138 - Mapping Out Political Campaigns with Strategist Matt Krayton

Do you have political aspirations? Want to know what it takes to navigate the complexities of running for office? Join us as we pick the brain of Matt Krayton, founder and principal at Publitics and a seasoned political campaign manager. Matt breaks down the journey of a political campaign, from choosing the right office to run for, to understanding the jurisdictional requirements and the formalities of getting started.

We also explore the ins and outs of campaign budgets, giving you insight on how to source funds, find the right campaign manager, and make tough financial decisions. Learn how to strategically leverage your contact list for potential donors and gain insight into the varying costs of campaigns in different locations.

Matt also delves into the world of opposition research, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the "oppo book" - a comprehensive record of a candidate’s past. From old tweets and Facebook posts to court fillings, Matt shares valuable advice on how to deal with potential liabilities that could affect your campaign. And wrapping up, we explore campaign timing and fund management, emphasizing the importance of early starts in competitive races. This episode promises a wealth of knowledge and fresh perspective on political campaigns. Join us for this engaging conversation.

Learn more about Matt and his work by connecting with him on LinkedIn and visiting his website at www.publitics.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

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Speaker 2: 0:53

This is Center Stage putting your firm in the spotlight by highlighting business owners and other industry experts to help take your firm to the next level. Everyone and welcome to Center Stage. I'm your host, John Henson, and this week we are talking about politics, but not in a way that makes people irrationally angry and ruins friendships and all that kind of stuff. We are actually talking about your political aspirations. I know a lot of you lawyers out there have an interest in it. You end up getting into it, and so I wanted to bring on someone who has a lot of experience managing political campaigns so that they can come and share what it's like to get started and what it's like to run a campaign and go for a political office. And so we are joined by the founder and principal at Publitex, Matt Creighton. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3: 1:43

Thanks for having me on Appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:46

Yeah, so before we jump in, tell us a little bit about you and your background and what you do with Publitex.

Speaker 3: 1:53

Sure, absolutely so. Publitex is a full service political consulting, public affairs and public relations firm, so we've done work on the very local level on up to the federal level. So I like to say, never a dull moment. Definitely an interesting mix of things that we do and we help with all aspects of campaigns. Our team has a pretty diverse array of experiences in terms of managing campaigns and then working as a consultant on campaigns, which are slightly different roles here and there, but yeah, so at this point we do a lot of media polling, message development and general strategy consulting, but we've managed a ton of campaigns as well, and usually we're right there on the ground floor as these things are starting up. So, yeah, it's definitely an interesting space to be in these days.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Absolutely. So I kind of like to start at the top in these sorts of things and then kind of drill down into specific areas. And so for people who may not be familiar with the formal process, they may think all right, I would like to run for office one day. What does the process even look like for starting a campaign? Because I'm sure there's some sort of paperwork or something that has to be submitted or something I don't know. But it's got to be more than just someone deciding, hey, I'm going to go run for Congress, and then they just start making speeches. What does it look like?

Speaker 3: 3:26

If only right yeah, it's like I'm running, declare it and put it in the universe. And here we are. So you're absolutely right. So the requirements depend on the jurisdiction. So every jurisdiction has slightly different rules. Different states have different rules for how to run.

Speaker 3: 3:48

The basic process generally is filing some kind of paperwork with the FEC on the federal level or whatever state or jurisdiction you're in, their campaign finance board or enforcement agency At that point. Then there are ballot access requirements that again differ from place to place. So in certain jurisdictions what you have to do is you have to go out and get a certain number of signatures. Sometimes that's based on the previous number of votes in a particular election, and they have a formula for calculating that. Some jurisdictions have a hybrid of two different things, so one being signatures and then the other.

Speaker 3: 4:37

You can kind of buy your way onto the ballot, so just pay a substantial filing fee to get on the ballot. The purpose of all of that is to make sure that the people who are running for office are serious about running for office. So if it were just a case of saying, ok, show up to your local county clerk and sign a piece of paper and then you're on the ballot. That could open the door to quite a bit of mischief potentially, so most of those requirements are are you serious, do you want to do this? And then from there, it's a matter of building out a team, getting an infrastructure together, and fundraising really is the first step, actually beyond the paperwork.

