Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich interviewed Gov. Bob McDonnellto offer 2010 hopefuls advice on how to win over voters on the campaign trail.
During the 40-minute clip, posted on the conservative web site www.americansolutions.com - includes McDonnell rehashing a lot of the strategies, techniques and talking points from his successful race against Democrat Creigh Deeds.
McDonnell talks about his "Bob's for Jobs" bumper sticker - and his focus on the economy and deciding to give voters a positive economic message.
"They want to be inspired an uplifted they're just tired of rampant partisanship based on who is going to win. Now that doesn't mean you capitulate one inch on what you, what we believe in as limited government, conservative Republicans."
McDonnell also talks about the fiscal realities facing Virginia in the near future. Here he briefly touches on the differences between campaigning and governing.
And here's an interesting exchange on dealing with unscrupulous reporters.
NG: What kind of advice do you have to get your message across in hostile media interviews and talk shows?
BM: Never let them see you sweat. Keep smiling. During the most rocky days of my campaign when we were dealing with attacks on the thesis and on social issues, they were expecting that a withering assault would get us to be defensive and mean spirited or elusive and we didn't do that at all. I had great advisors who encouraged me that this is what I believe in. I'm a pro-gun, pro-life, pro-family, pro-property rights, pro-free enterprise person. Stick with it and then talk about jobs and the economy. And do it with a smile. So no matter how tough the question were, I would try the best I could to smile my way through it so the people who were watching on TV would see you smile through even a withering question. That helped create a tone for us that no matter how hard the other side tried to put us in that stereotype box, we were going to be positive and friendly and results-oriented.
McDonnell also talks about emerging "new media" strategies - some of the very same one that you're seeing deployed by candidates - including Barack Obama - and future candidates - we're looking at you Sarah Palin.
Facebook and twitter give candidates direct access to speak to supporters and woo potential supporters - so you can bet that the folks running against Rep. Glenn Nye are going to be all over the web.
NG: You also used new media. What new technology do you think was particularly effective in your campaign?
BM: We decided to allocate a significant part of our campaign budget into new media. In part it was because we had watched the way the Obama campaign had done that. They devoted about 7 percent of their total advertising budget to online ads. More and more we see people getting their news online. So we spent about 8.5 percent of our budget on new media.
We also figured text messaging would be important so we hired the same vendor that did the Obama campaign in this part of the state. We used constant twitter messages. We were also very aggressive on Facebook. My daughter became our Facebook coordinator and youth outreach coordinator to all the college campuses. We ended up with about 35,000 friends on Facebook, about twice as many as our opponent.
McDonnell also touches on minority outreach and other topics. Here's the full clip.
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