Are You Willing To Run For Office In Illinois In 2024? Hear Is Your Guide To Win!

The Republican guide to winning office

Apr 02, 2023

Val Ojeda/Trump Hispanic Coalition Leader

File photo/Val Ojeda (2022)

April 1, 2023

©️Val Ojeda, Writer

Are you ready to serve your state and country? Are you ready to be the voice of the people? Are you ready to run for office?

Then I can give you direction.

April is the time candidates should prepare to run for political offices in 2024. It may be Congress or Illinois House and Senate and other seats. As a matter of fact if you are indeed running, it is wise that you announce right now and not later as you have to market your campaign.

Many candidates made the mistake of announcing at the last minute and losing because they had no exposure. The voters did not know who they were.

Judge Anthony Iosco/ Co-Dirctor Donald Trump for President Campaign

In the 2022 midterms races, candidates announced their campaigns just a week before collecting signatures and others were slated just weeks before the general election. A strategy like this is a sure loss and a waste of money and time.

To win a political race it takes strategy and time. The marketing part is the first, but there are other factors. You have become a salesperson to the people selling a product, yourself. Are the people going to buy it?

Last year, the Illinois Republican Party suffered the most losses in the history of the GOP. This happened because of bad strategy and consulting starting at the top.

If you remember, Illinois had a perfect Governor's candidate, Darren Bailey, who ran for Governor campaigning for two years until Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin stepped in late in the game, just weeks before collecting signatures.

Remember that Irvin stepped in late in the game just a few months before the GOP primary.

The Illinois Republican Party in its wisdom, accepting the horrible consulting advice of Mike Z, campaign manager to former Governor Bruce Rauner decided to promote Irvin for Governor. In negotiations with billionaire Ken Griffin they had the money to do it with now.

50 million dollars.

Their strategy was awful. They were late in the game for marketing Irvin just depending on advertising but no grassroots campaigning. They depended on him being the Mayor of Aurora but 90% of the rest of the state had no idea who he was.

Irvin, a lifelong Democrat, never voted Republican. However, the strategy of the GOP leaders, all 500 of them that endorsed him, wanted to sell him as the more moderate, liberal pro-choice Republican.

They stayed away from identifying him as "conservative" or supporting President Trump.

Jovita Caranza/ Treasurer of the United States Trump Administration

Next came his connections to other Democrats and corrupt business deals.

In June 2022 the people spoke running off this 50 million dollar candidate into third place giving Darren Bailey the nomination for Governor.

Now just imagine if the Illinois GOP offered that money to Bailey. JB Pritzker would be out of office.

The Illinois GOP picked Irvin because he was well polished compared to Bailey as they wrote off as "overweight", unsellable and "extremist" because of his conservative Christian views.

But he won. Like a ball player he made hits and got on plate scoring home runs. They stayed away from Irvin like the plague.

If you're running for office in 2024 let me help you show how to do it.

I'm a political operative and strategist. As an operative you work behind the scenes like a spy taking political opponents out. There are many factors in doing this. I also consult elected officials in public policy, economic affairs, defense, law and ideas for new legislation. As a matter of fact I've introduced several pieces of legislation that became state and federal laws.

I love politics.

My favorite is campaign management. Putting the right people in office. I've worked on senior staff in two presidential campaigns under Trump and hundreds of other races including Congress and Senate.

Compiled photos from 2022 Illinois campaigns

The best part is working with everyday humble grassroots Americans.

In Illinois alone I've won many races and I continue to manage and consult in statewide races including advising Conservative organizations and PACs.

Just like Bailey you don't need to be a millionaire to win. It would be nice to have money but you can still win. This is how you can do it.

Have you ever heard of Billy Beane, the Manager of the Oakland A's?

