Webinar Recap: What We Learned from Speaking to Hundreds of PA Voters
Deb Ciamacca and Lissa Geiger Shulman were 2020 candidates for the Pennsylvania State House. Strong polling throughout the year showed them poised to win their races, and it even looked like Democrats would flip the whole chamber. But on Election Night, they fell short – and Democrats in PA even lost seats. These results mirrored similar trends across the country, where the polling didn’t match the results.
In 2021, Deb and Lissa partnered with EveryDistrict to conduct a listening tour of their districts to understand what the polling missed and how Democrats can persuade and mobilize new voters in state and local elections. Deb and Lissa joined EveryDistrict Executive Director Nicole Hobbs for a conversation on what they learned from speaking to hundreds of PA voters and how EveryDistrict is using those lessons to win in 2022.
Click below to watch the full video of the event:
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Continue reading for the full transcript.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you all so much for joining us this evening. My name is Nicole Hobbs. I am the Co-Founder and Executive Director of EveryDistrict. I’m so glad to be with you all tonight. For those of you who are new to EveryDistrict, EveryDistrict was started a little over five years ago with a mission to flip state legislative districts and state legislatures blue by raising money for candidates who were running in competitive districts across the country to help them run fully funded campaigns that could win. In those past five years, we are incredibly proud of the fact that we have worked with over 200 legislative campaigns in 12 different battleground states, and that we’ve helped to elect dozens of candidates in those states across the country. But looking back on the last five years, we also know that there is still more room for us to grow in terms of seeing that sea change in democratic power in the states. Particularly in 2020, I saw a lot of polling leading up to election day that showed candidates in a really good position to flip districts blue and enough of those candidates in a good position to flip districts blue, such that Democrats were going to flip a whole bunch of legislatures and really come out of that election having changed the balance of power in the states. But as many of you on tonight’s call know, that, unfortunately wasn’t the case. We saw in states like Pennsylvania, which we’re going to talk a lot about tonight, that instead of Democrats flipping the legislature, we actually had Democrats see a net loss in seats in the state legislature in 2020. And unfortunately that was a similar story to what we saw happen all across the country. At EveryDistrict we knew we needed to do more to figure out why that had happened, and why there was such a mismatch between that optimistic polling and the results. We were incredibly fortunate in 2021 to partner with two of the candidates who we had endorsed in 2020 who ran for the Pennsylvania state house Deb Ciamacca and Lissa Geiger Schulman, who are here with us this evening. From that partnership, Deb and Lissa in 2021 knocked on thousands of doors and had hundreds of conversations with voters in the two districts that they ran in in 2020, which were two unique districts that we will talk about this evening. From those conversations, what we will also talk about tonight is what Deb and Lissa learned, and what they shared with us, the team at EveryDistrict and how we are incorporating that into the work that we are doing with campaigns this year to ensure that we are helping candidates run the best possible campaigns so we can see that greater success in 2022 and beyond. Before I dive into asking Deb and Lissa a whole bunch of questions tonight, I do want to give them a virtual round of applause. Unfortunately neither of them are candidates this year, but they spent countless hours last year talking to voters and having these really important conversations. I want to give them a ton of credit for doing that and for continuing that work by sharing those lessons with 2022 candidates, so virtual applause for them! I also want to acknowledge a couple of other folks who without them, what we’re going to talk about tonight would not have been possible, in particular, I will call out Steve Poses and Nancy Kleinberg, who were incredibly fundamental to this project; the entire persuasion project team, who put their heads together to really think about the ways in which we can re-envision and reimagine campaigning, which we will talk about more tonight; and also the dozens of volunteers who helped Deb and Lissa have those conversations. I know many of them are on tonight’s call as well, and I want to give them a virtual round of applause as well. And a huge thank you, because without them, this work would not be possible. One quick note of housekeeping, we will be taking questions tonight. We have the Q & A feature enabled, so as you think of a question, please feel free to ask it. I will also shout out EveryDistrict’s outreach director, Doug Foote, who is helping with logistics tonight. You may see him popping into the chat and helping to answer some of your questions, and we will get to a few more of those at the conclusion of tonight’s event. So with that, Deb and Lissa, I want to start by going back to a little bit over two years ago to when you both first decided to jump into these races and decided to become candidates. So Deb, I’ll with start you: Tell us a little bit more about yourself and what motivated you to run in 2020.
