By JOE KUHNS

A Present Danger to the Republic

Looking at our society in early 2026, it is clear to most thoughtful Americans that something has gone seriously awry, but most cannot give a coherent explanation as to how or why. People sense that the traditional unity of our society has been fractured. Different explanations abound. Many will say it is due to the breakdown of the family. Others will ascribe it to a decline in religion and thus traditional morality in society. And of course, others will say it is all because of Donald Trump. I have a very different perspective, which I will outline in this essay.

My basic thesis is that the fundamental threat facing the country today is the rise to influence of the political far left, in particular, its accumulation of great strength in various cultural institutions in our society (such as education and mass media), and especially its becoming the controlling wing of the Democratic Party.

During the recent battle over the government shutdown, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the quiet part out loud. He referred to the dominant Left Wing of the Democratic Party as its “Marxist Wing.”  He spoke the truth.

There are many who, when reading the above, will immediately declare that I am a “right-wing extremist,” a “McCarthyite,” a “Red-baiter” or even a “Fascist” for saying this. I am actually none of these things.

But first, to understand where I am coming from, here is some information about my own background and experience. I attended college as an undergraduate at Georgetown University from 1963 to 1967. This was at the height of the anti-war movement on college, at which time college campuses had an abundance of far ieft activists. After graduation, I served two years in the US Army, including a year in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969.

Nine years later, I received an appointment as a Special Agent in the FBI. I was assigned to the Bureau's New York Field Office, where I spent my whole career until my retirement in 2002. Immediately after this, I took a position as a history teacher in a Catholic girls' high school in northern New Jersey. I taught there for twelve years. All of these experiences were formative to the opinions I will outline here.

The FBI worked in two broad fields: National Security investigations and Criminal investigations. The National Security aspect encompassed Counter-Intelligence, which meant looking for Communist spies (the Cold War was still on as the Soviet Union and other Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe had not collapsed yet) as well as monitoring dangerous and subversive groups within the US. I worked in the National Security field for approximately the first twelve years of my career, before switching to criminal work.

I cannot go into any details about my work in the National Security field, but I will just say that I was astounded to learn how many American Communists there were and the tremendous web of organizations they had. These people were not “liberals” or people with mildly socialist leanings. They were out and out Marxist-Leninists, i.e., Communists. Most Americans had no idea of how many such people there were or how extensive their web of organizations was. The one overriding thing I learned about these Communists was the fact that they hated the United States of America and would do anything to bring it down. This was a central factor in their lives. This is hard for ordinary Americans to believe, but it is true. They had no love for this country. They have not changed.

I also noticed something else. Many of these groups stopped using the word “Communist” in their organization's title. They knew this word did not sell well with the ordinary American. But that did not mean they dropped the ideology itself.

Many Americans then and today, I believe, would just assume that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and other European communist dictatorships in the early 1990's, such people must surely have given up their belief in Communism. Some did, but the true believers did not. Why not? I believe it was because they had wrapped up their whole lives in this cause, and they had nothing else to believe in.

The best example of this was Gus Hall, the head of the American Communist Party (and for some time its candidate for President every four years). When asked to comment on the fall of the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes, he declared that there was nothing wrong with Communist ideas. The Soviets (and all of the other formerly Communist countries on several continents) had just implemented the ideas wrong. This is still a common explanation, apparently, among those who believe in Communism today. This is how they get around the embarrassing problem of the failure of all earlier Communist regimes. (1)

At this point, there is a name the reader should be made familiar with: Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was an Italian Communist in the early 20th Century. He dealt with a question that was ideologically challenging to Communists of that time. Russia had fallen under Communism and  become the Soviet Union. But according to Marxist logic, the other advanced countries in Europe and America should be doing the same. In fact, according to Marxist theory, because of their higher level of economic development they were better candidates for transition to socialism and Communism than Russia had been. So why were these countries not following suit, and how could this be corrected?

What Gramsci did was to offer a different road to Communism. He said that in advanced Capitalist countries it was necessary for Communists to penetrate the essential cultural institutions of those Capitalist societies, gradually take them over, and use them to steer the societies towards socialism and Communism. Gramsci is considered to be the godfather of “Cultural Marxism”. Later, this process he advocated would come to be called “the long march through the institutions”. (2)

What institutions would these be? They would be things like the press and the media, the governmental bureaucracy, churches, the entertainment industry, and above all, the education system at all levels. A key assertion of this essay is that this is exactly what has been happening in America, with the education system being a key factor.

