Ask the Expert (1 of 2): Campaign Differences

You have experience with Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial, Presidential, and ballot initiative races. How do you approach each campaign? Are there substantial differences?

There are fundamentals to each campaign that are the same. One, money. It’s the mother’s milk of politics, and particularly in California, you need a lot of it to win statewide as well as in smaller races. ‘Nough said.

Two, research is key. Opinion research is the foundation on which a successful campaign is built. Polling and focus groups remain the best way to distill voter opinions and moods about issues and candidates. Without research and disciplined adherence to its results, a campaign risks wasting every dollar it spends on voter communication.

Three, in a general election, target your message to the undecided voters. Most of the time, those are the voters in the middle of the political spectrum, who are less tuned into politics and generally make up their minds toward the end of the campaign. Often, there are discreet messages that must be targeted to them through more narrow media, such as mail. Over time, the internet and even text messaging may develop into reliable media for targeting persuasion messages to narrow slices of the undecided electorate. 

There are some aspects of campaigns that often, but not in all cases, are more effective tools for smaller races, like Congressionals, as opposed to statewide races. Endorsements, for instance, can be critically important in Congressional races, where validation from others in the community can make the difference in winning or losing. Of course there are exceptions –- we did see endorsements play a major role in Phil Angelides’ victory over Steve Westly in the gubernatorial primary last year.

A classic, volunteer driven field campaign can play a disproportionately important role in Congressional races versus statewide races. Jerry McNerney’s primary and general election victories last year are a clear demonstration of the power of the grassroots, as was Rep. Ellen Tauscher’s victory in 1996 over an entrenched Republican incumbent. 

The conventional wisdom is that true grassroots campaigning is too expensive to run in California for statewide races. While the Special Election effort by labor in 2005 was a compelling example of the power of the grassroots statewide, it also was costly. The same can be said for the No on 38/No on Vouchers campaign in 2000, where nearly 2 million voters were contacted directly by the campaign. In the 1992 Presidential and U.S. Senate races, the California Democratic Party ran a phenomenally successful field campaign statewide, including registering 1 million new Democrats. This proves that it can be done. The increasing effectiveness of online organizing in California’s statewide races may change the cost/benefit calculation for statewide field campaigns, making it more cost effective to build massive grassroots campaign efforts statewide. 

A couple of notes on initiative races: while many of the same campaign principles apply to initiative and candidate campaigns, there are some notable differences. One, there is a different vote dynamic at play in an initiative campaign than in a candidate campaign. As a matter of course, a successful yes campaign expects their initiative to garner an initial level of support somewhere in the mid-60’s and then drop over the arc of the campaign to somewhere no less than 51-52%. Such a downward trend is rarely a good sign in a candidate campaign. 

Two, running a campaign to defeat an initiative can be much easier than running a campaign to defeat a candidate. Generally speaking, running a no campaign against an initiative is about creating doubt. When running a campaign against a candidate, you need to create doubt about that candidate but then also explain why your gal is better. I do not claim to be an expert on initiative campaigns though. For a truly expert discussion of the ins and outs of initiative and bond campaigns, I would direct you to CMR’s very own Gale Kaufman.

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