Deb Ciamacca:
Well, I guess life comes full circle. The real reason that I got involved in running was the Parkland shooting in 2018. I was teaching government and politics at my high school, and I’ve told this story many times, it seems like a small story, but a student raised her hand in the middle of me talking about the Parkland shooting and said, why aren’t our lives as valuable as the second amendment and why don’t people fight for our right to live in this classroom without anyone, you know, attacking us. And it just really galvanized me to do something. I started organizing teachers and then I realized that the best way to enact change was really to run for the state legislature, which really had not been on my mind at all. But I saw this as an opportunity and also as an obligation to my students. Just a little bit about me: many people on this call probably know my background, but, I’m the oldest of six kids, and originally from Massachusetts. I didn’t have the money to go to college. And so I went to Penn state on an ROTC scholarship and I was commissioned a Marine Corps officer. I served five years in the Marine Corps, and then eventually went into business working for several big companies like Raytheon. Then I went into teaching and taught for 20 years. And the saddest thing for me is I gave up my teaching job to run for office and was all set to run this year, but unfortunately, the lines were drawn for redistricting and I don’t have the opportunity to run this year. So, what I’m trying to do this year is help other candidates as best I can and make sure that we flip the state house from red to blue.
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
I am a former teacher. I joined Teach for America right out of college hoping to really make a difference in the classroom. I taught for several years in Pittsburgh public schools, again, thinking that impacting and educating the future generation was the way to make a difference. I moved on after a furlough to a position as an advocate for universal pre-K and quality childcare, knowing the social and emotional learning skills that my kids were lacking was something I really wanted to focus on. I thought I was going to make a difference as an advocate, and did a couple years in Harrisburg and won some incremental increases in our state budget for programs for children and families. But really in 2020, what sparked my run was that there was a lot of discussion about the potential that Democrats could take over leadership in Harrisburg and one or more chambers. And I was very frustrated with what I found to be kind of a lack of courage on both sides of the aisle for anyone wanting to make any sort of change or really to pass legislation and fund programs that were going to make a meaningful difference for children and families. So for me, it was about wanting to make sure that it wasn’t just, oh, now there’s potentially new party control possible, but that the policies and the things that I saw over my time working with children that they actually got passed. So that’s what sparked and motivated me to run for office along with my children. I was four months pregnant when I decided to run for office. Just knowing the world that I wanted them to grow up in was very different than the path the legislature had set our state was a big motivating factor for me.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you both for that. Incredibly, incredibly inspiring. Lissa, I’ll pose this next question to you first. Again, going back a little over two years ago, can you both talk to me a little bit more about your 2020 campaigns? We all lived through 2020 and know it was an incredibly different year for campaigning, but there were also some pieces of the campaign that remained the same. In particular, can you talk about spending priorities, messaging, your opponent, and what the end result was in your campaign?
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
As you mentioned, COVID threw a huge wrench in my campaign. My plan had been to basically knock doors daily, from the time petitions started through the end of the election. I had volunteered on other campaigns. I enjoyed knocking doors. I know that face to face contact is really meaningful, especially from the candidate. So that was my initial plan and what I hoped to do. Up through basically the COVID shutdown, with the exception of about a week to a week and a half off when I delivered my baby, I was on the doors pretty much daily and loved it. But, once COVID hit, we really pivoted to phone banking and texting. The phone banking texting worked, we were seeing some slightly higher response rates, and they were somewhat effective during the March and April months, even a little bit through May. The primary that year was moved to June, but then by the time summer hit, we were still doing phones and texting and my opponent was door knocking. I actually talked to a woman, a neighbor of mine who I met recently, who said, oh yeah, I remember your opponent, she knocked on my door. I was like, cool, great. So she was out there, and she was posting videos from the doors. She certainly didn’t knock the number of doors that I had planned, but she knocked a good number of doors. We did about 15 mail pieces. We went up on television. We ran a television piece focused on my bio and issues that made sense given my bio, like education, paid family leave, and quality childcare. And then that ran on some digital platforms as well; it cost a lot of money for the same video over and over and over. That’s pretty much what we invested in. My opponent didn’t do any opposition TV. She did respond to one of my pieces, which was sponsored by the party that knocked some of her response on COVID. She went up at the very end and it was sort of a response to that piece on TV. So we were both up on TV. She sent about six mailers. And then in the end, we lost by about 4%.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thanks. Same question to you, Deb: talk to us a little bit more about your 2020 campaign.
