froth is a way of life
Iām here to declare that I am using my ONE TIME.
Apparently, noted Republican crank, podcast host, Republican influencer, and perpetual candidate Carl DeMaio is running a poll about the potential of him entering the race for Assembly District 75. This is the district my candidate is running for. There are already 2 Republicans in the race.
All I want for Christmas is for this to happenā¦and Iām using my one time in the hopes that it does. It would turn our backwater district with a race no one cares about into one of the stateās most interesting overnight, and our fundraising potential would go from ~$200k to literally millions. The Democratic Party has an oppo book 2 feet thick on this guy, and Democratic donors from across the state would be lining up to go against him.
Oh my god please make this happen please oh please oh please.
It would also launch my career into the stratosphere, no big deal
Thoughts and prayers appreciatedā¦
Wait, wat? How were they selected?
Candidate had to win popular vote and a majority of state House districts, otherwise the state House of Representatives picks.
But they only got to the state House of Representatives once, right?
Impossible to read that and not see this.
I donāt know
There was a tie in a city council race in New Hampshire. If the recount remains a tie, itāll be settled by bingo balls.
These exact two candidates tied last year, too, in a state house election.
My dad was reelected mayor of my hometown (unopposed).
He decided to run a couple of years ago when the current mayor moved and the only other person running was a known dipshit. He was too late to be on the ballot, but won with 69% of the vote through write-ins.
I asked him to name me police chief, he declined. So much for nepotismā¦
Iām just gonna use this thread to post wins, ok?
Background in this thread, but seems more appropriate here.
Soā¦after the drama of all the pre-convention bullshit with our Democratic opponent, we managed to come away with the CDP endorsement.
No one was flipping, so I channeled my inner Pelosi and made a deal with our congressional candidate. We made the purely political argument that āNo Endorsementā would hurt him as much as us because the CDP only spends money in places where they have overlapping endorsed candidates. Consequently, we talked him into having one of his appointed delegates flip their vote so we could reach the threshold for endorsement.
Today we just received what might possibly the biggest statewide endorsement weāll get:
They are the state umbrella org for over 1200 member unions and over 2 million union workers. It means an immediate injection of $11k to our campaign, plus their endorsement means that a lot of those member unions will automatically endorse us, and donate as well. Such a huge win, and Iām having a beer to celebrate.
ope, will tell our website guy to add a description! LOL
Yikes
ONE TIME has paid off! This news dropped at ~3:15 pm. Since then, we have taken urgent calls from CA Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivasās staff and the CA Labor Federationās political director, and weāve all of a sudden been followed on socials by all of the Republican candidatesā staff and fundraisers.
Well, Iāve just had the weirdest week ever since Iāve been involved in campaigns.
2 weeks ago we went up to Sacramento to meet with a bunch of lobbying firms, only to learn that literally NO ONE wants this asshole Carl DeMaio in the Assembly. He is the great uniter. Dems, Reps, lobbyists, companies, whatever, they all share a burning hatred of this guy.
Fine, no worries, we get it. So hereās how last week went:
Last Sunday: this GOP forum happened in my town and it got reported on by one of our bigger indie news outlets. This will become relevant later: Carl DeMaio Calls GOP Assembly Rival Andrew Hayes a Tool of the Democrats - Times of San Diego
Monday: Carl DeMaio releases his āPete Wilson was rightā ad because apparently his polling has told him that border issues are the best to run onā¦because CA state assemblypeople have so much control over federal border policy, yanno: āGov. Pete Wilson Was Rightā: California state Assembly candidate revives controversial immigration ad - POLITICO
Tuesday: DeMaio has a presser about the ad, and we get asked to respond (yay, earned media!): Carl DeMaio campaign ad stirs up controversy ā NBC 7 San Diego
Wednesday: 9am I get a text of a recording of a cross-platform TV ad that DeMaioās campaign paid for. People are confused because it seems like an ad for both Kevin and Carl DeMaio. Here it is:
Wednesday: 11am, our op-ed response to the stuff published on Sunday is published. Yay more earned media! Opinion: GOP Candidates' Chaos Shows Lack of Interest in Solving Rural Problems - Times of San Diego
Thursday: 3pm my phone starts blowing upā¦Dems all over my district have received a GIANT mailer in support of Kevinā¦not uncommon, it just means someone did an independent expenditure for us (so I thought). Campaign laws say we cannot communicate with IE committees (commonly known as Super PACs) so we have no way of knowing those are coming. Thereās a catch though. The language on this mailer is a little bit weirdā¦and sure enough, itās a Super PAC endorsing Carl DeMaio but doing our name recognition work for us. pics:
Look when I say giant, i mean these things are 9x12 which is the largest direct mail you can do and of course the most expensive.
Meanwhile, Iām getting angry texts from concerned Democrats telling me that I need to not use the āDemocrat Partyā language because thatās a Republican dog-whistle and why donāt I know that(?!!) and now I have to send emails to the clubs and central committee that we did NOT send this mailer (ugh I hate when people assume Iām a moron) and that we are NOT working with Carl fucking DeMaioā¦because even the most informed Dem activists are woefully uninformed when it comes to campaign financing regs and PACs and IEs and campaign strategy.
