Progressive Problems and Solutions Series:
Predatory Consultants
Background:
Over the past week, Don Ford and I have driven 1300 miles across 6 eastern states to meet with candidates, activists, political directors, fundraisers, and election integrity experts to piece together the state of 2018 progressive races.
We are uncovering a web of obstacles that are strangling the lifeblood out of progressive campaigns. Patterns are emerging, and it is our intention to illuminate these tactics that are driving progressive races into the ground while offering solutions so we can pull off as many progressive wins as possible in 2018 and beyond.
Today we are talking about the vital force being deliberately and organically drained from progressive races: campaign money.
Since July, Don and I have been chasing a culture of predatory Democratic consultants. It feels like we are always one step behind, reaching candidates who are flush with volunteers, energy, and endorsements, but completely drained of campaign money, sometimes to the point of deep debt.
I will not personally weigh in on whether this is a vast conspiracy with clear centralized directors, or if this is the fault of business-as-usual corporate fundraising culture that has overtaken centrist races for decades — what NJ Congressional candidate Peter Jacob identified and calls the “campaign industrial complex.”
Two things are happening right now that are completely screwing up progressive fundraising and outreach.
1. Campaigns are being sold on magic bullet, data-driven digital fundraising.
2. Campaigns are trying to compete with neoliberal campaigns with a neoliberal toolset because their fundraising strategists tell them they can. (They can’t.)
Data-driven fundraising:
Google any combination of “grassroots,” “digital outreach,” and “campaign fundraising” and you’ll see a host of “boutique” consulting companies pop up promising slick packages to flood specifically progressive campaigns with funds.
Spend a few minutes researching the CVs behind the team members and you’ll find they tie back to think-tanks, non profits, lobbyist group, PACs, and deeply entrenched establishment players on the Democratic spectrum.
These consultant groups lean heavily on the accessible, friendly branding and progressive messaging. Their outreach is rapid, polished, and easy to onboard at a low introductory cost, which is why so many of them have infiltrated campaigns early on in the campaign cycle when candidates are so strapped for cash. From multiple interviews and hours spent inside various campaigns, we have pieced together their sales pitch: hire us for $2000-$10000/month and we can guarantee massive returns based on our proprietary data systems that will have your campaign offers overflowing within 2 months.
Essentially these consultants sell grassroots candidates an idea that there is a magical bullet that can get them flush with cash in a short amount of time through digital outreach. They charge flat fees (a huge red flag and actually inconsistent with this traditional fundraising role) which means they are shopping their services around to multiple campaigns as packaged, tiered services and have no incentive to raise actual large sums of money. These packages are about volume across multiple campaigns, not about growing single campaign fundraising numbers to the point of viability (think $500K — $1 mil for a Congressional race.)
There are so many problems with “data-driven campaign strategy.”
I am the daughter of a data engineer. I am fascinated by the power of aggregated data and its infinite potential to turn the tide against the juggernauts of the old guard. I collect and analyze data to identify trends in campaign cycles. I know activists pioneering excellent work in grassroots data for campaigns, but the fundraising results are not yet showing on a large or even small national scale.
Data-driven campaigns are not what they were in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Email lists are burned, social media fundraising is largely falling short, and the multi-million dollar algorithms that are supposed to surgically target voter and donor groups are not any better than the data being fed into them, which is largely garbage.
In fact, the 2018 race is coinciding with a tidal technology shift brought on by aging social media models, the end of net neutrality, and an extreme donor hostility to email fundraising, largely the fault of bad strategy on the part of the DCCC and DNC. Additionally, the organic social media fundraising that the grassroots Bernie volunteers coordinated to raise millions of dollars is not effective without Bernie’s personal support. And Bernie is a busy man.
The consultants are not telling their clients any of this.
They are not telling their clients that fundraising has shifted, and that it can’t be outsourced to faceless consulting companies who will skim the golden fields of the internet and dump the riches at the campaign’s door.
The fact is, we are up against a massive industry that is rapidly becoming obsolete, not recognizing its impending demise, and in its death throes is milking grassroots money for its last exit bash disguised as a victory parade.
I want to clarify that none of the candidates we have met with are naïve, and most of them have done a fine job of recognizing the changes that need to happen, if not exactly knowing how to make it happen. This is not a case of wishful thinking- it’s a case of bad consultants selling an obsolete fuel to campaigns that can’t actually run on that fuel anyway.
Progressive campaigns can’t compete with neoliberal fundraising. That isn’t how we win.
While these digital fundraising evangelists and mercenary salesmen might actually be good people thinking their way is best, the truth is that progressive candidates are being fed through a system that is crippling their campaigns early on in their races and paving the way for easy establishment wins.
So why are these predatory, either in intention or function, consultants telling grassroots campaigns they can get them flush with cash for a monthly fee? And why isn’t it working?
Consultants have run this country via corporate or proto-corporate campaigns for as long as this country has been a capitalist society, and grassroots campaigns are an inherent pushback against corporate capitalism. As soon as a progressive candidate shifts into the mindset that they can raise massive amounts of money without actually having to ask for that money from individuals, they have shifted into the neoliberal race.
They will always lose to the establishment candidate.
I have to tell you something obvious: if an establishment Democrat and a progressive Democrat are primarying each other, they are not actually running the same race. They are running IN the same race, but they are on two completely different tracks.
The definition of progressive candidate means essentially that they cannot run the same race as the establishment candidate because they cannot take the same money via the same donor sources.
Progressives win when the people are behind them. Progressive candidates win not through outsourced digital fundraising and boxed strategy but through direct connection to their voters.
The truth is that progressives have to run a progressive race, and in a progressive race, the candidate is THE fundraiser. There is no substitute and no work-around. Candidates must be prioritizing call time, allocating money raised to strong volunteer coordination, and keeping laser focus on the values of their progressive platform. Social media and digital outreach plays a part, but it will not lead to the flood of money promised by consultants who cut their teeth in establishment organizations.
This is not to say that progressive campaigns should be averse to raising a lot of money. In fact, too many progressives are pushing the idea that all downticket races can win on small dollar donations alone. But without the candidate driving the connection to voters, and I deliberately say voters instead of donors, there is no way to build and work the base for effective fundraising.
Cash-strapped races are a reality of the progressive movement, and the commitment to people over money will always get in the way of the easy path to financial dominance.
It’s time for the progressive movement of candidates to abandon a predatory culture that exploits the grassroots and focus instead on the real and untapped potential of individual donors who are just waiting to be contacted, activated, and embraced.
Don and I are so grateful for the donors that have contributed this far, and we are still in personal debt on this trip.
We are on our way to the DNC to lobby the Unity Reform Commission to adopt the slate, and we can’t do this without your help.
Any small dollar amount helps. If this information was helpful to you or your candidates, please consider donating what you can at:
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