Deb Ciamacca:
Well, I mean, in so many ways it’s a carbon copy of what Lissa went through. I actually decided to run at the end of 2018. So I had knocked doors all of 2019 helping local candidates, but also getting my name out there. I had a primary opponent, so I really couldn’t start on my general election campaign facing an incumbent until June of 2020. I did have my name out there a ton, but it was discouraging because to beat an incumbent, you need to knock doors, you need to have face to face contact. We actually outraised my opponent by about $350,000 and yet, I lost by about 2%. I think that phone calls are great, but they just can’t replace talking to people at the door. I’d like to think that I would’ve won had I actually been able to knock at the door. I will also say, this whole issue of TV is a big one, too. I think from a campaign tactic, I don’t know if we’ve figured out what the use of TV should be in a state rep race. I spent probably $350,000 on television, which is just like, just blows me away. And I can’t even believe I spent that amount of money when it could have been used in so many other ways. So, I think that one of the big things that we wrestled with last year was what’s the place of door knocking versus television. How much should we be using mail? I think we sent out 22 mail pieces because what happened was we got so much money late. What do you do with late money when you can’t knock doors and your television ad is already done? So we did a couple of mail pieces that frankly, I don’t know how effective they were. So, hopefully the pandemic was a once in a lifetime curve ball for campaigns, but, it really made me revisit what happened in the election because the polling had predicted that I would win and, you know, not by a lot, but it predicted that I would win. And many of the other fellow candidates had the same prediction. So, much of 2021 was what happened, what went wrong, and how can we help fix that in 2022?
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you for that. And that leads into my next question. But before I do that, I want to talk a little bit more about your two districts, which are actually two very interesting and unique districts, and those of us who participated in the project last year were particularly lucky for that reason, Deb, your district in the suburbs of Philadelphia was a majority Republican district where Republicans have the registration advantage. But, it was also a highly college educated district where particularly at the top of the ticket, we had seen growing margins for Democrats in recent years. And Joe Biden won your district in 2020 pretty handily. Then on the flip side, Lissa, your district on the other side of the state in the suburbs of Pittsburgh actually had a Democratic registration advantage with many more Democrats than Republicans or Independents. But it also really had a pretty significant population of non-college voters, which, as we’ve seen in broad electoral trends, non-college voters have been drifting more to the right in recent years. We saw that play out, not just in your results, but also at the top of the ticket where Joe Biden pretty narrowly lost your district. But in an area that a lot of folks had predicted that Joe Biden might be able to kind of bounce back after 2016, and an election cycle where Democrats hadn’t done so well in those types of areas. So Deb, I’ll start with you. What interested you in participating in this listening project and what did you learn from speaking with these voters at the doors?
Deb Ciamacca:
Well, I was blown away by the fact that Joe Biden won my district by 13 points, and then I lost by less than two. How did that happen? Why did some people vote for him and not vote for me? That was the fundamental question. So, I wanted to participate in this listening tour to find out. EveryDistrict did a great job targeting people, mainly college educated Republicans and Independents, and we knocked on their door. And we did find that the ones you targeted were for the most part people who voted for Biden, but did not vote for me. I learned a lot. One thing I learned was that, even though they voted down ticket for the Republican candidate, I don’t think there was a ton of allegiance to the Republican candidate based on their performance. I think it was really just, they voted for the Republican down ticket because they were Republican. Most people couldn’t even name the person who’s currently in that office; the gentleman who beat me. Secondly, what I learned is there’s a lot of room for changing people’s minds, not on policy, but on values. Listening – both as a tactic and a way to find out information – going to a door and saying, hi, I’m Deb Ciamacca, I ran for state rep last year, and I just want to hear what your concerns are, what’s going on in the world, you know, what are you angry about? It’s less about policy. And I think more about the fact that most people feel like (A) they’re not being listened to and (B), that there are some underlying value-oriented things that are wrong with the country right now. And I think the more you talk to people, and this is time consuming, the more you get to a place where you can actually have a real, deep conversation with them. I had a number of people who were Trump voters, in addition to Biden voters who said that they would be willing to vote for me, but I will say this takes a lot of time. Candidates only have so many hours in a day and, usually candidates are doing two things: trying to raise money either by calling people or having an event or they’re knocking on doors. Well, for every hour, you’re trying to raise money, you’re not knocking on doors and we need to have candidates in front of these persuadable voters so that they can get to the total of votes that they need. And the more you can help candidates either a raise more money or change our philosophy and spend less money on probably TV and mail, the more likely they are to win.
