Labor Day marks both the start of American election campaigns and a celebration of the American worker—whose productivity contributes to 87 percent of global inventions.
My Labor Day weekend began with a meeting with a canvasser who arrived just before I picked up literature from a Wisconsin printer. This printer was producing 10 million pieces for the Faith and Freedom Coalition. I then embarked on a 682-mile all-night drive to distribute these comparisons to canvass leaders across Wisconsin (see map, with our wolf sighting marked).
The irony of meeting this canvasser was that he worked for a liberal non-profit promoting only the positives of Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin. Their literature lacked footnotes and highlighted legislation like the “Child Care Stabilization Act,” part of a $1.9 trillion spending bill passed when inflation was at 2.6% in March 2021. Inflation surged in the 15 months after passage to 9.1%.
Their literature also offered immediate hiring to spread praise for these politicians, perhaps including extracting all contacts from a person’s phone.
In contrast, our Faith and Freedom Coalition literature educates voters about both leading candidates. While the liberal literature ignored Donald Trump and Eric Hovde, our guides feature profile photos of all candidates with footnotes on their positions. A version distributed in the western part of the state includes similar issue comparisons between Cong. Derrick Van Orden and his opponent Rebecca Cooke; and in the Southeastern portion of the state of Cong. Bryan Steil and his opponent Peter Barca.
Years ago, I helped distribute similar comparison pieces, designed by Karl Rove and Ralph Reed (now Chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition). Like our current literature, it listed 10 issues and let readers put a check mark by whose position they liked on each issue to give them a score of 0 to 10 for both George W. Bush and Al Gore, helping voters make informed choices—a method still effective today.
Our focus is on the 207,000 conservative faith-based voters in Wisconsin and millions nationwide who show up for church but not to vote. This year, conservatives have a unique advantage with four key issues on which 70 percent of Americans agree: immigration, inflation, Israel, and keeping men out of women’s sports. Our format, 24 years later, still covers 10 issues..
We hope focusing on these issues will drive voter turnout and strengthen the Republic. The main divide in this campaign is whether the threat is Trump, as most liberals believe, or the legal system’s efforts to bankrupt, imprison, and remove Trump from the ballot.
The Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition believes that focusing on policies over rhetoric will lead to higher turnout due to more informed voting.
The canvasser who came to my door was professional and asked if I saw any positives about Kamala Harris. I acknowledged her disciplined communication – a very simple message repeated over and over has won many elections – but reiterated my strong disagreement with her policies. He admitted he and his friends were impressed when Trump raised his hand after being shot. As he left, someone down the street told him I was very conservative. I had to smile when I heard him reply, “Yeah, but he seemed cool.”
The trek included seeing a wolf near Fort McCoy – site of the largest wolfpack ever in Wisconsin, navigating through thick woods on a gravel road in what is categorized as Wolf Zone 5 in an effort to protect wolves despite farmers opposition. At stops between midnight and 5 AM, I avoided waking people but stirred a few dogs and horses at one home – the former a lot more aggressive than the wolf as apparently his owner didn’t let him in on the instructions for me to take literature to a shelf in his shed so he could take it to church on Sunday.
The trip was marked by great conversations and even some late-night brownies from a canvass leader. By Saturday, after some rest, I was distributing literature and receiving reports from canvassers across the state.
The map shows areas where I connected with canvass leaders (red arrows) and those where leaders agreed to take literature to their zones (blue arrows). Click for a paid position distributing literature in your area—and we won’t extract contacts from your phone. To make a tax-deductible contribution to support this effort, donate here.
