I got my start in campaigns pitching opposition research. It was some of the most fun work I’ve ever gotten to do.

But many of the local news outlets I used to land stories with don’t exist anymore. And the kind of “scandals” that merited full-page write-ups in 2016 barely register these days.

That’s why I was so excited to connect with Pat Dennis this week.

As President of American Bridge 21st Century, Pat leads the largest Democratic organization dedicated to tracking and researching Republicans and holding them accountable for things they’d rather not talk about in public.

How voters encounter opposition research, and what they care about when they do, has changed a lot in recent years. But good research is still helping define some of this year’s highest-profile contests.

This week, I talked with Pat about how the opposition research landscape has changed, why American Bridge is pitching research directly to influencers, and how AI is creating new opportunities to get oppo directly into the hands of voters.

I hope you get as much out of our conversation as I did.

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4 short questions. 4 quick responses on what’s working, what isn’t, and what comes next in Democratic communications, featuring the wisdom of American Bridge 21st Century President Pat Dennis.

Between the decline of local newsrooms and changing standards for what constitutes a political scandal in the Trump era, it feels harder than ever to get opposition research placed in traditional news outlets. Has your thinking about how to get research out into the world in an impactful way changed?

Absolutely. There’s so much noise and the ways voters receive their information has changed so much that you need to adapt to break through.

Influencers matter far more now. We’re constantly packaging research for influencers to distribute on their platforms. That’s particularly important for oppo on the administration, which is committing once considered career-ending scandals nearly every day. The zone is so flooded and so many newsrooms have been down-sized that a lot of reporters simply don’t have the capacity to cover every pitch. Adding influencers into our approach lets us quickly get research into the social feeds where people are increasingly getting their information and forming their political opinions. It’s also a great pipeline for traditional press.

When New Jersey’s Tom Kean Jr. left Congress for months while collecting his salary throughout, we compiled research on his record of voting against paid leave at both the state and federal level. We shared that research with both local and national influencers, who shared it on social media where the contradiction of it gained momentum, and that momentum carried that research into traditional media outlets.

However, for local races, it’s hard to replicate the impact of local outlets. The changing media landscape has made it harder for voters to know who they can trust, but they still generally trust their local paper. So, even as we’ve adapted, we’ve still relied heavily on those traditional channels.

There’s a school of thought in campaigns that you should offer opposition research to a reporter as an exclusive before putting it out into the world. But earlier this year, Bridge launched its Research Books, making your research available to anyone and everyone at the same time. What was the thinking behind that decision, and how have you seen it work in practice?

Research is only impactful if people can actually access it, and that means making sure it’s available in the new places voters are receiving their information. We still pitch reporters and land our research in local and national outlets, where it can reach voters and move races, but plenty of voters aren’t seeking out news at all anymore. They’re getting it passively, through their algorithms and the influencers they follow.

Research Books gives our research to anyone who needs it — the TikTok creator, the local newspaper reporter, the campaign volunteer knocking on doors — so they can pull it and put it in front of voters immediately. It also lets us move faster and at a far greater scale. Not every finding will make the front page, but many of them build on a larger narrative that shapes how people vote.

In practice, we’re actually seeing a lot of voters themselves use it. We’re also seeing our research surface in AI-generated answers every day. That’s another major shift in how voters get information, plenty of them are using AI to research candidates. If Democrats aren’t in the sources AI draws from, we’re ceding that ground where potentially persuadable voters are.

What research hit from this cycle are you most proud of? What impact did it have on the race?

I’m proudest of something that doesn’t show up as one viral moment. We’ve taken the deep-records investigative work that used to be saved for presidential and Senate races and are doing it all the way down the ballot.

Take Pennsylvania’s 12th statehouse district. It’s a Trump +18 seat where no Democrat had been competitive in decades, and it held a special election in August. The state party and Democratic candidate there ran an incredible campaign. At the same time, our researchers went through Butler County and state records and found that the Republican candidate, who was running on his small-business record and low taxes, had a business with more than $42,000 in unpaid state taxes and liens on the books. We placed it all over local press right before election day. For voters who decided late, that was a key piece of information informing their vote. The Democrat won by fewer than 100 votes, so a lot of things matter with that kind of margin.

Look at the Iowa governor’s race. There’s a key narrative against Zach Lahn that he lives in Kansas. Well, he also holds up a private school in Kansas as the model for Iowa’s schools. We reviewed public records showed that he and his wife personally loaned that school $4.5 million to keep it afloat, and that it isn’t even accredited. The Kansas Reflector broke the story, and it spread from there.

That kind of investigative methodology going down ballot so that voters can have a real picture of who they’re voting for, that’s a big value add we work hard to provide.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

Focus on the tangible! There’s no shortage of things Democrats want to protect or get done because we believe in the principle behind them. But you can’t get anything done without power, and you don’t win power unless you speak to what matters to voters.

For example, I think 2024 showed us that democracy is, unfortunately, a pretty abstract concept to a lot of voters. It sounds nice on paper, but telling people you want to save democracy from the Trump administration doesn’t answer the kitchen-table issues they’re dealing with every day. But there’s a way to talk about everything that ties it back to the kitchen table. Corruption raises your costs. The erosion of law and order affects the safety of your community. You can talk about the big concepts, but you have to be able to explain why they matter to a working-class voter who’s focused on providing for their family and keeping them safe.

I talk about this a lot when it comes to AI. If you want to talk about regulating AI, talk about jobs, because that’s a real threat every voter feels. You can’t expect voters to make the leap on their own. You have to lead them there, and that means meeting them where they are — and right now the voters you need are worrying about their costs, their job security, and their financial future.

Thanks for your time, Pat.

We’re 21 days out from Election Day, when many of us will be laser-focused on the races that will determine whether Democrats win control of the House.

Courtney Rice has been locked in on these races for nearly four years. As Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Communications Director since 2023, few people have more insight into this year’s most closely watched House races.

This week, I connected with Courtney about why Democrats can’t afford to let attacks go unanswered, why the DCCC hired a national spokesperson to engage with content creators and podcasters, and which races she’ll be watching most closely on election night.

I’m excited to share the well-earned insights of one of the most thoughtful strategists I’ve had the pleasure of working with.

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6 short questions. 6 quick responses featuring the wisdom of DCCC Communications Director Courtney Rice.

Courtney, you’ve been at the DCCC for 3 out of the last 4 election cycles. What’s the most important impactful change you’ve made in how you do your job during that time that others could benefit from emulating?