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
Why I wanted to participate in it? Same as Deb said: I wanted to figure out what the heck had gone wrong. How was it possible that I had polling that was showing me leading by five or more points, even as it narrowed towards the end of the election, and yet the results were not in my favor. Secondly, it was my original plan to knock this entire district. It’s my community. I wanted to talk to more voters. And then certainly, exploring a potential future run was also a motivator. The things I learned, one thing was really just the personal popularity of my opponent, in ways that I hadn’t heard during the campaign. I think of the woman who told me, you know, I love what you’re saying, I love that you’re a teacher, I love that you’re coming to talk to me, but, I did vote for your opponent because my kids were in class with her kids. I just know her and I felt like I had to. Or, the gentleman who talked with me for quite a long time about Biden and how he was getting a bad rap in the media, but he’s so much better than the last guy and railed against Trump. Then, when I asked him to rate my opponent he said, oh, I was in a band with her dad and he gave her super high ratings. So that was one factor in my race where my awareness of it was heightened during this listening tour. Secondly, really getting to talk to a lot of the non-college educated voters who have very strong feelings about the democratic party in a negative way, and recognizing that many of those were people who were probably in my turnout universe. Meaning, I was speaking to them towards the end of the election and reminding them to vote when I’d never asked them to vote for me. That was particularly scary that there were a lot of those voters who say things like I haven’t voted Democrat in years. The democratic party used to be for the working man, and it’s no longer that way. It’s really changed voters. These voters place a lot of value on traditional values and believe that the democratic party, or at least some elements in it, no longer are aligned with those values. So really getting a lot of just long, deep conversations with those voters were really helpful. And we found a lot of areas of agreement, which really made me recognize how challenging it’s going to be for Democrats to win those voters back. Then the last thing is just the amount of time that it is that it takes to really connect with a voter. I thought back to when I did door knock right before the election, probably about the last month in 2020. And so many of my conversations were me giving a brief intro, asking if they had any questions, and really not getting into a longer conversation about their views on politics and issues. Those longer conversations are so much more valuable to winning over voters. So those are some of my big takeaways from the tour.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you, that was incredibly insightful. For us as an organization that works with candidates all over the country, as I said at the outset, and I’ll say it again, we were incredibly grateful to Deb, Lissa, and all of the volunteers for having these conversations because of how instructive they have been for our thinking in 2022 and beyond in terms of how we make endorsements and also how we work with the candidates that we endorse. This year, EveryDistrict is working much more closely with our campaigns than ever before, making sure to impart these lessons that Deb and Lissa have shared with us, really working with our campaigns to make sure they’re incorporating listening, and targeting both the college educated Republicans who have been shifting democratic, and the non-college Democrats who have been shifting right, where we need to really think about how we can bring them back into the fold. So Deb and Lissa, another question for you before I turn to the questions from the audience. First, one of the first questions I asked was tell me about your 2020 campaign. Based on what you just shared, if you were running in 2022, how would you run your campaign differently this time around knowing what you know now?
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
Well, certainly one issue that came up a lot was sort of general government reform type issues, whether it’s term limits and really feeling like all politicians, regardless of party, are in it for themselves and to enrich themselves. I felt like I campaigned on those issues in 2020, but I don’t think they were centered. They certainly weren’t in the TV piece, which is where most of my money was spent promoting. So, those government reform issues and demonstrating ways that I, as a candidate am different than politics as usual is one thing I would do differently. Then the second thing is that voters really appreciate genuine authenticity, and thinking about ways to create that throughout the campaign with imagery, stories, and facts from my bio. That it’s not just the issues I cared about that very much spoke to the base voters but also spoke to some persuadable voters who really were looking beyond specific issues. Things like childcare that has bipartisan support, but that’s not enough. I think going beyond that to talk about other ways that connect with different types of voters and issues is really so, so much broader and not just kind of straight and narrow teacher, mom, family issues.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you, Deb. Same question to you.
