All 'Bout Those Benjamins
Doomscroll 5.21.23
Today’s Doomscroll is sponsored by Benjamin. Scroll down to learn more!
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One Question
As always, thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about whether Rep. George Santos should be kicked off WinRed. 65% of you said yes, he should be kicked off the platform. I don’t know this for sure, but I’m guessing those of you in the other 35% have firmly planted yourselves in an anti de-platforming camp no matter what. And look- I get it. Normally I’m a grade-A fan of consistency, but Santos on WinRed? Dude’s gotta go, IMO.
This week was a big week in Washington for AI (gah I sound like such a swamp frog). OpenAI’s Sam Altman testified on Capitol Hill and pretended to be pro-regulation. Still, when it comes to Artificial Intelligence there seems to be a fair amount of bipartisan consensus that AI is…worth freaking out about. So, this week’s One Question is this: Are you all concerned about the use of AI in politics? And as a follow-up, what has you most concerned: the spread of misinformation (spooky!), the threat of censorship, or something else? Let me know.
Who’s Doing What
--What Up, Ted
Is it just me or is Texas Senator Ted Cruz the Democratic Party’s white whale? The conservative firebrand is getting yet another high-profile challenger in Rep. Colin Allred - a former pro-football player-turned Democrat politician. Allred’s already got lots of institutional support from the left, and he’s been spending quite a bit since his splashy launch a few weeks ago. So, I thought it was worth looking into how Cruz’s digital presence is going (and if things have gotten better since this). In the last 30 days, Cruz for Senate has spent around $27,000 on Facebook ads, most of which are for fundraising. One variation features a photo of Allred and Biden, but the majority are of the “Join Team Cruz; keep Texas red” variety. He also is running a “stop the war on trucks!” petition - which I did not know was a thing. But hey, whatever works! A couple ads promoted his short code number. I will say, once I texted TEXAS to 24005, I got a nice follow-up message with a contact card which is excellent. ::chef’s kiss:: Similar story on Google, though with fewer variations. I did enjoy this passionate plea which looks to have run for one day. What else is there to say about Ted Cruz? This isn’t his first rodeo and the man knows what he’s doing even if it means - yet again - raising and spending a s**t ton of money to keep his seat. I know you can do it, Ted! If nothing else, I’ll end with this: let’s all say a prayer of gratitude for the fact that we’re not spending another cycle talking about freaking Beto O’Rourke.
----Never Back Down, Unless it’s Because of a Bad Tweet
Remember when CNN did that town hall with Pres. Trump and everyone freaked out? Ah, those were the good old days. When I’m old and gray I hope my grandchildren ask me where I was during #townhallgate and when Donald Trump said the word “vagina” on live TV. But I digress. Semafor had an interesting write-up this week of the fallout over a tweet sent that night by pro-DeSantis PAC, Never Back Down. Here’s a snippet:
This was the kind of all-out critique of Trump that Ron DeSantis — and most of the 2024 field — have never made themselves. Don’t expect to hear it again, though: The tweet generated some heated internal pushback at Never Back Down, while multiple prominent conservative commentators piled on publicly. One DeSantis ally familiar with their thinking told Semafor that the group’s leadership “100%” recognized it as an error. A second source familiar with the situation added that they were told the tweet was sent without the approval of the PAC’s senior communications team.
Woof.
What’s a Republican presidential primary if campaigns can’t sling some mud on Twitter??? Still, I get it and I don’t fault DeSantis world for regretting the tweet even if I WISH that they did not. I certainly hope no one lost their job over it. There are some lessons here for all of us, though.
Get your tweets approved by comms. Yes, it pains me type that, but I’m 100% pro cover-your-butt
Even if you send a tweet you later regret, don’t delete it. Deleting it makes it a bigger story.
When asked about said tweet, don’t engage. Move on. Keep the clean-up to a minimum.
In this respect, NBD handled the situation perfectly. Good on them. They are pros, if nothing else.
--What Happened in Kentucky
A lot of ink has already been spilled this week over the gubernatorial primary results in Kentucky - especially over Kelly Craft’s shocking third-place win. For someone who spent $11 million on the primary race alone, getting 17% of the vote must have been quite the bitter pill to swallow. Unfortunately, postmortems don’t write themselves. So: what went wrong? A lot of people are pointing the finger at that kooky woke ad. Others say Trump’s endorsement of Daniel Cameron sealed the deal a long time ago. I’ve seen others argue that her messaging was too all over the place, she went too negative, and seemed too out of touch.
