The following guest post by Phil Van Treuren recently appeared on the CampaignNow blog.

If you plan on running in a local election and there is publicly available information about you that might be a hindrance to your campaign, it’s best if you can identify it before your opponent does. As a political campaign candidate, you should always assume that your opposition will discover–and leverage–any unflattering bits about your past.

The best way to prepare yourself for this kind of negative campaigning is to do preemptive opposition research on yourself.

Sometimes a political candidate’s own worst enemy is himself, especially if he is arrogant enough to assume that his opponents aren’t.

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