Deb Ciamacca:
Having talked to a ton of people in 2021 about what went wrong, I think one of the things we have to do a better job on is number one, I think our data has to improve. I talked to a guy who’s an expert on Republican data and I think we need to do more very targeted voter outreach. For example, I think I was knocking on doors, talking about gun reform to people who were actually members of the NRA. You have to pick your battles – I believe in gun reform, but why would I be going to that door and talking about gun reform? So, data has to improve and what EveryDistrict has done is very good. Number two, I really believe what Lissa said about being authentic is so important. People want to know who you are as a person and you don’t have to bare everything about yourself, but I think you really connect with stories. And when you tell stories about yourself and people can see you as a real person and not some cardboard cutout that they see in a TV commercial, or that they see in a flyer, they’re way more likely to connect with you. I know that some of the most meaningful connections I made during that listening tour were when, you know, like I have a niece and nephew who are both addicted to heroin, and I shared that with a woman and found out that she had lost two of her sons to opioid abuse. I’m not trying to share gratuitously, but I think that we want people to know that we care enough about them. That when we go to Harrisburg, we’re not just going to be people who care about some PAC who gave us money. We care about them. And the reason we’re up there is because we care about individuals and helping them to live a better life. I learned a lot and that’s one of the reasons I’m so sad about not running this year is that I think I did really learn a ton and that’s why I’m continuing to try to help candidates so that they can learn.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you both. We certainly hope that 2020 was not the last time we will see either of your names on the ballot in the future! We have a number of questions in the chat, so I’m going to try to get us through as many of those as possible. This is a great question about tactics: Were there more efficient ways used to talk to voters, especially given how long these door knocks were taking? Did you use any tactics like neighborhood parties, block captains, or focus groups?
Deb Ciamacca:
We talked about it because honestly, Lissa and I were worn out. We were knocking on doors last summer. It was a hundred degrees outside. It’s so unbelievably time consuming and it can be discouraging, too, because you can have eight out of 10 doors where no one is answering. So we did talk about focus groups. I think that’s something that we could have done going forward, but we didn’t do that. Something that I did in the past, which was I had little car parties in 2020 where I opened up my trunk and I had donuts and coffee in the back of my car. I probably would’ve done that again, because in a neighborhood you could focus and invite people to come to those things. That also goes back to the idea of why calling people endlessly for money is hard because on most of those calls we don’t get answers either. That’s not efficient at all. So, would I rather go do eight hours of doors where I might potentially talk to a bunch of people or eight hours of phone calls for money? I mean, I gotta go with the doors. So it just tells you candidates need help raising early money so that they can focus on talking to voters.
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
I agree with everything Deb said. We didn’t try anything necessarily to increase that efficiency. Finding those types of profiles now that I know who to look for as these sort of persuadable voters and really trying to talk to people in my community who aren’t in my bubble. I think about some of the voters, even whose doors I knocked on, you could tell they have like a standard answer, whether it’s like they fake a phone call as soon as they answer the door or they just have a standard, oh, I’m really busy and I have to get the kids. And it’s like, you know, like 10 in the morning, you’re like, eh, school’s not over for a couple hours. How do we get those types of voters? Because it matters what they think and candidates really need to get to know them. When it was ramping up towards a potential run, I was thinking of doing postcard invitations to say: Lissa will be in your neighborhood between these hours, please look for her and open the door. Here’s some pre information perhaps a specific page on the website that gives some information about the candidate. I think all of those could be really helpful tactics.
Deb Ciamacca:
If I could add one thing: We had planned to look at our constituency in niche groups. I had already planned a veteran’s forum where I had a list of 1,300 veterans in the district and we were going to invite them to a town hall. You can also look by occupation, like teachers or union workers. That might be another way to focus and get people to come to a meeting with you.
Nicole Hobbs:
Yes. I’ll jump in and add a few thoughts of my own to this question before the next question. A couple of questions in the chat have asked how many times we talked to these voters, which in 2021 was once, with the goal to then go back in 2022, as you started to talk about Lissa, to really think about different ways to layer in touches. Talking about the work that EveryDistrict is doing this year and how we are helping campaigns, both of you have really spoken to this over the last couple of questions is, that these conversations are time consuming. A candidate has a lot of demands on their time. But the other thing we know is that there are a whole lot of committed Democrats who are going to show up and don’t need these kinds of deep conversations. So that is one thing that we are thinking through with campaigns that we are working with this year are, who are our committed Democrats, who maybe another campaign like the US Senate campaign, or the gubernatorial campaign is touching and making sure that those folks are getting out to vote. And then who are the people who, are those Joe Biden Republicans, for example, splitting their ticket for the down ballot Republican that is so critical for you as the state legislative candidate to make sure you’re getting that personal touch with those voters. The next question, which is a two part question: how effective were volunteers having these conversations? Also, a couple of folks in the chat have said that they’re doing some of some conversations like this, some deep listening and deep canvasing and are having a hard time getting voters to open up, which I have also seen. But I will also say the two of you are some of the best at getting voters to talk and open up at the doors. So, can you talk about volunteers having these conversations and can you both share some of your tips and tricks for getting voters to open up?
