The People Who Make Politics Happen – Daniel Laurison (Swarthmore College)

Daniel Laurison:

Having real conversations with people and not just breeding from scripts, I think would make a huge difference in how connected people feel to politics.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing partner of startup caucus, an investment fund and incubator for campaign technology. Welcome to the business of politics show on this podcast, we bring you into conversation with the entrepreneurs who build best in class political businesses, the funders who provide the capital and the operatives who put it all together to win campaigns. Today, we've got a very special guest. We are joined by Daniel Sen. He's an associate professor of a sociology at Swarthmore college, the associate editor of the British journal of sociology and a Carnegie fellow. He researches and writes on social class and political inequality. He's out with a great new book that I've really enjoyed reading called producing politics inside the exclusive campaign world, where the privileged few shaped politics for all of us. We talk about his own campaign experiences, what he learned from his research and how campaigns can become more effective organizations. Daniel, you begin your book with a story I've heard many times before from technologists and entrepreneurs that I work with via startup caucus, who are frustrated that campaigns don't make full use of their talents. Share that story with our listeners. And I'm curious to hear what you've learned after your research about why that may have happened.

Daniel Laurison:

Sure. So in 2004, I was just starting grad school in Berkeley. I worked at a small nonprofit in Philadelphia for about five years before going to grad school. And it was the Bush carry campaign. And I thought, you know, I wanted Carrie to win and I had a lot of skills from working in a small nonprofit. I knew how to, you know, organize events. I knew how to manage volunteers and recruit them. I'd done fundraising. I'd done, you know, from my perspective, pretty much everything that you know, every kind of skill you might need to be at least moderately helpful to to a campaign organization. So I went down to the carry office and said, hello, and I've I I'm available. And what do you need from me? And as you know, anyone in this world will know, they said, great, welcome.
Thank you so much. Here's a list of people to call. There's a chair off you go. And you know, I wanna be clear that the you know, I think that's important and effective and I it's, you know, a key role for volunteers to play. But there was nothing else available. Right. so I did that to the best of my ability. I went to Nevada, I did, you know, all the things that they had volunteers doing. But then I, you know, I wanted to be more involved, both because again, I had thought I had something to offer. But also cuz I wanted to sort of understand the inside of the world of politics a little bit. And so in 2006 I found a, a contested house race, not too far from me and I, you know, a contested

Eric Wilson:

House, race, not too far from Berkeley. That must have been a, a good year for Republicans.

Daniel Laurison:

<Laugh> <laugh> it was, it was over the Hills in anyway I'm blanking on the guy's name at the moment, but it was a Democrat actually taking over a seat from a from a long time Republican come

Eric Wilson:

Back. Oh, bad

Daniel Laurison:

Here for <laugh> but anyway, I went, you know, I went over there, I showed up, I said, I could give you, you know, hours every week. What can I do? And I blew up some balloons one time. And then again you know did did phone calls and canvasing and you know, I had that experience again early in 2000 in 2008 with the same campaign where I said, now I've got, I just have this job four hours a day, four days a week. Other than that, I could give you all of the time I've got and I'm thinking I'm offering like 20, 25 hours a week of free labor. They've gotta take me this time. And they said, if you've got 60 hours a week and you can quit that other job, you have great welcome aboard.
Otherwise there's nothing we could do with you. And I finally actually got involved in a campaign later that summer of 2008. Because someone I knew from grad school was involved with the local Obama organization and as they were staffing up, I had, you know, spent a fair amount of time being there as often as I could. And she sort of, you know, knew me a little bit and chose me as one of the people to be one of the actual full-time unpaid, but full-time sort of semi staff people in the Berkeley Oakland Obama office. So, you know, and then, you know, the other thing I recounted the book is that once I was in that role, when volunteers came in and said, I've got so many skills, we all just sort of went, hahaha yeah. We know, go make some phone calls.
so we did the exact same thing. It's part of your training back to people <laugh> yeah. It's part of your training and I mean, you know, part of it is there, you know, the bulk of what is the, you know, the way campaigns are set up, even the Obama organization in 2008, which was much more invested in letting people have some control over, over being part of the campaign, it let people organize their own house parties get their own lists for canvasing, that sort of thing. You know, part of it is that just a lot of what needs to happen is contacting voters and that's really important. But part of it is that people who get a little taste of that political power that sort of being in the, in the room where it happens as, as the, you know, as Hamilton says and is one of my interviewees said wanna keep it for themselves. And I think that's part of the dynamic that's going on that keeps regular people from being able to contribute as much as they might like. Yeah.

