{"id":8558,"date":"2018-11-23T21:30:51","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T05:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/?p=8558"},"modified":"2025-12-20T21:31:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T05:31:51","slug":"10-things-we-learned-from-the-midterms-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/2018\/11\/23\/10-things-we-learned-from-the-midterms-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"10 things we learned from the midterms elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

REID WILSON]<\/em><\/p>\n

1 Show up
\n2 Be available
\n3 Go globally viral
\n4 Go locally viral
\n5 Define your own electorate, and plan ahead
\n6 Experiment with GOTV
\n7 Professionalize your campaign
\n8 Diversify your inputs
\n9 Close strong
\n10 Relax<\/strong><\/p>\n

Running a political campaign is like building a Fortune 500 company: hiring or recruiting dozens, hundreds or thousands of people for a sales force that has just one day \u2014 or, with the advent of early voting, only a handful of days \u2014 to make the sale.<\/p>\n

Parties and candidates spent more money on this year\u2019s midterm elections than ever before, battling over thousands of contested races and millions of persuadable voters.<\/p>\n

Some candidates experimented with new ways to reach voters. Others stuck with the basics, pounding the pavement to reach voters who might not otherwise show up to the polls.<\/p>\n

We asked more than a dozen campaign managers from some of the most hotly contested races around the country what they learned this year that will inform them in the future \u2014 what lessons they took away from this year\u2019s election, and how American political campaigns are changing.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we learned:<\/p>\n

Show up<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

For years, the political calculus has held that winning a statewide race in Georgia is all about winning the Atlanta suburbs. Highly educated white voters are persuadable, and they show up.<\/p>\n

But Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, and Brian Kemp, her Republican rival, both threw out that playbook. Their campaigns deployed staffers and opened offices in rural communities across the country, some of which hadn\u2019t seen a political campaign actually show up for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had put more field staff on the ground than had ever been on the ground in Georgia,\u201d said Lauren Groh-Wagner, Abrams\u2019s campaign manager. \u201cPeople want to overcomplicate things with media and digital and the rest of it. You still have to also put people on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott (R) had the advantage of a day job that allowed him to travel across the state. Scott made a point to visit every Florida county in the first three months after he kicked off his race, and his constant presence in the Panhandle overseeing the response to Hurricane Michael gave him free media in the race\u2019s closing weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to show up, every day. He was in sometimes three to four cities a day talking to voters,\u201d said Scott\u2019s manager, Jackie Schutz Zeckman. \u201cYou just have to constantly be on the ground and meeting with people and hearing what they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott beat Sen. Bill Nelson (D) by a hair, and the results could easily have gone the other way had Scott mismanaged the hurricane response.<\/p>\n

Be available<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

House Republicans avoided town halls in many districts over the last two years, anxious to avoid confrontations like those Democrats faced after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed during President Obama\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

But that opened the door for Democrats like Dean Phillips and Angie Craig in Minnesota, Jason Crow in Colorado and Colin Allred in Texas to accuse their Republican incumbents of failing to listen to their constituents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is some tendency to shy away from folks and not do town halls, and not make your candidate really open and accessible and transparent, because it\u2019s harder to control the narrative that way,\u201d said Alex Ball, who managed Crow\u2019s race against Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.). \u201cYou can\u2019t shy away from exposing yourself to anyone in the district, be they Democrat, Republican or independent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) may be a prime example of that. Though she lost this year, she won her reelection bid six years ago, after she endured hours of angry town hall meetings over the ACA.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing right now in politics is a demand for a new level of accessibility to the public,\u201d Ball said.<\/p>\n

Go globally viral<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Easier said than done. But for a handful of candidates this year, viral videos or interviews on new media outlets like NowThis led to a rush of small-dollar donations, money they desperately needed to get their message on television.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile call time and those best practices are always important, having a viral video or having NowThis come out to your district and film your candidate raises a lot of money as well, especially online,\u201d said Zack Carroll, who managed Rep.-elect Andy Kim\u2019s (D-N.J.) race against Rep. Tom MacArthur (R).<\/p>\n

Some Democrats who went viral raised millions more dollars than any of their recent predecessors, in many cases outspending even their Republican opponents.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lesson there for potential Democratic presidential candidates, too: A strong video presence can help break through a crowded field.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t get distracted by the shiny objects of viral videos,\u201d Carroll warned, but he said: \u201cI don\u2019t know, if you\u2019re running in 2020, if you can run a serious race without a kick-ass intro video.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go locally viral<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

When Anne Caprara managed then-Rep. Betsy Markey\u2019s (D-Colo.) campaign in 2008, the campaign\u2019s best volunteers wrote dozens of letters to the editors of local newspapers.<\/p>\n

These days, letter writers are replaced by influencers who tweet, blog or Instagram. The volunteers working for Caprara\u2019s candidate this year, Illinois Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker (D), spent some of their time sharing organic content online, from local leaders or supporters who blog about parenting or community issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want people to engage with you online,\u201d Caprara said. \u201cYou have to start organizing around organic online content the way we organized around other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

J.P. Twist, who managed Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey\u2019s (R) reelection bid, said local newspapers hungry for content can offer an avenue when larger outlets are slower to respond.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeed an op-ed placed and the big guys won\u2019t run it or are dragging their feet? Find the best local [news outlet] with an online version and just get the thing up,\u201d Twist said. \u201cIn the age of social media, you can boost the post and get decent mileage out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Define your own electorate, and plan ahead<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign hit its turnout targets in big Florida counties in 2016. She lost the state, in part because President Trump\u2019s campaign found a ton of new voters in more rural parts of the state.<\/p>\n

