The Election Is Over And You Lost: Now What?

Another election Tuesday is over, the votes are counted, and as expressed by a friend of American Majority:

It feels strange not working on a campaign, or having an election to win.

— Anthony DeFazio (@anthonyjdefazio) November 6, 2015

Or perhaps, you identify with Winston Churchill. After losing the election 1945, Winston’s wife tried to cheer him up. “It might be a blessing in disguise,” she told him. “At the moment,” he replied, “it seems quite effectively disguised.”* 

Politics is, by its very nature, a competitive business and as much as today’s PC culture would like to instill the idea that “everyone’s a winner”, in an election, somebody has to lose. But having said that, not taking an oath of office doesn’t make it a loss. If you learn from your mistakes, understand what needs to be done differently, and make choices to actively change how you lost, you will not have, in fact, “lost”: it just means you have “learned”. So what do you do now that you won’t be taking the oath of office? As someone who has, himself, lost an election, here are a few tips:

Get Some Rest.

Being on the campaign trail is taxing (even if you are against taxes), and if you don’t feel like you need 2 weeks of sleep after the election, you didn’t work hard enough. There is nothing wrong with taking a couple days (or weeks) off to recoup.

Stay Involved.

Nothing will impede your efforts to get elected like voluntarily giving up. The best way to get elected in the future is to stay involved: show you are serious about caring for your community by being active even when you have no “obligation” to.

Don’t Ignore The Victor.

Just because you might not agree with your opponent doesn’t mean you can’t get along and work for good things in your community. Especially if the campaign was “clean”, your opponent might be willing to work with you on getting things accomplished, which should be what your whole campaign was about anyway.

Plan For Next Time!

All those resources you generated while running like contacts, yard sign locations, and political movers and shakers? Use them! Don’t make the mistake of simply deleting them from memory: the odds of getting elected in the future will improve dramatically if you stay in touch with all those contacts.

Keep Your Eyes Open For Other Opportunities.

Maybe you don’t plan on running for office again (or at least not in the near future), but don’t assume your efforts were wasted! After I lost my election, I had the opportunity to work for the State Senate because of contacts I made in the campaign itself. Sometimes a donor, fellow politician, or someone entirely random might have an opportunity for you because they saw qualities about you they like and want on their team.

Losing an election might seem, at first, like the end of a professional road option. It isn’t. With persistence, situational awareness, and an open mind, you might be just starting to open untold numbers of doors that you didn’t know about, all because you made the effort to run. Don’t despair because your name won’t be listed in the roll call of your intended office. Instead, take pride in the fact that you made the effort to begin with.

*Bob Dole, Great Political Wit: Laughing (Almost) All the Way to the White House (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1998), 49-50.