What It's Like to Run in the COVID-19 Election Cycle

Politics & News
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I ran in a Democratic Primary for the U.S. House of Representatives attempting to primary an incumbent from the left. I was predictably unsuccessful, but vastly exceeded all of my most realistic expectations (did not finish last, though it was a nail biter). It was important to me to try to do something this cycle, and this was the place where I felt my voice would best be heard sending a message out to a significant audience size. I also wanted to set an important baseline. What could be accomplished if a candidate completely shuns donations or any of the traditional campaign avenues that generally have to be engaged in to have success?

I think money in politics is a cancer, and the only way it can be removed is to start winning elections without it. Whatā€™s easy to learn is that itā€™s impossible to ā€˜winā€™ without it, but it is possible to have some success and possibly set a baseline smallest amount of expenditures to be competitive. It would probably take 3 cycles under this least amount of money spent model to make it very close against a similar incumbent. The thing that was most important to me was crafting a message that informed the voter exactly what I believe in, so they could make an informed decision. Due to the sheer amount of issues I gave my positions on, it possibly could have reduced the pool of voters who might have selected my name on the ballot and thatā€™s exactly what should have happened.

If thereā€™s interest, Iā€™m willing to talk about everything that went on in the election, including how much money I spent. Any info I give will make it much easier to identify who I am, so I would appreciate it if my name doesnā€™t appear in this thread.

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good to see you, mang :heart:

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Iā€™ll start with a question that shouldnā€™t need to elicit any ā€œdoxxableā€ infoā€¦

Basically, the question is, ā€œWhy?ā€ You touched on it somewhat in your OP (ā€œtry to do something,ā€ ā€œset an important baselineā€), but what was the something you were hoping to do? Why did you choose running for US Rep instead of doing something else?

Iā€™ll share a little here too: the reason Iā€™m asking this question is that my college girlfriend was a state rep for a couple terms, then quit to run for mayor of a large city. I havenā€™t spoken to her since college, but when I learned she was in politics, my biggest question was, ā€œwhy?ā€

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Mainly because Iā€™d had enough. If you followed my often polarizing posting, Iā€™m livid it at the sheer level of corruption inside this administration. I wanted to be a voice pushing back against that. I had no illusions I would win, but felt that there were people out there who felt the same way I did and wanted someone who wasnā€™t just going to shove the corruption and impeachment under the carpet. I also campaigned on significant systemic reform. At the time (I feel less this way now, though it still is), I felt this was the existential election of our lifetime and that it was way too close for me to just sit back and hope it worked out. If history were to judge and say, ā€˜what did you do in that election?ā€™, I would say I was on the ballot trying to get a message out to as many people as I could that this is it, the end game.

More directly, I wrote my rep after the Mueller report dropped trying to convince the rep to go on the record in support of an official impeachment inquiry. I was blown off, and the rep was scheduled to have a town hall in the recess. I wanted to go to pressure the rep, but didnā€™t see the actual notice. A couple of days after the town hall, I received an email from the rep talking about the town hall. That seemed intentional, and was a strike against the rep. The final straw was after the Roger Stone thing where Barr interfered. I tried to contact Pelosi, but her site kept failing (lol). I found out you couldnā€™t reach Nadler unless you were in his district, so I wrote my rep asking the rep to pass along a message to either or both of them trying to pressure them into starting an impeachment inquiry against Barr. I heard nothing except a carefully crafted form letter addressed to ā€˜Dear Friendā€™ telling me that ā€˜my voice had been heardā€™. On February 14, I was taking a nap, and when I woke up I was on ā€˜fireā€™ knowing that I had to do the run no matter what happenedā€¦well before COVID-19 would play a major factor. I had basically my entire platform in my head and spent a few hours writing it up. I continued crafting it over about a weekā€™s time to get it to what it ended up as.