If you haven't watched the movie "Moneyball" with Brad Pitt, I suggest you do if you're running for office. It's the true story of Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A's Baseball Team in the Major League's that was at the time the poorest team in the league, with no star players or wins. The owners just refused to invest more in the team, recruiting any star players. Beane had to make do. However, he came upon a baseball strategist that knew numbers, and together they developed a system that would build an undefeated baseball club that smashed every team in the MLB, including the Yankees. And they did it with no money. Just strategic skill. They would recruit players no recruiter wanted because of looks, cage, or performance. But they could get on base and win games. Just like a political candidate. The Republican Party is too busy looking for stars versus people who can win elected office!

Bean's strategy was simple. To get on base. No showboating or looking for home runs. No fancy stealing bases where you can be tapped out or passing to second when you should pass to first. You first recruit the right player. Not the right looking player and micromanaged plays. In politics, it's the same. Don't look for the richest or best-looking candidate. Especially a popular bragger. You pick the humble one that will work hard and will make a difference. The party is too busy “vetting” the right candidates, meanwhile letting the good ones pass by. When that individual they finally find runs for office, they can run on a small budget and run against a candidate on pure skill and strategic thinking and win. No need to be good-looking or rich. Just the knowledge of how to win a race and to never give up!

The biggest obstacle I ran into in Illinois is that the party officials wanted to decide who was going to run in what seat and even discouraged great contenders to drop out over this stupid thinking that they no best.

Let us continue.

Beane ran the Oakland A’s—and he’s known for taking a mathematical approach to assembling a competitive baseball team on a shoestring budget. (Michael Lewis coined it Moneyball.) When Beane started using math and data to design winning baseball teams, it was completely countercultural. Scouts flew all over the country to identify fresh talent. That approach was both inefficient (it took a lot of time) and inaccurate (not every player who looked like a good player played well and vice versa). The same thing happens in politics: Candidates are judged on what’s seen—their resume, work experience, and how they do in interviews. But this surface-level insight is insufficient in making good politicians and leaders. Just like in baseball, exceptional talent isn’t always seen with the naked eye.

Here are some tips from Beane’s message you can apply to your political campaign.

Don’t be afraid to do something different.

When Beane started using the Moneyball methodology to pick players, people thought he was crazy. Why fix what’s not broken? But Beane and his partner-in-crime, Paul DePodesta, knew that something was broken. DePodesta ran the numbers and discovered massive inefficiencies in the drafting process. So, they took a different approach. The moral of the story? Just because there’s “a way things have always been done,” that doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do things. Takeaway: Just like Beane broke the mold in baseball, you can break the mold in politics by leveraging people's data to make informed decisions about your talent.

“Deciding without data and information is like running through a room in the dark, not knowing where the furniture is.” — Billy Beane

Look at the data, not what you see in front of you.

This goes for voter demographics and voter turnout in elections. As Beane said in his keynote, “Your eyes and your gut will fail you.” A lot of what matters isn’t visible. The industry was paying for skills that didn’t correlate with winning. They were searching for people who never struck out. But the data showed the No. 1 skill for baseball players was actually the skill scouts ranked eighth in importance: the ability to get on base.

This understanding allowed Beane to nab Matt Stairs, a player who didn’t look the part. He didn’t pass the scouts’ “eye test” the visual assessment scouts gave players. Stairs hit over 35 home runs in a season and currently holds the all-time MLB record for most pinch-hit home runs: 23. Takeaway: Don’t miss out on your version of stairs. Collect and use people's data to make better hiring and management decisions. Use election data to forecast a win. Find out what the previous contender did wrong and avoid what he or she did, and develop a plan on winning by political intelligence.

There were two concepts that stuck out to me while watching Moneyball. The first concept is to treat people like professionals. There was professionalism throughout the whole movie. One particular point that stood out for this was how Billy learned and showed the team how to be a leader. As Billy was speaking with Peter, he said that he needed to treat the players like professionals. If you do this, then they will respect you and listen to you. There were many obstacles throughout the movie, but Billy talks about the traditional methods in how to choose a ball player, and it also told me about Billy Beane's unsuccessful career as a baseball player. The five tools or abilities that a baseball scout looks for are run, throw, hit, and hit with power. A guy with wheels means a guy could run. A guy with a strong arm had a hose. Each time a baseball scout scouted Billy Beane all they saw was a future big league star.