On the subject of education, our whole system of education has been degraded to the point where it has become a national crisis. The reporting on this topic has been so voluminous that it is hardly necessary to repeat it. Our children in our public school systems read very poorly, write very poorly, and are very poor at math and analytical reasoning. They also are very ignorant about history, whether American history or any other. And I have a couple of relevant experiences of my own to relate on this last point.

Around 1975, after spending two years overseas in Taiwan, I was doing graduate study in Asian Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. I was asked to go to a public high school in central New Jersey to give a talk to the students regarding China and the Far East. I was struck by students' complete lack of knowledge of history. I asked one of their teachers why this was. She told me that the new emphasis in history teaching was not to teach historical facts but rather “concepts about history”. I was stunned.

Of course, I realize that merely having children memorize endless names and dates without learning overarching themes and trends of history is useless. But so is teaching “concepts about history” without at least a sufficient knowledge of concrete events that make up history. Without some factual knowledge of historical events, how can one judge the validity of concepts about history that one is taught? One cannot, and perhaps that is the very point.

Another example: Following retirement from the FBI, I taught a history course entitled “Western Civilization” for twelve years in a very good Catholic girls' high school in northern New Jersey. Toward the end of the course we reached the section on the Russian Revolution. As an introduction to the subject of Joseph Stalin, I would ask my students “Who was the greatest mass murderer in all of history?” Twenty five voices would answer in unison “Hitler”. When I asked if they had ever heard of Stalin, the answer always was“Who was he?” I would tell them that he was a dictator of the Soviet Union and murdered around 20 million of his own people in the course of cementing Communist rule.

I also told them, while citing a solid scholarly source, that all of the Communist dictators together, including, besides Stalin, Mao in

China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and others, had caused the deaths of an estimated ninety-four million people.

In my twelve years of teaching this course, I must have taught close to one thousand students. While they all knew about Hitler and the Holocaust, NOT ONE student ever said she had learned anything about this mass murder by Communist regimes.

After I finished the lesson on Stalin, usually some girl would ask why they had never learned about him. I would suggest to her that perhaps those who made up their curriculum, because of their own ideological beliefs, wanted students to identify mass murder only with Nazis, but not with Communists. While the problem of the Leftist predominance in education is at all levels, let us look at higher education.

Anybody who has been following reports on what has been happening in America's universities cannot be unaware that most are firmly under the control of the political Far Left. The examples that I could give on this point are very numerous, but I will only cite a few that are especially significant right now.

As an example of the phenomenon, let us look at the very recent reaction of both professors and students to the murder of Charlie Kirk.

First, let us look at the reaction of one university, as reported by one of its own professors. Trevor Michael Tomesh, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, wrote the following after the assassination of Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus:

“I’m a University professor here in Wisconsin.

Obligatory disclaimer: these views are mine alone and do not reflect the views of the University of Wisconsin System.

The fact that Charlie was killed on a college campus for expressing his opinions and ideas — the one place in society what’s soul [sic] purpose is to express opinions and ideas — should be a watershed moment for all universities.

Every single member of every single university community — faculty, administrators, staff, and students — should be lamenting this as it spells the death of the university. There should have immediately been a press release from every school in the United States condemning this act of ideological violence. Students should have been told about the gravity of this situation.

Faculty should have been coached on how to explain what freedom of speech looks like, and every classroom should have an entire lecture devoted to why what Charlie was doing was fundamental to the fabric of American society.

Instead, hundreds of professors and students celebrated and continue to celebrate.To date, there has been no statement from my university or the University of Wisconsin system. Not a single one of my students heard from any of their professors about this.

How do I know? I asked them. Not only did I ask them, but I gave them a 50-minute lecture about why this moment is one of the darkest in American History and how we must pull back from this and encourage dialogue or the American project is dead.

Conservative students and faculty are taking this silence on behalf of administrators as an endorsement of violence against them.