As for why the House? Iā€™m not interested in local politics. Rightly or wrongly, I believe the House has a particular purpose that deviates from how quite a few people in it appear to view it. I believe the true intent of the House is to represent your district for the good of the country, not to bring pork back to your district. Itā€™s also disgusting to me that the typical House seat costs well over $2 million dollars to win. Thatā€™s ā€˜the peopleā€™sā€™ seat, and something has to change. A good representative, to me, brings back good things to every district with good policy. If a member of Congress is obsessed with getting pork back to the state, I think that member should be working at the state or local level. I also think that kind of ā€˜advocacyā€™ is more intended for the Senateā€¦again, thatā€™s just my personal opinion.

Cliffs: It was a combination of the events going on, the cynicism of people thinking nothing can be done, not being able to sit on the sideline, an incumbent that massively irritated me, and feeling the need to press a particular set of ideas to a much wider audience (a large part of that message is voting).

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First I want to say congratulations on living your values.

My (related) question is: how does it feel to have completed this effort? Did it give you any more hope to be a part of that process? On a personal level do you feel like a little weight was lifted in that you werenā€™t so much screaming from the stands, but actually in the arena?

Lastly, in your more heated moments did you consider telling the rep that they are a good rep and you like them very much?

Thanks for sharing.

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gogogo

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Thanks. Iā€™m hoping this was a once in a lifetime thing, especially as my message was forward and generic facing in the sense that it wasnā€™t geared to win the seat but to show how important the 2020 general election is. I was on the side of the fight of trying to stave off ā€˜burning it all downā€™. If this election goes wrong, wellā€¦

The effort was interesting. Throughout the run, I had no idea how I would do. I set my over/under at 3 votes (me, my wife, and ???). I have no idea what kind of ā€˜conversion to voteā€™ percentage there is out there, but more people selected my name on the ballot than visited my website. That just seemed mind boggling to me.

I canā€™t really describe the feeling of the first vote drop happening (votes came down in three batches on election night). I couldnā€™t believe how many people selected my name on the ballot (it wasnā€™t a ton of votes, but very far above expectation), and I thought I had a realistic chance of crossing a threshold that I never realistically expected to cross. I did end up blowing past that threshold, but got to have the sweat of a lifetime for what place I would finish in. And yes, it felt so much more like I was doing more than screaming from the stands. People around here would probably be surprised how much influence they might have on the typical voter. I certainly didnā€™t anticipate there would be that many people who would be willing to use my name as their avatar for their feelings.

I told the rep that I had voted for the rep in all primaries and general elections and that I would do everything in my power to primary the rep if the rep didnā€™t go on the record. Little did I realize at that time that meant running against the rep. That was kind of the equivalent of the old inside joke on here.

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Itā€™s over, brother.

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Congrats on running and exceeding your expectations! Iā€™ll biteā€¦ How much did you spend? Do you think the dynamics of being in a pandemic hurt you? I would imagine they would, although if you used social media and technology really well, maybe not. Seems like on a shoestring budget as a relative unknown, being able to go door to door and make legitimate in-person connections is essential.

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Question - Did you consider using this space as a resource at all? Id say we have a fairly wide political footprint. Did you think that we might be able to assist in spreading the word in any way?

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Curious as to roughly how many votes you got.

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Thanks. Including ballot access ($300), I spent $1391. I spent $875 on ā€˜reachā€™ material (the actual campaign cost). I spent about another $216 on a few other small things (including being able to save editable elements of the logo I designed), some of which werenā€™t able to be used either due to quality (a stamper) or because of the pandemic rendering them unusable (business cards).

My goal was to create a ā€˜viralā€™ campaign where people would see somewhat unique material and be drawn to find out more about what it was about. Road signs were originally going to be a part of that, but the pandemic killed that. Dropping business cards in strategic places was going to be another, but the pandemic killed that too.

If anything, I think the pandemic helped me. I was never planning on doing any kind of public campaigning (it was all about trying to create message visibility) and once the pandemic hit everyone running was basically shut in. The turn out was absolutely crazy for this election (we were still waxed by the incumbent) and my guess is that my vote total wouldnā€™t have been drastically different if it had been a low turnout election like I expected. My highest percentage of the vote actually came from in-person voting, which was pretty surprising. I was trying to create a particular reach, and it seems like the decisions I made reached a lot of the right people, far more than I expected.