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
For volunteer effectiveness, making sure that the script and the communication is really about, I want to relay this back to the candidate. I think that can be really helpful. So it’s not, I’m just here to tell you about this person. Do you like what you heard? Yes or no, which is like a pretty typical volunteer canvass script, here’s some information, will you check them out that kind of thing, but really about whether it’s targeted on an issue or targeted just generally, what are your thoughts in politics right now? This goes back to my teacher time, but having the wait time, that’s a big piece of it. I know when I was a volunteer on campaigns, it’s I gotta finish this packet, I gotta knock so many doors. So let me ask you a question. You don’t have something ready, all right. I’m off to the next door, please check out the website. But really being committed to when I have somebody in front of me, I plan to be here for 10 minutes, and I’m going to keep asking questions. And so I guess that sort of goes to the second part of that question. What gets people to open up? Definitely waiting once you ask a question and not being in a hurry. It was never, for me, it was never about finishing my list of doors for the day. If I don’t finish the street today, I’ll come back tomorrow. So not being in a rush. And then, really trying to ask very open ended questions. How do you feel about the democratic party right now? Then, watching for their reaction. Maybe I want to hone in on a particular person, the president, what are your thoughts on Joe Biden or our Congressman, that kind of thing and picking up visual cues from the household. Is there any evidence that they have kids? Do they have a thin blue line sign or a we support the library sign, those sorts of things. Then asking them about that and just starting to get in conversation and showing a genuine curiosity for who they are as people. Then circling that back to now, can you tell me how you would rate our member of Congress from one to 10 now that we’ve talked about our shared love of the library programs, that kind of thing.
Deb Ciamacca:
Lissa took exactly what I would’ve said where both being teachers, one of the first things you learn as a teacher is you don’t want any silence in your classroom. Because it seems deadly. One thing I see in a lot of volunteers is they think the voter is going to slam the door in your face if you don’t immediately jump in on whatever it is you’re asking. But you really have to wait two or three seconds, because think about yourself: If you get asked a question, you need time to digest it. And, what I often tell people is play stupid. I mean, really like people will say, I heard that there’s record number of people coming across the border and I’ll say, huh, I haven’t heard that. And then, now they want to open up and explain their sources and why they’re saying that. So a lot of times the easiest thing to say is, huh, I just have never heard that before. And people love to tell you why. Lissa’s thing about signs is terrific. I’ll see someone with a Penn state sign outside front and I’ll say, wow, that’s so cool. You went to Penn state, you know, or whatever. And people love that. Or they have a kid pool. That’s a big indicator. Oh, how many kids do you have? Where do they go to school? Do you like your school? Those kinds of warm up questions really get people thinking that this isn’t just a transactional thing and you’re just trying to get information from them. Like you really truly care about them. And then, I use this information. One of the things I would do is follow that up with a postcard and say so glad to meet a Penn State supporter, etc. People love that.
Nicole Hobbs:
Yes, that’s great. We’ve gotten a couple of questions in the chat about values versus policies. If you could give an example about that and also, we have had a couple of people talk about specific issues. Could you give an example of a time when a voter brought up an issue where you maybe were on the opposite side of that issue, but were able to keep the conversation going to find common ground?
Deb Ciamacca:
Well, I had a woman who I was really having a nice conversation with; she was a Republican woman. And then she started on masks and our kids are being abused in school by wearing masks. And what it really came down to were things like parental control and the school telling her what to do and freedom and independence. And I just, I just kept asking her questions to get to the root of why she was so angry. She said she was concerned about masks because her kids were in elementary school and they’re wearing these masks and they can’t breathe. And I’m like, huh, really? Then she explained to me what her kids were going through. And I think she appreciated the fact that I gave her a chance to explain. But it really came down to – which we saw in the Virginia elections – the whole idea of parental control and the fact that she felt like the school had taken away her ability. I did bring up like vaccines. And I said, well, how did you feel about it when you first sent your kids to school? And they asked you to get vaccinated for mumps and those kinds of things, she goes, well, that’s a fair point. I remember she never really answered it, but I think I got her thinking about, was there a similar kind of decision making there and she had agreed to that previously. So why hadn’t she agreed to this? So, that’s an example.