When little 5’4” 96 lb grandma, Sister Cindy Smock, came to our campus to talk to kids about Jesus, they had sent out a campus-wide email telling the students that if they need to talk about their traumatic experience that councilors [sic] are available and there’s a safe space where they can go to cry and play with toys. They then assembled a task force to determine how to handle people like Cindy and the trauma she inflicts on students.

When my students witnessed a man — someone they grew up watching since they were kids — have his throat blown out with a 30 06 round at a college campus, much like our own, doing something that they are meant to be doing… nothing.

I’ve written, called, and pleaded with admins on campus to JUST SAY SOMETHING!

No returned calls. No emails back. No invitations to talk about this. Nothing. I had one email the day of telling me (because they know conservative students actually talk to me) that I can send students to the woke counselors in the diversity, equity, and belonging building on campus.

Oh — and I got an email reminding me that if I am going to identify myself as a professor, I need to add a variation of the disclaimer I left at the top of this comment.

So, I am angry. I am disappointed. I am scared s***less.

But when I got done with my lecture (which I intend to publish — I did record it), nearly every student came to me and shook my hand. One student (Korean, I believe) even gave me a bow.

These kids can be saved. There is so much potential in Gen Z — but if the only thing they hear from the institutions of higher learning is extremist propaganda from radical Marxists, many more Charlie Kirks are going to happen and America will be extinct within the century.” (3)

Now let us look at the reactions of a collection of professors from several universities to the murder of Kirk:

Marilee Kinsella, program assistant for the Philosophy Department at Gonzaga University, shared on Facebook: “I'm Glad {Charlie Kirk} is dead because he was a horrible excuse for a human being. In fact, I'm going to have a cocktail and get high in his memory”.

Tamar Shirininan, an anthropology professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, posted the following about Kirk:“The world is better off without him in it. Even those who are claiming to be sad for his wife and kids...like, his kids are better off living in a world without a disgusting psychopath like him and his wife, well, she's a sick fuck for marrying him, so I don't care about her feelings”.

Jay Perk, UCLA's Director of Race and Equity: “It's OKAY to be happy when someone who hates you and called for your people's death dies- even if they are murdered. Why shouldn't he be dead?”

Laura Sosh-Lightsy, Middle Tennessee University Assistant Dean of Students, posted: “Looks like Old Charley spoke his fate into existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy.” (4)

These four examples are from professors and people in authority at American universities. There are many other examples that could be given. They are the people educating our young people.

Does this have an effect on students? Consider the fact that the 2026 Free Speech Rankings, a survey of 68,000 college students at 275 universities conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) discovered that about one-third of the students surveyed answered that using violence to prevent a speaker they disagreed with from speaking on campus was acceptable at least some of the time. Is it surprising? (5)

So we have many thousands of students on college campuses who think it is okay to violently attack someone because they disagree with his politics, even to kill them in some cases.

When you look at these young people who want to violently silence people they don't agree with, some even believing it is justifiable to kill them, it brings to the surface a startling fact. As mentioned earlier, Communist regimes in the 20th Century killed nearly 100 million people. They were able to do this because they indoctrinated their followers to believe that when it comes to accomplishing your political goals, the ends justify the means. Including murder. People like the murderer of Charlie Kirk and those who applaud him, those who attempted to assassinate President Trump, and people such as Antifa, who routinely use violence against people with opposing ideas, have adopted this same idea.

The people who applaud the murder of Charlie Kirk, like the academics cited above, will usually say that the killing was justified because Charlie Kirk spread “hatred”. Kirk was a Conservative and a devout Christian who debated Leftists publicly and civilly on college campuses. I watched numerous recordings of these debates, and I can say that I never once heard him say anything hateful about a person or group of people. He, like any decent person, may have hated things which he considered evil and perverse, but he never expressed hatred for any individual or group, no matter how vehemently he opposed their ideas. One of the comical things you often saw in Kirk's exchanges with Leftist students at his events was that when a Leftist student could not provide a rebuttal would go into a rage, call Kirk a racist, a bigot, a transphobe, a homophobe, etc., before angrily storming off the set.