Speaker 2: 5:24

Yeah. So when it comes to kind of the first campaign that you run, do you have people who? How do you decide, I guess, which office to run for? Is there advantage to maybe starting at the state or local level, or if you really just want to be a state rep or if you want to try to run for Congress? Is there a right or wrong way to go about doing that, or does it kind of depend on what your goals and aspirations are?

Speaker 3: 5:54

Yeah, that's a really good question. This is actually a question that we get quite often is, you know, we'll have people come to us and they say they want to run for one office and you know they kind of go through what sort of commitment they're willing to make to it and you think, well, you know, congress, that's can be a very expensive endeavor in certain places Like, for example, we're in the, you know, in northern New Jersey, our main office is up here and we're smack dab in the middle of the New York media market, extraordinarily expensive place to run a campaign. Same thing with South Jersey and the Philadelphia media market. Yeah, you know, los Angeles, miami, you know. So all of those places are extraordinarily expensive. So, you know, sometimes we'll go through that process and say, well, look like it sounds like you're you're serious about running for office, making a difference in whatever community or whatever way that you want to make a difference in. You know, maybe you should try local office, and usually that's a good way to get the fundamentals of campaigning now. And so like campaigns will look a little bit different depending upon what level you're running for, you know. So obviously running for town council in a small town is going to be different than running for Congress or president or US Senate or governor or any of the other state.

Speaker 3: 7:04

You know constitutional offices but but at the end of the day the fundamentals, like it kind of just gets you used to. You know the routine of what you have to do, some of the basic steps in between you know you, and then ultimately winning winning your race. So you know I, and then part of it is also assessing the political landscape as well. So I will say this there's nothing wrong with losing your first race. Plenty of successful candidates eventually or at some point in their career will have lost a race and they're valuable lessons to to going through that process. You know some of some of that. Maybe you just ran in a really tough district or tough. You know jurisdiction and it was the voter registration statistics were just stacked against you and just wasn't going to happen. But again, that helps kind of flex the muscle a little bit and you know you kind of. You know work out. You know those, those areas that you need to work out.

Speaker 3: 8:00

So it really depends on a number of things. You know availability of seats to like in some cases, do you really want to be running against the incumbent. Does that make sense? Do you like the incumbent? Or are you just like trying to run for something and you know, like, is that the right place to go? You know it's. So you know those are, those are the considerations generally speaking, and then, like you know, kind of looking at the again, the amount of time that you have to dedicate to it.

Speaker 3: 8:23

So I'm running a campaign, you know, for, like Congress, or you know some statewide races, or even you know certain state legislature. You know positions, really that is a full time job and the election cycle has gone from being, you know, a couple of months right, so we're talking five, six, seven months to almost like a one, one and a half year cycle where you're dedicated to doing that one thing, whereas town council still a lot of work, but or city council, or wherever you are right, but you know it's not as time intensive, so it's, you know, balancing sort of career, family, other obligations that you might have. So so there are a number of things you know that we kind of take into account when, when we're making recommendations on that, and then sometimes people just decide you know, no, I want to run for whatever office it is because I have a very specific thing that I want to address and that is the office that will address that.

Speaker 2: 9:22

So yeah, so, yeah, yeah yeah, awesome, and I want to dig into some of those things a little bit on. But you know, thinking about once you've started a campaign, right? You know I know that there are there's potentially debates that you can participate in. You know different rallies that you can participate in. You got to have some fundraising events. Are those you know? Are there any other kinds of tasks or activities that someone needs to be doing when they are running a campaign? How do you even, how do you even go about setting some of those things up?

