Welcome to Louisiana Lefty, a podcast about politics and community in Louisiana, where we make the case that the health of the state requires a strong progressive movement fueled by the critical work of organizing on the ground. Our goal is to democratize information, demystify party politics and empower you to join the mission because victory for Louisiana requires you. I'm your host, Lynda Woolard. We've been on summer break, turning out this series of bonus episodes about state Democratic parties with Professor Stephen Handwerk. You may have heard about coordinated campaigns. So this week, we're trying to answer all the questions about them, and explain why they are critical to democratic success. Stephen Handwerk, thank you for joining one more time for the last in our summer series on demystifying the Democratic Party. This week, I want to talk to you about coordinated campaigns, what they are and how they work. You know, we talked a little bit last week about the difference... the party can do a lot of things without a coordinated campaign. So they can do a lot of generally speaking to voters and registration, mobilizing, messaging, all of that stuff, without a coordinated campaign ever happening, which is relevant because we have those jungle primaries, as opposed to party primaries. So we don't often have an actual candidate, who's the chosen Democratic candidate, in the statewide races. But when we do have that opportunity, where we have a candidate, and they're the sole Democrat running and we are able to do a coordinated campaign, what can the party do?
First off, I want to kind of preface this conversation by saying, "Why a coordinated campaign?" And the interesting thing about state parties, how we're organized, and this is post McCain-Feingold, the modifications that happened then, and a whole bunch of other stuff... At the end of the day, Democratic Parties, state Democratic Parties are uniquely situated. They're unlike any other organization in our country. And that is because they get to fully coordinate both on the incoming side of money and also on the expenditure of that money. And because of that unique situation, they can do that not only for federal candidates, but they can also do that for local candidates. And so functioning state parties, the state parties that are actually really leaning into this, oftentimes build that coordinated campaign structure, which, let's just be honest about what that is, a coordinated campaign is just an agreement to run operations through a state party. So it's still the state party, you can call it a coordinated campaign. Oftentimes, in the ones you and I've been involved with, we named it something else, even though it was still just the party. We called it...
For Mary Landrieu, it was Campaign for Louisiana. For John Bel Edwards, it was Victory for Louisiana
100%. And it's because of that way, which gives us a little bit of an opportunity and flexibility without having to constantly message on what the party is and giving all of the party control. So what is a coordinated campaign? Loosely speaking, it's when those candidates like the governor or US senator or even president, it could be president, it could be members of Congress, it could be your state officials, if they're all on the ballot the same time, it's these groups coming together and saying, "These are our priorities for this election cycle. This is how much money we're going to raise in and how much we'll individually be responsible for kicking in to this fund." And this money, once we raise it, is going to be expended here, here and here. That is what a coordinated campaign is. And oftentimes what happens is, you hire on a coordinated campaign director, who will actually run that operation, because just you're running a coordinated campaign doesn't mean that the state party stops functioning. There are still pieces that a state party still has to do independent of that coordinated campaign. And so that's that sort of coalition of the willing of what a coordinated campaign does, and and how it is. Now, what could that mean? It could mean telephones, it could mean door knocking, it could mean mail, it could mean slate card distribution, it could mean poll watchers. All of those things that it could mean... it could mean radio ads, it could mean television ads.
When I spoke to Joel Emerson about the 2014 Mary Landrieu campaign, he reminded me that when they were making phone calls or door knocks for Mary Landrieu, they were also, in at least some of our congressional districts, they were turning out voters for both Mary Landrieu and the down-ballot congressional candidates.
That's exactly right. And that's the important part of this. By making the call through the coordinated campaign, that does not then hurt the actual top of the ticket. So for example, the legalities of this, and I know that this might be in the weeds, but just to give it the top line is, the U.S. Senate candidate cannot legally expend their money to then represent for a congressional candidate and help pull them over the line because they are limited by how much money they're allowed to spend on campaign resources. So even if it's not cutting them a check, but they're including them in scripts and they're paying them, those volunteers, or they're paying their staff to manage those calls, that is an illegal campaign expenditure because they'll quickly go over their limit. So that's why you need the coordinated campaign, organized through a state party, which has that unlimited control that they can then muster those efforts in order to represent the entire ticket. So that it's not just one individual and then you're dying with 1000 phone calls. Because, in this day and age, we know that the people that are going to get the phone calls are probably about 20% of the voting population.