Those who follow Major League Baseball closely were aware of the unconventional way the Oakland A's went about re-building a ball club into a winner in 2002, after three superstars left the team as free agent's en route to multi-million dollar paydays. Indeed, when Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen, the biggest stars on the 2001 team, head for the big bucks, general manager Billy Beane figures out a new way to win. The novel Moneyball was about Beane and how he reinvented a way of making a winning team. Set in the early 2000’s, Beane uses unique thinking to make the Oakland Athletics a successful team. Back in the 1980s, Beane was the star of his high school baseball team, and it looked like he was going to be a star. At least, that is what the scouts thought. He struggled when he got to the minor leagues, but still made it to the majors. There, he was never a stand-out and only played on a small minor league team.

Big management and owners believe that the more a team spends on their payroll, the more games they will win. (Remember Irvin and the Illinois GOP?) Just like big name candidates with money, like Hillary Clinton, for example. Clinton raised 1 billion dollars to defeat Trump. He beat her hands down, spending just a third of what she had.

With the absence of a salary cap, baseball may seem unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bear the salary costs that the larger market teams can. These are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors.

Microeconomic Concepts in Moneyball, which explains the conflicts that the major league Oakland Athletics baseball team had to face. Thanks to their general manager, Beane, the team overcame difficult situations by using the sabermetrics method, which is a well-known statistical analysis. The method measures the in-game activity in baseball statistics. Throughout the movie, you see a revolving theme of the basic concepts of economics.

At its core, the book Moneyball, to me, is about leadership and overcoming resistance to change to create a sustainable competitive advantage. In Moneyball, a new General Manager challenges a traditional industry with a new paradigm. He successfully deals with the resulting resistance from the more tradition oriented employees. With the Oakland A's this has led to a substantial competitive advantage through lower costs (their payroll goes down) and improved output (they have a higher percentage. Now we just have to apply that theme to Republican politics to actually start winning!

So, you want to become a candidate and win in 2024?

Let's begin here with this.

Announce that you are running for the seat that you desired today!

The rule of thumb says you need 20% of the overall cost of the campaign to begin. Say you have a one million dollar campaign, then you would need 200 hundred thousand dollars to start.

That is not true.

Remember, Billy Beane didn't have that money and so didn't Darren Bailey. But both were winners. Let me say this. Though Bailey lost to JB, he actually almost beat him with a bare-bones budget. Bailey's 3 million compared to JB's 200 million. Bailey almost got it.

Don't expect to have the GOP to step up to offer you money as they will sit back to see who will win the primary before they make a financial commitment unless you're a favorite like Richard Irvin or Esther Joy King, another bad choice liberal Republican that ran for Congress in the 17th Congressional District in Illinois.

Do not let anyone attempt to talk you out of your decision.

First will come the amateur consultants. The party elders and PCs then will come the chairman. Their thinking is that they will run their choice or even a candidate that lost in that last race for that seat.

There is no rule or GOP bylaw that they can use to prevent you from running. According to the Constitution, you can run without anyone's consent.

The only prohibition are if you're a felon running for a seat in the state, but you can run as a felon in a federal race.

Next, hire a professional consultant. Do not use your cousin because they want to work for free or worse, a person who is involved in politics and they “know” the system.

Hiring a campaign manager is like hiring a criminal attorney to win your DUI case or homicide to keep you out of jail. To win.

Don't fall prey to these bigger campaign management companies that are actually run by kids just out of college as they are really glorified volunteers charging you $15,000 a month plus expenses.

Ask around and use some grassroots consultants who have a record of winning races and will work with you and your budget.

A consultant has been around the block. They may have lost races. But you have to lose in order to find an effective way to learn from your mistakes. Even the best lawyers lose cases. However, you are hiring them for their experience. Because they have fed off several dozen or in my case hundreds of political campaigns.

I love to win. Like Jordan on and off the court. One thing I found out is that most candidates are not wealthy. Yet, they want to serve.

