Call to Action: A Story From Inside Two Campaigns, Part Two

Part two of the story, a call to action for those who care about representative government, justice, and leadership.

By Harrison Levitan

NOTE: The following is a true story, but the names of those involved have been omitted.

Cynicism is an imposter, blindness masquerading as wisdom. I was raised on satirists like Stephen Colbert, people who attack serious problems with levity. I admire the ability to stare down the devil grinning, but the approach has pitfalls. Comedy’s natural bend is toward cynicism. That bend can provide the chainmail for our daily struggles, but it can also serve as a bunker of sorts. Insulated by cynicism, a flippant attitude becomes its own confinement. I cannot deny, there are days that the bunker has serious allure.

I want to share the true story of a damaging, but common political operative. This operative preys on uncompetitive races. Rather than mounting an honorable challenge against long odds, he instead applies minimal effort with the goal of personal enrichment. I did not understand this dynamic when I landed a job for the 2024 election, but it soon became my reality.

On paper, my new job looked like a congressional district likely to flip. The current elected Republican representative occupied a precarious position, vacillating between fealty to MAGA and an empty bipartisanship. On top of double-dealing, the representative had an aversion to any public setting where they might encounter an unhappy voter. The representative hid from constituents. A skilled Democratic challenger could blow this incumbent out of the water.

“There is nothing here,” I was told by trusted colleagues. Party insiders agreed, declining to designate the race as a winnable “Red to Blue” flip. Without that designation, serious donors were unlikely to give. If I had a competing job offer, this would have given me more pause. Instead, it spurred me on. Win or lose, I savored the opportunity to exceed low expectations. I accepted the role of field director, believing I understood the obstacles before me. I would quickly learn I only had one obstacle: the political consultant advising the Democratic campaign, who as it turns out, belonged to a boutique firm.

The warnings were visible at the start. For instance, I was surprised to learn that the consultant managed all elements of the congressional campaign, not just specialty roles like digital marketing and direct mailing. The consultant, in fact, “hired” the candidate, not the other way around. The biggest warning of them all was that the consultant was a Republican working for a Democratic challenger. Ds and Rs campaign in markedly different ways, and because of that, most consultants usually stick to one tribe or another.

I initially downplayed my concerns because the consultant had guided our candidate through the Democratic primary successfully. There had been another challenger, but my candidate, with the help of the consultant, had beaten them out. The consultant must have some idea of what they’re doing, I told myself.

My job as the field director was to design and execute a voter outreach program. Field programs depend on either full-time organizers or paid canvassers. Organizers embed within a community. Their success depends on their ability to empower local volunteers to shape the campaign. In contrast, paid canvassers have one job: knock on doors. Generally part-time and unsupervised, they are notorious for faking data.

A field program can be boiled down to identifying likely voters for your candidate and then mobilizing them. Without trustworthy data, that task is impossible. A campaign is only as good as the data it acquires, and while I’ve known one or two organizers who faked it, they were the exception. With paid canvassers, however, the fakers are widespread. I would have preferred organizers, but the consultant hired a team of two dozen paid canvassers before I was brought on.

It took only a week before I voiced my suspicions: I believed the canvassers knocking on the most doors were faking their data. The high contact rates in communities not welcoming to our campaign suggested they were padding the numbers. “You have it backwards,” the consultant claimed. The other canvassers were the issue, they needed to match his team’s high response numbers. Staff members privately agreed with me, but the consultant maintained exclusive access to the voter database. This was not normal.

I asked for data access repeatedly until the consultant finally relented. Within hours I had the hard evidence: 50% of the canvassers were faking 100% of their data. I was vindicated, or so I thought. Despite the overwhelming evidence, the consultant was reluctant to axe anyone. Why couldn’t this be a final warning, a second chance? These people had compromised the campaign, wasted precious dollars, and expressed no remorse (only one person copped to their crime.) I still had to push for the firings. It felt like I was taking crazy pills. The consultant eventually agreed to offload the fakers but with a caveat: staff was sworn to secrecy, and the candidate was not to be told.

This was the first of many controversies, and I assumed the consultant was just trying to avoid blame. Thanks to a little digging, I learned there was something bigger here: many of the canvassers, and specifically the data fakers, had been hired through a local staffing agency. That agency was owned by the same consultant. He was hiring his own. Weeks of work were being manufactured and tens of thousands of dollars were paid out to do-nothing liars so the consultant could collect double fees!

That only brings us to the end of June. To catalog all the misdeeds of campaign consultants would take far more than an article. Maybe the best illustration of the consultant’s gift for incompetence is his 2022 run of a Republican in the very same district. Not only was that candidate more extreme than the already extreme incumbent, they were a known bigot. As if running such a disgraceful individual wasn’t bad enough, the consultant had found a way to sink even lower. The defining moment of that run was when conservative media caught the consultant plagiarizing the bulk of the campaign website from a well-established politician.

There is a quote from the film. “Big Short”: “Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I’ll have my wife’s brother arrested.” I asked myself that question a lot. Ultimately, I cannot say if the consultant was intentionally sabotaging the campaign, or if he was truly that incompetent. Somewhere between the lack of fundraising, the absence of substantial advertising, and the rejection of a candidate debate, that concern became a difference without a distinction.

The consultant in my story is just one example of the obvious bad actors populating our electoral system. A strong incumbent meant political insiders wrote a race off. Money, attention, and expertise were all diverted elsewhere. A political blogger did try to bring light to the presence of this harmful consultant, calling him out by name, but to no avail. By the time I arrived for the general election campaign, it was too late.

I find it hard to believe party leaders were not aware of what was going on. There was a mutual disinterest here. On one hand, the consultant wanted to act without prying eyes, and the party wanted no part of a losing campaign. There was no one coming to save our campaign.

This was not what I had signed up for, but this district deserved a more effective campaign. I dug in. With 100 days left my lobbying paid off: I was allowed to dispense with paid canvassers, hire organizers, and run a real field program. That program recruited and trained hundreds of volunteers, who spoke with thousands of fellow voters. An energetic ground game convinced the incumbent this was a legitimate challenge. Millions of Republican dollars were spent in-district, allowing two neighboring Democrats to successfully win competitive seats. We accomplished something, despite the consultant’s misdirection.

Epilogue: Campaign Reform

We need serious campaign reform. Too much of what is wrong in this country derives from our broken election system. How we choose our leaders matters. We also need more activists, but not everyone has the time, temperament, or ability to do that kind of work. The best thing you can do to make an impact is to get more active. Make new friends, deepen existing relationships, create a book club, join a sports league, etc. Focus on connections. Focus on what the issues mean for people in their daily lives.

The enemies of democracy thrive on isolation, on the weakening of social ties. The most robust defense we have is our sense of community, and that defense needs renewal. So quit bowling alone and go make some adult friends. Then support good candidates and get involved. We need more ordinary people on the front lines, not paid consultants.

Harrison Levitan is a writer and political organizer who has contributed to local, congressional, and presidential campaigns. The emphasis of his work is voter outreach in traditionally conservative areas. Originally from Boston, Harrison currently resides in Southern California.