And one of the benefits of a coordinated campaign is that there are caps on the amount of money a candidate can receive. But the party, via a coordinated campaign, does not have the same kind of caps. They don't have the same restrictions on donation amounts.
Correct. The state parties actually have higher limits for what they're able to accept. So for example, right now, federally, state parties can accept $10,000 per donor, per individual, and that's not corporate money. But then the state party can also then accept non-federal dollars. And every state has different non-federal rules as to how much... in Louisiana for example, they're allowed to accept up to $100,000 per entity, which includes corporations, by the way, up to $100,000 every four-year cycle. So because of those larger limits, you're able to bring in a lot more money. Now, every single penny of it has to still be reported. So it's not like anyone's getting away with anything. It's not like the super funds, or super PACs or anything like that. And unlike Super PACs, state parties or coordinated campaigns can coordinate through all of those candidates, they can coordinate on messaging, they can coordinate on what doors to knock, on what the message is once that door is knocked. So it is a real, true team effort being done. And that's why it's so uniquely situated. But oftentimes, for donors, it's not the sexiest place to put your money.
And traditionally, one of the things a coordinated campaign might handle for instance, is the field side of the campaigning, right? So they can raise money to do all, like you said, the door knocks and the phone calls and etc., leaving the campaign open to do more really candidate specific stuff.
That's exactly right. And here, let me explain why that is, all candidates receive a, I don't want to say a discount, all candidates are required by law to receive the best price possible for all of their media booking and for all of their radio and TV. How and why is that important? Well, it's going to cost us almost twice as much to place the ad via the coordinated campaign, with a Louisiana Democratic Party paid for by, for anything that's over the airwaves, right? Anything that's going to be on TV or radio is going to cost more. So that's why we leave the candidate to place those ads, we leave the candidate who's allowed to be able to do that messaging and do that framing. The state party then can take on those door knocks, all of those other expenditures that, quite frankly, take a lot of organization. Most times when you have a coordinated campaign, you're going to have regional field offices. The state party is more situated because of its background, because it's going to exist in November and December after the campaign wraps right? Come win or lose, party is still going to exist. So they are much better situated to be able to sign those leases with those local rentals. It's them that actually sets up the internet, all of that information, all of that stuff, and then it's their job then to archive all of that information for future campaigns.
So the fact that we have these jungle primaries, that makes it much more difficult for Louisiana than states that do not have that kind of primary system, that makes it more difficult for us to have these coordinated campaigns. Right?
It could, it could if we allow it, okay. And here's what I mean by that. Just because we do have the jungle primaries doesn't necessarily mean that the state party can't do early endorsements and set themselves up to win. Prime example of that would be Governor John Bel Edwards. We endorsed him incredibly early. We worked with our partners so that we literally would have an entire month of rollouts of endorsements for him, where we all aligned, and this happened in early March of the election year when this started. So the great thing about that was that we were able to endorse on, I think it was the first Saturday of March... The next weekend, the AFL-CIO endorsed, the next weekend LFT and all of the teachers unions came in. It was this kind of groundswell that we were able to build up and that early spring that allowed us to then execute like crazy during the summer.
Was their coordinated campaign created right after that endorsement?