Eric Wilson:

And I think another thing that I, I have seen is the trust that comes with it right. And giving people access to data. Yes. But also the, you know, the exposure that comes with because, you know, I, I, I've been on campaigns where we had to deal with some volunteer who changed their Twitter bio to say that they worked for our campaign then says something untoward. We now have a problem. Right? So like this was a big challenge for me on the, the Ruby campaign in, in 2016, we had this massive social media volunteer base and, and we wanted to take full advantage of them. But the entire time I was convincing people inside the campaign that, you know, no, we don't wanna shut this down. We don't want the, tell them to stop doing what they're doing. They're giving us hours of their day. And, and so I, I think about Lee Atwater said that the mark of a truly great campaign is the ability to absorb infinite numbers of people. And you diagnose that as <laugh> as a real blank spot for a lot of campaigns.

Daniel Laurison:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's, you know, a lot of people in, in campaigns believe, and I'm not sure it's entirely true that the, you know, one of the most important things is to have a, a control over the message, right? To have a single sort of line that's going out about what this campaign is about and to reinforce that over and over. And if you let other people in, then they might say things that aren't what you would say what the campaign wants to put out there. And so I think that, you know, I, I both understand why people wanna have control and I don't think it's unreasonable in some cases. And I think it again, gets in the way of, of fully involving more people.

Eric Wilson:

And, and you, to that end, you write that contemporary campaigns tend to be performances more than conversations. Each campaign is conceived and executed as an isolated event rather than part of an ongoing party project. What do you think are the root causes for that disconnect?

Daniel Laurison:

I mean, one thing is, I think, you know, a lot of the people who work in campaigns are people who, who work in politics more generally are people, you know, the, the comparison I often make is that it's like a kid who's been a, you know, a, a hardcore baseball fanatic since the time they could walk and they get to play pro baseball. And they're, you know, what you're interested in when you're playing pro baseball so far as I could tell, not being a baseball person myself, right. Is, is what's happening on the other team what's happening on the field. That's where all of your sort of concentration is. And I think, you know, politics is especially difficult in that way, because it's also really hard to tell whether any given thing that a campaign does is what necessarily is making the difference. So, you know, you can look at, at whether polls are shifting, et cetera, but at the end of the day, it's, it's really challenging to figure that out.
And so what you, but what you can see right away is do the people around me think this ad I made was cool. Is it getting media attention? The re is the other side reacting one way or another, right? The retweets, the, the hits on you know, and, you know, to some extent hits on YouTube or re retweets or et cetera are some indication of, of people actually engaging. But a lot of it is really just the, you know, the reactions to other people in politics. And so that makes it hard to focus on the people outside. And it is hard to get a sense of, you know, what's going on for the millions of people in this country. So, you know, again, it's not that I think it comes out of something necessarily nefarious, but it, it does have negative effects.

Eric Wilson:

Daniel, the book is based on your interviews with campaign operatives I'm curious to hear what are some of the surprising things that you learned from them that you didn't already know going into this project?

Daniel Laurison:

You know, one thing was, I was surprised by how willing people were to tell me what's wrong with, with the campaign world. <Laugh> you know, a lot of people had real critiques of the culture of you know, one thing we is that, you know, a lot, you tweeted this, that's why I'm thinking of it, right? That you know, that, that the relationship between the best evidence we have about what's effective and what campaigns actually do is not perfect or linear in any way. And so, you know, they were willing to make those critiques and they were also willing to acknowledge the thing I just said a minute ago, which is that it is really hard to know what's working, what's effective, how much difference you make, whether you're making a difference at all. And so a lot of what people in campaigns end up doing is based on either conventional wisdom from people around them, or just sort of a gut sense of what's going to work or who can argue the loudest, or has the sharpest elbows. And that was something that a lot of people were really concerned about.

