian Munsel, and Richard Green). The broadcasting of the spots came in at just over $10,000.

I’ve included the cost of each campaign to emphasize the fact that Test PAC is dedicated to ensuring that every dollar you donate is a dollar you can trust to make a difference. It is with this in mind that Test PAC is run on an entirely volunteer basis, meaning that Test PAC has a 0% overhead. It inspires us to see individual donations of $5, $10, and $20, and as a result we make it our point to utilize each donation in the most efficient manner possible.

As we head into the last lap of the Republican primaries, we encourage each and every one of you to do your part. Voters in Texas’ 2st: end the reign of Lamar Smith by voting in the Republican primary elections. Americans across the country: write your congressmen and women, educate yourselves on legislation threatening our freedoms in the digital age, donate to the cause, and help raise awareness of our current political state of affairs.

The power and innovation of our technological community has proven thus far to be a powerful adversary to the legislative ignorance in Washington. Let’s make sure our concerns further translate into positive action.

Let’s unseat Lamar.

Jeromie Whalen
Test PAC Chairman

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