JOE KUHNS:

Joseph Kuhns was born in Queens, New York City, and has lived most of his life on the East Coast. From 1963 to 1967, he attended the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Following graduation, he served two years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, during which he served a tour of duty in Viet Nam.

Later, Mr. Kuhns spent two years in Taiwan where he taught English and also studied Mandarin Chinese. Returning to the US, and after further graduate study, he obtained a position as a Special Agent in the FBI, where he had a career spanning 25 years, assigned to the New York Office of the Bureau.

Upon retirement from the FBI, Mr. Kuhns took a teaching position in a Catholic high school, where he taught a history course entitled “Western Civilization” for twelve years until retirement in 2014.

Today, he devotes himself to local political issues, especially those involving education and curriculum.

CONTACT: 201-783-5574

amenemhet2@aol.com

Why Was Trump My Only Possible Choice?

By Joe Kuhns

In the last election, I voted for Donald Trump, a man who is one of the most controversial and, in many quarters, one of the most reviled men of our time. And I would do it again. Why?

Allow me to say at the outset that I am not a fanatical “Trumper”, for whom Trump is a God-like figure who can do no wrong. I  know he is a flawed figure, like everyone else. There are things I like very much about him and things I very much don't like. If it had been my choice, there are other Republicans, both men and women, whom I would have preferred.

But there was no choice for me on whom to vote for. While there are many things about Trump that I admire and applaud. I cannot say the same thing about the Democratic Party, which is firmly under the control of its far Left wing. I watched the Biden-Harris Administration in action for four years, and it was clear to me on every level that our country could not survive four more years of their control.

Let us put aside the political propaganda of these many months and look at what the Democrats have done that has damaged our country so badly.

To start with the most obvious and egregious, the Democrats, in violation of the law, effectively abolished the US borders, allowing a steady influx of an estimated ten million illegal aliens to flood into our country. These people were never vetted. How could such a torrent of up to 10,000 people per day possibly be vetted? Our government does not know exactly how many there are, who and what they are, or where they are. But they included hundreds of thousands of criminals and hundreds of thousands of people from countries with governments that are hostile to the United States. Tom Homan, the President's Border Czar, has stated there are approximately 700,000 who have criminal records. And there are, without any doubt many thousands who are criminals but have no criminal records because they haven't actually been caught yet for any of their crimes.

Criminal gangs from Central America, such as Tren De Aragua and MS 13, came in and took up residence in our country. There are members of drug cartels and terrorists. Many American citizens have become victims of rape, murder, and other crimes committed by these criminals.

There is even an organization (Angel Moms) of parents of murdered victims of these criminals. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris created this tragedy, but I did not hear of one instance of either of them ever reaching out in sympathy to these people for what happened to their children, or expressing any regrets over their own actions, which caused the problem. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has met with some of the Angel Moms.

Tom Homan has also stated that there are about 300,000 unaccompanied children who came in and who are unaccounted for. We don't know where they are. One can assume that many of these children are in the hands of sex traffickers.

The Executive Orders from Joe Biden, which set this tragedy in motion, began immediately after his inauguration, which clearly shows that this was all planned ahead of time. Does anyone recall one single word from the Democrats before the 2020 election telling the American people that this was what they intended to do? No, they wouldn't have gotten elected if they had let people know.

Let me state right now a salient point. Nobody who loves this country would knowingly and intentionally do something like this. But it is exactly what the Democrats did.

Joe Biden campaigned on a promise to unite people after years of discord. He came into office and did exactly the opposite. His administration made identity politics the core of its approach to governing, with Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a central part of everything they did. They pushed this idea in schools, the government, and the military. This is designed to divide Americans, not unite them. They teach people to identify not as Americans but as members of racial sub-groups. The point of it all is to cement in the minds of minority members the feeling of victimhood and the belief that big government is their only savior.

 Democrats do this at the state and local level as well. Throughout Democrat-controlled Red States and cities, such as my state of New Jersey, state education policy and curriculum put heavy emphasis on identity, deliberately imposing on students the idea that anyone in a minority status, whether because of race or gender   identity, is an “oppressed” victim, while white people, and especially heterosexual white people are “oppressors”.