Eric Wilson:

That is fascinating. I'm I'm thinking back to <laugh>, this is like the, the finishing weeks of the 2016 campaign, there was an anecdote about how, how Trump's campaign was planning his travel strategy based on the, like, build your own electoral college map. Right. <laugh> that, that, that was, that was what is that, that was at least what was reported. And then someone from the, the Clinton campaign tweeted, needless to say, this is not how we plan our strategy. And, and so it, it really reveals that. I mean, I, I think a lot of political operatives are critical. They know that their industry could be done better, but there are two things kind of holding them back. One is the business models, right? The, the, the way you earn a living in politics is by doing the things that people will pay you for. Right. So there's sort of that, that market pressure, and then also the campaigns as you discuss aren't necessarily for the voters, therefore funders, candidates, party committee, you know, the they're they're the operatives, the people producing politics are, are doing it for a different customer. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so I think those are, those are two things that I, I, I saw come out in, in your interviews.

Daniel Laurison:

Yeah. I mean, one per, one person told to said to me, you know, about sort of the idea of doing something that was different or unusual or not what everyone else expected. You know, he said, I suppose you could stick, stick your neck out that way. And if you win doing that, you'll probably be okay. But if you lose you're, if you lose, you're gonna be out of the circle. Right, right. You're gonna be that guy who tried something weird or that other people didn't think would work or that, you know, made life harder for the other folks in one way or another. And no one's gonna wanna work with you again. And a huge part of how, how people get jobs in campaigns. So this, you know, this is true in lots of other fields as well, but I think it's, it's more true than average in campaign world.
A lot of how people get jobs, almost entirely, how people get jobs is someone else knows you and thinks you're good and offers to bring you on. Right. and so if you are making enemies, because you are arguing that, you know, the ad guys should not actually get that much money, this cycle, we need to put more money into something else. Or if you are, you know, insisting on, you know, making a big thing about, you know, I had someone with a candidate who was unusual in some way, and they wanted to address it head on mm-hmm <affirmative>. And the rest of the campaign just thought that was too much of a risk. So again, if you sort of stick your neck out and do insist on doing something, everybody else thinks is too risky. They're not gonna necessarily wanna work with you again. So there's a big incentive to sort of stick with what everybody else believes is the right thing. Even if everybody, or at least some substantial portion of people are secretly thinking, it's not the right thing either. Right.

Eric Wilson:

You know, that, I, I think there are two things converging here. Right. Which we, you know, there's, you cite a lot of research in, in one of your early chapters about campaigns don't necessarily matter. Right. I think right. Someone summed it up really well. Like campaigns don't matter until they do, which I think is like the, the right attitude here. But so if we take that of campaigns, typically don't matter, but we can't take risks cuz it might screw it up. You know, that's a really hard circle to square. I guess you rightly call out that because politics, professional politics that is is, is a lot of who, you know, that tends to mean who you are. Right. So people that went to colleges like you, that came from similar backgrounds like you you know, startup caucus is working with two companies that are trying to address this challenge.
One is G P jobs, which is a jobs board, right? You, you point this out in your book, most jobs are not publicly posted on campaigns. And, and G O P jobs is one of the only jobs boards. I know that frequently does not tell you what job you're applying for. Right. It just gives you kinda anonymous information. And then revered work, which is helping people build a more stable career, right. Because unless you have, you know, family resources, it's hard to go unemployed for weeks, right. Or months at a time. And so we're, we're looking at this and we take the view that, you know, like the success that we've seen in candidate recruitment of, of recruiting candidates who are more reflective of the districts they seek to serve, we need campaigns to look like that too. I'm curious to hear what other recommendations you have for practitioners on opening the industry to new professionals.

