Aaron Winter & Sidney Henkensiefken
This presentation dives into the compelling topic of political campaigning/political communications and offers up student perspectives of a class project completed in the Honors Forum: Political Campaigns class. The class project featured a fictitious local Overland Park campaign race involving two teams (Democrat and Republican) fighting for the seat of mayor. The unique perspectives of Aaron and Sidney in their experiences of being part of opposing campaign teams provide an insight into the fascinating world of politics.
Wow! Very informative presentation. What caught my attention was the fact that students were working for a certain side of the political fence, despite whether or not the student personally identified with the party they were affiliated with. I found this interesting because it forced individuals to look at a perspective, and the concerns correlated with that party, that they were unfamiliar with. It makes me pose the question if this process should be practiced more often with political parties; that people should familiarize themselves with prominent issues and concerns of all people and parties, even if they may not exactly take that stance. In a way, a bipartisan way to inform candidates. Is this process already implemented in the political atmosphere? In this class, did guest speakers or course content discuss the idea of informing yourself and trying to understand the other parties’ values?
Thank you so much for viewing! You are quite spot-on in your observation, and I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments. I feel that today’s legislation would benefit immensely from law-makers just simply being open to other worldly views or perspectives other than their own. However, that is not the case, as we are dealing with individuals in a competitive environment. That tends to throw perspectives out the window.
For your first question, there is numerous literature available that does exactly what you say: informing candidates. However, most have rudimentary knowledge of those different perspectives and as such, make over-generalizations of those other parties which lead to no solutions.
As for your other question, this class mostly went over the process of political campaigning and the strategies involved in it, but has intuitively taught us these other perspectives (via providing examples of those issues/ideologies in teaching us the strategies). However, one of our guest speakers, JCCC Trustee Smith-Everett, stressed the importance of learning about our political systems (beginning from local to national) in early childhood education. Unfortunately, if you have no desire to learn about other party values or both sides of an issue, then it shall be so. No one can teach an individual who is willfully ignorant, which is an issue in and of itself.
Nice insight into the class! I was one of the influenced votes by Sidney’s social media campaign which helped her win the election. The work that was put into either side’s campaign seemed to be a lot (especially the thoughtfulness in Emma’s videos), but turned out to be a job well done.
Thank you for your contribution to the project
What a powerful team you created. I know that much of this project is near and dear to you both. There is no doubt that we will hear more from you both in the years to come. Go forth and do good, friends.
Thank you so much. That means a lot to us.
Wonderful presentation! I think having representatives from each campaign and ones that played different roles in the campaign team really enriched your presentation. It brought back such great memories of the class and you both did an excellent job of of walking through the campaign process of your projects while illustrating the different campaign strategies. For me, I especially appreciated hearing a bit more of the “why” you made the choices you did. While I knew the differences as they were presented in class, getting more context was nice to get a larger picture of the campaign teams. You did a nice job of highlighting and discussing the different strategies on social media, the websites and your scandal responses. I appreciated the honest reflection Sidney on the debate performance, that is sometimes hard to do. Overall it was an extremely strong analysis of the various elements of your campaigns. I am curious if you had to go back and do it all again knowing and experiencing what you have, what things would you do differently and how for the same race/same candidates?
I think I speak on both Sidney and my behalf when I say that the class was one of the most impactful experiences to be had during such a unique time.
If I had to go back and do everything over again, I would dedicate more resources to personalized messages to potential voters to change the tide of the election as it was going on. On my side of things (media), I would have definitely polished our web interview video as that had poor video quality, and I obviously wanted to convey professionalism.
This class was a treat!
What a fascinating class! You did a great job giving us an overview of this immensely rich experience and reflecting on what worked well. You ability to identify short-comings demonstrates great maturity and self-awareness! Well done!
I’ll be candid, what swayed me was Sidney’s personal outreach. Curiously, neither you, nor Maria included this, perhaps innocuous aspect of your campaigns. Can you comment on the place of personal outreach in your master plan?
Thank you so much for watching our presentation and for your insightful comments!
For your question, the honest answer was that personal outreach was overlooked (a fatal error) and was a factor in the downfall of our campaign towards the end. As I had stated previously in the presentation, we lost steam during the last sprint towards the finish line, and so we pushed for more social media presence in the hopes that the audience would be captivated. Looking back at it now, the election hinged on that particular “innocuous” aspect of personal outreach.
For those that are more interested in viewing each team’s campaign materials (social media, videos, and writing materials), here are the workspaces:
Democratic Candidate (Emma King): https://padlet.com/jusher1/fzlwln83tsbhjghb
Republican Candidate (Sidney Henkensiefken): https://padlet.com/shenkens/viqzoe0e92mj5elz
Very informative presentation! I know this class had a big impact on all that participated, so kudos to Terri Easley-Giraldo for putting together such impressive speakers and creating this amazing project. And a huge kudos to you two as well! The campaigns were both very impressive. I especially enjoyed Aaron’s videos and Sidney’s handling of her scandal. It’s clear you both learned a lot AND had some fun.