For Micah Pearce it’s the human element.

Pearce, a college student from Wisconsin, is one of many college students affected by working closely with American Majority as an intern and participant in weekend training programs. His passion is people, and he views his involvement in politics as the best way to impact the culture.

“So much of government affects how people live and will change how they view themselves,” said Pearce. “Politics is something that impacts people so powerfully especially when you’re actively changing minds and talking to people.”

From listening TalkRadio at an early age, Pearce became acquainted with the idea of campaigns and politics, but was never moved by what he learned. As he got older, however, he tried to deepen his faith and as a result began to love people deeply. Through this new-found love, Pearce was drawn into the world of Conservative politics.

When a friend backed out of an internship under Matt Batzel, American Majority’s executive director of Wisconsin, Pearce was happy to take his place. Already equipped with decent political knowledge from volunteering with conservative groups in the area, Pearce felt the internship was a case of “passion meets functionality.”

Through American Majority, Pearce learned to talk to people on a human level.

“Every once in awhile someone was moved by numbers. But I found that  
 statistics weren’t good enough.”

Understanding why people think the way they do is an idea that was heavily emphasized during Pearce’s training. “Everyone understands it based on what they care about. It’s issue based.”

Pearce finds conversation and “conversion” of previously politically inactive people a rewarding part of his involvement with politics. “I saw the impact in my own friendships and was able to show [them] why it mattered.” He recounted his excitement when a friend who had previously despised politics and actively remained ignorant, became acquainted with and then voted on a local issue without external prompting.

Having recently finished working as a staffer for a conservative organization called TeenPact, Pearce will go on to work with American Majority Action this summer. His position allows him to travel and speak to homeschooled students aged middle school to high school which fits right into his passions.

When American Majority kicked off the New Leaders Project a couple of years ago, we did it with the goal of having 1,000 individuals or organizations commit to helping build a team of new leadership that would address several severe problems our country faces. We’ve passed our first benchmark, and we are seeing the impact of the hard work of hundreds of local activist groups around the country.

The goals of the New Leaders Project are simple. We want to:

• Hold current elected officials accountable for their decisions by encouraging local leaders to challenge them.
• Build a network of leaders who are experienced in governing and campaigning and are ready to move up to higher office when new leadership is needed.
• Roll back irresponsible policies at the local level that increase government debt and intrude into the lives of the American people.

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You’ve got an excellent platform, ambition, and the support of your family and friends, but how can you turn all of that into fuel for your campaign? Fundraising can be tedious, and even frustrating at times, but these four tips will send you on your way towards successful fundraising:

1. Know who you are and how to present yourself

One of the toughest questions can be where to begin. Start by knowing who you are. Be able to clearly articulate why you are running, what you believe, what makes you different than your competition, why you can win, and how potential donors can help. Having this information on hand will enable you to present a dependable image to potential donors and will be an effective way to get your story out.

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With more than 48 million users, Pinterest is the world’s third largest social networking site. As a virtual pinboard (think scrapbook), it allows users to gather and share images and videos that reflect who they are and what they want to say. As Pinterest states, the goal is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.” How can you, as a political activist or candidate, use Pinterest to develop your interests and powerfully influence your audience?

Our team has pulled together some great ideas and today we’re releasing our Get Political with Pinterest Cheat Sheet. Download it for free today!

In the meantime, here are five tips to get you started:

1. Create an account and keep up-to-date. For some good step-by-step instructions, read this from Forbes.com. Visit Mashable’s Pinterest section for the latest news and updates.

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Your story can be a powerful tool as you campaign for office or volunteer for an issue or candidate. It gives a personal face to your cause, and a personal aspect to the planks in your platform. An anecdote from your life can be an incredibly useful tool, whether giving a speech, meeting voters, or doing an interview.

Take, for example, this questions: “Why are you running for office?” Why do you care about this issue? Surprisingly, many people botch the answers by repeating over-used clichés, or rolling out a laundry list of problems with the incumbent or the status quo.

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We’d like to offer congratulations to our good friends at Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) on concluding 10 state conventions from California to North Carolina. In an off-year, they have already inspired 1,336 young student leaders to achieve “their best activism yet,” training them to build stronger state networks. We’re excited to see what these students will do with their new skills.

With more than 380 chapters and 125,000 student activists nationwide, YAL is hard at work mobilizing college students and teaching them to have an effective presence on college campuses. Training students to engage in the political process with principles of freedom, the YAL staff is doing good work with far reaching effects.

Take a look at their video released this week, highlighting the good things that are happening.

Jennifer Grant Represents Her Community on County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin

Jennifer Grant works in the Human Resources Department at a hospital four days a week. She has four kids under the age of nine. With that kind of schedule, it’s hard enough to find time for yourself, let alone to represent your community on the county board of supervisors.

That point was certainly lost on Grant, a native of Waukesha County, Wisconsin, who threw her hat in the ring and ran for county board of supervisors in 2012.

“Growing up I wasn’t all that interested in politics. I wasn’t a Young Republican or anything like that in college,” Grant says. “It was 9/11 that was the beginning of the turning point. I began following the news a lot more closely, and then from news websites to blogs. That’s when I began to realize I was more of a conservative republican.”