Daniel Laurison:

Yeah. I think those are those sound, both sound like great initiatives. I think the other big thing that could be done is really rethinking what the entry level or sort of starter jobs look like in the first place. Right. so you mentioned, if you don't have a lot of income, it's hard to go unemployed. It's also hard to go to take a job that you don't know when it will end that you might have to move for that, and that pays you off. I mean, often the first time people work for a campaign, they do it for free, or they do it for very, you know, very, very, very, very little money and no job security. So I think rethinking how that works. I mean the other thing that, that most national campaigns tend to do is hire people from DC or from, you know, from anywhere in the country to work anywhere else in the country.
and so that means requiring people to move, to get there, you know, for their, for these early jobs. I think, you know, hiring more people who live in the places that the campaigns are happening would make sense and paying them better. And this is gonna be a hard one for campaign culture to accept. But I think if we want a sustainable politics industry that actually connects regular people to politics, it probably needs to happen is figuring out how to not make it a job. That's a hundred hours a week for the, you know, during the last month of the campaign and 70 hours a week or whatever it is before that, trying to make it a job that you can have, and also, you know, have a family, right. Also you know, what, what are the people I, I interviewed described the American association of political consultants conference as a, as a bunch of really sad, divorced old white guys <laugh> which, you know, that he said, please don't attribute that to me. And obviously lots of people figure out

Eric Wilson:

How the later this week, so yeah.

Daniel Laurison:

Right. Tell them I said that, no, you know, I think, you know, lots of people figure out how to have a relatively healthy family life, despite the ways that campaigns make that difficult, but it's really hard. And probably requires having a spouse with a lot more flexibility and a lot less of a work commitment than the person on the campaign.

Eric Wilson:

Well, when I was reading this chapter of your book, the thing that I kept going back to is you know, I'm, I'm a big believer of the lean startup methodology, right? Which you, you, the, the idea for, for a company is you get the minimum viable product and you, you just get along as, as, as best you, the big criticism of that is it doesn't allow room for things like diversity, putting ethics and more, you know, like there, there are just a lot of things that get sacrificed when you're running lean and, and same thing goes for campaigns. And, and I, one, it's just fascinating when you start to dig into this stuff, there's so many unintended consequences. So when you look at a campaign that has hard, you know, at the federal level, those, those restrictions on how much an individual can give, who can give and then there's time constraints.
So, so campaigns are necessarily restrained by time and resources. And so you have to chip away it, well, what's essential. I don't think people are saying, oh, I'm going to exclude this type of person. It's I need someone who can get here tomorrow that I already know and trust. And so I'm just gonna go to my own network. Right. I don't, I don't think it's in intentional. So again, I don't know what the policy change is. Maybe, you know, put more money into politics or more specifically put more money into campaigns. Right. Which, which would be the, the distinction there. So it was just a, a fascinating perspective.

Daniel Laurison:

I mean, I think one, one solution is maybe not at the campaign level, but at the, the party and affiliated organization level. Right. Because those are institutions that and you know, and the, and the 5 0 1 C four S that could accept unlimited money from practically anybody right. That those sorts of organizations could hire people to work for them year round, who live in the places they're gonna be campaigning who can give them job security can, you know, can do all of that. Of course, there's still fluctuations in the, in the cycle in terms of how much money is coming in right now versus how much money is gonna be coming in six months from now. But I think it would be possible for those sorts of organizations to do that. And to, you know, to the extent allowed by the law, that's always a little complicated, but to coordinate with the campaigns or to you know, or to otherwise, you know, have people at least get their starts and those kind of

Eric Wilson:

Right. Kind of a launching pad, you're listening to the business of politics show. I'm speaking with Daniel Morrison and author of producing politics. Daniel, you write about how political operative sync and, and work, and I'm left with the sense that you're frustrated by the lack of a peer review process. Like you'd see in academia, or even like a business metrics effectiveness culture that you'd see in, in commercial endeavors. I wanna get you to say something nice about our listeners. So what talent skills or insights do you think successful or effective political operatives possess?