Yes, yeah. And we had already started setting up the pieces of that. And the reason why... the reason why endorsements are so important for states that do not have party primaries, is because that is the mechanism in which it gives you the authorization from your members to just work with one Democrat, when, ultimately there could be multiple. Because in Louisiana, with our jungle primaries, we'll probably see this come October when we all go vote here this year. There's probably going to be more than just one Democrat on the ticket. There's going to be people, who we usually call the also-rans. But in order for us to be able to back, there'll be more than 20 candidates, I'm sure, on the ballot for governor. In order for us to actually do that organization work with just one candidate, basically, forget the other candidates. And we don't even have to... that gives the staff permission to ignore the phone calls of any of the other candidates. It allows you to form that team to be able to process, and without that endorsement, you don't have that opportunity.
And to the point that the party can be doing things for candidates, even if there isn't a coordinated campaign, prior to that endorsement, John Bel Edwards had already been running for two years prior to that. We were already, because I was at the party at that time, we were already doing things for John Bel prior to that. Now, we had our bigger focus in 2014 on Mary Landrieu so that... that sucked up most of the energy of the party, but there were little things we were doing all along the way for John Bel. Like, making sure we were keeping him in the loop with team Blue Dat volunteers and getting him on conference calls with them. I know we awarded him, when we did the Naughty and Nice awards, he got the the Nice award that year. So there were little things we were doing all along the way to try to elevate his name. And make sure people were hearing from him.
The one thing that, I think, that you and I have to constantly remind individuals of, maybe Joel and others that were around for the 2014 races... I am going to say this, I'm going to plant my flag in it because I honestly believe that we're at not for the work that we did in the organization, in the data harvesting, in the door knocking, in the conversations that we had in 2014, John Bel never would have been elected in 2015. I think that our lifts would have been so high and heavy for us to try and recreate now, we did not have the resources in 2015 that we had in 2014. But I truly believe that in order for us, that was kind of our our dress rehearsal, that was a way for us to actually start working together and figuring out some of that stuff, and I truly believe that it benefited. It's something that we still owe a great debt of gratitude to Mary Landrieu for what it was. We didn't give up.
I made that point on the episode with Joel Emerson. And he graciously said... he did not want to take credit for work that John Bel's campaign did. But you're not wrong in the sense that that, those two campaigns aside, any building you're doing benefits, so any work you do to party build, to build networking, to reach out to voters, that benefits down-ballot and benefits next future candidates. So that is... we talked about that last time. That's the ongoing work of the party, that it is an ongoing 365 campaign. It is a never ending campaign. So...
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that's why... if you are a politician right now, if you are sitting on a big city council and you're thinking about your political future, because you're a young individual, and someday you may want to run for governor, you should fully be involved in what's going on with your state party right now. Because every single thing that is being done is going to go to your benefit. When you actually go and pull that trigger, 10, 15 years down the road, right? So that's why it's so incredible for people to not get this out of focus. This is something that is worth fighting for. It's worth fighting to have a functioning and vibrant state party that is doing the things to make them successful. If we want to have a better legislature, if we want to have these things, we've got to stop with the mundane practices of old. I mean, waiting until now, waiting until the middle of July or August, to recruit candidates to run for the House and the Senate is not in anyone's best interest. For anyone. Because it's not going to be useful when it actually comes down to actually winning races. Could we pick up some? Sure. But in order to build that coordinated campaign, we should be doing that much earlier, and laying that groundwork in order to be successful.
I said this on one of the previous episodes, the demystifying episodes we did, the work for recruiting the next round of candidates for State, House and Senate begins in one year.
Well, it should, it absolutely should. And that is kind of where I'm regretful that we kind of get... we fall down. Now, one of the things that I frequently say, especially in my new job, in what I do right now, and that's helping provide resources to do big things. One of the things that I try and remind individuals is, you can wish, hope and dream, but until you resourced, it's never going to come to fruition. You know, we have to actually put our money, our time where our mouth is. If we say we want to have a better party, that's not something that we sit back and say, "Oh, I'm going to tweet about this." Although, tweets are great, but what you should probably do is... you probably need to be rolling up your sleeves and trying to figure out what it is that you can do to have a better situation. Having a full slate of candidates on Election Day is incredibly powerful. Having a coordinated campaign that's behind them, that's door-knocking, that's doing the things that we know win elections, not buying yard signs, not doing the things that are just kind of like lip drops, those are not things that really affect elections in any sort of meaningful or tangible way. We know that because we have years of data to prove it. And so the only mechanism to get this done on the larger scale, to benefit the most people is via a coordinated campaign.
