The revelation that Republican representative-elect George Santos fabricated much of his biography and life story has raised the question of how it is possible that this did not come to light prior to election day. Was it the fault of the press? The DCCC? Lazy campaign work?
In the search for scapegoats the most important lesson may be lost – the Santos scandal reveals structural weaknesses in the Democratic campaign apparatus at the congressional level. Over the past few decades, the Democratic Party has evolved an electoral model in which individual campaigns outsource most of their creative work and strategic decision making to professional campaign consultants and party committees. This model has weaknesses that are increasingly apparent but that receive far too little scrutiny and attention.
For over twenty years, I have worked on campaign teams for municipal and legislative races in my mid-sized midwestern community, including serving as campaign manager for a pair of successful local campaigns. I have also helped to coordinate field operations for our local Democratic Party. I have done all of this on a purely voluntary basis. My one serious foray into congressional politics was serving as campaign manager for a successful Democratic primary campaign in a Republican-leaning congressional district in which we were far outspent by our Democratic primary opponent. (I also did this on a volunteer basis as a personal favor to the candidate, who had been unsuccessful in their efforts to hire a professional campaign manager, and I stepped down after the primary.)
One thing that I have learned from these experiences is that the key to an effective political campaign at any level (aside from a high-caliber candidate and access to sufficient campaign funds) is a campaign team comprised of creative, experienced, and hard-working individuals who are intensely dedicated to the goal of victory for their specific candidate.
Unfortunately, the consultant-driven driven model deprives candidates of such a team.
In the consultant-driven model, the candidate does not begin by assembling a campaign team headed by a talented and experienced campaign manager. Rather, the candidate first contracts with a “general campaign consultant” that designs a campaign plan for the candidate. Unlike a traditional campaign manager or chief campaign strategist, the consultant is providing similar services to a number of clients. (I once had a conversation with someone whose job it was to work out of his home designing campaign plans for candidates all over the country.) In this model, the “campaign manager” is reduced to a low-level functionary whose job it is to implement the strategy designed by the general consultant. Such campaigns also lack a traditional communications director, as messaging and creative work is also outsourced to political consultant firms.
One result of the consultant-driven model are cookie-cutter campaigns that are unresponsive to local conditions. Another result of the consultant-driven model are campaigns that lack the expertise, experience, and local knowledge to respond in timely and creative ways to opportunities that arise as the campaign develops – opportunities such as the fact that your opponent is a fraud and a grifter.
Let’s look at what happened in the case of candidate Robert Zimmerman, who lost New York’s Third Congressional District seat to George Santos by a shockingly large eight-point margin. Zimmerman filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission on January 18, 2022. F.E.C. reports suggest that, prior to filing his candidacy, he had already contracted with Lemma Strategies (a New York-based firm) for general strategy consulting services at a cost of $7,000/month. By contrast, his first salary payment to his campaign manager was dated March 1.
Zimmerman’s F.E.C. reports also reveal tens of thousands of dollars of payments to other firms for legal consulting, digital consulting, compliance consulting, communications consulting, fundraising consulting, and field consulting. His payments to consultants outstripped the salary costs of his in-house campaign staff.
The Zimmerman campaign also outsourced its opposition research to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). In a column in the New York Times, Democratic opposition research consultant Tyson Brody explained how the DCCC’s in-house opposition research shop operates. The DCCC employs a number of opposition researchers who use what appears to be a standardized methodology to research Republican congressional candidate. They produce an “oppo book” on each candidate that is shared with the DCCC, the Democratic candidate, and the candidate’s consultants. The oppo book is then reviewed to identify talking points that can be hawked to the press and used in campaign advertising.
In the case of George Santos, the DCCC produced an 87-page oppo book. Contrary to some reports, however, the Santos oppo book did not reveal his fabricated biography and life story. Rather, it emphasized his sleazy financial dealings and history of extremist MAGA statements. It included a couple of red flags – his failure to register his Friends of Animals United non-profit and a pair of evictions. No one, however, followed up on these red flags to uncover his fabricated life story.
And it is no surprise that no one followed up.
The DCCC opposition research staff lacked both the incentive and the resources to follow up as they were responsible for producing oppo books on numerous Republican candidates. Zimmerman’s in-house campaign staff would have no reason to follow up (even assuming they had the capacity to do so), as they had outsourced their opposition research to the experts at the DCCC. And Zimmerman’s consultants would have no reason to follow up, as opposition research would have fallen outside their contracted services.
All of this reveals deep flaws in a Democratic congressional campaign model in which individual campaigns outsource their creative work and strategic decision making to consultants and party committees. The consultant-driven model deprives candidates of the in-house expertise, experience, and drive to run effective campaigns. Had the Zimmerman campaign had these things, I have little doubt that the Santos fraud would have been uncovered. Folks like Santos always leave a trail.