Reading this, 3 out of 4 election cycles at the DCCC is CRAZY. But I can’t help it, I love House world. Each of the cycles (2020, 2024, 2026) has been very different, but I think my biggest takeaway is what worked in previous cycles - whether it’s strategy or staff structure - doesn’t always work in the current cycle and you can’t be scared to try new things just because it’s the way it’s always been done in “the building,” as we affectionately call the Committee.

A big part of the Comms Director’s role is message development and execution - across both the national and local level - and team management. Since I’ve been here, we’ve expanded the communications team to hire a more senior dedicated Hispanic Press Secretary role that interacts with campaigns across the battlefield (a first in the 2024 cycle in its current iteration) and a National Spokesperson whose role is primarily to interface with new media, whether that’s podcasts, longform YouTube shows, content creators, and the like. You’ll read this throughout my Q&A, but my fundamental comms belief is that we can’t keep our candidates in a bubble and we should take most media opportunities that come our way. Both of these roles reflect that belief.

Four dollar gas and $20 hamburgers have a lot of Republicans running scared. But is there a race that best exemplifies why strong candidates and smart ways of reaching voters are a big reason the House in play?

You mentioned burgers so I have to put a plug in for two of my favorite ads this cycle:

The DCCC ran an ad on Meta platforms and YouTube over Labor Day 2025 breaking down how much the cost of a cheeseburger has increased thanks to Republicans’ tariffs. The ad, and another one of the increased cost of beer, were targeted to men ages 18-44.

Janelle Stelson in PA-10 (ran in 2024 and overperformed the top of the ticket by nearly 4 points, and genuinely one of the best and most fun people I’ve ever met) was up on TV last month with an ad all about how GOP Congressman Scott Perry and Republicans have raised the cost of burgers.

The reason I’m mentioning both of these is because we’re not coming late to the party on rising prices being THE theme of the midterms. We’ve been leading the charge on this issue from the beginning.

To your actual question: the DCCC’s secret sauce over the past several cycles has always been the candidates we run. The through line between every candidate and every district on the DCCC’s battlefield is that they are driven by public service over self, that they are grounded in their communities and known outside of politics, and that they represent their communities.

First example that comes to mind is Jake Johnson in MN-01, running against freshman GOP Congressman Brad Finstad. Jake is a high school math teacher working in the same town in which he grew up. This district wasn’t on anyone’s list at the beginning of the cycle but, because of Jake’s doggedness and really creative ways of generating earned media, he has absolutely put the seat in play. Finstad hasn’t held a town hall since being elected and has even refused to answer reporter questions. So Jake embarked on a 21 county district town hall tour and is now driving around the district on a Receipts Tour, where voters bring their literal receipts and talk about how high costs are affecting them. And he’s even posting his town halls online, unedited. Talk about the real deal. Goes to my fundamental belief that candidates need to be going everywhere and talking to everyone.

What would surprise people about the way DCCC advises candidates on messaging and talking to voters? Has that shifted in recent years?

I think most folks think the DCCC tells candidates exactly what to say. We don’t. In reality our role is empowering candidates to speak to what is authentic to them and their districts, laying out options and potential results, and helping them think through how best to communicate whatever that is. It’s a cliche but candidates and members really do know their local communities best. One throughline through all of this is that we’ve been strategic in recommending that candidates respond when they’re getting attacked. The worst thing you can do is let an attack on air go unanswered. In previous cycles, you’d see Democrats up and down the ballot operating under the belief that they shouldn’t give these attacks any more oxygen by refuting them. It didn’t work.

We’re already starting from a solid place because our candidates are trusted, well-known and grounded in their communities. We know from electoral experience, such as the 2024 special election in NY-03 where Republicans fear-mongered on immigration and border security to attack now-Congressman Tom Suozzi. Suozzi responded to the attacks and went to camera to tell voters what he believed in – and he was elected by an 8 point margin. In Congress, Tom has followed through, launching the Democratic Border Security Task Force and co-leading bipartisan legislation to fully fund DHS and also reform ICE.

What race are you watching on election night to determine if we’re gonna have a good night?

Iowa, Virginia, and Florida will be some of the earliest indicators as to how good of a night we’ll have. I’ll be looking at the margins in IA-02 and VA-02 in particular to gauge our Democratic candidates’ margins of overperformance from 2024. IA-02 went for Trump last cycle by 10 points and the GOP House incumbent by 16 points; on paper alone, it shouldn’t be at the center of our battlefield but because of our incredible candidate Lindsay James, coupled with some pretty damning oppo on the Republican Joe Mitchell, and of course voters being pissed about rising prices, we’re running neck and neck.

VA-02 is a perennial battleground. The Democratic or Republican candidate who wins the district has, since 2008, tracked with which party controls the House Majority. That’s a big deal. With the district being home to one of the largest naval bases in the country, Trump’s reckless wars and, importantly, GOP Congressman Jen Kiggans’ votes to continue the war - and her 100% Trump voting record - which are costing lives and raising prices, will be determinative here.

And, of course, I’ll be looking for just how big of a swing across Florida we might see because of Latino dissatisfaction with Republicans’ broken promises and their failed attempt at a gerrymander.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

We’re going to win the majority, not just because Trump is unpopular, but because we deployed the strategies to make sure we met the moment. We had to create the environment, build the infrastructure, and recruit the candidates to take advantage of the national mood. We built a good foundation for this in 2024 when House Democrats massively overperformed the top of the ticket. Early strategic decisions like these can be the difference between winning and losing. In 2024, we were 7,309 votes away from winning back the majority.

Who else should we make time talk to?

Dan Gottlieb! Dan was the DCCC’s West Regional Press Secretary in 2024 (my first cycle as CD at the DCCC) and he’s now serving as Troy Jackson’s Comms Director up in Maine after a wild 2025 of handling comms for Colin Allred’s Senate race and the Virginia redistricting referendum - aka he knows how to roll with the punches and make the most of every situation. He’s one of the best in the business and is better at landing oppo than anyone I’ve ever worked with. Bonus is that he’s just an all around good human and colleague. One day I think we’ll all end up working for him.

Thanks for your time, Courtney.

Everyone has an opinion about how Democrats should respond to anti-trans attacks. But unlike most of us, Lanae Erickson has the data to back hers up.

Lanae and her colleagues at Third Way have conducted more than 40 rounds of research across four campaign cycles to figure out how Democrats can respond to attacks on trans Americans that have become central to the Republican Party’s 2026 midterm strategy.

This week, Lanae and I connected on how Democrats can stake out positions that voters respect, avoid punching down at a marginalized group, and win the battle over “reasonableness.”