Speaker 3: 9:55

Yeah, I mean. So it's. It's funny and in some of these campaigns there's a little bit of a trick or the egg issue with with the fundraising piece, right, because you need help fundraising but you also don't have money unless you're self funding up up front, which people do. So I mean there is always a benefit to if you're committed to it and this is really something that you want to do that setting aside some, some money and self funding, getting some seed funding in there and and doing it that way. That way you can start to bring on a team, because the some of these things, even though we're all kind of like familiar with the political process, you do need help, right, like it helps to have someone who's been through it before walk you through exactly what you need to do.

Speaker 3: 10:38

So so the first, the first step, I would say, is like developing a really solid fundraising plan and that that's going to be the lifeblood of the rest of your campaign, because if you can't raise money, then you're going to have, you're going to have no way to reach out to voters, right, other than, you know, physically running around and knocking on doors.

Speaker 3: 10:56

But I mean again, if you're talking about a large city or a county wide thing, statewide thing, you're never going to be able to knock on the number of doors they need to knock on in order to to win your race or even make it dent at that point. So so money is the most important thing and fundraising, interestingly enough, is also one of the areas that it's a very polarizing thing. So either candidates love it or they absolutely hate it. If you hate it, you almost need to kind of make it a game, figure out how to, you know, challenge yourself and get yourself, you know, really like lock yourself in a room and dial through your phone book. So I mean, that's one of the biggest pieces of advice that we give first time candidates. Is all right, look through your phone book.

Speaker 3: 11:40

In your phone, I say phone book, that's like a bit of a dated your contacts and your smartphone and you know, go through, look at the names and then assign each of those people a dollar value and then call them and ask. And I think that you know, one of the most important skills that you're going to gain from that is not being afraid of hearing no quite a bit, because there is going to be quite a bit of no. Even if you're asking for a small amount of money, like hey, you know, we've known each other for a long time, can you throw me 50 bucks for my campaign? People will say no, not right now. I have other obligations. You know I can't. You know can't do it, or I don't agree with you on this, so I'm not going to give you money or whatever it is. So hearing no means that you're kind of getting that out of the way and then that'll get you to a place where you're going to get to yeses. I mean you're going to get a bunch of noes before you get a yes. You just can't get discouraged with that. So I would say that's like.

Speaker 3: 12:34

You know, square one in terms of the campaign is like looking at that you know contacts list, looking, or even your like LinkedIn, you know contacts and saying like well, who do you know on here, who could I ask for money? It's, it is uncomfortable, honestly like I'm not going to lie to you or sugarcoat it it definitely is uncomfortable for some folks. Like just straight up asking for money. It's a different thing than saying like I will provide you legal services for for money. Right, that feels different than that there could, because it's you're basically just saying give me this and I'm running for off. So, but, but I will say that like people do like to be asked as well. Like there are some subset of donors that enjoy being asked, are flattered by it. You know it's, it's a weird, it's a weird thing. So you just kind of have to like learn to love the ups and downs, the roller coaster, fundraising. So I'd say that's square one before you get anything else in place.

Speaker 3: 13:28

Otherwise you're not going to be able to hire a team. You're not going to be able to, you know, do polling. If you have to do polling, focus groups, things like that so yeah, that's, that's really, that's really square one. And then, beyond that, you know, finding, finding your team.

Speaker 3: 13:44

So, again, depending upon the race, you know you're you're probably going to need a campaign manager, like someone that's like dedicated staff on the ground, who will be with you and just manage all of the moving parts, especially for larger campaigns. Where you have a media shop, you're gonna have your polling shop, you're gonna have your Field team. You know the people that are going out and organizing canvassers, knocking on doors, the people are doing phones, volunteer work. So you're gonna need someone else, because, I mean, the most valuable resource on a campaign is Is the candidates time ultimately, so that step two really is finding a good manager, and what type of person you pick for that role Really depends on what you need. So so what I found In a lot of races is the. The skill that I would prioritize is someone who actually has really good management skills, not necessarily a strategist, but a manager like someone who can manage effectively and, you know, keep a team moving in the right direction.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Yeah, so a couple of things those are. So I know, yeah, I know, and all of this really depends on the the type of you know Election you're running for and the market that you're in. You know, because, like I would think that Running for you know, like mayor of New York City is gonna be multiple millions of dollars I cost, versus running for mayor of a 20,000 person town, maybe, I don't, probably a few thousand, maybe, you know, over 10, I don't know what, what. What are kind of the ballpark costs of Running for these different kinds of offices you know, from like that small 20,000 person town to more of just like a Generic, like us Senate seat.

