Rapid, Unscheduled Disassembly
Doomscroll 4.23.23
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One Question
Happy Sunday. Special shout-out to everyone who traveled to Palm Springs this week for the AAPC conference. I hope you all behaved yourselves. No, I was not there. Someone had to stay behind and defend the home front! Someone had to make sure the week didn’t end with any rapid, unscheduled disassemblies. If not me, then who? Elon? Pssshh.
Oh and congrats to all the winners. I spent some time browsing entries, and you should too!
Anyway, this week’s One Question is about tech - something I’ve been thinking a lot about ever since that Higher Ground Labs report came out a couple weeks ago. The general consensus is that the left takes this stuff much more seriously than we do. But I say the tide is a’changing and I want to know: what’s missing from our Republican tech stack? What do you wish we had that we don’t?
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about whether Republicans should do influencer marketing. 75% of you said yes. About 16% said no, and the rest of you are on the fence. As for the bonus question about whether skipping the influencer marketing game means we’re ceding the youth vote - 60% said yes; 20% said no, and 20% said you don’t care. SAD.
Who’s Doing What
--Who’s NOT Doing what
Ex-Trump official Mike Pompeo is NOT running for president in 2024 - despite the fact that he’s spent the last couple of years setting the groundwork and engaging in quite a bit of digital activity through his PAC, Champion American Values. As of this writing, in fact, the PAC is still spending on Facebook page-like and lead-gen ads. So, what now? If he still wants to play a role in shaping politics in 2024 or beyond, it still makes sense to spend on ads if he’s got the funds (although you all KNOW how I feel about page-like ads #cringe). He can still use the PAC as a powerful fundraising vehicle and build a list that could definitely be a value-add for the Republican email marketing eco-system. Best of luck to him!
--Throwing Down in Kentucky
Things are heating up in the Kentucky gubernatorial primary race -as they should be. The May 16 primary is in just a few short weeks and if you’re not paying attention you’re missing out. Democrat incumbent Gov. Andy Beshear (as someone who worked on the KY gov race in 2019, it still pains me to type that) is running for a second term. The GOP field features Attorney General Daniel Cameron, former Ambassador Kelly Craft, and Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles. Cameron is largely seen as the frontrunner. Right now he’s ignoring his primary opponents and attacking Beshear. He’s got an ad about how the governor shut down churches during COVID. It’s pretty good, and you can watch it here. He also has a spot about backing the blue. But I do wonder how much the COVID attacks will work. I mean, presumably they have polling telling them it will (or should) work. But we just went through a Midterm election cycle in which Dems didn’t seem to pay all that much for their COVID policies, so I’m just asking questions here. Meanwhile, Craft is going after Cameron for supporting the shutdown of coal mines in Kentucky. She’s also got a kooky ad about wokeness in schools (gotta stand out somehow), and went hard after Cameron this week for letting the drug crisis get out of control while he was AG. Ryan Quarles, meanwhile?
Hey, we’re all rooting for you, Ryan. If you can win the state tractor driving championship, YOU CAN WIN THIS PRIMARY. NO BIG.
--Gearing Up in Virginia
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia is running a bunch of lead generation ads on Facebook…targeting a national audience. WHAT’S HE UP TO, HUH? The ads are pretty solid, red-meat-type acquisition stuff: sign a petition to ban TikTok, grade Biden’s performance, secure the border, etc etc. I’m not saying it looks like he may be looking to run for higher office, but I’m not NOT saying that, either. Lead-gen ads don’t always mean someone is looking to build a list and lay the groundwork for a future campaign, but if you WERE contemplating your political future this MAY be one step you MIGHT take. This is why they pay me the big bucks.
--(Wo)man on the Street
Team Nikki Haley posted a video this week with a staffer asking people around Charleston what they think of competency tests for politicians. I don’t see many campaigns post these kinds of man-on-the-street videos, and I like it for all the obvious reasons. I can’t help but watch them (anyone else??) AND it’s a good way to show there’s actual support for a somewhat controversial policy proposal. A+
-- ActScared
Sen. Marco Rubio is going after ActBlue by calling on the FEC to investigate the Dem donation platform. ActBlue allegedly collected fraudulent donations under the names of senior citizens without their knowledge. Hmm. We’ll see where this goes, but maybe ActBlue should be nervous? Apparently the platform has not required donors to enter the CVV from their credit card when making donations? That seems wild to me. Anyway, godspeed, senator.
-Watch those Ethics…
A conservative watchdog group I’d never heard of before, The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, has filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-NC) for using his TikTok account for both campaign and official business. Iiiiiiiinteresting. If you recall, Jackson had a TikTok video go viral recently when he went on the platform to explain the SVB collapse. Anyway, the complaint states that “Federal law and House ethics rules require strict separation between campaign and official acts…A member is prohibited from using official resources for campaign purposes and a member is prohibited from using campaign funds for official purposes.” I mean, they’re not wrong….