Hope you enjoy Lanae’s research-backed — and very thoughtful — insights.

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6 short questions. 6 quick responses featuring the wisdom of Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s Senior Vice President for Social Policy, Education & Politics

Lanae, what’s the first thing you say to a comms director or media consultant who doesn’t want to attack a marginalized group, but also believes they’ve gotta win and that their candidate will be a lot better for trans people than the Republican they’re up against?

Don’t believe the hype that this is an “80/20 issue” on which Democrats are on the wrong side. Public sentiment on these issues is much more complicated than that slogan. There is a way to inoculate yourself against these attacks, respond confidently and authentically when they come, and even go on offense here. And a candidate can articulate their values in a way that appeals to both swing voters and the Democratic base—if they prepare and get comfortable saying what they really think. If they don’t, they can end up reacting in a way that both hurts transgender people and turns swing voters off. Don’t let them wander down that path!

Poll after poll shows Democrats with a lead on the cost of living issues most important to voters. Why can’t Democratic candidates just ignore the anti-trans ads? Is there an example of someone you think has done a good job here?

Clearly costs are the number one issue driving voters this fall, but in order to win, Democratic candidates need to both land the affordability argument and show that they are authentic and mainstream.

Last cycle, too many consultants (and a fair amount of LGBT advocates) told Democrats not to respond to the anti-trans attacks and to just change the subject. That led to a situation where most voters thought Democrats believed there should be no rules in sports and no rules around healthcare for transgender young people.

The caricatures from those attacks stuck, because we completely failed to rebut them. Silence is deadly on these issues, because although it isn’t their first priority, voters do care—and our latest testing shows the attacks take about eight points off the Democratic vote if we don’t respond. Voters also know that every person in America has a viewpoint on these issues at this point, so if you change the subject or sound evasive, you sound like a tricky politician.

The good news is that we can win the battle of reasonableness on these issues, addressing concerns of cross-pressured voters without taking positions or using rhetoric that hurts transgender young people.

Here’s how it goes: we all want sports to be fair and athletes to be safe—that’s why sports associations should absolutely make rules around transgender athletes’ participation, but those rules don’t need to be the same in college and kindergarten. And parents are the ones who should be making health care decisions for their kids, not politicians. Lindsay James in Iowa offers a fantastic example of this approach, embracing rules (not laws) and parents (not politicians). That’s the winning formula.

Third Way’s research seems to suggest that “don’t let boys play girls’ sports” isn’t the most effective thing for a candidate to say? Why not? And what does that data suggest may resonate more?

I think there are three reasons that pat response doesn’t work.

First, it conjures images of big dudes running around playing against little girls, which is not helpful to put in voters’ minds.

Second, it’s confusing—by boys, do you mean transgender girls? I’ve had consultants argue “but it doesn’t mean trans girls, it just means non-transgender boys!” That’s confusing at best and evasive at worst.

Third, and most importantly, it’s disrespectful. Calling transgender girls “boys” is unnecessary and in the same vein as the people who insist on calling Rep. Sarah McBride “Mr. McBride.” You don’t want to be that guy. And you don’t have to be—our research shows that talking about rules tests better by double digits!

James Talarico has done a great job here, deploying what I call the “Susie Lee approach” (Rep. Lee from Nevada did it first in her statement opposing a blanket sports ban last year). He said, “I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports *if* it risks safety or fairness.” He didn’t misgender anyone. He supported rules. And he left space for the fact that those rules can and should differ by age, sport, and level of competition, because they should be based on addressing fairness concerns, not based on animus towards a group of people. He can come to Washington and vote against the Republicans’ blanket bans on kindergarteners playing with their friends at recess all day long without flip flopping.

This is a tough issue. What makes Third Way want to help folks navigate on it? What makes you want to?

I’ve been at Third Way for 18 years, and over that period, the issues at the forefront have changed, but the mission hasn’t. We want to help Democrats navigate social issues in a way that builds sustainable progress and also helps them win in red and purple places. We recognized that the anti-trans attacks were coming for every Democratic candidate in America, and we’ve done more than 40 rounds of research over the past 4 years to create a roadmap to help them navigate this debate. That work isn’t just about winning elections, it’s about winning them while bringing voters along on a journey toward the America we want to live in. We can meet them where they are and persuade them, and we have a moral imperative to do just that.

Personally, this has been the work that has kept me up at night and gotten me out of bed in the morning since Trump won his second term. This MAGA movement is obsessed with hurting transgender people, pushing conversion therapy as the only health care available to them, confiscating people’s ID documents so they can’t travel or pick their kids up from school, shutting down their access to the national suicide hotline—it is horrifying. If there is any way I can have an impact to stop their cruel campaign in this moment, I would spend every waking hour doing it.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops? (this can be about any thing in politics)

We have to be able to distinguish between folks who acknowledge nuance in these conversations, a need for rules in competitive sports, a primary role for parents in their kids’ health care, and “throwing trans people under the bus.” I’m hopeful that the tide is turning on these conversations—just this week, Rep. Don Davis in North Carolina, who Cook Political Report calls “without a doubt, the most vulnerable House Democrat in the country,” released an ad that emphasizes the need for rules but does not misgender anyone. If we can continue to move candidates toward more effective and more respectful responses, hopefully this can be the last cycle we all have to spend so many hours talking about this topic!

Who else should we make time to talk to?

Ari Drennen. She’s doing God’s work helping people combat disinformation, holding space for nuance while holding Dems’ feet to the fire on anti-trans votes, and regrounding this conversation in reality. (Plus she’s hilarious, subscribe to her Substack and read this perfection debunking the MAGA claims about medals transgender athletes have “stolen”—which include hundreds of “wins” where the athlete was the only person in the event and 11 from oyster shucking!)

This week, we talked about an astronaut’s approach to making A.I. work for regular people, his advice for incoming Senate comms directors, and why Democrats should take more risks when engaging with the media.

I hope you get as much from Jacob’s insights as I always do.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring the wisdom of DCCC alum and Senator Mark Kelly Senior Advisor Jacob Peters.

Fingers crossed, we’ll have a few new Democratic senators in January. If you were coming in as communications director for a freshman senator in 2027, what would you do differently than you did with Mark Kelly in 2021? What’s changed about the environment, and what still works?

We had a uniquely fun scenario where he was sworn in during COVID and had to immediately run for reelection. 0/10 do not recommend. One thing that never changes is the importance of having a talented team you can rely on to not just execute, but to be independent and push the envelope, especially as you’re starting up and getting pulled in different directions. We had that immediately in the Senate six years ago and have had it over the last few months as I’ve been on paternity leave and watched my team perform at a really high level.

