After the election stay in comunication with the offfice holder. Tell them what you think they're doing right and what you think they're doing wrong. Make sure that they know that the only reason they're in office is because of your support and the support of others like you. If an office holder doesn't know that you helped him attain his office and that you support or oppose what he does while he holds it, he doesn't care about you and couldn't care less about what is important to you.
Let me guess: you're a Republican, right?
I recognize it because I used to believe this sort of thing too back when I was a Republican.
More recently, though, it's become clear to me that politicians of every party will tell you what they think you want to hear when they're campaigning and then, once elected, will completely ignore you until the next campaign.
Here's another interesting bit of anecdotal wisdom, gleaned from hard experience: The most efficient way to make a politician say what you want to hear is to make him
lose, not to make him win. If you make him win he'll immediately discard you; if you make him lose he'll keep trying to figure out what he can say to make you vote for him next time.
(This is not to imply that making a politician say what you want to hear will have any effect on his actions if he
is elected: politicians as a class are scum, and they will always do whatever they perceive to be in their own short-term best interest. If you want a politician to support your agenda, voting and letter writing is useless: you have to
corrupt him into supporting it.)
(I'm also not advocating democracy over republic or vice versa. Politicians are politicians whatever form of government they inhabit.)