Speaker 3: 15:33

Yeah, I, that's. That's a really good question. So, like you said, it's a little bit of a sliding scale depending upon where you are. For you know, for a town, you know 20,000 people are 20,000 voters. Let's say, you know you'll, you'll need to run a very robust campaign. You know, anywhere from 75,000 to about a hundred thousand dollars. Now, can you run that campaign unless, sure, you absolutely can? But you have to make some tough decisions about what you're gonna do and what you're not gonna do. So, yeah, the way that we like to think, think about these, these types of races, we, as we work backwards from the ideal, the ideal setup for you. So it's like, you know what, at what budget, can we do everything that we should do for this race and then work backwards from there. Now, yeah, does it always work out that way? No, it doesn't. More times than not. Like, you do have to make those difficult decisions. So like, for example, you know, maybe you decide, you know we're not gonna do any polling on this race, we're not gonna do focus groups or we're gonna have to, you know, rely more heavily on volunteers rather than a paid you know Field program. So there are our pieces of that, you know, at that level, but I would say from 75 to $100,000 in most, like 20,000, 30,000 voter Juroristicians. That's that's like, again, a very robust campaign and that's assuming that it's. It's very competitive as well. So that that's. The other sort of factor is, you know, certain places don't have a history of where where candidates spend a ton of money in in campaigns, so like there are towns even smaller than that. See, like a hundred thousand dollar, wow, you know campaign, and and it's just because those places have a history of contentious Elections, like every cycle there's always something happening and there's always some big interest in in that, so so they end up spending a lot more in in those small places. So if it's not a super competitive election or your opponent doesn't really have the type of resources that you're gonna bring to the table, then maybe it's not as much. But if it's a, it's a hyper competitive election. That's what we're looking at on on that front.

Speaker 3: 17:40

For for a house seat, million-dollar plus race again, can you do it? That's sure. I mean there are certain certain markets where you can do it for quite a bit less, because the Media markets really. I mean really it depends on the, the television market, right, the DMA that you're in and which, which sounds kind of outmoded at the at this point, but cable and Specifically broadcast advertising, right. So you know advertising on the low channels and I'm sure you know a lot, of a lot of your listeners and I'm sure you've been inundated at times with, like in the fall of the presidential cycle or midterm cycle, add after add after add after add. Those are extremely expensive in a lot of these media markets Again, especially like New York, la, miami, philadelphia, like those are just expensive Places, but there are other markets that aren't quite as expensive.

Speaker 3: 18:36

So you know you, three-quarters of a million dollars, you can, you can run a pretty robust campaign. I mean, I've seen, again, successful campaigns run for less. Right then that even. But again, again, you try to work backwards from like what should we do in order to to ensure the you know, victory in this particular place? I mean, the other question to again, in those in those races are is you know how many people do we have to actually persuade? Like are we in a in a district that tilts one wire another? Like do we have a built-in advantage based on on the voter registration Numbers in that particular district? So that, so that depends Senate races, you know, and so those, those can get quite expensive. So you're talking Anywhere from you know, two million plus three million to like 10, 15, 20 million in some contentious places, I think yeah that you know, georgia runoffs were extraordinarily expensive.

Speaker 3: 19:29

I don't have an exact figure in it, but I was, like you know, tens of millions of dollars on those races and and and the thing that happens there. Well, first of all, that was like the only thing happening in the country at this point. So not every race is gonna get to that point. But, but I mean again, you look at a Senate race in a place Like, let's say, rhode Island versus California, like those are two completely different. I mean the size of those. You know two states, I mean they couldn't be more different. Yeah, so I think that's so, so that that's sort of the marker is yeah, and it's getting more expensive to run these races every single day. Like broadcast TV, cable TV, it's, it's getting more expensive.