The other thing I’d tell incoming comms directors today is to not draw up your org chart until you, your senior team and your principal are on the same page about the goals for your operation. Nearly every Senate comms shop has a different setup these days because they all have different priorities: policy leadership, national profile, dominating online, etc. Deciding on those goals is how you decide who to hire and how to plan for your first months in office, and it might not be the structure you first envision.

What’s one thing Senator Kelly is doing that you think reporters, fellow Dems, etc. should be paying more attention to?

People see his leadership on AI, but don’t see what goes into it and how it epitomizes working for an engineer and astronaut. It started with his bottom line philosophy that AI should benefit all Americans, not just a few. Then to turn that into solutions, he has had countless conversations with experts and stakeholders about everything to do with AI. He had us form an internal working group to turn those ideas into legislative action and take in the feedback he gets from those conversations. Sometimes that meant iterating and sometimes it meant totally rethinking where an idea had started, but that’s his leadership style: work with experts and those most affected by an issue, make a plan, and be willing to change it over time as you get new or better information.

It’s really fun to work on a big policy initiative like this that is driven by the principal. It also makes for smart solutions, like the Make AI Work for Americans Act he introduced last week, that addresses the real world concerns Americans have about AI job loss in a pragmatic way.

You’ve done your fair share of tough races. Are there any campaigns you see crushing it from a communications perspective that you think are worth watching?

I’m not the first to say it, but we all have to tip our cap to the Ossoff team. They’re crushing all the fundamentals of blocking and tackling in a competitive race - landing oppo, disciplined message, etc - while also driving awesome engagement and enthusiasm with these rallies and speeches.

It’s a great example of when an entire operation coalesces around a plan. They have tightly written, relevant, fresh remarks for him at these events. The events are really well produced and look great. They have a high quality camera set up. And they presumably partner with accounts and push out the content in a timely manner. Having one or two of those things is good, but it’s all of it coming together that makes it break through every time and drives not just online engagement but also earned media in a virtuous cycle.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

Democrats are collectively still too risk averse about who we talk to. The media mix has shifted a lot in the last two years and you see more Democrats on podcasts and talking to creators. But the most crowded spaces are still the safest ones and the easiest ones to book. That’s not all bad, we need a megaphone to reach the base. At the same time, the medium isn’t the goal, the audience is. Reaching younger Americans or those less interested in politics and the news takes more time, more creativity, and requires a higher tolerance for uncomfortable questions and the occasional awkward moment. But being willing to answer some uncomfortable questions and be straight with people is exactly how you ingratiate yourself with a new audience, especially a skeptical one.

Bonus question: You’re currently on paternity leave. There are a lot of staffers thinking about how to balance Hill life or campaigns with building families, maintaining relationships, and living real lives outside of work. What advice would you give people thinking through those choices?

Whether it’s a special trip, a relationship, or a major life decision: don’t put off joy in your life for fear of balancing it with work. You can have both and you need both to be the best, most effective version of yourself.

And be part of creating a culture that understands that. No one was more excited than Senator Kelly to hear I was having a kid, and our team is full of parents from our Chief of Staff on down. I never doubted that I’d have the support to be the dad I want to be and succeed in my job because I am around people who do it every day.

Who else should we make time to talk to?

Anyone doing work with creators and campaigns. And as someone who started in the House, I’d love to hear how a House campaign CD is keeping up with the new landscape without the budget for a big team.

Thanks for your time, Jacob.

Winning Jobs Narrative Action thinks one way to change that is by putting those voters at the center of the story, rather than at the mercy of it. And by doing so, we can convince people that Democrats can help them afford to raise a family, retire with dignity, and create the kinds of lives we all go to work every day to build.

This week, I connected with WJN Action’s Executive Director Steve Pierce to talk about “aspirational populism,” and why Democrats across the party spectrum might benefit from talking a little less about billionaires and a little more about buying a home.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring the wisdom of Steve Pierce, Executive Director of Winning Jobs Narrative Action.

Steve, what does an aspirational populist message look like? And why is it more likely to move voters?

Aspirational populism starts with a simple principle: working people should be the protagonists of our economic story.

That means starting with hardworking Americans’ deepest aspiration: to build a good life for themselves and their families. Of course, what that looks like can be different for different people — affording a home, raising a family, getting ahead, retiring with dignity, giving their kids a better life — but it’s ultimately why they get up every morning and go to work.

Once we show that we understand what people are trying to build, then we can identify the obstacles standing in their way and offer tangible solutions that help them move forward.

To be clear, none of this means we should leave billionaires, big corporations or other powerful interests out of our messaging. It means putting them in the right role: as obstacles in a story that is ultimately about working people and the future they’re trying to build.

It might seem like a small thing, but our research suggests that distinction matters. In head-to-head testing with Blue Rose Research, aspirational populist messages outperformed more adversarial, villain-centered alternatives by an average of 43% across taxes, energy affordability and housing.

Every poll seems to tell us that voters are angry about how stacked the deck is against them. What would you tell Democrats who think our focus should be on harnessing that anger?

The anger is real, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Democrats should run away from it. We need to harness it — but anger is most powerful when it’s attached to something people are fighting for, not just something we’re fighting against.

I’m a huge Star Wars fan, so I always think about it this way: Darth Vader is one of the most iconic villains in the history of film. He’s absolutely essential to that story — you almost can’t imagine it without him. He raises the stakes and clarifies the central conflict just through his presence. But Star Wars isn’t really about Darth Vader. It’s about Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance — what they’re fighting for and the future they’re trying to build. We haven’t kept coming back to that story again and again for 50 years because we want to root against Vader. We come back because we want to root for the Rebels.

Political storytelling works the same way. We should absolutely identify the bad actors that are rigging the rules or standing in working people’s way. But if the whole story becomes about how terrible the villains are, working people get pushed to the side or reduced to victims.

So yes, harness the anger. Name who is responsible. Hold them accountable. But make sure that anger is in service of a larger promise. People don’t just want to know who screwed them or see the bad guys taken down a peg. They want to know what becomes possible if we change the rules — and how their lives can actually get better.

What Democrat is doing a good job delivering this kind of message?

One thing I’d emphasize is that aspirational populism isn’t really an ideological or policy prescription. It’s about how you tell the story — and there are Democrats from very different wings of the party who are doing versions of it.

Pat Ryan is a good example from the New Dem world. He calls it “patriotic populism,” but the storytelling architecture is very similar: start with working people, their contribution and what they’re trying to build; identify the powerful forces standing in their way; then offer a way forward.