I made a few timing mistakes that I think hurt me (lost a week twice, once due to ballots going out 10 days earlier than expected, and the other being a technical problem related to ID verification to run political ads), but they might have only caused a few hundred people who might have selected my name to not have any awareness of me, so nothing earth shattering. I also had an issue with a printer not getting back to me fast enough when I wanted to do another printing, so I had to abandon something Iā€™d planned on doing (would have made the campaign probably cost another $200 or so as I would have allocated final funding differently). That printing might have had a significant impact on my vote total, but Iā€™ll never know for sure.

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No, I was trying to create a baseline of what could be possible by basically doing ā€˜nothingā€™ but having a strong message and wearing what I believe on my sleeve (something uncommon for nearly every political candidate). The goal going in was to try to create a low grade GOTV campaign, but it exceeded that much more than my wildest realistic expectations. The election was never about me, but about what I feel elections for the House should be about if that makes sense.

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1,431

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That is actually amazing. Well done.

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Only about 1,200 people in the district landed on my website and I doubt much more than 50 percent of them selected my name. I have absolutely no idea where the rest of the votes came from. Iā€™m looking forward to doing precinct level analysis.

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I know we havenā€™t gotten along in the past but good work. It takes guts to do what you did and undoubtedly you would have been an improvement on whoever you ran against.

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Are you comfortable sharing what percentage of the vote this was?

Would you do it again? What are some of the things you would do differently? And what advice would you give someone who wanted to give it a go?

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I can certainly relate to being irritated by elected officials being unresponsive. When you get that generic form letter response, it feels like they either didnā€™t actually read/understand the specific thing you contacted them about, or that they did, but theyā€™re blowing you off. Both possibilities are annoying.

I was reflecting on the bolded part above. I realized that running for office does give you access to some channels to amplify your message that you wouldnā€™t otherwise have access to, for low/no cost as well.

For example, in Washington state, youā€™d have the chance to write a statement thatā€™s included in the voterā€™s pamphlet thatā€™s sent to all households in the state. Obviously not everyone reads every statement but a lot do.

Also there are things like candidate forums, panel sessions, debates, etc. that are put on by the party apparatus, League of Women Voters, etc. Thatā€™s a good chance to get in front of people and say your piece.

Anyway, itā€™s not something Iā€™d be inspired to do, but still it seems worthwhile if you are.

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Sorry for the length of this, but you know me. I put dividers between your questions, so you can skip to whatever you want to read.

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Rounding up it was 3 percent. In the final votes released prior to certifying the election, I received 3.1% of that vote drop. That was likely the in-person voting tally.

As for doing it again, I canā€™t commit either way. Iā€™m working on the biggest thing of my caeer thatā€™s likely going to be a 2+ year project once the pandemic becomes more mild (already 2 years in on the development). Thereā€™s no way Iā€™d be able to do a ā€˜seriousā€™ run while working on that. If I were ever to run again, I would take it a lot more seriously but the only way Iā€™d probably even consider it is if 2022 looks like it would bring big systemic change potential. A big portion of what I ran on was trying to make sure nothing like Donald Trump could ever happen again and trying to legislate a lot of the abuses of power this administration has done out of being able to happen again. I think voters have the appetite for that but Congress likely doesnā€™t.

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For things I would do differently? My intended campaign goal pretty much fell apart when the pandemic happened. I was basically in the ā€˜crankā€™ tier with my original intent, but wasnā€™t exactly a crank candidate. I wanted to see what would happen if I eschewed all of the traditional avenues people are forced to rely on to be competitive. That alone put me in the crank candidate tier. Iā€™m capable of holding a conversation, am presentable, and have a decent voice so itā€™s not like I was worried about any of that. I just didnā€™t want to do it. I specifically avoided putting my picture on my website because I didnā€™t want there to be any preconceived notions about who I was. If it was missed above, i wasnā€™t running for me, I was running to be an avatar of what I felt was a lost, missing, or oppressed voice. With the numerous positions I laid out, if those things were important to the particular voter, they would know I was an avatar for their views. I could easily have picked 5-7 core issues and ran on them with probably significantly more success, but it wouldnā€™t have been an accurate overall picture of what was important to me.