Speaker 3: 20:11

Direct mail, believe it or not, huge things still in the camp, actually very, very effective method of communication. But post-drates printing, you know, paper like it was, it was tough to get paper at certain points, like during the pandemic, like actual real supply chain issues, because a lot, of, a lot of mills kind of shut down. So there was, there's not. So things got a little bit more expensive and have kind of stayed at that level. So you know politics not immune from from inflation. And then you know the CPMs on On digital are getting more expensive to insert in platform. So it's it's definitely an interesting, interesting thing, but again, the budgets are gonna vary from from place to place.

Speaker 3: 20:55

But I would say those are good markers and the thing that you want to do again is like work backwards from that. What is a really robust campaign, look like, like what is a campaign that we'll feel good about, and like winter Loot. The end of the day, we could say that we did everything that we needed to do here, like what, what does that look like and how much is that gonna cost? And then working backwards from that.

Speaker 2: 21:15

Yeah, and and all the more reason to, you know, ask for, ask for money from some people you know, because you know not, I know lawyers are a lot of lawyers out there that make good money, probably not really willing to spend millions of dollars to to self fund their own campaign. So Another question, and this is something that I see a lot you know you'll have a candidate, they'll burst on the scene, they'll get a ton of attention and then Almost inevitable that a story will come out. Someone has dug up something that they tweeted like 12 years ago or something at some sort of like controversial, cancelable sort of offense. How do you Mitigate or reduce the chances of someone Potentially digging up something like that to that that could wreck your entire campaign?

Speaker 3: 22:09

That's a good question. I think it's actually something that a lot of candidates are, or prospective candidates are, cognizant of. That's sort of one of the biggest fears of running for office, which actually honestly keeps quite a large number of people out of the mix. It may not even be like something like a tweet, but it might be something a family member did at one point years ago. You personally have absolutely no control over how things get twisted. It's a really tough thing and does have a suppressing effect on the number of people that are willing to run for office, especially in local elections.

Speaker 3: 22:51

We've been through a couple races where it's like it got so contentious. I'm talking small town stuff here. Some of these small towns could be more vicious than the national level, where kids are not going to be invited to other kids' birthday parties anymore because parents ended up on either side of whatever local fight was happening. Or the old grocery store snub. You're in a vegetable aisle and you try to wave to a neighbor and they just give you the cold shoulder Because of stuff that was dug up or some of that. From a mechanical perspective, like a tactical perspective, one of the things that we like to do right off the bat is number one, and I think attorneys can probably relate to this a little bit is that you say, well, okay, tell me the full story, tell me everything you know, like any liabilities, any opportunities that we might have here to message around your biography. But you've got to be honest about the liabilities. Is there anything that you can think of, even if it doesn't feel like it was that big a deal to you at the time? Just tell us about it. Well, you and I both know and I'm sure a lot of your listeners know like their clients probably don't always say it's like but you're in the courtroom, he's like oh, by the way, I did do that thing, I'm sorry. Like, oh, I forgot to tell you about this other thing. So that does happen from time to time. But what we try to do to mitigate that, so it sort of cuts both ways.

Speaker 3: 24:17

So there's a whole discipline within politics called opposition research. So you put together what they call oppo books that's the terminology that we use. So oppo books on your opposition, where you do all sorts of research. You dig through all the old tweets, all the old Facebook posts. My space posts go way back in the time machine. Yeah, you go as far back as you can, any sort of legal records. You go through court cases, court filing, just really fine tooth comb it's a pretty invasive process on the opposition to see if there's anything there that would be considered disqualifying for office. You also do that for your own candidate. I mean you should right, that's the thing that you should do.