And the nice thing about coordinated campaigns is if you have the legal permission, essentially, to go make calls for a Senate and congressional candidate. It's inherently helping all those down-ballot candidates that are further down on the ticket. Now, in the 2023 year, are odd years, where we are electing our state-wide officials, when we don't have Senate and congressional candidates and we're looking at governor, etcetera, it's a little harder, but there are still resources out there for funding. The DGA, the Democratic Governors Association, there is a Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. I've heard, not just from our state, from other red states, that they say they don't get a whole lot of love from the DLCC. But there are sources for getting funding for the statewide year elections.
Yeah. And again, they're more apt to contribute. Remind you of the way that they can contribute is via coordinated because they run the same risk as everyone else as to the campaign contribution limits that individual candidates have. The problem that we always had with those is, we do these off-year elections, and they just typically get rid of all of their staff after the midterm or presidential year, when it comes time for us to elect. So that's a constant problem there. But you're right, in that there are multiple different vehicles to do that. But a lot of times those vehicles, those national organizations are waiting on that endorsement in order for them to make those significant investments in states and it's the chicken or the egg sort of situation in those regards.
Again in the statewide election years, where we're electing to The Louisiana State Senate and Louisiana State House, we do have Democratic caucuses for each of those bodies. How engaged are they? And they tend to focus on incumbents. But they are supposed to be also helping to recruit for seats where there's a Republican currently seated. How engaged are they with coordinate campaigns? Can they be integrated?
Absolutely, they can completely... when I was running things for the party, we, especially for the governor's years, we worked with them very closely. And figuring out what our mail program was going to be, what our resources were going to look like, where and what districts we were going to be playing in, how we were going to invest those resources. Now, the problem that I have with those caucuses, and I've said this 100 times, so I'm not breaking any news here, but I am salty about it. What I'm upset about is, is that they go three and a half years, every single cycle, with doing absolutely nothing when it comes to candidate recruitment, candidate training, candidate education. And so then, all of a sudden, they'll bring in these consultants at the last minute, just for an election year, usually only for six months of that election year. And then they wonder why, "Oh, we're gonna celebrate because we kept the seats that we had." Like, that is not something we should celebrate. We should be celebrating picking up seats, we should be looking at the targeting, we should be working on candidate recruitment. And I wish those organizations did a little bit more on that. But the way they're set up, you're absolutely right, Lynda, the way they're set up is incumbent protection. That is really how they're set up.
And on the finance piece of that, did they raise their own money? And would they give money to a coordinated? Or am I getting that backwards with a coordinated give them money?
No, they absolutely do give the money. And a lot of times...
They raise money and give it to the coordinated?
Yes. How that happens, though, is... typically, what will happen then is our state party finance director and the gubernatorial candidate, their finance director, will raise into all of the buckets, okay? This House caucus bucket, the Senate caucus bucket, and the Louisiana Democratic Party bucket, which by the way, all three of those have the same contribution limits. So each one of those could take $100,000 check into each one of them. And then those three together, because of the coordinated buy-in, were then going to agree where those expenditures will be made. Sometimes it'll be a House check that gets cut. Sometimes it'll be a Senate check. Sometimes it'll be a Louisiana Democratic Party check. But that is how that works is that we all agree that those funds are going to be utilized in the way that the coordinated director ultimately pans out.
So my takeaway today is the same takeaway I often have when we have these conversations, is the party needs a really good compliance person.
Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, I don't know... she never wanted any credit for any of this work. But I gotta tell you, I had the best compliance person. For the nine plus years that I was with the party, Pat Hoffman was just the absolute best. She was a no-crap type of woman who did not suffer fools. But I'm telling you what, keeping on top of all of this, making sure that you can keep those spreadsheets, you need a strong executive director with a very strong compliance background as well in order to be able to make split-second decisions. And you also need a really good attorney. And we had one of the best attorneys as well. So I'm kind of... I'm kind of happy of the dream team that we put together for those years.
What else should we know about coordinated campaign, Stephen?
Look, I think that they, they need to be realized as a valuable resource. And they need to be something that is not forgotten. We should, right now, already be putting things in place to be set up for next year's coordinated campaign for the presidential. We should be setting up policies, procedures, and we should also be cultivating donors to realize that Louisiana is worth investing in. We may be... we likely will now be picking up a congressional district. What are we doing right now to plan for that? What are we doing on candidate recruitment for that right now? What are we doing to raise funds for that right now? Are we raising money into the legal fund in order to be able to pay for any sort of litigation that might be happening there, which we know will probably be forthcoming? Those are all things that a coordinated campaign could and should be doing right now. Those are the things that we need to look at and I and... also too, by the way, local parties. Your local DPECs can do a lot of these same things in a coordinated aspect for your local candidates. So if you're looking at electing a president, if you're looking at electing a council, those are all things that you guys could be marshalling together and pulling people together in order to get this done. A lot of these things that... especially all of the Louisiana Lefty podcasts have cross-disciplinary applications to the topics that we're talking about, that can be utilized for just about any sort of persuasion campaign you want to run. And so building that coalition, even on the local ground level, in your city, in your parish, is all something that you can be doing right now.
You know, my worry to your point, Stephen, about next year, 2024, is that if we're just now recruiting candidates for our House, state and Senate races, we're not focusing on recruiting folks for the congressional districts for next year or the Senate seat that'll be open. And that isn't work that... you can't ask someone to run to be a senator two months out from an election.
No. That's exactly right. And being in the room, asking people to run for office, let me just tell you, I stopped. I started refusing to be part of those conversations after the beginning of March in the years of the elections. And the reason why? Because you can't mount a statewide campaign or congressional campaign in four months, you just simply can't, that's not a thing. Especially when you don't have an incumbent. That's just not a thing. So you have to realize when are, and you've done a really good job on this, when are the times in the calendar that you should be doing certain things. We talk about this a lot, especially you and I, kibitzing back and forth as to when voter registration drives, and that sort of work, should be done versus when persuasion calls should be being done, when persuasion conversations should be happening. And then when ultimately turnout should happen. We have a majority of Democrats out there, the problem is that a majority of those Democrats don't vote.
Correct. And so the other piece that I hit on a lot, why coordinated campaigns matter, doing the early recruiting for those so that you can get the endorsements and get them set up, matters is because, if you're not doing that, you're setting up your candidates that you recruiting too late to run a good campaign. You're setting them up for failure. And so it becomes increasingly more difficult. That's a snowball effect, it becomes increasingly more difficult to talk people into running when they see that, well, "No one's gonna really support me if I run." It also sets your volunteers and advocates and activists up for failure. When you're pushing them out to stump for a candidate who does not have the full backing and the full coordinated campaign. You know you're going to lose, but you got to have a Democrat on the ballot. Great. But when you're asking someone over and over and over again to put in the hard work for candidates who cannot win... there's was a burnout factor. You cannot keep volunteering when you cannot deliver them some successes, you have to rack up some successes. So yeah, I am an advocate, 100%, for there always being a Democrat to vote for on the ballot. And we know there are some districts where we will not win, we know that. But it's why you have to really target smartly. And pick the districts that you're going to do some smart work in and focus your serious efforts on electing those candidates, whether you're the Democratic party or a group that... any group that recruits and trains candidates to run. You've got to be able to show some successes at some point in order to keep people investing money and investing time into your efforts.