Iā€™m not sure (50/50) whether I would have been better off returning interview requests. I ignored requests from 4 places (3 campaign related, 1 for comment about a development). One newspaper that didnā€™t ask for an interview printed small profiles of every candidate in the race, and I guffawed at mine. It missed the core of what I was running on and picked out a few somewhat ridiculous things related to how I would run a non-traditional campaign but it was still a ā€˜goodā€™ profile (they subtly slammed nearly every candidate Dem/GOP in the race, some less subtly than others). The main writing hit a very core point and it appeared to drive a decent amount of traffic to my website.

As I said in a previous post, my original goal was to create the equivalent of brand awareness. People running in elections need to have their names remembered to even be selected on the ballot. The question was how to do that with no money and no campaigning. I was originally going to do road signs placed strategically throughout the district. Based on permitting, this might have been very expensive and not necessarily worth the cost. It was $200 to get a permit to put signs on a roadway, and even doing 25 signs probably would have cost over $400 for the signage. The other thing was I was going to just randomly place business cards at various places. Both of those ideas were blown out of the water by the pandemic.

The main thing I wanted to do was craft a mailer that would potentially get the voterā€™s attention. I felt I came up with a solid idea but knew it would be difficult and time-consuming to carry out. It was a 500 piece mailer and my goal was to try to find out how to get postage done cheaper than face value. I had a consultation call with the U.S. Postal Service Political Mail division in the area, and was basically told Iā€™d backed myself into a corner that meant I was likely going to have to pay full postage rate. She was kind of surprised I only wanted to create this one mailer and gave me a list of printers to contact if I wanted to do a second mailer and to see if anything could be done with my original idea.

After talking with the printer, it became clear that I was on my own for the main mailer because it would have been just as difficult for the printing company to do what I was trying to do but with more expected ā€˜breakageā€™ than I would probably face. In other words, it would be more expensive than how I would do it at full postage rates and I would need to buy more material to protect against bad printing. On a positive note, he really liked the layout of the mailer I designed and what it was trying to accomplish (could have been sales, but might not have been because he knew he couldnā€™t sell me anything). Theyā€™re a printing house that does a ton of political printing and he told me if he received the mailer heā€™d open it based on how it looked. That was at least encouraging that I was on a good track. When describing what he would do in a postcard version of the printing, I realized Iā€™d made an error with the paper stock. That was largely because the idea didnā€™t come to me until a few days after Iā€™d finished the logo design. I had it printed on a glossy postcard, but it definitely would have looked better with a matte finish.

Within a week or so, Iā€™d made the determination I was likely going to do either a 500 or 1000 piece additional mailer going through the postage saving way. I gave about 8 days lead time from when I wanted to have the mailers sent out when I asked for a quote, but he wasnā€™t properly responsive related to cost so I could determine whether I wanted to do 500 or 1000. He then disappeared for nearly a week and by the time he got back to me (without the information I wanted) I felt it would be too late for the mailer to have proper effectiveness so I decided against it. I also hadnā€™t seen anything that looked like a surge in website traffic related to the original mailers, which also pushed me away from wanting to do the second set. The mailers ultimately appeared to be surprisingly effective based on county level analysis but I didnā€™t know that at the time.

Iā€™m rambling on a bit here, but thinking more clearly about how I wanted to do the mailer might have had more effect. The biggest issue I faced was the ballots were supposed to start going out on a particular date. I received my ballot 10 days before that date and saw an immediate upsurge in website traffic that night. At that point, Iā€™d only sent out 50 of the 500 mailers and knew I was in deep crap. It took me about 5 days to get all the mailers out and by the time they were all out (not received) the state had probably received back nearly 60k ballots (probably about 15k in the district).

I didnā€™t want to get my name out too early to the point where it could have been forgotten, but it turned out the bad outcome had happened with a lot of ballots being returned before I had gotten my name out really at all (this was also significantly before any press came knocking). The other issue was that I needed to create a way to get more reach in the weeks leading up to the election. This basically left facebook, and predictably I had issues just getting set up.

