Presidential Campaign 2000 Assignment AP American Government

Overview:

In the next 6 months you will be tracking a presidential candidate (There will be four students from each class assigned to each candidate). You will have two activities per month as well as weekly group and individual responsibilities. Your organization and effort are essential to your success. The following are the activities that must be completed by April 5, 2000. There may be some minor modifications or additions along the way but you can start on these as soon as you would like. This scrapbook will be a main portion of your senior portfolio for the end of the year. There will be some time in class to work on a few of the assignments, however, you will need to spend most of the time on your own.

Candidates:

Democratic: Al Gore, Bill Bradley

Republican : George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, John McCain

Reform Party : Pat Buchanan

Campaign Issues: Write five separate issues papers that cover an important issue that your candidate supports or opposes. Include the arguments and evidence that your candidate uses to defend his or her stand. Out of the five you must have one on healthcare, foreign policy, and education.

Campaign involvement: (You should get started on this as soon as possible)

1. Contact your candidate's campaign office and ask for as much information as possible to be sent to you.

2. Contact the local political party office of your candidate and volunteer at least three hours for them.

3. Write a two page explanation of your experience volunteering . Explain the impact you had and what you did. You may want to take photos of your experience and include them.

Contacting your candidate: (This should be done immediately to ensure a response)

1. Write a letter to your candidate and send it to him or her. Include one issue that is important to you and what you would like the candidate to do about it. (Submit a copy in your portfolio as well)

2. Email your candidate and ask him or her three questions. (Submit the questions and the answers that the candidate returns to you in your portfolio)

Monitoring the Media:

1. Write a half page paper explaining your candidates web site and what type of information it includes. Tell one interesting thing you learned from it, one thing you think that should be added to it, one thing you would change about it, and one thing that you think makes it great.

2. Visit the Web sites of the opposing candidates that your candidate is competing with. Write a half page paper listing each opposing candidate and the main issues that they oppose your candidate on. What are their main weapons against your candidate?

3. Critique one campaign ad. One of your candidate or one of an opposing candidate. In a half page paper, describe the ad and critique how effective it was. Include positive points and negative points of the ad.

4. Keep a scrapbook with a news article, Internet article, magazine article, opinion poll, or video clip from each week beginning with November 5. Organize your scrapbook and keep a half page summary of the piece of media you gather for each week. Make sure to include whether the piece of media is subjective (fair, neutral, balanced) or not.

5. Weekly record your candidates whereabouts between November 5, 1999 (365 days until the election) and April 5, 2000. Use a map to chart their campaign trail and also list the places they visited and the functions they attended.

Launch a voter education campaign.

1.. Take an accurate opinion poll that will be beneficial to your campaign for your candidate. One question and 100 people surveyed. Try to get a diverse sampling with a low sampling error.