Speaker 3: 25:03

So that turns up some stuff Sometimes that the candidate themselves either like genuinely forgot about and just like didn't tell you, or they'll. It'll turn up stuff that maybe didn't seem like a big deal, but like after having done you know hundreds of campaigns and on our side you just see it and you're like I know where this is going, so you have to address it. So once you kind of know so again, not perfect, because stuff will come up during a campaign Like, even if you go through everything with fine tooth comb, sometimes you miss stuff too, like as a consultant or a campaign manager. So you kind of have to deal with it to your point. So how do you deal with it?

Speaker 3: 25:42

There are a number of different ways. I mean it really depends on what it is. So it could be something that was taken out of context. I will say like there is this really sort of underappreciated skill of making a genuine apology for something like if it's worth it and sometimes like you don't feel like as a candidate, you don't feel like you should have to mean it that way and you know, having having that dialogue I think goes goes a long way. Like that apology just saying like look like I understand how people that are taken in that way and really kind of most times trying to avoid the sort of like I'm sorry you were offended apology, like I'm sorry if this is like it's your fault for being offended, so I'm sorry about that, not that I like tweeted something super offensive or you know, or did something like ridiculous back back in the day.

Speaker 3: 26:34

So I think you know there's there's a little bit of an apology. There's also a way to kind of inoculate yourself against these sorts of things, to using a little bit of humor. So like this has really been a kind of an interesting thing for both younger and older candidates, right, because like younger candidates right, I'm talking like you know, millennials are really even like Gen X on down. You know, we kind of like grew up with the internet and like, so, you know, just thinking in, you know, for my own personal experience, right. So like Facebook was just starting to become a thing as I was getting into college and like I guarantee you that very few college freshman sophomores at that time or high school seniors were thinking, ah, yeah, this is going to be on the internet forever and one day I'm going to run for office and maybe this post could cause me some trouble down in what. No one thought that way. So it was sort of like this digital native thing You're living there posting all sorts of crazy stuff and and then you realize years later, oh, shouldn't have done that, right so so that's kind of an interesting thing. And some of that is just like stuff that, like in college you would seem like entirely normal or not offensive or not problematic, but like as an adult you're like, wow, you know, like doing a keg stand with your shirt off maybe not the best look for a Kennedy, so I mean that's a reality that you know that you have to have to deal with is sort of like all this stuff that's out there like documenting our lives from, you know, the very early age. At this point It'll be interesting to see, like how Gen Z, who really like, grew up with it right, because, like I still like I remember dial-up internet, right, like that horrible sound or someone picks up the phone and you get knocked off, right, which honestly, like was a totally different experience than what kids have today which is on their phones. You know they have the ability to access the internet, so it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

Speaker 3: 28:33

But the other thing that you can use is a little bit of humor in diffusing some of these situations too, to inoculate yourself so like don't take yourself too seriously, like if it's something silly, and you know people are trying to make a big deal out of it. Then just use a little bit of humor, joke about yourself, be a little self-effacing there's nothing wrong with that. I think there's this perception in politics that you have to be perceived at all times as completely infallible, this sort of like you know perfect figure, and if you're not, then you know you're not worth. But I think people do connect with other human beings and it is human to to error, right like it is. It is actually a human trait there. So a little bit of humor works.

Speaker 3: 29:18

There was one example of this that this is like an extraordinarily extreme, actually a really extreme example of sort of inoculating yourself. But John Hickenlooper, who was the governor of Colorado and now a US senator, you know he was running for president and essentially what he did was he published this book, like it was an autobiography or memoir, but it really was like an oppo file that he took and then published as a book on himself, like so it was like all these like weird little stories from his past, like things that people would think might be a little bit offbeat or whatever, and he just like put it out there and he was like you know.

Speaker 3: 29:55

I am who I am and it works. I mean, it's, it's, it's so. It's just like if you, if you bring it to the table, it's harder for your opponent to take that and be like oh, you did this horrible thing when you're kind of being about so yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's what I would say. Like those are the two big things. For bigger stuff, you really have to like go situation by situation. I mean there's like genuinely bad stuff that like you have to consider, even as a consultant, have to consider like do we, do we want to defend this? And and I think you know, sometimes the answer is no, you, it's really like indefensible and you have to make a hard choice at that point yeah, so a couple more questions here before we wrap up.