 This way of thinking, commonly associated with the “Woke Left” essentially adopts the Marxist (Communist) dynamic of history. Karl Marx saw all social and political movement in terms of an unrelenting struggle between economic classes, with the lower class, the workers or proletariat constantly struggling to overthrow the capitalist upper class.

 The Woke Left adopts this dynamic and applies it to race. So now the “oppressor” is all white people and the “oppressed” is all non-white people. By doing this, they indoctrinate the youth in the idea that the US is a bad country.  Of course, one thing which they never wish to celebrate or even talk about is the enormous progress this country has made in race relations.

 What they achieve by this is the creation of a permanent victim class, which will not see itself as part of the national community. What better way to over time undermine the nation?

 In the domestic sphere, what is the primary responsibility of a government? It is to insure the physical safety and security of the people. Within the borders of each state this means to enforce the laws, beginning with the criminal law. If one looks at Democrat-controlled cities across the land such as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, one sees city administrations and district attorneys determined to do the opposite. Dangerous criminals are let out with little or no bail, the lightest possible sentences are given, and in some cases prosecutors such as DA Alvin Bragg in New York are more interested in prosecuting those who try to protect themselves and their fellow citizens against violent criminals than prosecuting the criminals themselves.

 In some cases, like San Francisco, it was decided that nobody would be prosecuted for stealing less than approximately  $1,000 worth of merchandise from a store. This resulted in stores being routinely looted and ultimately being forced to go out of business. Did Democrat city officials know this was happening? Of course, they did, but they were more than happy to let it continue, in the name of  “social justice”. Eventually, many voters had enough. As examples, radical DA Chesa Boudin in San Francisco was removed in a recall vote, and radical DA Gascon in LA was voted out in the 2024 election.

 Perhaps one of the most insidious things the Democrats have done, both on the federal, state, and local levels, is in the cultural realm. And this entails an across-the-board promotion of gender ideology.

 All societies have a cultural basis. That entails a foundation of ideas, attitudes, and ways of looking at the world and reality. It also entails a web of customs that hold a society together. The foundation of American society is Western Civilization, which developed over the centuries in Europe.

 And like all civilizations, ours has concepts of accepted truth. In line with these truths, there are accepted barriers and behavioral lines which should not be crossed.

 If my goal was to destroy the United States of America as a coherent, functioning society, I would undermine these cultural ideas that form the basis of our society. I would attack all behavioral norms and boundaries. I would first attack all of society's sexual norms, and aim especially at children. I would make sure children were exposed to teaching on sex of every variety, normal and abnormal, starting at a young age. They would be exposed to it in school, in entertainment, in libraries. When traditional sexual norms are attacked and undermined, eventually the family is undermined. This does tremendous damage to any society. And this is what the Left has been doing.

 It is in this light, I believe, that we have to consider the Democratic Party's latest cause du jour: transgenderism. It centers on the idea that gender is subjective and unrelated to biological reality. In official circles in Democrat controlled blue states, this idea takes on the qualities of a religion.

 Not only is transgenderism their latest obsession,  but they emphasizes pushing the idea on children. Why? They will say they want to “support” children with gender dysphoria by “affirming their gender identity”. But if you look at their actions in schools and gender clinics, you begins to realize that the welfare of the children is not the goal. In fact, they care little about the children. So besides profit for gender clinics, what is the larger goal?

 I believe that the answer may be found in a book written by former NYU professor Michael Rechtenwald. Previously a left-leaning professor,  he became persona-non-grata at NYU because he took a stand against  the political cancel culture at this institution. In his subsequent book about academia, “Springtime for Snowflakes”, he identified transgenderism as a manifestation of the philosophy of Postmodernism.

 This is a philosophy which denies there is any absolute truth or objective reality. Relativism is the overriding truth. Each person has his own truth. Thus, if I feel and say I am female despite being born a male with the XY chromosome in every cell of my body, then that is my “truth” and nobody has any right to dispute me. Nobody's truth is any more valid than any other person's truth.  Everyone must indulge my delusion about being a woman. In this bazaar template for society, feelings are given far more weight than scientifically provable facts.

The insanity doesn't stop there. If I “identify” as a cat, then that is what I am, according to this insane ideology. And everyone has the obligation to treat me as a cat. Thus the phenomenon of “furries”, children who identify as animals and demand others recognize and treat them as such, even to the point of being allowed to use litter boxes as toilets in schools.