Friday: We get word that they are also doing phonebanking and texting and sent yet ANOTHER giant mailer, all with the same message as the ad.
this weekend was spent knocking doors and also completely redesigning our entire primary strategy because Carl DeMaio, who is a sneaky smart motherfucker, is spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to boost Kevinās name rec because he knows a Democrat is easier to beat in the general in this district.
I think heās severely underestimating the amount of hatred Sacramento and the lobbying class has towards him, and we might give him a tougher fight than he predicts. Also, this is gonna get nasty. Thank god Kevin is the most vanilla guy you could possibly imagine and theyāre going to have to manufacture shit against him.
Oh, and did I mention, the other, establishment GOP candidateā¦is doing the same fucking thing?!
So weāve gone from desperately begging for funds to do texting, etc, to a basic spending moratorium because why spend our money when dumbass is doing our work for us?
whew
ETA: this is a tried and true campaign strategy, and while itās annoying to be thought so little of, I also understand why heās doing it. Hell, Adam Schiff is doing the same thing with Steve Garvey (who I might actually vote for so we donāt have an expensive Dem v. Dem race which will take up money from the state party that could be spent on races like ours )
Update:
There have now been ~7 mailers sent by this group, all the same or similar language.
NOW Iām getting angry emails telling us that weāre sending too much mail and itās making them not want to vote for us.
The TV ad is still running.
The kicker is: Carl DeMaio took the voluntary spending limit, so his limit for the primary is $727k. When I tell you that a cross-platform 30-second ad buy probably is costing him $500k, and each mailer is probably $50k-$70k, itās not hard to imagine that heās spending his entire primary budget promoting us. Of course, the other ads, all in his favor, are being paid for by Reform California. Must be nice to have two pots of money, one with no limit, to control the narrative.
There are other bullshit shenanigans going onā¦like one of our biggest endorsers telling people not to donate to us because they want a rep vs. rep general because thatās the only way to keep DeMaio out of the assembly. No faith that we can actually win. Which explains why none of the people or groups who were supposed to give us money are actually doing that.
We found this out, and basically demanded that they make up our accrued expenses, like, oh, you know, my PAY, since they were the reason we couldnāt pay those bills. They agreed. And they are spending money to promote one of our dem opponents (the nice teacher, not the nasty old harpy) so Dem vote gets split and the two top republicans make it to November.
Honestly, Iām not sure they can stop the train, now. I guess we did too good a job lining up a lot of high-profile endorsements plus Carlās efforts on our behalf. Iām not sure the genie can be put back in the bottle. Iām pretty sure weāre going to make it past the primaryā¦and now I donāt want to because all the help we thought weād have is going to disappear.
Also, in other news, holy shit. I may not always agree with him, but heās actually doing what I wish all the shitposters would doā¦
Is DeMaio likely enough to make the General that he can afford to spend promoting your guy?
He seems to think so. We arenāt so sure. Thereās an outside chance that by doing this he is fucking himself over and handing the general to the establishment republican. Thereās a LOT of people on both sides of the aisle who hate DeMaio.
We did a ātestā texting campaign to only people in my town who are NOT registered republican nor democrat (so no party plus all the little parties) and of the responses, our guy got half of the votes. Which is WAY above the normal R/D/N registration split.
Oddly enough, that text campaign received an abnormally high response rate, too. Probably because people donāt usually spend money to text them so they arenāt inundated like reliable Rs and Ds are.
Well, It looks like I might get to keep my job until November!
We probably wonāt win, but you bet your ass weāre going to outperform our 11-point registration deficit. The fact that DeMaio didnāt get 50 means thereās a chance, albeit a small one.
Also, HAHAHAHA to our annoying protest candidate coming in behind the Dem candidate who did literally zero campaigning. She didnāt even have an FPPC committee!
There are still votes to be counted, but Andrew Hayes is going to struggle to overcome a 4k vote deficit. Looks like we get to face off with mini-Trump. My first call on Thursday morning will be to all of our local chambers of commerce who endorsed Hayes.
Iāve posted a few times in the past about the absolute buffoon that I have for a state representative.
Heās made headlines for trying to get a national holiday for Trumpās birthday. For getting in a shouting match in the statehouse and bragging/threatening that heās 6ā4" 280. And a bunch of nonsense during covid.
But then he also was one of a group of Rās that teamed up with Dās to cut the legs out from under the presumed R speaker of the house and install a more moderate R speaker. And heās been fighting and calling them out on their stupid school voucher program they are pushing.
So heās pissed some people off and Iāve never seen such an insane local race. Some superpacs must be pouring crazy amounts of money into this race. Every day Iām getting the most insane full page color mailers. Radio is blanketed with ads. Signs everywhere. All for a state representative primary that will certainly remain Republican, in a state where Rās will certainly maintain a super majority. It has to be because heās resisting the school voucher bill.
Theyāve found some young, palatable military guy to run against him. But if you dig just a little he seems probably even more crazy, but just acts more mature. And he pushes the school voucher crap, and every other mega conservative Christian fascist bullshit.
Anyway somehow I ended up voting in the R primary specifically to vote for the buffoon today. Something I never could have imagined doing.
Hereās some examples of the insane mailers that are on nonstop barrage.
