He was a cherub-faced, harmless-looking, shrewd, conniving, and VERY ambitious tactician who set up a national power base in this fundamentalist outfit called the Christian Coalition. He never shut up about going local. He insisted that's how you take over. You start small and build. And he specifically singled out running for the local school board. That's where you could build a power base that might grow you into bigger and bigger election successes as you climbed the power ladder. Get in at the school board level - where it's easy, it's cheap, and nobody's paying much attention except for the candidates and their extended families. And then start moving up. Next stop City Council. After a few years there, try for Congress. Or mayor, Or the state legislature. And from there... well, you get the idea. But he specified "the school board."
We had a living breathing example of that. A small, shrill, in-yer-face woman named Bobbi Fiedler. She started by winning a school board seat. That positioned her for a City Council race which she also won. All the way, she was a professional pain in the ass. Out there in front of every set of microphones and cameras she could find, blabbing away, accusing, grandstanding, opinionating, ANYTHING for attention. I remember thinking - "aw, man, not her again..." over and over.
She used the City Council race as a springboard into Congress. Fortunately, when she tried to push farther, from the House to the Senate, she finally failed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbi_Fiedler
GOD she was annoying. Big anti-busing person, although she was pro-choice. Always making pronouncements about something or other! ENOUGH!!! But her political career was a TEXTBOOK example of how-to, in Ralph Reed's CONservative takeover strategy.
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