I have worked on Congressional campaigns every election cycle since 1998. This year, I was part of the Pat Timmons-Goodson for Congress campaign, a race that ended up one of the top contests in the nation. Between my first Congressional race and this year, a lot has changed about how we communicate and how the electorate is divided. The world of politics has not adapted well to those changes. The structure of campaigns still looks more like the campaigns from 1998 than the digital world of 2020. 

So here are a few lessons that I learned this cycle and a few that were reinforced by my experience.

1. The first 90 days of a campaign is just as important as the final 90 days. Building a solid foundation is as important as any part of the race. Many campaigns fail because they never get off the ground even if they have a good candidate with a good message. The beginning of any race is about putting in place an infrastructure that can raise the money necessary to take the campaign to the next phase of the election cycle. Campaigns need a professional fundraising operation, an experienced digital team, and a press operation. The target audience in the beginning is the donor class, the institutional players, and the activists. The goal is to give candidates the credibility to entice both large-dollar and low-dollar contributors to the campaign, giving the campaign the perception of viability.  
2. The press release is dead, or at least on life support. In the age of emails, press releases from campaigns are a terrible way to communicate with reporters. As somebody who is on a lot of press lists, I assure you that most press releases end up unread. If the topic is not worth a phone call to reporters, don’t send an email. Reporters are all on social media, especially twitter. Make sure they are following your campaign. That’s how to get information to them. If it’s particularly important give them a heads up with a text or call. In today’s world, the primary point of a newspaper article or TV hit is to turn it into a social media post that might get traction or email to donors. 
3. When it comes to getting press, don’t swing at every pitch. Make your campaign relevant to the broader conversation. Pitch stories that either comment on the events of the current news cycle or are so revelatory that they deserve a story on their own. Most campaigns don’t have the bandwidth to drive a story unless it’s a broader scandal. 
4. Direct-to-donate ads are surpassing emails for low-dollar fundraising. Simple ads on social media drove a lot of the low-dollar contributions in 2020, at least on the Timmons-Goodson campaign. We had a good story and a good messenger and people responded.  As inboxes get slammed with email requests, ads on social media can reach the same people and give them information in a more interactive way with a single click instead of asking them to open an email with some urgent subject line. However, you need a professional digital team to make those ads work. 
5. Campaigns are spending way too much on traditional communications and way too little on innovative field operations. Television may still be the most powerful medium, but it’s seen by fewer and fewer voters every cycle. And while digital is on the rise to help low-dollar fundraising, it still has a ways to go as a persuasion medium. In the Timmons-Goodson race, by early October, the two campaigns and their allies had spent more than $5 million and less than a third of the voters knew anything about either candidate. Some of the problem may have been the amount political advertising in the state, but I suspect voters are learning to tune out political ads and may not believe what they say anyway. More than $500 million was spent of television advertising in North Carolina. Campaigns would have been wise to take a $100 million of that and trained an army of people to talk directly to the very few swing voters that the ads were trying persuade. 
6. The institutional players should stick to their strengths and get out of the business of directing strategies and tactics for campaigns. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other institutional players are great at making connections, helping with fundraising, providing information on issues and processes, and helping candidates see the big picture of the campaign. They are terrible at providing strategic and tactical advice. While most of the staffers are smart, motivated, and committed to the cause, many do not have the experience to make important strategic decisions. They tend to see races in national terms when Democrats desperately need to localize races if they hope to win tough districts. They see campaigns in formulaic terms instead strategic terms. Most staffers don’t understand the difference between tactics and strategies. Instead of making demands about how to spend money, the committees should spend more time making sure that it continues to flow. Their record of winning campaigns, especially in tough districts has been abysmal in recent years. 

I’ve got more thoughts but that’s enough for today. The big takeaway for me is that political campaigns behave remarkably like they did when I first began working on them more than 20 years ago. During that period, we’ve had a communications revolution that has changed the way people and businesses communicate. The media environment has been turned upside down by the rise of social media and cable news. Newspapers, especially local ones, are on the verge of extinction. And yet the political professionals still operate as if they are the dominant source of news for most people. The world of professional politics needs to catch up to the rest of the world and get out of their Washington bubble.