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
I agree. I use that tactic, too. Huh? And just trying to be really grateful, like almost like putting on my semi-academic hat of like, I appreciate you sharing this with me because it’s informing me, it’s informing this project I’m doing and everybody who’s on it. And it’s informing me as a candidate and trying to kind of put it in a box of like, well, I don’t agree with that, but this isn’t, this isn’t about a debate. Again, it goes back to that idea of the phased approach that this first phase was really about listening and learning from voters and that maybe there would be an opportunity to go back and that if I allowed the conversation to continue, maybe we would move from something where we don’t agree to an area where we do agree and something that then could be emphasized in a follow up conversation for me or a volunteer. And then as far as values versus issues, I think this is where you hear the most internal contradictions amongst voters. I still think a lot about the guy who was railing against the handouts and all the money and unemployment that was going out in 2020. He was incredibly upset about it. And even said, you know, said that the government never gave me a dime. Like that was his exact quote. And then as I was asking him more, he talked about being a copy repair person and having been on unemployment in the past. And yet he’s so upset about these people who are getting a dime from the government. That really highlights for me this value of the government shouldn’t be giving handouts and this idea that he somehow was different. He was just patching through a period of unemployment versus what the government’s doing now is these people who don’t want to work, in his opinion. And so I think that idea of really trying to get at well, it’s not that he’s against unemployment because he took it and he needed it and he recognizes that there are a lot of legitimate places where that policy is good and helps folks. It’s really about a larger value of the role of government and what government should and shouldn’t be doing.
Nicole Hobbs:
I think that’s a really, really important distinction, particularly for 2022 candidates and campaign staff who are on here tonight. Something that we are thinking about with the campaigns that we are working with this year is in terms of how do we really shift from individual policies to those broader universal values that we all share. We’ve gotten a couple of questions that have all touched a little bit on this topic, but did you have voters who brought up what we might call misconceptions about Democrats and what we stand for? I know both of you were unfortunately the subject of some pretty intense attacks in 2020. Can you talk about how you tried to respond to some of that at the door last year?
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
I don’t think a ton of it was really responding necessarily for me. I think a lot of it was really just trying to understand what was really behind why they said the democratic party had changed. And then for me, do they feel like I represent the old democratic party that helped them, the working people, or do I represent this new, I think somebody in one of the questions called it, the woke issues of certainly there’s huge layers around diversity identity politics and then some just hot button things in Congress. So, where did I fall as somebody who was there standing on their front lawn or on their front porch, asking them about the party: Was I that Democrat who cared about working people and fixing the economy and making it work for them and their children? I don’t think I ever really got into a back and forth debate with anybody about the party because I didn’t feel like that was the goal of this project. It was really about just understanding what was it behind their thinking and then who fell in which camp? You know, what needed to be on my mail piece next time? Was it about a union endorsement? I definitely had folks saying to me that they looked to their union for their endorsement or they didn’t, or the union bosses are all for Biden and those crazy Democrats. Was the union stamp going to be an indicator that you’re the right kind of Democrat for the working people or is it something else? You had both with those voters that I spoke with. So, again, it wasn’t about the back and forth. It was about really digging into what their beliefs were.
Deb Ciamacca:
I would say, I really only had a couple people that I got into any back and forth because of the same thing that Lissa Alyssa said, I didn’t want to do that. I really wanted to just hear them. But I did have one guy, where I knocked on his door and he said to me, you’re the teacher. And I said, I am a teacher. And he said, you’re the ones trying to brainwash my kid. And this was the whole critical race theory thing. And what I said to him was I believe, as a teacher, that every group should have a voice. And when I was a kid, all the groups didn’t have a voice. And I said, look, I just want to have a narrative of history where everyone’s voice is heard. And he said, no, you’re trying to rewrite the textbooks. And so you get to the point where there are some people who you’re just not going to convince. But by struggling with this with him, I think I came to the conclusion that first of all, you have to know this stuff because people are going to attack you. There’s a way to talk about being inclusive. You need to be able to communicate your values in the language that working class people might use or that a Republican might use. So thinking in terms of freedom, the lingo that puts things in key Republican terms, as opposed to maybe the Democratic terms, but you don’t change who you are. You still believe in those things.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you. We got a question about this, which is something that Deb you touched on at the very beginning and have brought up a couple times since: money. There’s only so many hours in a day and candidates are choosing between knocking that door or making that phone call to a donor. I know both of you got a lot of late money in 2020, and Deb, you talked about how it was pretty limited in terms of what you could spend that money on. Can you talk a little bit about the timing of fundraising, what that means for a campaign and for folks on this call, who might be thinking about making a donation to a state legislative candidate this year, when you would recommend they do that and what kind of impact that can have on the campaign?
