It’s another Sunday, so for those who tune in, welcome to a diary discussing the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up anytime: Just visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide. Every week I try to tackle issues I’ve been asked about, and with the help of other campaign workers and notes, we tackle how to improve and build better campaigns or explain issues that impact our party.
Due to COVID-19 and Trump, this year presents a set of unique challenges. One of those challenges is how to generate excitement in a campaign in an insane world. How do you raise funds? How do you get your community excited? How do you get your name out there? How do you hold gatherings? People aren’t interested in coming to a town hall and holding a fundraising dinner are simply things that aren’t happening right now. So, where is the excitement? How do you get people eager to support your campaign and ready to donate, especially with a shaky economy? It’s a big question, but let’s look at some of the best answers coming from campaign staff right now.
Everyone is looking to digital
The top lesson I hear from every single campaign manager or staff member I speak to is that digital outreach has become an overwhelming component of their campaigns. Some of these changes are opening up new opportunities, as people who rejected this format in the past are now more accepting, giving candidates a better chance to reach more people at once.
Instead of going to a town hall of 22 people, try a Facebook Live meeting, a Microsoft Streams town hall or a Zoom meeting; these events give a lot of people in a district a chance to easily attend from the comfort of their own home. Hosting these events virtually in the past was met with resistance, but now, these tools provide a much more professional experience for the campaign and the end-users. From multi-camera views to document sharing, chat agents and strong video recording options, these formats are proving to offer features that can help get voters back involved in the process, even from home. For some voters, features provided by these applications, like providing live-time captioning for the hearing impaired, can make a major difference toward inclusion.
Digital has always been seen as a growing format for advertisements and fundraising. Now, the community building tools offered in a digital space are helping campaigns stay exciting for those who want to see a change in their local, state, and national political environments.
Old ideas can be new again
Instead of talking about difficulties, let’s talk about how some of the discoveries made in the distant past are making a comeback through campaigns because of social distancing. Human beings are social animals. We need connection with one another and to feel as though we aren’t isolated. Before people had cell phones, before they had the internet, before any of that, people had the U.S. Postal Service and regular phone lines.
It wasn’t too long ago that the Daily Kos community was promoting Vote Forward, a method to encourage voter turnout by having individuals send direct postcards to strangers in different U.S. House districts, as an example, to help flip the Congress. The idea of sharing a postcard to encourage someone to get a ballot and get out and vote certainly can influence them to pay attention, get registered, and turn out to vote.
Ballot chase
If your state provides absentee ballots, campaigns should have always paid attention to the ballot chase, making sure that the ballots checked by voters get turned back into the election office so that their vote counts in the election. With more voters voting absentee, more effort has to be placed into making sure that those voters who receive an absentee ballot in many states turn it back in. While we have some states where vote-by-mail is more frequent, and even the standard, in numerous states it is the exception.
This means you can generate excitement every day in your campaign by thinking about how many ballots you are making sure get mailed in. Campaign workers also need to feel excitement, and giving them a feeling of accomplishment every day can be a big plus for their participation.
Next week: Some campaign managers share their thoughts on 2020