Speaker 2: 30:32

I know we're coming up on a major election year. Obviously there's there's different elections going on almost seemingly all the time. When should someone what's kind of the sweet spot for starting a campaign like how many months out before an election?

Speaker 3: 30:49

yeah, I mean that's, that's another good, that's another good question. I there's no real sweet spot. Like I said, the the cycle, the campaign cycles have really expanded now. So you know, instead of being a one-year campaign or six-month campaign, you're looking at like a two-year run land. Some of things so for for congress or even like governor.

Speaker 3: 31:11

You know there have been some examples of people who are running for governor who started three years ahead, right, just kind of poking around and starting to set up infrastructure, starting to flesh out their ideas about what they might want to do or what their message might be. So, so it really depends on on resources, in bandwidth. And then there are some campaigns that are much on a much shorter runway, just based on on the calendar, the electoral calendar. So like, for example, if there's a retirement in in congress and all of a sudden there is a seat open and you have three months to run a campaign, then you know you're just considering it on the fly essentially. So I would say like, the more time the better, especially with the fundraising stuff, because, like, as the campaign heats up toward the end, as you get closer to election day, it just becomes your, your schedule, your calendar is going to become even more hectic and it's going to be harder to find that time to do the fundraising.

Speaker 3: 32:07

So I would say, like, if you can start that, you know a few months, like for a, for a local campaign, start five, six, seven months out, and there are also like filing deadlines too that you have to adhere to, so you have to just make sure that you're in. So if you're filing, deadline is in March, you know, for the primary, which then will qualify you for the general election ballot you know you definitely want to start in January of that year, or even like late December. Just start thinking about it, yeah, and thinking about, like, how you're going to raise money. But the more time you give yourself to raise the money, the better off you are, because it takes the pressure off in the final weeks where you're running around, you're doing rallies, you're going to events, you're barely sleeping or you know barely have time to eat, so you're not going to want to be on the phone. You know dialing for dollars at that point got it.

Speaker 2: 32:53

So then, after an election is over win or lose uh, what does someone have to do with any leftover funds? Or are there typically any leftover funds after an election to do? People typically max out and even kind of go into the red on these sorts of things?

Speaker 3: 33:11

You are. You're touching on a topic that that we have a lot of conversations about here at the, here at the office. So, like, our general Disposition here is like, if you're in a competitive race, there's almost no excuse for not spending to zero. Like, why would you leave any dry powder in in the? You really really have to. You have to pull out all of the stops to win. So you know, and you never want it you the worst thing on the worst feeling on election day for a candidate and a consultant is sitting there and asking yourself what could we have? Is there something more that we could have done? Or like actually knowing exactly what you could have done potentially, yeah, you two have made a difference. Late there were.

Speaker 3: 33:56

There were a couple of elections that you know we were watching a few years ago where, where the candidates were separated by four votes Wow, so think about that. Four votes in in an entire legislative district. So you're gonna sit there, an election that can go. What Could we have? That four votes? Like you can count that I mean you can. Like you can figure out who Didn't vote for you, like almost like you can almost figure out like the people who didn't come out like right off the top of your head. So I think you always want to, in a competitive race, spend to zero, like there is almost no excuse for for not doing that Other than this weird fixation with like keeping keeping money in the bank for whatever reason. But like on election night if you lose and you still have a million dollars in the bank, that that's like a real kick yourself kind of situation. Yeah, if it's not a competitive race or or like the sort of partisan Tilt of a district is is heavily in your favor, you know, then you can leave some money in the bank.

Speaker 3: 34:59

I mean, there are a lot of reasons to do that, so you know. The first is that if you're in what would be considered a safe district is your, your typically both parties do it a little bit differently, but you're typically expected to pay into whatever committee, like campaign committee at large, they have. So like, for example, on the congressional side you would pay into the the, you know, democratic congressional campaign committee or the Republican version of that Pay in dues. So then that group can help other vulnerable or competitive. It will help in other competitive races where where's yours is not so there you know, in that in that case, like that's how you would, how you would keep your, you know that's how you would use your, utilize your campaign funding.