Chris Deluzio comes from a more progressive lane and often uses sharper rhetoric, but he also consistently keeps working people at the center of the story and makes concentrated corporate power the obstacle rather than the protagonist.

Jon Ossoff and James Talarico offer two other versions on bigger stages. Ossoff is especially good at pairing sharp critiques of corruption and concentrated power with a broader argument about what government should do for ordinary people. Talarico’s “New American Dream” message begins even more explicitly with aspiration — the job, home, education and time with family people are trying to attain — before explaining what’s making those things harder.

That range is part of why I think the framework is useful. You can have different ideological identities and different policy solutions and still tell the story in a way that keeps working people — what they contribute, what they want and the life they’re trying to build — at the center.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

Democrats need to start building the Democratic brand, not just selling Democratic candidates.

We do almost the exact opposite of what every marketing textbook would tell you to do. Nike doesn’t spend all its time telling you that this year’s shoe is 12% more comfortable or that its newest shorts have better stretch. It sells Nike as an idea — what the brand stands for, what it says about you, and the kind of person you are when you wear it. That brand affinity then transfers to the individual products.

Democrats mostly do the reverse. We rarely build the party brand proactively. Instead, every cycle we launch hundreds of individual products — candidates — and ask each of them to define themselves from scratch. Often they also have to spend time distancing themselves from a party brand that voters either don’t understand or that our opponents have negatively defined for us.

That is a huge strategic handicap, especially because most voters are not political obsessives. Many know very little about the candidates farther down the ballot; even nationally prominent congressional leaders are unfamiliar to huge swaths of the public.

So when voters step into a voting booth and see a bunch of names they don’t know on the ballot, the party label becomes one of the strongest cues they have. We should want the “(D)” next to our candidates’ names to immediately communicate something meaningful about who we are, what we believe, what kind of country we want to build — and what it says about you if you’re part of it.

Right now, we ask every candidate to sell the shoe without ever bothering to build Nike.

Who else should we make time to talk to?

Richard Trent at the Middle Out Center.

A core part of our framework at Winning Jobs Narrative is what we call “people-driven growth”: working people and families aren’t just supposed to benefit from economic growth; they’re the ones who create it. When they have more money in their pockets, they spend it in their communities, businesses grow, jobs are created and the economy gets stronger.

Richard and the Middle Out Center are very much fellow travelers on that idea. They come at the question more through economics and policy, while we tend to approach it through narrative. But we share a basic belief that a strong economy starts with the people who actually power it.

Priorities USA and its President and Executive Director, Danielle Butterfield, are investing $30 million ahead of 2028 figuring out how to do the latter.

This week, I connected with Danielle about what Priorities research is teaching them, what political advertisers can learn from corporate brands, and how to actually persuade the voters watching the football game or playing the online game you’ve spent an ungodly sum of money interrupting.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring the wisdom of Former Clinton Campaign Deputy Director of Digital Advertising and Priorities USA President and Executive Director Danielle Butterfield.

Danielle, you’ve done a lot of research on reaching voters when they aren’t thinking about politics at all. What’s the biggest lesson for Democratic communicators trying to break through while someone is watching fitness or true crime videos?

People aren’t explicitly thinking about politics, but they’re living it all the time. Our job is to draw that connection. Most ad campaigns try to interrupt someone’s day and force a pivot to a topic they don’t want to think about, like running ads about inflation during a live sports broadcast. We need to understand first where people are actually spending their time, then build strategies that feel native to that space.

In Ohio earlier this summer, we ran a program that reached persuadable young men by targeting the content these voters were already watching, instead of ZIP codes or the voter file. The ads themselves blended in with gaming, finance, and fitness content.

We did this by designing ads that had the same tone, styles and visual cues of the videos that they are running before. We believe that today, better ads are ones that blend in rather than stand out. Once you know what someone is already paying attention to, it's easier to hold that attention than to yank them out of it and change the subject. That's what our research is focused on right now.

Watch the ad here:

Ads like this don’t look what we’re used to. How much of Democrats’ problem online is the message, and how much is simply that our content doesn’t look like anything people actually want to watch?

You can’t separate the message from its delivery. Our research found 54% of voters aren’t seeking out news, so we’re pitching them on topics they are actively trying to avoid.

Corporate advertisers don’t operate that way. They use behavioral data to build campaigns. My feed right now is full of tennis skirts and different brands of tennis shoes – because my online behavior tells them I’m watching the US Open. None of those ads feel interruptive; they feel native to my life.

Democratic advertisers still treat digital like it’s broadcast TV, putting the same :30s ad everywhere, forcing a topic in front of voters that they want nothing to do with. As Priorities gears up for 2028, we’re building something different: showing up in moments of real relevance. A health scare, a car purchase, retirement planning. That’s economic anxiety showing up in their life and an opportunity to connect it to politics.

If you were sitting down tomorrow with the comms director of a Democratic campaign, what’s one thing you’d tell them to stop doing and one thing you’d tell them to start doing?

Stop confusing “reach” with attention. We can’t claim we reached voters if they’re skipping past our ads or turning to a second screen during a commercial break.

Start looking at the signals that actually tell us someone is paying attention. We spend so much time crafting messages in a vacuum, routing every little thing through approval chains, when the internet is sitting right there. We can just put things out and learn in real time how they’re landing. The internet isn’t just a distribution channel; it’s a place to listen.

Priorities is building tech to make that easier. Our media intelligence tools turn billions of rows of online behavioral data into decisions we can act on. They are already helping us drive smarter decision-making across paid, owned, and organic media, and we’re putting these tools into the hands of more practitioners every day.

What’s one thing you want to shout from the rooftops?

YouTube is not TV. Just because it reaches everyone doesn’t mean you can run one-size-fits-all creative against it. Some people scroll it like a social feed, some stream podcasts, some watch live sports. If we’re not planning and buying with that lens, we’re wasting money.

Our research keeps finding that content targeting on YouTube can lead to more persuasive results! Take the Ohio program I mentioned. We reached young men watching gaming, finance, and fitness content and found real room to increase persuasion by matching the ad with what the voter was already watching. When you stick to targeting by geography or voter file score (the way you’d target a TV or mail campaign), you’re leaving votes on the table.

Who else should we make time to talk to?