To assist candidates, I bypassed my regular fee and charged our candidates $150.00 a week with no retainer fee. What would you pay a volunteer? However, I had volume and some wealthier candidates to cover my losses. Consulting for GOP organizations helped offset my losses as well.

It's not about the income but the outcome!

Let's continue…

Next, market yourself.

Create a website. Create your social media. Your posters and graphic design. Your lawn signs. Most important, is your message.

To win over a voter, imagine you are a man on a date with a woman. Are you going to talk about yourself? About your good looks, your nice car and great job. Or is the attention going to go to her? If so, then you're going to get on first base.

The voter isn't concerned about your resume with a good look. They are out of work or in bad health, and they want to see a solution to their problem.

Develop your public policy and sell it. Study up and understand the government. Learn about public safety and economics. Pensions and schools. All this can be done by reading up.

Next is Networking.

Start with attending every GOP and public event you can find. By this time, you should order printed materials, business cards and wear a name tag.

Announce to the world you are running this, including press releases and a media statement.

There is no need to hire a staff. Recruit volunteers to help you. Give them titles such as “area coordinators” offer them free campaign shirts and name tags. They do this because they support your mission. Maybe later consider paying them a small stipend but always take care of them with maybe pizza lunch or dinners with drinks to show your appreciation paid for by campaign funds.

Demographics

You should conduct a study of your voters. Who voted in the last race. Study your opponent and find out why he won his race against his opponent. Later gather voter data including precinct information.

Start to gather a feel for your district by visiting restaurants and bars. That is where the action is to talk to the people and find out their concerns.

Next is very important, fundraising!

This is the most difficult for candidates because who likes to beg for money. You better get used to it. It comes with the job. No worries, though, patriots will step up to donate only when you capture their imagination. So sell yourself!

Only enter your race to win. Don't do it to make a point or to become a celebrity or, even worse, to collect money.

If you truly care for the people, then you will fight for them. To be their voice. We cannot afford to have voters support you and have high hopes just for you to drop out later. If you have that mindset, don't even bother running.

We are shaking things up in Illinois for the real “Red Wave” in 2024. We are running out the “moderates” and rebuilding the grassroots Republicans. Now let us win this together in one unit, not split like I'm 2022.

If you are a candidate and you find that you need some help, feel free to call me. I'm not trying to make a sale but we have to start winning races by utilizing skills and experience.

I myself am vested. I have become a leader in the grassroots movement. I have donated a lot of time and money to assist candidates in Illinois and I continue to do so campaigning in 38 counties in Congressional and statewide races.

We are going to win in 2024 because of the Biden economy. The financial and banking system is collapsing. By the time people vote in 2024 it won't be out of patriotism or identity politics. It will be on an empty stomach and fear because of the rise in crime.

Donald Trump is running for President again. He announced early because he listened to his consultants. You start early to win early.

Now he is getting his message out there and he's breaking fundraising records just this week raising 5 million in a few days.

This is the tactic we had when I was on the Trump campaign. Most important is cyber.

The days of the older consultants with cigars hanging out their mouths are over. Now it's social media advertising and text blasting. Data, data, and data.

I look forward to finally winning more races, but we must do it right and not repeating the mistakes the RINO leaders of the party made in Illinois in 2022.

I foresee a big change to rebuild, restore and regain Illinois.

I wish you good luck on your campaigns and remember I'll be here to help you. It's not only about winning but to secure a better future for our children so they can live free from our debts so they can live in better financial prosperity and a safer society!

Click here for more information:

https://www.integratedpoliticalstrategy.com/

Or call: 708-437-1728 (IPS)

©️Val Ojeda is a Republican Author, Media Personality, Strategist and Consultant. Ojeda manages federal political campaigns also serving as President Trump's Hispanic Coalition Leader. Ojeda is also a businessman, entrepreneur and the founder of FAMA a 501c3 Chamber of Commerce. Ojeda served as law enforcement Veteran Officer/Detective.