Did you all have a great time at your election night parties? I did. You worked hard for your favorite candidate’s victory and you deserve a party and a rest. Take today off and recharge. Get completely away from politics and relax. Until tomorrow. Then it’s time to get back to work! After all, there ain’t no rest for the wicked (and THIS elephant won’t be caged).

Oh? You thought that victory in this election was our goal? Wrong! That was just the preliminary round. Consider it practice for the real work that needs to be done. We won a great victory and have temporarily staved off the socialist threat to our nation, but this is just a skirmish. This is a LONG term project and YOU are a key player.

So what do you need to do? Well short term, there’s the next election to consider. In Illinois there are spring elections for Municipal Offices such as Mayor, City Council, Treasurer, Alderman, Trustee, etc. These are the people who will be running your local city and will affect your property and sales tax. They are the people who will be creating local ordinances and directing policy. The School Boards, Township Boards, Park Districts, Library Districts, Community College Districts, etc are also local taxing bodies that are holding elections. The full lists of offices in Illinois are in the Illinois 2011 Candidate’s Guide.

These are the critical offices which can direct how well your local government works. They are also the training grounds for higher political offices. It’s important that we fill these positions with good conservative minded people.

It is your job to find good candidates for these offices or run for them yourself. If you live in Illinois, pick an office that you or someone you know can make a difference in and make an effort to win! I’m running for the Board of Trustees for Illinois Central College and will be helping others that are running for some local city council slots.

But you can’t wait! Now is the time to gather signatures for nomination petitions (it’s usually not a restrictive number for local offices, I had to get 50). The papers for partisan elections and offices with a primary must be filed between Nov 15th and 22nd. Yes, that’s only 2 weeks from now! The papers for non-partisan elections must be filed in the appropriate offices December 13th to 20th. You don’t have time to sit around and debate, get moving! Find out who has already expressed interest in various local offices and help them out as well. They’ll need to get signatures too.

The other 49 (or is it 57?) states have similar local and municipal elections coming up. The offices and dates will vary considerably from state to state, but you have to start on a campaign long before anyone else is even thinking about the office. Contact your local party officials or look at your state election web sites to find out what offices are up for the next election, what the filing dates are, what the signature requirements are, and get to work!

Longer term, we are still the evangelists for Freedom, small government, and individual responsibility. We MUST keep preaching the message or the socialists will creep back into power and ruin the strides we’ve made this year. We’ve only stopped their advance, we haven’t started rolling back their ideology yet. Keep talking to your friends and neighbors. Nudge (don’t push) them towards conservatism when you talk. Write letters to the editor on important issues. Monitor the message boards of your local papers and give reasoned debate to the insanity that the progressives spew.

Above all, keep working!

P.S. I know people get burned out on politics. If you’re getting to that stage, take a short rest, then jump back in. We need every one of our people battling for freedom, so make sure you are fit for duty. Just don’t miss a ballot deadline because of taking a short rest. If you are in Illinois, you don’t have the luxury of more than a day or 2 off. In other states you may have more time, but check before you take off.