I’m most hopeful when I’m talking to groups that have picked an audience to go deep on. Instead of trying to be all things to all voters, Equis and Somos Votantes have zeroed in on Latino voters; Onyx Impact on Black voters; Galvanize on moderate women. Rural Path is focused on rural voters who often get less attention. And real investment in young voters from Youth Turnout Project and Alliance for Youth Action. I’m also excited to see what Kyle Tharp cooks up in his new role at Crooked. It sounds like he will be working to break through in non-political spaces, which is an all-hands effort.

All this to say: the more outside groups can carve out expertise with specific audiences, the less it will feel like we’re all fighting each other, and more like we’re building real relationships with the voters we’re communicating with. More of that, please!

Thanks for your time, Danielle!

Fortunately for both of us, I’m a longtime admirer of Amanda’s work and had already asked her to connect this week.

As Co-Founder and President of Run for Something, Amanda has played a role in helping 200,000 progressive leaders run for offices up and down the ballot. Along the way, she’s become one of the party’s most vocal advocates for changing how we show up for voters, how we speak to them, and even who we put in front of them.

I hope you’ll be as excited as my dad and I are to read Amanda’s thoughts on not being an asshole to other wings of the party, candidates giving flash tattoos, and the two questions every candidate should ask before deciding to run for office.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring the wisdom of Run for Something Co-Founder and President Amanda Litman.

Amanda, Run for Something has had a lot of success helping Democrats flip state senate, city council, and school board seats, where candidates don’t have the luxury of reaching voters through daily news coverage. What can candidates higher up the ballot learn from that success about getting their message out beyond traditional media?

This is going to sound overly simplistic but the best candidates we’ve worked with can very clearly answer two questions: (1) Why are you running and (2) why should the voter want you to win?

That second one is particularly important because it’s not about why you want to win -- you want to win because winning is great and losing sucks. The voters should want you to win because something specific in their life is going to get better in a way they can feel. Campaigns that can answer those two questions at any size are going to be grounded in a tight, specific message.

How you communicate the answers to those questions is a different story, and tactically, what works in a 3,000 person or even 30,000 person race doesn’t necessarily scale up to a 300,000 or 300,000,000 race.

But! One of the strongest motivations for someone showing up to vote is whether or not they feel like they have a personal relationship with the candidate.

In local politics, that can mean literally knowing them -- they coach your soccer team, you go to the same gym, you have mutual friends -- or meeting them IRL throughout the campaign.

For bigger races, everything you do should aim to replicate the intimacy of that one-to-one relationship -- work toward cultivating what is essentially a parasocial relationship with your voters. They should feel like they know you and trust you, even if they don’t agree with you.

To that end, I am obsessed with Maria Hinojos Pressey and Sara Duncan, two RFS candidates running on a slate together for Marion County Commission in Oregon. Their content is fun and engaging, and their campaign tactics reflect their personalities - they’re doing a Dungeons & Dragons for democracy game as a fundraiser; earlier this summer they did a flash tattoo event to “get ink, fight fascism.”

You’ve talked a lot about the importance of being a big-tent party, and you’ve pointed to Florida, where a DSA candidate and a former Republican are at the top of the ticket. How should more moderate candidates communicate in situations like that without going out of their way to attack other folks in the party?

Disagree respectfully -- don’t be an asshole about it. Good candidates should be able to say plainly: “I may not agree with my colleague on every issue but I look forward to winning and working together on the goals we share, like making housing and health care more affordable (or whatever it may be.).”

A family fight may be satisfying to wage but it rarely serves your goals of building an effective coalition that can win and then actually govern.

Run for Something backed Aparna Raj, who has leaned into her own experience with housing instability and a bad landlord in her (likely successful) campaign for D.C. Council. What advice do you have for communicators trying to help their bosses use their personal stories in a similar way to speak to the issues frustrating voters?

This gets at what I was saying earlier: Campaigns are better when the candidate has a strong and specific reason for running! It’s not a good sign when the team is debating what the candidate believes instead of how to communicate what the candidate believes.

Not every candidate needs to have a sob story or a personal trauma that brings them to this work, but every candidate should have the thing that made them say “screw it, I’ve got to run for office to fix this.” Even if that’s not the focus of their campaign, consider the feelings behind that moment -- part of the reason the personal stories resonate is because it helps voters understand that the candidates share their emotional truth. (Especially right now: Voters are pissed, and they want leadership that’s just as mad.)

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

Apologies in advance to all the staffers reading this but: I tend to believe the things we (the operative class) obsess over are often the things we can control, not the things that actually move the needle or change outcomes.

We stress out over the exact words in a policy position, or whether or not a candidate is on TikTok, or exactly how many GRPs they run on which TV stations because those are things we feel like we can control. And that’s fine! But we should regularly acknowledge: Candidate quality (meaning: who the candidate is, their values, story, and whether or not they can connect with voters) and the political environment (e.g,.: for a number of economic and cultural reasons, 2026 is a good year to be a Democrat, generally speaking!) are the biggest drivers of election outcomes.

That doesn’t mean your work doesn’t matter -- in close elections especially, everything might matter. But we should all practice discernment about what we devote our energy and time to. (And, ahem, we should all do what we can to get better people to run for office in the first place -- everything is easier if the candidate is great!)

Lastly, anyone else you think we should make time to talk to?

Danielle Butterfield at Priorities is one of the smartest thinkers in our party about how to reach voters who otherwise aren’t tuning in to politics. Yasmin Radjy at SwingLeft is running a stellar program through their Ground Truth canvasses -- and I love her honesty about what did and did not work in previous cycles. And for thinking about how to reach young voters in particular: Ben Wessel is one of the foremost youth vote comms experts in our party and Dakota Hall at the Alliance for Youth Action is so so smart about how to be strategic and intentional about organizing (while having fun!). Jesse Lehrich’s newsletter about the 2028 Democratic primary is mandatory reading and he’s got a great perspective on what’s going on in that hellscape. Can’t go wrong with any of them.

Thanks for your time, Amanda.

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Not many people can say they’ve advised a Vice President of the United States. Even fewer can say they’ve done it during a global pandemic AND during that Vice President’s 107-day sprint as the Democratic Party’s newly named nominee for President.

Kirsten Allen can say that - and a whole lot more. She has served as Communications Director for the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis, as national spokesperson for the federal government’s COVID-19 response, and on presidential, congressional, and statewide campaigns across the country.

As a former colleague and longtime admirer of Kirsten, I’m very excited to share her insights on responding to a crisis, giving voters what they’re actually asking for, and, above all, keeping our focus on winning.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring Kirsten Allen, former Communications Director to Vice President Kamala Harris and Deputy Assistant to the President who’s hung her own shingle, advising leaders and causes through KNA Strategies Inc.

