Why I Am Suspending My Campaign

Running for public office has been one of the truly great experiences of my life.  It has been an absolute pleasure to run as a Democratic Party candidate in Hamilton County.

However, I am announcing that effective today, I am suspending my campaign for the Tennessee House of Representatives, District 26.

I want to thank the many people who have supported, contributed to and volunteered for my campaign.  I wis h to acknowledge two very special people within the Hamilton County Democratic Party - Paul Smith (HCDP Chair) and Stephen Harper (HCDP Treasurer) as they were the first to encourage my candidacy.  And, I am especially proud of those Democratic candidates who appeared on the ballot with me.  It is a great group.  I urge all who supported me to turn their attention to electing our candidates for House (JoAnne Favors, Sandy Norton Smith, and Frank Eaton), and Andrae McGary (TN Senate District 10), and, of course, Dr. Mary Headrick as our next Congressional Representative in District 3.

I have been offered the opportunity to lead the National Institute of Staff and OrganizationalDevelopment (NISOD), an outreach arm of the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin focusing upon community and technical colleges.  Since 1978, NISOD has been dedicated to the professional development of faculty, administrators, and staff, and to the continued improvement of teaching and learning, with the ultimate goal of student success.  More than 500 community colleges around the world are NISOD-members, including almost every large community college district, the majority of urban and technical colleges in the United States and Canada, and more than 200 small, rural colleges around the world.  NISOD’s annual International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence, held each May in Austin, Texas, has been the largest conference targeting community colleges for the last six years.

 
I will accept the offer and plan to begin as NISOD Director on September 1.  

Please follow me on Facebook and Twitter - I want to stay connected to my friends in Hamilton County.

Don't Look for My Yard Signs

I recognize that my candidacy for the Tennessee House of Representatives District 26 is an uphill fight.  The Republicans have already declared this District to be “safely Republican.”  My opponent has a huge amount of money to fund his campaign (largely from various Political Action Committees and special interest groups).  In addition, at this point I am not well known among the voters of the newly configured 26^th District.

I have been asked many times on the campaign trail, “Where are the yard signs for Miller?”  My answer is that there are NO signs.  I will do what I can with the resources I have, but I will not be using yard signs.  Against the advice of several experienced political activists, I am running my campaign without the use of the ubiquitous yard signs that have littered the landscape for the past several weeks.  That is correct – NO YARD SIGNS! 

Here is why I will not be using yard signs.  First and foremost, the thousands of political signs are visual pollution and, in fact, often a safety hazard.  

I have scoured the research literature on political campaigns and have not found any definitive studies that demonstrate that there is a causal relationship between election success and the use of yard signs.  In an article in Politics Revealed by Katie Garland titled, “Political Yard Signs, Do They Really Work?,” the author concludes, “The fact is that there are more effective ways to persuade and convince voters that a candidate is right for the job.”

The two traditional strategies that I will focus upon are: 

• Knocking on doors – I am convinced that talking with people face-to-face is a more effective way to persuade voters.   
•  Register voters – The most important factor in any election is registering voters to increase the possible number of people who could vote for a candidate.  Then they need to get out and vote.

Also I will build upon my use of social media to present my candidacy to the voters.  I know the power of tools such as Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Twitter and more.  The use of these Web applications was a big part of why Barack Obama was elected President.  A Pew Research Center study shows ten percent of users ages 18 and up used social networking to get politically engaged  That figure jumps to 37 percent among voters ages 18 to 29.

A story in Connect Amarillo describes how one voter looks at campaigns.   "Facebook gives you more information and guys like myself don't have a lot of time to watch the news and gather information from the news," 26-Year-Old Neil Bates said.  "So, I get on Facebook and I look at the person's bio and watch all of his campaign commercials."

Soon, I will launch a series of videos that will stake out my positions on issues that are very important to the 26^th District.  I am also pleased to announce that my opponent and I have agreed in principle do have a least one campaign debate.  I will be walking neighborhoods and talking to people from Lakesite to Downtown Chattanooga and from Middle Valley to Snow Hill. 

But, if you want to know about the Lawrence G. Miller who seeks to be the next Representative to the Tennessee General Assembly, House District 26, then check out my campaign Website, Blog, campaign Facebook and personal Facebook pages, and follow me on Twitter. I promise you that I will reveal much more about my qualifications and views than you will see in a typical political campaign, including my opponent's.

However, you will not see yard signs for Lawrence G. Miller.