In other places like Nevada, Democrats are the ones who benefit from a big turnout operation. The party went into Election Day with a huge advantage of about 75,000 registered voters, and those voters showed up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t rely on the ability to persuade soft voters alone,\u201d said Kristin Davison, who ran Attorney General Adam Laxalt\u2019s (R) campaign for governor there. \u201cIn a blue state like Nevada, you need to run a minimum $10 million campaign focusing on voter registration alone. If not, there won\u2019t be enough voters left by the election year that are open to persuasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laxalt lost to Democrat Steve Sisolak by 39,000 votes \u2014 about half the registration advantage Democrats had built up over years of work.<\/p>\n

Experiment with GOTV<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Reliably Democratic voters in Georgia may have gotten used to frequent messages from Stacey Abrams\u2019s campaign popping up on their phones. The campaign used text messaging to raise money, build crowds and even to contact newly registered voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really pushed the bounds of what you can do via text messaging,\u201d Groh-Wagner said. \u201cWe did a ton of experimentation, and that was a whole new platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virtually every major campaign in the country experimented with new ways to reach voters by text message, either to get those voters to the polls or to persuade them to listen to a new appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot of get-out-the-vote with texting,\u201d Rick Scott\u2019s manager Schutz Zeckman said. \u201cIt was a new way we could reach out to voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professionalize your campaign<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Campaigns run on shoestring budgets, and they may not always be the most professional of environments. Booze in desk drawers is not rare in campaign offices.<\/p>\n

But as budgets and staffs grow, larger campaigns have to operate more like a business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, campaigns have been run as these ad hoc committee things. And nowadays you have to approach this like I\u2019m setting up a very formal business,\u201d Caprara said.<\/p>\n

Pritzker\u2019s campaign employed a human resources department and labor attorneys who could deal with an employee complaint if one arose. The campaign set guidelines to govern younger staffers who might be used to putting everything in their lives on social media. They held sexual harassment training and sensitivity training.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe culture has changed for the good. This is a job and I should get treated like an employee at any other company,\u201d Caprara said. \u201cThe management structure we\u2019ve set up hasn\u2019t always been able to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Building a modern campaign also means picking the right staff \u2014 people you can trust to do their jobs without too much oversight.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are the cheapest thing that a campaign buys. The amount that you spend on a salary for someone is minuscule compared with these million-dollar weekly TV buys,\u201d said Peter Hanscom, who managed Sen. Joe Donnelly\u2019s (D-Ind.) reelection bid. \u201cMaking sure you surround yourself with people who you are 100 percent confident can do their jobs without your supervision is critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diversify your inputs<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Pennsylvania Democrats have a rural problem, one that cost them the Keystone State\u2019s electoral votes in 2016. Gov. Tom Wolf (D), the only Democrat up for reelection this year in a red state, wanted to know what rural voters were thinking, and to let them know he heard them.<\/p>\n

Wolf\u2019s campaign broadened the number of ways they could hear from voters. Beyond the traditional polls, they conducted both in-person and online focus groups, message-tested Facebook posts and spent time talking to voters in areas that favored President Trump in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew we could not confine ourselves to traditional research, rather we diversified how we heard from voters, and this helped inform our communication,\u201d Wolf\u2019s manager, Jeff Sheridan, said in an email. \u201cA key lesson learned as a campaign is to diversify the research you do in order to hear directly from voters and to not be afraid to experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolf won by 17 points, and he won six counties that Trump had carried in 2016.<\/p>\n

Close strong<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Danny Kazin, who managed Rep. Jacky Rosen\u2019s (D-Nev.) winning bid against Sen. Dean Heller (R), said his team spent money on late focus groups to try to understand how voters viewed the campaign as it unfolded, therefore crafting a message in the final stretch.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlan to close with your strongest message, especially in your most crowded media markets. Even if you’ve litigated it earlier in the campaign, late undecided voters should hear the message that penetrates the most right before they vote,\u201d Kazin said in an email.<\/p>\n

For Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), that strongest message was all about projecting calm, even as her opponent accused her of treason.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to sit back and let the other side overreach, but they will and they did,\u201d said Andrew Piatt, Sinema\u2019s manager. \u201cWe had spent months laying down a very strong, positive argument about Sinema\u2019s independence that our opponents could not easily uproot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Relax<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

Did President Trump just tweet about your candidate? Is the local paper about to run a negative story? Did your opponent take some outrageous swipe at you?<\/p>\n

Chill out. This too shall pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cCampaigns are a long game,\u201d says Justin Barasky, who managed Sen. Sherrod Brown\u2019s (D-Ohio) reelection bid. \u201cWhat seems like the end of the world in one hour of one day of one month of a two-year cycle is almost always fixable, and not as big of a deal as it seems.\u201d<\/p>\n

One good way to put things in perspective, Hanscom said, is to find a stable of friends and relatives who aren\u2019t plugged into the campaign. If they haven\u2019t heard of some minor scandal that\u2019s lighting your hair on fire, it\u2019s probably not a big deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so easy to get yourself worked up into a frenzy over something that isn\u2019t even registering with people,\u201d Hanscom said.<\/p>\n

BY\u00a0The Hill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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