LNow that the candidate lunches are over, the campaign contractors have gone home, and the yard signs are heading to the recycling bin or are burnt, reality may be starting to set in, and given the nature of the campaign, it’s about time for a dose of reality.
As the jubilation fades and the campaign promises you made are still fresh in your minds; you may be feeling like the dog that caught the bus: exhausted, overwhelmed, and asking yourself, ” NOW WHAT?”
You can take comfort in the fact that you probably are not the first newly elected official to ask this question. You might ask yourself variations of this question throughout your tenure in office. Whether you are dealing with a new national office mandate or a seemingly impossible regional and constituency issue, you might ask yourself, “WHAT DO I DO NOW?”
Making the transition from candidate to an elected official is the first of your many challenges. It probably seems a bit unfair that just when you were getting the hang of being a candidate, you now have to become an effective leader and fast! Gone are the days of the 30-second sound-bite solutions that are the friend of political outsiders.
You must be conscious of the messaging about the change that you would bring, whether positive or negative, it must work. That will buy you the overnight distinction of being an insider, “ONE OF THEM”.
Your first instinct may be to continue to campaign, to distance yourself from your colleagues but remember that the qualities it took to be an effective campaigner, however, are much different from those required to be an effective elected official.
The focus is now on you
To be effective now will require endless prodding, compromise, and political skills to balance the different points of view of members of the team to get anything done.
You are now one member of a collegial body. You will soon experience one of the unique dynamics of being an elected official. That is in short order, the general public’s perception of you will diminish, and you will inherit the larger perception people have of the overall going team – good or bad.
Even veteran politicians sometimes do not fully appreciate this because they tend to surround themselves with a relatively small universe of people who like and support them, who share their political ideologies, and who are much closer to the finer nuances of local politics and personalities than most.
Here is the thing, you may have been an effective campaigner by inspiring voters with uplifting messages about your leadership, but remember the campaign season is over and that when the elected body takes a policy direction or implements a program that adversely affects the special interest of an individual or is counter to that person’s specific beliefs, that person is left with the perception that the elected officials made the wrong decision, did not consider all the facts, and acted contrary to the interest of the Party as they satisfied someone else’s special interest – you must be focused.
The writer is the Deputy Volta Regional Secretary of the NDC