That's exactly right. And if we ever want to receive money from these national organizations, the alphabet soup that you and I frequently refer to, we also have to showcase to them that we're actually doing the things that will actually work. And so again, I mean, we look at and will wring our hands and say, "Why in the hell isn't the DGA investing more in the gubernatorial race this year?" After all, we have a sitting Democratic governor. Well, there's a couple of things that are kind of working against us there. The first and foremost is, we didn't have a candidate, actually out there and declared, until basically the beginning of April, when the election is in October... that hit us bad. The second part of this was, and this is something I'll say, and I'll own it, I'll probably take flack for it, but it's gotta be said, we also didn't hire a national name to actually run that campaign. We didn't bring on a team that has successes underneath their belt to be able to say, "We're taking this very seriously, we're actually going to be able to raise the money." And I'm telling you, those two decisions, probably more than anything else, are now showcasing themselves in the campaign finance reports that are being filed as to why there's not more money in the campaign coffers of our candidate. Now, I love Shawn Wilson, I'm gonna vote for Shawn Wilson. I'm going to do what I can to help elect Shawn Wilson. But right now, those things are things that are irreparable to where we're at right now. And I also think, too, that those decisions also contributed to the fact that the endorsement for Shawn Wilson came so late. Because they didn't have that groundswell. They didn't have the work out there in order to be able to do that earlier. So I said my piece.
Well, that's also bylaws related, right? Like, the party needs to change the bylaws so that they can do those endorsements earlier. Right?
Yeah. We tried to warn the governing party in the Bylaws Committee that their bylaws were a mess, and that the changes that they made... there was no successful campaign that can be mounted in a 45 day period. If you were going to limit endorsements of the state party to 45 days, you cannot mount a statewide campaign, you can't launch a congressional campaign, I would argue even to launch a mayoral campaign, in 45 days.
Gotcha. Okay. Well, Stephen, I appreciate you taking the time, with your wealth of knowledge on democratic inside baseball, and sharing that with us so that folks can have a better understanding of how the party functions. And so they can participate in the party in a way that makes sense, where we might actually get some change this year, next year, however many years down the road. Because I think that's important. I think that being able to get average Democrats involved in the party so that they're not questioning things, like, "How did we end up with the party chair that we have? How did we end up with the leadership that we did? How did we end up with the endorsements we did?" Those are things we've covered. And we now have a special link on the louisianalefty.rocks website. If you scroll down on the bottom of the archives page, there's a link that says Demystifying the Democratic Party, and you can click on that and find all the episodes that you and I have done that have talked about these different topics. So that folks, should they care to understand better, have that opportunity.
Yeah, and we need to go back and sharpen the saw. It's a great time to go back and kind of refresh yourself because, as you and I frequently say, you only get one bite at the apple to reshape the party. And that's every four years. And guess what, that comes this December with qualifying. So I really do help folks roll up their sleeves and get involved. And the parting word that I would like to give is... it's truly a butterfly effect. We may not get what we want in this election cycle. But the work that we do today will pay it forward so that we can lay the groundwork so that we have an opportunity for success in the future. If we don't begin that work today, if we don't have a starting line for us to begin, then that's never going to get there. We're never going to get there if we don't start. And we can start in small ways in order to be able to affect that big change down the road.
And one of the things that we started Louisiana Lefty for, and that I'd like to underscore, while some people may just not like the party, might not like the issues that they talk about, or might think they should be talking about some issues better. At the end of the day, the reason why we do the work of the Democratic Party and try to make the party a better party, is because there are people in the state who need it to be better. For their survival, for their protection. There are vulnerable communities, their workers, their families, their children, who need the party to be strong, to be better, so that there are more people in our elected government representing them and standing up for them.
I couldn't have said it better. 100%. There is so much at stake right now. We thought that, you know, we thought that we had certain things that were just done that we could mark them done in the history books, and now all of a sudden they're not, they've been undone. And now we're having to refight some of those battles. And that's what we need to do right now. We got to wake up some folks, but then we also have to get to work.
Thank you, Stephen.
Thank you, Lynda.
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