Forces on the Left not only go along with this, they also actively promote it, particularly to children. For what reason? A society cannot sustain itself when it adopts a philosophy that requires that unreality be accepted as reality, where feelings take precedence over facts.

 Western philosophy, based on Greek rationalism and Judeo-Christian thought, declares that there is an objective reality and objective truth that can be rationally determined. A society that buys into irrationality will come apart and collapse. After all, if people can be persuaded to believe that a woman really becomes a man because she feels like a man, and that a child is a cat because he or she identifies as a cat,  then they can be persuaded to believe just about anything, no matter how absurd. Rational debate becomes impossible. What better way to undermine the society that you disdain?

Finally, there is the issue of out of out-of-control budgets and the national debt. Our budget deficits and national debt are out of control. At present, the debt is approximately thirty-seven trillion dollars. Numerous well-respected economists are warning us that the situation of the national debt is becoming critical, and we are headed for a point of no return. We will get to a point where the interest on the national debt will be larger than the budget for national defense.

 We cannot sustain this. But the Democratic Party cares little about the problem of the budget and debt. They are addicted to ever-increasing levels of domestic spending, promising everything to every group to lock in voters. Do you have student debt, which you freely incurred yourself? No problem. We will make the taxpayers, who never took out the loans, pay it off for you.  How do the Democrats support illegal immigrants? By subsidies directly from the treasury.

There is far more that can be said and far more examples to be given. But the essential point once again is this. The Democratic Party, which is under the control of its far-left wing, does not love this country. Nobody who loves this country would do the things I have described above. So what do they love? They love their imagined future, an America, divorced from its past, organized in the image of the Marxist Left, a one-party state, where their ideology and it alone prevails.

Donald Trump, whatever his faults, loves this country. The left wing of the Democratic Party, which has effective control of that party, does not.

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS FOR JOE, info@nolimitusa.us, OR OUR CONTACT PAGE.

A FORMULA FOR WINNING A SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION. 

BY JOE KUHNS

OUR OWN JOE KUHNS WAS ONE OF THE PRIME MOVERS IN SUCCESSFULLY TAKING QUALIFIED CANDIDATES TO WINNING BOARD OF EDUCATION SEATS AND WINNING MAJORITIES. THERE IS A FORMULA THAT WORKS. MANY WOKE BOARDS OF ED ARE NOW FLIPPING TO TRADITIONALLY BASED POLICY BOARD MEMBERS. THIS HOW-TO OUTLINE SHOULD BE A LEARNING EXPERIENCE. 

How to Run a Successful School Board Campaign

Last November, in the town of Oakland, New Jersey, there was an election for two seats on the regional high school board. The result of the election was to effectively “flip the board”. It put moderate conservatives in the majority by removing a board member who was not sympathetic to conservative ideas regarding education.

The result of the election was a resounding victory for two women who as yet had never been on the board of education.

Oakland is a middle-income suburban town of approximately 13,000 people in western Bergen County. Politically, it tends to be a fairly conservative, predominantly Republican town. If that is the case, how did it happen that there were people from Oakland on the regional BOE who were anything but moderate conservatives? The answer is that many Oakland citizens are like others in that they often don't get out and vote, especially in off-year elections.  Or if they do vote, they vote for governmental positions, but not the school board. Many times, voters have to be convinced that even though they no longer have children in school, they should still be very concerned about what is happening in the schools. This lack of participation often allows people who do have a political agenda that does not reflect the community or its beliefs and values.

Very early in the process, one should attend school board meetings to see firsthand what is going on, get a sense of the personalities and factions involved, and understand where they stand on the issues. Look at the district website. This will give valuable information about district policies, budget matters, test scores, and curriculum. Know what is happening in the school and the classroom. (One very important issue is that reading the curriculum alone will not always adequately reveal what is being taught. It is also important to learn about what online instructional materials are being used.)

 Talk to people in the town to find out their concerns about the schools. Some people are primarily concerned about how school expenditures will affect their taxes. Some will be concerned with athletic programs and others with how test scores compare with state averages. And today, many people are concerned with ideologies being promoted in the classroom. All of these were issues in our town.