Daniel Laurison:

Almost everybody I talk to, I really enjoyed speaking with, and I really respect a lot. Right. so I tried to be, as you know, I have a real critique. I have a lot of things that I wanna be different. But I also really respected almost everyone I spoke with. There were a few exceptions. And you know, one of the things that you know, a lot of critiques of the campaign industry that come from outside, say, you all are mercenaries. You don't care. You're just trying to get as much money as you can. And for most people I talk with that really wasn't true. You know, one, one person I spoke with said they you know, they could make much more money working in commercial polling instead of in political polling, but they just, he said, I just don't care at all.
Whether the toothpaste box is red or green, it just doesn't make a difference at all, but it makes a whale of a difference who's president, right? So a lot of, pretty much everyone I spoke to, again, there are a few exceptions, but pretty much everyone I spoke to really believes in the values of their party and really wants to see that party succeed. And they, you know, they're doing this partly cuz they love the thrill partly cuz the access to power is intoxicating partly because you know, it's just something they've, you know, for a lot of people been sort of a geeky fan of for a long time. But also because they really believe in it. And I think that's, that's important to, to remember you're also a set of people with amazing social skills. I will say like no

Eric Wilson:

One has ever said that about me <laugh> <laugh>

Daniel Laurison:

Or at least really good you know, in an interview one-on-one conversational skills also I'm comparing to academics.

Eric Wilson:

Right, right. Okay. The bar is pretty low <laugh>, you know, one of the things that we talk about with, you know, obviously there there's kind of that professional layer of they, they wanna win and then move on to the next campaign. But of course that their core campaigns are of course, about winning elected office. And there's a saying that governing is campaigning by different means. How do we see this campaign world spill over into, into other areas of government?

Daniel Laurison:

I mean, I think a lot of it is that we see in government more, I think than was probably the case 50, 75 years ago when politics was less professionalized that a lot of it is, you know, although I'm not a historian, so I should sort of put a little star by that. I, I, this is my guess. Right. <laugh> but certainly it's the case that there's a lot of how governing works that ends up looking just like how campaigning works as you said. Especially I think with regard to the approach that is like, can I score a point against the other side? Can I, you know, sort of the focus on the competition more than even when something is passed you know, communicating to regular people, look at this cool thing we've done. So I think that's, that's part of it. I think also just the, you know, the way of thinking about voters and the electorate as sort of, you know, a, a conglomeration of, of variables essentially.

Eric Wilson:

Well, you called it a terrain to be conquered. I thought that was a great image. And, and I'm trying to be more conscious about that in, in my own discussions.

Daniel Laurison:

Yeah. That way of thinking about the population of the country you're representing, I think often creeps into how governing gets done, how politics works even among elected officials. Again, I don't think it's because people don't care about the, you know, the things things they're trying to do for the country. But it works out that you get you get this approach that, that fails to connect with people.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. It reminds me of a conversation I had recently with, with someone who works for an advocacy organization that that's trying to advance a, a, a policy. And they said to me, well, our concern is if everyone agrees on it, that raises red flags. <Laugh> because the, and, and it's that political thinking that that's creeped in,

Daniel Laurison:

Right. If both sides could actually vote for it, then it's not winning any points for one side of the other.

Eric Wilson:

That's right. Why do it no. Yeah, so, so Daniel, let me, I'm gonna try and make my best defense for the professional political world by, by saying that we are, we are also driven by outside forces and are in bonding to market pressure. You know, there are funders who have preconceived notions about what the campaign should be about. They know a lot about business. So they're gonna tell us how to run campaigns. Even though we read the, the academic literature that says that's not effective, you've got candidates who no matter how qualified or good they are, there is an ego involved, their name is on that ballot and they're, they're gonna have to go see their friends at, at church or school or, or what have you at the end of the campaign. And then you've got voters, right? So sort of thinking about the times when I've tried to run a really down the middle email fundraising campaign, it doesn't raise as much money as the hyperbolic stuff that, that everyone says. So how does that work? So, you know, getting volunteers to organize and care about long term political power is really, really tough. It's hard to measure and it takes lots of time. And that's just one example. So I'm curious to hear from your perspective, what responsibilities do the voters have with respect to the quality of campaigns that they receive or engage with?

