Press Training Pays Off

Many of you know I have volunteered my time night & day to work on the campaign of Mayor Becky Miller of Carrollton. I love this lady and believe in her completely. Last night she lost her re-election bid, due in large part to the inability to handle the press.

Her opponent thought she was lying about elements of her personal life that had nothing to do with her time in office. She didn't feel it was his business at all. But he's a smug, arrogant man who wasn't going to be denied, so he got the Dallas Morning News interested in the story. When the reporter called and asked her for specific details, she knew Ron Branson was behind it and refused to work with the reporter and instead told the reporter to go find the information herself. Major mistake. Obviously you want to work with the press, not against them. She was simply trying to not give Branson the information he wanted but instead gave the reporter a reason to dig in deep.

The article that was written did not have any supporting documentation and input from the Mayor's daughter that verified her story did not appear. The article was completely one-sided and made the mayor look horrible. The afternoon that the article hit, her team got together and that's where the TRLP training paid off. In two hours we had a statement written, four news networks on her front yard with cameras and mics, and a candidate dressed, prepped and ready. We held the Mayor to the statement and didn't allow probbing, invasive quesions and passed out copies of the statement to the press. That evening the only thing the reporters could quote was what we gave them. We controlled the message.

For the next 4 days between the inaccurate article and the end of the election we worked with the press, wrote releases, wrote calling scripts and monitored election results. The final act was to write the concession speech and release it to the press.

I'm really sad because 1) Becky Miller is not the liar the DMN made her out to be and 2) a really bad candidate got elected Mayor. But in the end, the training I received in TRLP helped pull a campaign in crisis back up to only a 400 vote lost. It could have been signifigantly worse if the article had been left unanswered or had be answered poorly.

Thank you TRLP. I'm really glad to have had this training!