It took several hours to correctly size the ad images to where they would both display properly and not have a loss of reach due to too much text (nonsensical trial and error trying to get around a stupid algorithm), but I was still set up in time to start my campaign on the day I planned the following morning. I left my computer for about a half hour and when I returned my account had been disabled and I was given the message that I may never hear anything back to any appeal (lol). After waiting 2 days, I received a message giving a list of reasons why I might have had my account disabled (even after having been ID verified to run political ads). My best guess was that it was due to having two accounts (wanted a separate account for the campaign, but thatā€™s apparently a no-no). That meant I had to go through the whole ID verification again on my regular account, which is about a week-long process. It meant I had barely two weeks to create any kind of reach and would probably mean Iā€™d miss out on a lot of potential voters.

The idea was to get as many impressions as possible with the same message as my mailer and also a more generic version that just led to the website. What I found was that facebook was consistently suppressing the ā€˜messageā€™ ad despite it having more engagement than the generic one. Over the weekend of the first week, I did an A/B test campaign where the ā€˜messageā€™ ad was again clearly winning on engagement. When they sent me the results, it said the other ad had won despite the interface telling me the ā€˜messageā€™ ad won. I basically determined before the test was over that I was going to kill the generic ad and just run the ā€˜messageā€™ ad. Iā€™d hoped to get around 500k impressions with my budget, but unique impressions ended up being about 130k (zip code targeted, though I never saw the ad). Of that, probably a little under half were to non-voters. And then based on Dem/GOP registered voter split, it probably hit maybe 30k to 40k Dem registered and/or likely voters. My original goal was to get about 3 link clicks per 1,000 impressions. I ended up with about 400 clicks overall, and based on the 30k to 40k Dem voter reach, that probably exceeded my expectations significantly. The day before the election, I received a message that my latest charge by facebook had been denied by AMEX (they thought it was fraud, good job AMEX). I solved the issue on AMEXā€™s end, but I continued to have an account error in the facebook ad manager. I just let the campaign lapse at that point.

The only positive out of the facebook ad campaign was that it showed me who was engaging with the ads on a demographic basis. I was surprised to find out the number one group was women 18-34, followed by women 35-44, followed by men 18-34, and men 35-44. What that likely told me was that I was on the wrong delivery platform for ads. The facebook campaign cost $310, so Iā€™m not sure how effective it was. Based on things like Cost per Click, I had numbers a lot of places would drool over but I didnā€™t get the reach I hoped for and it was obviously later than I wanted (many ballots would have been returned by the time I started the campaign).

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For advice to anyone who might do this? Itā€™s the same advice Iā€™d give to any potential filmmaker, just do it. Figure out what policy ideas mean the most to you, then figure out where those policy ideas get implemented. If thatā€™s at the local level, run at the local level (itā€™s much easier to win in local elections depending on the locality). If thatā€™s at the state level, run at the state level. If thatā€™s at the federal level, run at the federal level. I knew the things that mattered to me all happen at the federal level, which is why I ran there.

By running in a federal campaign thatā€™s not statewide, youā€™ll get attention whether you like it or not. How you use that attention is probably what determines how you do at a base level. Itā€™s very important to understand that I never intended or expected to be competitive in this race. When I was thinking about ways to not sit on the couch, I felt I could get my message out about the importance of this particular election to the highest amount of people by running for the House.

Itā€™s not hard to get on the ballot in most places especially for a ā€˜peopleā€™s seatā€™, but the most important thing to realize is that even if your goal is to spend practically no money, thatā€™s just not realistic. My original goal was to spend about $800 all in (including $300 ballot access) and that was impossible if I wanted to reach more than 300 people. Itā€™s possible the ā€˜freeā€™ publicity had the most impact, but I can never know for sure. If you feel strongly about running for something understand youā€™re going to lose a lot of privacy. The run will be attached to your name on the internet forever. I hope the run wonā€™t harm my career, but it was something I felt compelled to do so itā€™s not something Iā€™ll spend much time worrying about even if it does end up being detrimental. All my clients who knew about it were very supportive and I had to continually lower their expectations of how I would do.

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