Grant made her first step into the political world when she attended a Tea Party rally in 2011. It was shortly after the event she realized that, because of redistricting, she was living in a district without an incumbent county supervisor. “I looked at it, and thought ‘Why not me?’” Grant says. “There’s been a decline in this country, and there aren’t enough people willing to step forward and run.” When it looked like no other principled conservatives were standing up, Grant filed papers, gathered the necessary signatures, and got her name on the ballot. A week before the deadline, another candidate filed, and the race was on.

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It’s no secret that American colleges are the strongest—and least opposed—bastions of radical liberalism in the nation. Liberal college professors outnumber their conservative counterparts by three to one on college campuses. A whopping nine out of ten university faculty members supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and 96 percent donated to the Obama campaign in 2012. In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney had an abysmal showing among young voters and only one in three college-age students voted for him.

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Download your copy of our new manual today!

Young Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1830, when the republic was a little over 50 years old. As he traveled the country and studied American government at both the federal and state level, he was struck by what he observed.“The form of the federal government of the United States appeared last,” he later recorded in Democracy in America. “The great political principles that govern American society today were born and developed in the state…. It is therefore the state that one must know to have the key to all the rest.”

Essentially, Tocqueville explained, America grew from the bottom up. Before the U.S. Constitution ever articulated our principles of freedom, the concepts of self-government and representative assembly were being tested, tried, and practiced in America’s pre- Revolution colonial assemblies. When the colonies declared independence from Great Britain, these colonial assemblies became sovereign governments, responsible for raising troops, printing currency, and determining rules of commerce for their states. So by the time the Constitution was finally passed several years later, these colonial assemblies turned sovereign governments turned state legislatures had generations of experience.

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Terri Proud Arizona State Legislator American Majority

As a single mom of a special needs child, Arizona State Legislator Terri Proud knew what it was like to struggle financially, to spend hours in the hospital with her child, an experience which often correlated with making the difficult decision of what bill she was to pay and which one she was going to skip.

While many would think that she had her hands full enough, Proud’s experience as a single mom only increased her concern that Arizona was not headed in a good political direction. She believed that the current trend of legislation was creating a state which infringed upon constitutional and personal rights, making it difficult for struggling families to survive. As Proud says, “The direction of the state was not one that I wanted my children to live in.”

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In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney had an abysmal showing among young voters and only one in three college aged students voted for him. With the sting of defeat still lingering, American Majority has doubled down and refocused its efforts to emphasize reaching the youth generation through its campus training program, Campus Majority, in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

Campus Majority is designed specifically to equip and empower students on their campuses and in their communities. Today’s students understand the importance of social media and how to connect with their generation better than anyone else, making them uniquely positioned to influence their peers. Campus Majority’s goal is to ensure that conservative students are prepared with the knowledge of how to get involved on campus, make a difference on campaigns, and utilize social media effectively to lead their generation.

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When individuals and organizations join our New Leaders Project, we ask them to commit to doing one of two things: either become a candidate for elected office themselves, or recruit other conservative leaders in their communities to run for office. Few people live out the goals and principles of the New Leaders Project like Minnesota native Lisa Belak.

Lisa first started really paying attention to the political environment after September 11, 2001. When the elections started heating up in 2008, she and her brother attended the state caucus together. She learned a lot, but didn’t become actively involved just yet. That changed when her brother decided to run for state house.

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In 2011 and 2012, Wisconsin had two rounds of recall elections, first for state senators over collective bargaining reforms and fleeing the state, and then for Gov. Walker along with more state senators.  While the recall elections are over (for now), the impact of the Left’s overreach is still being felt.  29 judges signed recall petitions and immediately felt the heat for doing so.  Joe Voiland was inspired to run for judge when he saw that his circuit court judge has signed a recall petition.  On Tuesday, Joe resoundingly won his election for Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge 63%-37%, joining 8 other American Majority trained candidates who won.

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73 votes. That was the difference between Leah Cole, a newcomer to politics, and her Democrat opponent Beverley Griffin Dunne when the dust settled. Cole was in a three-man race in a special election for a seat in the Massachusetts State House—running against two candidates with long political histories and large bases of supporters in the Peabody area. Now she’s the first Republican since 1990 to represent her district at the State House.

With a special election, turnout is expected to be low, so an aggressive Get-Out-The-Vote effort is essential. Many of Cole’s volunteers trained with American Majority, learning how to effectively reach voters in their community. American Majority emphasizes how to make a difference, training people how to hit the streets and clearly communicate with target voters in their area. When less than 5000 voters showing up to the polls in the state representative race, an effective door-to-door campaign can be the difference between victory and defeat.

Cole says she was “overwhelmed” by the victory, and looks forward to serving her state in the coming years. Now her area will be represented by a principled conservative for the first time in 20 years. Good work, Cole!

Read more about Cole’s win here: http://peabody.patch.com/articles/in-shocking-result-republican-newcomer-cole-wins-peabody-state-rep-seat#photo-13095132