I worked on the Kentucky gubernatorial race in 2019 while at the RGA and the thing we heard over and over again leading up to, and after the election, was that then-Gov. Matt Bevin just turned people off. He was too brash. Too antagonistic. He tried to be Trump without being Trump. Voters ended up choosing the safer anti-Bevin in Andy Beshear. I suspect there was a similar dynamic at play in this primary, but at the end of the day, what do I know? Not a whole lot about Kentucky, that’s for sure.
From a digital perspective, there’s not many conclusions to draw without having an insider perspective. Yes, Craft spent a ton of money on advertising, but as I’ve often said: digital spending is only one (albeit important) smaller piece of a larger puzzle.
One last insider-y side note: the Axiom pile-on has been a sight to behold. I won’t add to it here, but this obvious Trump/ anti-Jeff Roe oppo dump made for some fun reading on Friday. Do with it what you will!
--Who the EFF is Ryan Binkley and Why Is He Running Sketchy Ads?
…The question we’d all like to have answered. Word on the street is that his operation is, at least in part, being run by Iowa-based Victory Enterprises. Not confirmed, but it makes sense given his “strategy” is heavily focused on Iowa. If Victory Enterprises IS responsible for these ads, I’d like a word! Can we stop with the deceptive fundraising tactics? Sincerely, everyone.
Industry Watch
Ya’ll: A while back I noted that OpenAI’s fine print clearly states that ChatGPT was not to be used to influence elections. Then we spent several months, as an industry, talking about how to apply AI to the business of politics. Mmmk. Well now Semafor is reporting that OpenAI has, for the first time, decided to police how its technology would be used. Here’s more:
OpenAI told a leading company that provides data to Washington lobbyists and policy advocates that it can’t advertise using ChatGPT for politics. The booming Silicon Valley startup took action after the Washington, D.C. company, FiscalNote, touted in a press release that it would use ChatGPT to help boost productivity in “the multi-billion dollar lobbying and advocacy industry” and “enhance political participation.”
…
This is the first known instance of OpenAI policing how the use of its technology is advertised. The company last updated its policies in March, which now ban people from using its models for, among other things, building products for political campaigning or lobbying, payday lending, unproven dietary supplements, dating apps, and “high risk government decision-making,” such as “migration and asylum.”
OpenAI told Semafor that it uses a number of different methods to monitor and police when those policies are being violated. In the case of politics specifically, the company revealed it's working on building a machine learning classifier that will flag when ChatGPT is asked to generate large volumes of text that appear related to electoral campaigns or lobbying.
Does this concern anyone? Please drop me a line if so: itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com. I know it’s en vogue to treat ChatGPT like it's the best thing for politics since the advent of the candidate website, but what’s the point if companies like OpenAI are going to pounce every time it has a political use case? We’ve seen how great other companies like Facebook and Google have been at censoring regulating political content…
Who’s Spending Where
From March 10 -16, PragerU was the top Republican spender on Facebook, with about $93,000 in ad spend. FIRE came in second with $87,000, while Sound of Freedom came in third with $85,000 in spend. Nothing too surprising there. American Action Network is still spending heavily ($58,000) targeting Democrats on energy costs, and praising Republican House members for “fighting to make life more affordable.” It’s nice to see a group putting some advertising budget behind economic messaging. Rounding out the top 5 is American for Prosperity, which spent around $51,000 on some interesting ads around medical costs.
The top Republican spender on Google during that same time period is Never Back Down PAC, followed by Prager University Foundation. Perry Johnson for President came in at third place, followed by American Action Network. Katie Ford popped into the top 5 this week with an abortion ad that I want to highlight. Ford was running in a special election this week in Pennsylvania against Democrat Heather Boyd, and even though Ford lost, her abortion ad is a good example of how I think Republicans should message on this issue: be direct and clear about our position and highlight the extreme pro-abortion stance of the other side. This was a good ad, and it’s a shame Ford lost.
P2P
The Grapevine
Today’s edition of Doomscroll is sponsored by Benjamin - a new fundraising software platform for Republicans. Thank you so much to Benjamin for sponsoring this post and letting me help introduce this tool to the world! Keep reading for a GREAT Q&A from CEO Kevin Curran.
What’s your name and who are you?
I'm Kevin Curran, the co-founder and CEO of Benjamin. I got my start in politics working on Bush-Cheney '04 in the finance shop and have been lucky enough to do some cool things and now working on the coolest thing I have gotten to do, which is build Benjamin.
Ok that was easy. Tell us in just a sentence or two: What is Benjamin?