Kirsten, you spent 4 years traveling alongside and advising the highest-ranking female officeholder in U.S. history. What advice would you give people working for women who are held to a different standard by the media than their male counterparts? Any specific situations come to mind?

Written down, this advice may sound harsh or dismissive, but my honest advice to staff is: get over it. Then get to work. Racism, sexism and bias (to name a few) are a given. And none of it is new to the woman you’re advising. Chances are she has spent her entire career breaking through the barriers you are now only seeing up close.

Your job is not to be shocked by the double standard. Your job is to plan for it. Understand how it will shape coverage. Anticipate where her words may be distorted, discounted or dismissed. Then, develop a strategy that gives people direct access to her message, her brilliance, and most importantly for elected officials, her vision. Name the bias when it is useful, but don’t let your rightful outrage over the unfairness become a substitute for doing the work required to break through it.

As Communications Director for a Vice President and National Press Secretary for the federal COVID response, you’ve seen your fair share of crises. What’s one lesson that dealing with a tough jam taught you, and what’s the story behind it?

“Pause and consider.” It’s a phrase my dad used to say alllll the time when I was growing up. Every time a decision or precarious situation presents itself: pause and consider.

My first week in the White House, the Vice President tested positive for COVID-19. Just over two years later, on July 21, 2024, my Chief of Staff called to tell me to get to the Naval Observatory immediately because within the hour President Biden was going to announce he was abandoning his campaign for re-election. In situations like these, often the instinct is to move quickly without first establishing the ground truth. That almost always results in more chaos. What happened? What do we know? What don’t we know? Who needs to make a decision? Then, communicate directly with your team as early as possible. This part is critical.

That Sunday, in particular, one of my recommendations was that the Vice President’s first stop on Monday should be campaign headquarters in Delaware. The staff was processing a host of emotions, and there would likely not be another opportunity to gather them that way during the 107-day sprint ahead of us. They needed to hear directly from her and to understand that they were a critical part of what came next.

Whether you’re running for president or leading any team, people look to you to corral the chaos. Don’t become part of the chaos. Get the facts, pause and consider, and bring your people into the solution as early as you can.

What do you think Republicans are doing better than us?

Elevating young people.

Creating an echo chamber and weaponizing it.

Exercising power.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

As you know from our time working together, I don’t shout. But I do want us to focus: spend less time online arguing with one another and focus that energy bringing people back into the civic process so they understand—and exercise—their power to win.

Focus on what Americans are telling us they want and then do everything in our power to deliver it. In our administration we spent a lot of time telling Americans what they needed (and delivering good stuff!) but it was not what they asked for.

Anyone you recommend we make time to talk to?

Two former DCCC colleagues of ours, Tayhlor Coleman (@tayhlorcoleman) and Ryan Thompson (@ryedth). Tayhlor is a proud Texan and deeply thoughtful strategist who understands trends and desires of voters because she is deeply rooted in – and actually organizes – the communities our party needs to reach. Ryan is one of the smartest and creative digital mobilization strategists in the party. He knows how to turn attention into action and has built programs that move people at scale. Both are builders, not just commentators, and more people should know (and hire) them.

I’d also encourage you to talk with a young press aide or organizer on the ground in one of these hotly contested statewide races (after Election Day). Their day-to-day experience is fundamentally different from ours when we started on campaigns 10-15 years ago and they will be on the front lines of whatever comes next, no matter the outcome. We have to make sure we understand what is motivating them, what they’re seeing and what those of us who have been doing it for a while are missing.

Thanks for your time, Kirsten.

Kurt no longer spends his days making life difficult for Democratic presidential administrations. He left the Republican Party in 2017 and has since become a Democratic strategist and a familiar face to millions of Americans getting their news on MS NOW, CNN, and NewsNation.

As Andrew Bates said in the first edition of this newsletter, we can’t just preach to the choir. We have to “grow the congregation.” As a Republican-turned-Democrat and as someone who left the beltway to live in Dallas, TX, Kurt has a unique perspective on how Democrats can reach Americans who aren’t on our side (yet).

I hope you enjoy Kurt’s insights on why Democrats should spend more time connecting with Americans who are more worried about WWE Raw and their kids’ theatre rehearsal than the news coming out of Washington.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring Kurt Bardella, Democratic strategist, author of the Watchdog Report and former Senior Advisor to House Oversight Committee Republicans.

Kurt, what’s the one thing that frustrates you most about the way Democrats are communicating right now? How would you change it?

I think oftentimes, Democrats in Washington lose sight of how most working families are spending their day, in part, because the people who are helping craft these narratives are out-of-touch.

Most Americans don’t watch cable news, don’t read Axios or Politico, don’t even think about politics. We wake-up, make breakfast for the kids, pack their backpacks, get them to school. Then we go to work or run errands, get groceries, supplies for school projects, deal with house maintenance issues and then before you know it, it’s time to get the kids and off to carpool pick-up. Then it’s football practice for Kid 1 and play rehearsal for Kid 2. Then it’s get homework done, make dinner, clean-up dinner, do laundry, have family time and then bedtimes and then we get to do it all over again.

Now tell me where in that routine does “democracy dies in darkness” fit in. Where in that daily cadence, are you able to breakthrough with something that is relevant to my everyday life? You have to meet people where they are and oftentimes, the message makers in DC miss the mark entirely.

You come from a traditional media background, but you’ve also embraced TV, podcasts, and Substack. Which Democrat do you think is crushing it newer media right now, and why?

Rep. Ro Khanna has done a terrific job going outside the traditional media ecosystem and embracing all the platforms to communicate. He still does a tremendous amount of traditional media, but also goes out of his way to participate in podcasts, post on substack, and embracing the challenge of trying to meet people where they are.

What’s one thing Republicans are doing that Democrats need to get on immediately?

Culture. Republicans have had a stranglehold on cultural touchpoint like WWE and country music for far too long. I always say if you want to understand this era of politics where Trump has thrived, watch an episode of WWE Raw on Netflix. Go to a country music concert and see why tens-of-thousands of fans are lining up to listen to songs about trucks, beer, dirt, faith, family, etc. Rather than mock it or reduce it to a stereotype, understand the culture and find ways to make inroads within it.

Anything you want to shout from the rooftops?

STOP TAKING THE BAIT ON TRANSGENDER.

There’s a reason why Republicans spent hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars in TV ads on that issue last cycle. An issue, that impacts such a small percentage of the voting electorate that it is absolutely idiotic to allow them to elevate the issue to such national prominence. Democrats need to stop taking the rage bait and focus on driving messages that effect the 99%, not the 1%.

