We have printed for New York campaigns for more than five years, city and state, for candidates who won. What follows is the order in which a campaign actually needs print, rather than the order people usually think of it.
Petition season comes first
Before anything else, you need designating or nominating petitions in volunteers' hands on the first legal day. They have to match Board of Elections format exactly, because a defective petition sheet is a challenge waiting to happen and no amount of good field work fixes it after the fact.
Print more than your signature target by a wide margin. Sheets get lost, rained on and filled out wrong, and the cost of extra paper is trivial next to the cost of falling short.
The field kit
- Palm cards: the workhorse. 4x6 or 4x9, both sides, handed out at subway stops,street fairs and doors.
- Walk cards: sized for a canvasser's hand and a mail slot.
- Door hangers: for walk-ups and buildings where you cannot get past the vestibule.
- Literature drop pieces: lightweight, for no-knock routes and doorman buildings.
- Slate cards: multi-candidate, for coordinated tickets.
- Endorsement cards: when a union or organization backs you, print it.
Mail, and the window it has to hit
Mail is the largest line item in most campaign print budgets and the easiest to waste. A GOTV piece that lands the day after early voting closes is money set on fire.
Work backward from the Board of Elections calendar, not from a comfortable date. Absentee application and reminder mail, persuasion mail, and the final GOTV drop each have their own window. Tell us the in-home date you need and we will tell you the drop date required to hit it.
Signage
Lawn signs on 4mm coroplast with H-stakes are the standard. In Manhattan, window signs often do more work than lawn signs, because most voters do not have a lawn. Rally and handheld placards, campaign banners and press step-and-repeat backdrops round out the visual package.
Check local rules on sign placement before printing thousands. New York City has restrictions on posting to public property and on placement near poll sites, and signs removed by the city are not coming back.
The union bug is not optional in New York
If you are seeking labor endorsements, your printed material needs the union bug. It is a small mark, usually placed near the paid-for-by line, and it certifies the piece was produced in a shop operating under a collective bargaining agreement.
Sending a mailer without it to a union you are courting is an avoidable and memorable mistake. Every piece we print can carry the Teamster Made bug at no extra charge, because we are organized with Teamsters Local 2N and print in house.
Worth knowing: some shops advertise union printing, broker the work to a non-union plant, and apply a bug they are not licensed to use. Ask which local, ask whether the work is printed on site, and ask to see the floor. See our union shop page and the full campaign printing range.
Need this printed? We are at 40 Wall Street, and we deliver free anywhere in Manhattan.