Benjamin is a major donor fundraising software platform. It's all about the Benjamins in politics, and our job is to enable candidates and campaigns to raise more major donor money in a more efficient way and from new donors and an always-expanding universe of prospects.
Was the aim to just be a better database or was there a bigger problem you are trying to fix?
There are some fundamental problems emerging for campaigns that we are trying to attack: Mainly and most importantly, our candidates don't have enough hard money. If we have competitive U.S. Senate races where we are getting out-raised 8:1 that is a scary long-term problem. Second, we have a volume problem. Too much volume in terms of tasks and time to have an effective major donor program. At the same time there’s too little volume in terms of prospects and infrastructure.
Most campaign money conversations center around Super PACs or digital. Is major donor still as important as it was 20 years ago?
You bet it is. Super PACs aren't going to save the day in most circumstances, and the left just has a more mature and robust high volume-low dollar infrastructure with ActBlue.
In terms of scale, small, local campaigns need just as much help raising money as the big guys, but the current tools are cost prohibitive. A major donor to a State Rep is different from a major donor to the RNC, so let's help everyone on the ballot bring in their version of a major donor.
So if relying on Super PACs won't do it, and the left's low dollar apparatus will outperform ours, we either choose to lose and always bring less money (or less efficient money) to the fight - or we try to find another way. We chose to find another way and I am proud that we have done that with Benjamin.
Tell us a little about what it was like to build Benjamin. You’re a first-time entrepreneur who’s never worked in tech before, right? How did you take the leap from working in politics to launch a tech start-up?
Just like a campaign, you need money and expertise, so that was familiar territory.
What I have learned is that the most important aspect to building something is a) understanding the problem you are trying to solve, b) having an idea for the fix and c) really understanding the user. Being able to really think through how someone would use a product and minimize the misery of the job really shaped the development process.
A team of developers is not going to know what call time is and how arduous it can be. So while new to building software, having the resources needed and command of the job really helped me make the transition. I am definitely not the best major donor fundraiser in the world, but I have 20 years on the job So thankfully I am only debilitatingly nervous most of the time instead of all the time.
So it sounds like Benjamin is filling a major gap in the Republican tech stack, which is awesome. What do you think, besides Benjamin, is important to have in a campaign's tech stack?
The most important part of a campaign's stack is the candidate. I think oftentimes we approach these tools as candidate savers instead of candidate levers. Good and great candidates have a real opportunity to be successful if they have the right complement of talent and tools.
And I think a lot of times individual products are sold as silver bullets. The mantra for Benjamin from day 1 has been "no silver bullets." That cascaded into how we approached features and operability. There is not one particular feature that means the GOP will never lose another election. But we built a major donor aircraft carrier to bring to the fight, and that has to work with other parts to win the day. One bullet can start a war but it won't win it.
Our tech stack should be accessible to candidates up and down the ticket and need to be built and priced that way.
Anything else we should know about Benjamin?
We have clients on the platform now and are ready to go! We are about to enter Hunger Games season as a party, and your campaign needs more tools not less. We'd love to show off what we have built and find a way to be part of a campaign's team to help you raise more money and win the day, and you can sign up for a demo at www.benjamin.app
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Fav burger recipe? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
The other side of the aisle:
--Just call me Joe
Maryland State Delegate Joe Vogel recently announced his campaign for Congress in Maryland’s 6th Congressional District. At 26 years old, he’s young. Real young. Like, Gen Z young. And yes, this is the same district that one Matthew Foldi ran in last cycle. ANYWAY…Vogel might be a baby himself but so far it’s working for him. His announcement video is good. It’s really, really good. It’s so good, I’ve watched it three times, which is a lot for me. Everyone take note: this is how you weave your personal bio into your why. This is also how you appeal to young voters. Sure, it’s maybe easier and more natural for Vogel to appeal to voters who are in his same age group (aka people who can count on 2 hands the number of years they've been able to legally buy alcohol), but so what? It hits all the right notes.
Don’t get me wrong, though - Republicans have put out exceptional videos just like this one. To be honest, Vogel’s ad reminded me a lot of Glenn Youngkin’s announcement video. Yougkin’s, too, did an excellent job of intertwining his personal bio with his reason for running. It also struck the perfect balance between concern and optimism for the future. Anyway, who knows if Vogel will catch on, but his content right out of the gate is impressive. And that, friends, is my hat tip for a Democrat this week.
The other side of the tracks:
Enjoy this nice overview of McDonald’s Twitter strategy.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!