John Jay Myers: Post-election wrap up

Posted by John Jay Myers on facebook. Myers ran as a Libertarian against Pete Sessions (R) in TX-32.

Official release:

“Thank you to all donors and volunteers! John Jay Myers raised more than any other Libertarian candidate in the 32nd district with over $7200, and he received the highest percentage of any Libertarian candidate in the district’s history. Your efforts made this record year possible. As a result of your contributions, we were able to distribute 3000 flyers, launch 128 TV commercial airings, plant 100 yard signs, mail 8000 postcards to voters, and run two weeks of Facebook advertising. John Jay also personally attended dozens of radio interviews, parades, and outreach events over the past year while incumbent Pete “Bailout” Sessions remained hidden from the people he supposedly serves. Though his $1.8 million in corporate payoffs won Sessions reelection this time, you have proven through your contributions and support that a Libertarian campaign can get the message out and increase those vote totals. Thank you all again!”

For the next few months I am going to turn my focus on my family and my business. I will be spending only some spare time in making videos and writing to promote the party. Maybe a few hours a week.

Our facebook fan page and Johnjaymyers.com will change to a non-election format.

I know our message above sounds upbeat, but I am very disappointed in the results of the election.

Though we received a higher vote total than any other Libertarian in this district we put more into this election than any other Libertarian has. Originally I started out as a “educational” candidate, I don’t know if we ever really shifted our focus, the fact that there was no debate was a major set back.

We could not get press regardless of the message we sent out.

A few things I would do different:

1. Though our message should resonate with the “Tea Party” people it did not here in Dallas. We have a very pro-war, big religion Tea Party (in other words Republicans) which is run by members of the Republican establishment. Unfortunately most of our website and our videos etc seemed to be targeting the Tea Party voters…. who were probably all voting straight ticket. This was a mistake.

2. What should our message have been? 4 things:

A. End the Wars.

B. End Corporatism.

C. Live your life as you see fit.

D. End entitlements sooner rather than later.

That’s it. We should have approached it from that angle. Though this was our message we didn’t brand it correctly in a way that was palatable to the both the left and the right (and mainly independent).

3. We should have done radio spots months before the election. On both left and right media with a different message to each.

4. We didn’t have enough volunteers to cover the early voting locations, there were 8 in my district, I would like to have had the money to pay 8 people to work 10 days at 8 locations. (around an additional 5k) I honestly think this would have tripled our totals. We ran completely out of money about 3 days before early voting.

5. I would like to have had the money to send a letter to every likely voter in the district. Once about 3 months prior to the election, and once a week before early voting, we covered about 4% (once).

6. Dallas is incredibly partisan, I would like to educate the masses and try to break the monopoly the D’s and R’s have…. that is one of my main goals in the next two years. I would hate to say without education, we don’t have much of a chance electorally. America can not continue with this incredibly divisive “two party system”.

Americans need to understand their rights, and that Government is not the answer to all their problems. I am now more committed than ever in ending big government, especially our large corrupt Federal Government.

This is my first facebook post since the election, I needed some time off.

Thanks for reading all of this.