Daniel Laurison:

That's a great question. And I think, you know, just to, to be clear, I don't disagree at all that all of those constraints make it really hard to do some of the things that that I would like to see happen. I think it's possible to do more in terms of the voters. There's a book I really like by eating Hirsch called politics is for power. He has a critique of how a certain set of voters, the people who are paying the most attention to politics tend to engage. And he calls it political hobby. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. They, a lot of people who think of themselves as good citizens who pay a lot of attention, et cetera, what they actually do is, you know, listen to a lot of political news express opinions on social media or among their friends, read the newspaper, et cetera, et cetera. What they don't do is try to build long term political power. As you just said, what they don't do is, you know, volunteer year round for political organizations, or try to get involved with them in a deeper way. So I think for the, for the people who care about politics, figuring out how to channel that care into things that actually matter rather than things that are just sort of, in some sense, being part of the performance that is the political world

Eric Wilson:

It's sort of like Coplay almost. Yeah.

Daniel Laurison:

<Laugh> yeah. It, it really, it really is. I mean, you see it on Twitter all the time. There's people with, you know, passionate opinions about what the democratic party is doing wrong or what the Republican party is doing wrong in my world. It's mostly the democratic party mm-hmm <affirmative>. But they're not so far as I can tell, many of them are not, you know, joining their local party committee or joining any other grassroots political organization. That's trying to move the party in the direction. They'd like to see it move or, you know, doing their own campaigning of any sort. Right. They're, they're mostly Gring on Twitter. And so yeah, Coplay is a great, is a great word for it. Now that's not all of the people doing that, but it's certainly a substantial portion of them.

Eric Wilson:

You know, one of the things, again, talking about unintended consequences, I, you, you may know this, this study off the top of your head, but essentially that it looked at, you know, the, the post Watergate reforms that led to more primaries where were direct nomination of, of candidates actually rearranged the incentive structure just for ideologues. Right? Right. Because previously there wa there may have been a patronage system, right? Where, you know, your job, I is dependent on this person getting elected to this office. And so you had kind of a more moderating effect. And so if you take that incentive away from most voters, then it's just the ideolog, shall we call them, or the people increasingly who consume politics as entertainment to be involved.

Daniel Laurison:

And that is one thing that produces, I think, increasing polarization and separation between the parties and increasingly extreme candidates. Now, the evidence is most of the sort of increasing extremity and, and polarization is on the right. Not, and it's not symmetrical. But it's, it's certainly a mechanism that works across the board.

Eric Wilson:

Mm-Hmm <affirmative> all right, Daniel, we're just a few weeks away from election day. What are some practical steps that a campaign could take to benefit from the findings in your book?

Daniel Laurison:

The short answer is I think the balance of spending on field versus everything else is basically inverted from where it ought to be. If I could, if I, if I were in charge and again, I'd rather, I'd rather the Democrats do this, but if I were in charge, really, you know, I think for the, for the good of democracy though, every, every campaign would spend a lot more time just talking to regular people, having field people who it's their full time paid job to go and get to know a community, even. I mean, it's, you said it's just a few weeks away. I know it's, it's starting to, to ramp up, but we do have, you know, two and a half months or so before the election, you know, listening, not just sort of knocking on doors and saying, Hey, vote for my candidate, but asking people, what do they care about?
What do they wanna know? You know, what do they wanna see happen? What are the issues that really concern them? And, you know, being able to say to them, I'll take that to the candidate. I'll take that to the party. You know, having real conversations with people and not just, not just sort of reading from scripts, I think would make a huge difference in how connected people feel to politics. So many people, you know, there's you know, so many people hear nothing from, from any party or campaign, even people in swing states. If they're not people who voted hardly at all, for example. So I think doing more of that could make a real, could make a real difference. And all the evidence shows that it's in, you know, it's one of the few things that we could point to and say, you know, the more people you talk to, not necessarily, the more times you talk to them, but the more people you talk to the greater, the chance that you'll have more terms.

Eric Wilson:

So it sounds like a big endorsement for deep canvasing and relational organizing and maybe some vote tripling. So things that we've all covered on the, the, the podcast, but also require time and investment from, from grassroots. So with that, I wanna say, thank you, Daniel, for joining us. This was a great conversation. I really enjoyed your book. It's called producing politics inside the exclusive campaign world, where the privileged few shape politics for all of us, there's a link to buy it in the show notes. It's worth your time. It's a good read and remembers have subscribe to the business of politics show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you learn something today, it made you a little bit smarter. Share it with a friend. You'll also look smarter in the process though, with that, I wanna say thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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