Speaker 3: 35:45

The other thing that people do too is which is interesting, is like you see a lot of retirements and Massive sums of money and campaign accounts afterwards and you just kind of wonder. So you know, some people spend that down slowly by giving to other candidates or giving other causes. You're allowed in most places to give, give that money to charity. I mean you can't pocket it right, like that's right number one. It's like you can't be like, okay, I'm done now and you know, here's, here's my windfall at the end of it. So a lot of people do use that for For charity.

Speaker 3: 36:18

If you lose, there are a lot of situations to where people will have run and especially compelling campaign. So this, this happens a lot when you have a candidate running against what you know your base voters would consider like one of the like Marquis villains right of the other party and let's say you came close, like really close in In an unexpected way in that district, then people are kind of thinking you should take another shot next time and they'll continue to fundraise and then announce for for the following election cycle. So you can like roll that over in most cases as well. So it kind of just depends on what you want to do afterwards. But but you know, I would say like again, competitive race spends a zero.

Speaker 3: 36:58

Do not take anything for granted, you know. And and you know one more piece on that too is like early money is always better than late money drives us nuts. So yeah, I think that's a good point. You know you'll get a call like four, three or four weeks before election day. It's like, oh well, you know, we just got, you know, another two million dollars and what do we do with this? And you know, tv's booked right like most of the most of the broadcast and and cable is booked.

Speaker 3: 37:28

You know CPMs are through the roof on like, pre like for the midterm cycle. You know pre-roll, midroll, but CTV OTT, that those were all maxed out like it was absolutely nuts. And in direct mail, I mean, at that point people are getting, you know, ten pieces of direct mail every day to their mailbox. So, like, do you spend it? Sure, you absolutely do. You find a way to spend that money, but it's always better if you can get that in a little bit earlier rather than Later, because I mean there is a limit to like if you want to send more mail, you know you can't do that a week out. You have to make sure that you have everything ready to go before that.

Speaker 3: 38:04

So yeah, you know you don't want to be in a position where you have, like this huge infusion like just a few days before the election and you're like what are we gonna do with this? So, so in that case, like, some people do get caught with with money in the bank At that point too, because you just cannot effectively spend it at the end. So I say early money if you can get it, and always emphasize that to your donors. It's like, you know, the earlier it is the higher leverage we have here, the you know later it is the lower leverage we have. But yeah, spend, spend is zero. That's my, that's my thing. I think you know maybe some people would disagree with me on that, but you know, I just don't see a reason to to leave anything on the field. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 38:42

So I mean, this has been really great, a ton of great insight. I know I've learned a lot from this, and so, before we wrap up here, let people know how they can get in touch with you, how they can learn more about what you guys do. Yeah, absolutely so you can check me out on LinkedIn.

Speaker 3: 38:59

So that's Matt Creighton, k-r-a-y-t-o-n. That's a odd spelling, so I think I might be the only Matt Creighton on the internet that's spelled that way, so very easy to find. You can also check out public ticks on on LinkedIn as well. Those are the sort of two major platforms that were that we're on at the moment and feel free to, you know, check out our website so you can always send me an email. I'm always happy to answer questions and and go through go through three things with with perspective candidates. I know it can be kind of a daunting task. And then there are a lot of, you know, questions that people might have that are not easily answered just by googling. So, yeah, always happy to answer, answer a question if someone's got it, or point them in the right direction too, so happy to do that. So I would say LinkedIn and check out our website. Awesome, fantastic.

Speaker 2: 39:46

Well, that's gonna wrap it up for us today. If you have not done so yet, please leave a rating and review. Wherever you are listening to the show. It really does help us out and gets us out in front of more people. That's gonna do it. Thanks, matt. So much for joining us. Thank you, thanks for listening. To learn more, go to spotlightbrandingcom slash center stage.