 A successful campaign will require financial resources. 

In our town of about 13,000 people, we spent between $12,000 and $15,000. I will not go into requirements for handling and reporting on campaign funds, as this will change from state to state depending on local laws.

 When the above things are taken care of, how do we get people to get out to vote for our candidate?

 Many people think that the key to successful campaigning, even on the local level, is reaching people via social media. While this is useful as an adjunct method, the most important thing is to get a staff of people out to meet and talk with the voters through door-to-door campaigning. Telephoning and especially “robocalling” are not adequate substitutes. Our group of volunteers went out for weeks, knocking on doors, meeting people face-to-face, talking to voters and getting their support. This is most essential when you are promoting a candidate who has never been on the board, who may be largely unknown to the town people, and running against someone already on the board who is well known to people.

 It was not possible to knock on every door in Oakland. Since we had about ten people who were campaigning on a consistent basis, it was necessary to determine which voters were worth the time to contact. The County Board of Elections provided lists of voters (through the Open Public Records Act) showing voters' party affiliation and how many times each voter had voted over the last four elections. If a voter had voted in four out of the last four elections, there would be the number 4 next to his name, etc. Since this was an off-year election in which voter turnout is typically not high, to maximize our effort we only paid visits to those voters who were most likely to get out and vote. So we visited all of the voters who were registered Republicans or Independents and had voted three or four times out of the last four elections.

 In short, don't waste your time on people who as indicated by past behavior, probably won't vote. Go after those who probably will vote and persuade them.

 Our candidate provided us with her business cards with her telephone number. We handed them out as we spoke to people and invited them to call the candidate herself if they had any questions. Most did not, but gestures of this type are very important to establish a connection with the voters.

 School board elections in New Jersey are non-partisan contests, and our school board campaign was kept separate from any political party. However, the Oakland Republican Party (ORC) was campaigning to get Republican candidates into several mayoral and town council positions. To increase their chances in these contests the ORC initiated a campaign to get Republican voters to sign up for Vote by Mail. The rationale behind this was that Democrats in our area would typically be well behind in the election day vote, but would often win big with vote by mail and thus win the election.

 When election day comes, many people, for one reason or another, fail to make it to the polls. They may be sick, or the kids may be sick. Or they could be delayed getting home from work. The weather might be terrible. In any case, on election day, the window to vote in person is about 14 hours (less for most people, who work a full day). Democrats got people to vote by mail early, and thus “banked their votes”. This advantage of getting their people to vote by mail was often decisive in Democratic victories. In Oakland, the effort by the ORC did not completely close the gap between Republican and Democratic early voting registration, but it narrowed it enough so that the Republican advantage in voting day totals brought victory in all of the town council elections.

 In a school board election, the voters who will support candidates with common-sense conservative ideas will be largely Republicans. Thus, the effort to better turn out Republican voters in this way no doubt greatly assisted our school board candidates.

 Our candidates also sent out three mailers to every household in the town during the campaign. These should be colorful, hard-hitting, and listing clearly the ideas the candidate is running on. The points should be brief and concise. Do not write too much on the mailer because many people will not take the time to read something too long and wordy.

 Also, a campaign letter was sent to every household to coincide with the time that vote-by-mail ballots were being received by those who requested them.

 If you are campaigning against a candidate currently on the school board, it is not a problem to list on a flier or handout some of the votes, decisions, or actions the opponent has taken that citizens may find objectionable. This is vital to getting support for your candidate. But avoid mean personal attacks on the opponent. This may have the effect of drumming up sympathy and support for your opponent. Try to always keep it positive.

 Lawn signs are important, both the number of them and how they are strategically placed. When we met a voter who seemed very sympathetic to our candidate, we would always ask if we might a lawn sign on his or her property. To the average citizen, seeing a great many signs for one candidate indicates a high level of support in the community. If nothing else, this will engender an interest in that candidate.

Of course, what we did was tailored to our particular town and to the resources we had. These methods we adapted may not be entirely applicable to other towns, which are quite different demographically or politically. The first step is always to analyze your town, and what is the best way, with the resources you have, to get your fellow citizens out to vote for sensible candidates.