Doug Usher, a partner at Forbes Tate Partners and co-founder of the Political Analytics program at Columbia University, has spent two decades studying how campaigns build and sustain political power. In this episode of the Campaign Trend Podcast, we dig into a fundamental shift in how that power is now being constructed — and what it means for everyone from first-time congressional candidates to major trade associations.
The traditional model, as Usher explains, is built on borrowing and renting. Campaigns secure endorsements from unions and business groups, buy ads on broadcast television, and tap into audiences that other institutions have already assembled. It works, but it's transactional — and the connection it creates is weak. The emerging alternative is something different: candidates building their own audiences from scratch, one follower at a time, and maintaining those relationships well beyond election day. Bernie Sanders, AOC, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Donald Trump are the clearest examples. Each built something durable — an institution unto themselves — that operates independently of party structures and outside institutions.
The downstream effects are significant. We explore how audience ownership changes the power dynamic inside government itself. When members of Congress can raise money and mobilize voters without party leadership, traditional tools of discipline — committee assignments, campaign funding threats — lose their leverage. The result is a legislature that is increasingly difficult to organize and govern.
The conversation also takes on harder questions that campaigns rarely discuss honestly. Building an audience isn't the path of least resistance for most candidates — and for moderates in particular, it may not be a viable path at all. The content that attracts followers tends to be either extreme or extraordinarily compelling. The center of the caucus, by its nature, rarely generates either. Usher draws a clear distinction between coalition-building — which is about assembling blocks of votes through trust relationships over time — and audience-building, which is algorithmic and individual. The two can coexist, but they are not the same thing.
The practical takeaway for practitioners is blunt: if you're recruiting candidates, social media following is now a legitimate signal of political viability. Someone with no online presence in 2026 probably isn't going to build one. The smarter play is to find candidates who are already building something — and help them scale it.