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Political Campaign

Student Name: __________________________________________________

You are running for a political office. You will:

• Create a stump speech (a political speech, delivered on a campaign tour) and deliver it.

• Participate in a Town Hall Meeting Debate against your opponent

For which office are you campaigning? Mayor of Winston Salem, Governor of North Carolina, North Carolina US Senate, North Carolina 5th Congressional District, President of the United States

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PART A: Begin by creating a stump speech for your campaign. Assume all of the following:

• You will be giving your speech in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The speech will be given in Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University. Your audience will be comprised of voters of all ages, as well as multiple press representatives.

• Your speech cannot be more than five minutes long and must be at least three minutes long.

• You are at the beginning of your campaign and so are introducing yourself and your stance on issues for the first time.

• You need to address the concerns of your audience in your speech, so you need to know who your constituents will be and what they expect you to do if elected to office.

Your speech should have all of the following elements. Plan it in the space below. You will have to do some research to answer the questions.

|Connect with voters on a personal level. How will you do this? | |

|What do you need to know about the voters in Winston-Salem, NC in| |

|order to connect to them? What issues are important to North | |

|Carolinians? Make notes about the answers to these questions in | |

|the column to the right. | |

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|Give three problems that you think concern voters and then share |Problem: |

|your solution for each of them. Research this and make sure you | |

|choose problems that are universal and not just facing a small |Solution: |

|group of people. Make notes about the problems and your solution | |

|to them in the column to the right. | |

| |Problem: |

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| |Solution: |

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| |Problem: |

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| |Solution: |

|Critique or attack the opposition on the three problems you | |

|identified. Research what the other side says about the issues |Problem 1: |

|and give a rebuttal to those positions. Make notes in the | |

|right-hand column about the opposing side. | |

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| |Problem 2: |

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| |Problem 3: |

|Make promises and share memorable lines. When you end your | |

|speech, you should make sure that the voters remember what you | |

|say. So, what promises will you share? What “sound bite” (a | |

|memorable, catchy, 8-to-10 second excerpt from your speech) will | |

|you want them to remember? Write notes for this part of your | |

|speech in the column to the right. | |

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Before you begin writing the speech, read through these tips from the professionals: the speechwriters. Underline what you think are the important points that you will most need to keep in mind:

1. Get to the point---Quick!! You can’t start a speech until you are sure of your central point—the idea you need the audience to remember, even if they do not remember anything else. It should be simple enough that it can be communicated in one sentence.

What is the main idea of your speech, in one sentence? __________________________________________________

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2. Make it look easy. Remember that your speech will not be read, but spoken aloud, so it needs to be conversational, in the hope that people will almost forget that what they’re hearing is a prepared text. Your points have to be clearer than an essay and your sentences have to be shorter because people can understand a lot more complex things when they are reading than when they are listening. Write like people talk. In a speech draft, you’ll see a lot of things English teachers would be horrified at—sentence fragments, no verbs—much more the way people talk than the formal way they write. However, you still must appear educated!

3. Make ‘em laugh. Establish some kind of rapport with the audience first. You want to establish up front this connection, so they will listen to you. The next thing you usually do is tell a few jokes. If possible, ones that are specific to the location and are appropriate for all audiences. If you have a situation like the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, where it’s inappropriate to use jokes, telling a very personal story can serve the same purpose to get them to identify with you.

4. Get them to your side. If an audience isn’t listening, it doesn’t matter much what you say. Tell stories or anecdotes that illustrate a topic, or show that the topic is something that could have a real effect on the audience. You have to give the audience a stake in the speech, too. Make it emotionally compelling somehow. Also, be concrete. Which is a more effective line, “The president’s gone abroad,” or “The president’s hopped on a jet to Rome”? For instance, if you are talking to high school seniors about Vietnam and you tell them that it ended in 1974, well, that may even be before they were born, and a whole generation ago to them. But if you tell them that the average age of a combat soldier in Vietnam was 19, and they’re 17, it strikes a lot closer to home.

What is anecdote/story you intend to tell in your speech? Summarize it in one sentence. ______________________

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Where will you use this story? In which part of your speech? _____________________________________________

5. The meat and potatoes. In the heart of your speech, keep things simple and make sure to tell your audience what you’re going to say before your say it, so that they won’t miss your point. For example, if you are trying to get people to agree with your solution to a problem, make sure you tell them why the problem is so serious. Try to signpost the things you’re going to talk about---you know, “Today I want to talk to you about three great issues facing America,” and then list those three things. For persuasive speeches, the classic structure is “problem-solution.” You say, “Here’s a problem, here’s why things are terrible,” and in the second part, “Here’s what we can do to make things better.” In the problem section, you have to be strong---to alarm people, and to show you understand it’s a real problem, as they do, and so your solution will make sense to them. And usually between points two and three, you want to put in some more jokes, so there isn’t this thud in the middle of the speech, boring everybody to tears because it’s all policy. Then you come to the end, and try briefly to reiterate what you’ve just said. It’s inappropriate to do jokes there. You want to leave it with a serious thought and then say your goodbyes.

Information taken from : “Tips from the Insiders: How to Write a Political Speech.”

Now, it is time to type your speech! Use all of the information you have gathered, including the outline you filled out and the advice from the professionals to complete your speech. As a reminder, here are the requirements again:

• 3-5 minutes in length

• Typed in Power Poetry 16-18 font; double-spaced

• Audience will range from young to very experienced voters from North Carolina, though most of them will be from Winston-Salem.

• Follow the outline, but also make sure that you add some stories/anecdotes and consider some appropriate jokes, if the subject matter allows it.

PART B: After your Stump Speech you will participate in a Town Hall Meeting Debate against your opponent. Write down three problems that you think concern voters. Be prepared to debate these problems versus your opponent. You will need to support the problems with your own solutions while at the same time attack and critique your opponent.

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