Deb Ciamacca:
I’m part of a consortium right now where we’ve got about 13 candidates on there and they need the money now. And I’ll tell you why. If we want to knock doors, you need staff to coordinate volunteers, to train volunteers, to recruit volunteers, and people are desperate for the money to be able to hire staff right now. And staff – just like everything else – has gone up astronomically. Campaign managers are maybe making $7,000 or $8,000 a month and they’re working 24 hours a day, so they deserve it. And then they’ve got staff. So for example, on and off, I had four to five paid staff last year. And so I spent a lot of money on that, but when push comes to shove, getting the money in October, I mean, I would never, ever want anyone to feel ungrateful that you’re getting this money, but, like Emily’s List says, early money is like yeast. And so when you have a little bit of money, other donors start to be attracted to you. So the more you could do to help right now, the better. I just remember, even if it’s a small amount, if you gave someone $10 a month, if that’s all you can afford that people are so grateful for that. Or, if you can recruit 10 of your neighbors to give $10 a month, it just helps the candidates because they don’t have to go ask for that.
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
Over the summer is key. I feel like I was really fortunate. I had a lot of donors who stayed out of my primary. They knew that my race was going to be really important and I didn’t want to weigh in, which was frustrating in the primary. But when it came to the general, I was fortunate that starting almost immediately in June, the donations started coming in. But what got really frustrating was the big bump in October, when all the key decisions had been made. The decisions about staffing, the decisions about TV pieces. And really the only thing to spend a lot of that chunk of money was, well, let’s do another TV piece. It wasn’t a whole filming and production set. It was an attack piece on my opponent and her COVID response. And I don’t know that that was the best strategic decision, but if that money had come in in August, we could have been making the case earlier. We had to fight just to be able to hire a volunteer manager. I think that decision would’ve been much easier if that money had been there in August, we would’ve had the staff, we could have done more of that face to face voter contact. So summer to me is important, and really by end of September, by that point, all the major decisions are sort of made.
Nicole Hobbs:
Thank you. That’s very useful pulling back the curtain a little bit to help those of us on the call really understand how these decisions are made and why giving now – why giving over the summer – is so important. As we are only a couple minutes away from 8:00 PM, I want to end with one final question, which we have touched upon in a variety of ways. To put a pin in it: What would be your advice, thinking about 2022 and doing things differently, what would be your couple of bullet points that you want to share? Both with folks who are volunteers and donors to candidates, as well as any candidates or campaign staff who are on tonight’s call to take away?
Lissa Geiger Shulman:
Don’t pigeonhole your message too much would be one thing I would say. Continue to solicit feedback. If you have staff or volunteers who are out there on the doors like consistently taking in and processing what they’re saying, gut checking it with the people you already know in your community who kind of think differently than you, or just who are outside the politics bubble. Any other civic or other organizations go up to the person who hasn’t talked to you about your campaign, who you think might not even know you’re a candidate and kind of checking with them on some of the key issues or things in the media that are coming up and where they’re at. That listening approach and inquisitive curiosity, I think can be used all the way throughout and in lots of different settings. Then the other piece is, a lot of that pigeonholing or limiting, crystallizing down of a candidate really is led by consultants and campaign teams, because it’s really nice to package something up and put a pretty little bow on it. But voters aren’t really looking for the neat little package. They’re looking for an authentic candidate who has lots of different layers and views. They want to connect with them. And so I think really trusting your gut, and pushing back when you disagree.
Deb Ciamacca:
Not to beat a dead horse here, but, listening is a tactic, too. It’s a way to change people’s minds. It’s so important. And the second thing I would say is, we talk a lot about money, but volunteers are so important and the care and the nurturing of people who give their heart and soul to your campaign- I can’t emphasize enough that if you look at how much volunteer time is worth, it’s worth really spending the time to have someone as a volunteer coordinator and for you as a candidate with, I know you’re limited on time, but to really take care of volunteers because they’re your army and that’s how you’re going to win.
Nicole Hobbs:
Great! Thank you both again so much for joining us this evening. Thank you for all of the work that you have done over the past several years, and for sharing that wisdom with us, not just tonight, but making sure that that’s passed on to candidates who are running this year. Thank you all for joining. We will be in touch about ways that you can get involved to support candidates that EveryDistrict is working with in 2022. I hope everyone has a great night. Thank you.