Merch Shoutouts
This week: My basic white girl heart loves this Tim Scott tumbler. #sorrynotsorry
Get yours here.
While we’re on the subject of merch, I want to call out a couple of Dem merch stores: Katie Porter for Senate and Rep. Robert Garcia (CA) have excellent merch shops. Just take a look. They’re cool. The items in both shops are so on brand for each of them. This is merchandise done well, and I don’t mind saying that about Dems (although I’d prefer to say it about Republicans! If you know an awesome GOP merch store, email it to me: itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com).
Who’s Spending Where
Between April 14 -20, the top center-right spender on Facebook was PragerU with more than $192,000 in spend. Their ads are an interesting mix of pushing PragerU content, promoting certain personalities and debunking liberal myths. I’m pretty impressed with what I see in the content library from a creative perspective. They’ve got a mix of long and short video, vertical video, and graphics. Quality stuff. The Daily Wire came in second place with about $118,000 in ad spend, while FIRE ($85,000) and Newsmax ($58,000) come in at third and fourth place. Proud Patriots rounds out the top five ($57,000) with its bizarre merch, which now includes a Ron DeSantis $2 bill.
Opportunity Matters Fund Action, the pro-Tim Scott group was the top GOP spender on Google ads from April 14-20, followed by Nikki Haley’s SFA Inc. The RGA-aligned State Solutions Inc came in third place with an ad attacking Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear for endorsing gender reassignment surgeries for kids under 18. Kelly Craft for Governor came in fourth place, while Vivek 2024 rounded out the top 5.
P2P
Industry Watch
ICYMI: Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Derek Kilmer (D-WA) have introduced the Honest Ads Act “to prevent foreign interference in future elections and improve the transparency of online political advertisements.” According to Gallagher’s press release, the Act would "bring “digital political advertising regulations into the 21st century” while closing a “loophole that our enemies could use against us to subvert Americans’ faith in our institutions.” It seems like the nuts and bolts of this bill is all about requiring all digital platforms to maintain a public library of political ads that includes information like description of audience and targets, number of views, flight dates, rates, and contact info of the purchaser.
On a certain level, I’m not against any of that. I like transparency. But I’m also looking at who else is supporting this bill - which outside groups are championing it. Right now, it’s mostly lefty progressive organizations like End Citizens United and Center for American Progress. And I’m legit no policy expert, but I’m wary of anything those entities are lining up behind. So, I say let’s sit and watch what happens for now?
The Grapevine
Yours truly was on the Business of Politics Show this week with Matt Dailer and Eric Wilson to talk about the Democrat tech landscape. Listen here, and let me know what you think. TL:DR - it would be nice if Republicans took tech more seriously.
I heard from a trusted source this week that GOP Jobs has been sold to one of the big Republican consulting shops - most likely either GP3 or Axiom. Way to control the talent pipeline, guys.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Fav streaming platform? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
Nancy Pelosi’s campaign just settled a lawsuit around P2P texting for $7,500. Per Insider:
In October 2022, a Bolingbrook, Illinois resident named Jorge Rojas filed a 13-page lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that accused the former speaker of the House and her campaign of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.
According to the suit, Rojas received 21 texts from Pelosi's campaign from November 2021 to July 2022 despite previously placing himself on the registry in 2008 to "obtain solitude from invasive and harassing telemarketing calls."
He went on to argue that he "experienced frustration, annoyance, irritation, and a sense that his privacy has been invaded" by the texts.
That Pelosi made the whole nuisance go away by paying the man $7,500 was probably the smartest move for them. HOWEVER stuff like this sets a bad precedent and makes me want to claw my eyes out. The lawsuit was baseless. Rojas didn’t have to be opted in to get those text messages, and I wonder how many other campaigns are going to settle to make annoying lawsuits go away, rather than argue their case. Just something to think about.
Also: Marketing Brew did a little bit of a deep dive into the influencer campaigns the left did around the Wisconsin elections this spring. A snippet:
For the Wisconsin campaign, People First worked with 55 people who posted about the campaign across Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—most of them young people who were not politically active and appeared to have “stepped out of their lane” to express an opinion about the election, Hougland said. …
Participants were generally paid $200–$300 per post and encouraged to post about what issues were most important to them as they related to the election. As for whether it was difficult to get people who don’t typically make political posts to speak out? Hougland said the response rate on outreach was more than 30%, when a “good campaign would be 10%–12%” for People First.
From the other side of the tracks:
At first I was going to include this marketing item from the corporate world and make no bones about the fact that it HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS and has no takeaways for us. BUT then! I had a change of heart. People have been obsessed this week with Le Creuset’s new color, shallot. It’s the perfect shade of millennial pink without being PINK. And honestly, if someone were to design some cool merch with this color I would buy it so fast. Like, so fast. Not everything needs to be red, white, and blue, and there you have it.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!