Who else should we make time to talk to?

Anyone who doesn’t live in DC, NYC or CA.

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Rob led digital strategy in the Biden White House and later served as Deputy Campaign Manager for the Harris-Walz campaign. Since then, he’s become one of the most interesting voices on how Democrats can compete (and win) in the battle for people’s attention.

I think you’ll learn a lot from this week’s conversation on Democrats lighting up the internet, taking big swings online, and why the left could use its own army of loosely connected online voices who shitpost all the time.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring Rob Flaherty, former White House Director of Digital Strategy, Deputy Campaign Manager for Harris for President, and current host of the Nobody Knows Anything podcast.

Rob, you’ve worked with a lot of traditional flacks who’ve always seen comms as talking to reporters, putting out press releases, and sending a few snarky tweets. Why are we wrong? And why should we bother adapting?

Well, I think it’s a question of what “comms” is and who you’re comms-ing too. For a really long time, the game of political communications was shaping gatekeepers who shape voters through relationship building and management. Makes a lot of sense. But media has changed a lot! Everyone’s media now – you are, some random influencer you’ve never heard of is, and the voter you’re trying to reach is too. You can go direct.

In the older era, you shaped people’s political perceptions by shaping political media, which in a world of more limited choices was very high-reach. Now it’s not. People’s media environments are shaped by their personal preferences, algorithms, sure, but also just choices: the choice to watch sports and never turn on CNN. The choice to watch a Sabrina Carpenter Tinydesk but never read the New York Times.

What this does to comms is that it means you have to be more thoughtful about who you’re reaching and how. If the audience you need to communicate with is, say, young Black men, those people exist in a different consumption place than, say, college-educated women.

BUT! That is not to say the press release/reporter TLC/snarky tweet thing is dead and irrelevant. It’s just how you shape traditional media – and traditional media consumption is actually a psychographic choice; it says something about who you are that you care what the New York Times or CNN or the Sacramento Bee has to say. And also trad media still shape The Discourse. But I think of “elite” media management as an “audience” strategy. It’s what you do to reach and shape the perceptions of high-information voters and elites. It’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. And in doing it, you’re a specialist just like the influencer person or the content person.

More than a year ago, you wrote a New York Times essay calling on Dems to think beyond traditional press and command more of the online attention economy to reach voters who’ve opted-out of consuming mainstream news. How do you think we’re doing with that?

Better! Sort of? Part of it is just: it’s easier to get attention when you’re against something than when you’re for it. Being the out-party helps, especially when Donald Trump continues to hit the “price go higher” button for some reason.

What I think has broken through to people is the idea that content matters. Zohran helped. But I think you are seeing a lot of people doing content without thinking about why they are doing content and for whom. So you get a lot of people trying to Do A Zohran but not actually thinking about the broader implications on the internet on the way they need to adjust their overall strategy.

What I mean by that is that content/videos/whatever are just a tactic like press releases or bus tours or door knocking. It’s all just message dissemination. Most of the problems I see us running into are about “what we’re about” problems and not distribution problems.

Comms on digital is the never-ending hunt for the “thing that is resonant enough to get wide reach and magnetic enough to get people to agree with you.” You need something that persuades and engages. And that comes from iteration and experimentation and taking risks. And to do that well you need to achieve volume/more shots on goal. We are very (VERY) bad at this. We’ve got a culture of command-and-control messaging.

I’ll give you one example of the disconnect: people on the left often say stuff like “the right wing media is so good at dominating narratives.” Well, I’ll tell you how they do it.

They have a loose, unconnected group of online voices who shit post all the time. And all of those folks make their money by achieving lots of views. And so they herd; if one of the million swings that they all take starts to work, more people start doing it. And then that works its way up the chain. The bigger influencers start to talk about it. Then Fox. Then the candidates. They build an entire architecture off of what has social heat, which tells you it has resonance. Then they build it into something that changes votes (and sometimes, btw, it doesn’t and no one cares). They talk with people – their audience’s preferences shape what they do.

On the left, we talk at people. We say “this is the most persuasive message, I will figure out how to make it click with you.” We try to hit the viral button on pre-prescribed messaging. It is a much harder pull.

A former colleague of mine and I got in a tiff on Twitter about this disconnect a while back; they made the claim that digital people mostly just care about racking up retweets and not what actually moves people. And I do think there’s some of that. But I think the real disconnect is that traditional comms is focused on having the best, tight message and repeating it based on what you know to work based on exogenous factors (polling/testing/whatever) until it’s socially resonant (and therefore people respond to it organically). Digital people are trying to take a lot of swings to find what engages in order to find what might persuade. Top down vs bottom up. Everyone’s got their incentives. I just think the digital ones are closer to the modern information environment.

A lot of Democrats have posted more to TikTok and YouTube and engaged with online influencers. Some of this has been great. Some of it’s been cringe. What’s your best advice for folks looking to show up authentically in online spaces where voters are already skeptical of politicians?

I would take a candidate never posting over a candidate posting off-brand.

Social is basically the presentation of the candidates’ brand. It’s marketing. It is an extension of the principal and what they believe/how they act. If your boss likes Taylor Swift, great. Post about Taylor Swift. But if they are a 60 year old man who has never heard of Taylor Swift, don’t post about Taylor Swift. Would you do a TikTok trend natively? Great. Do it. Do you not use TikTok and you’re just doing some dance/trend because your staffer told you to do it? Don’t do it.

Now at this point you’ll probably go back and look at some bad/weird posts/videos/whatever from Joe Biden at one point or another while I was at the helm and say “this guy is full of shit.” And I’m a little full of shit. But he was a good example of this: we usually played pretty conservatively because it just wasn’t authentic to do the super trendy stuff with an 80 year old man. That’s not to say we would never do off-brand stuff (gotta take swings!) and there weren’t bad ideas (a lot of which were mine).We’d also spread our wings a bit when the social narrative supported it (that SOTU where he did well, student loan stuff).

But so much of digital is also reading the green – you can do crazier stuff when the social context in which you’re posting will allow for it. But when it’s not, you have to play a little more conservatively. Sometimes you just misread. But! You should aim not to.

And so my rule of thumb is:

1. Would the person I work for do this if they were left to their own devices?

2. If no, would they actually be good at it?

If the answer to both is no, it’s probably worth a skip. Do an interview!

Any examples of electeds or candidates doing this particularly well? On either side of the aisle.

Will put Zohran and AOC to the side for this exercise.

On our side: You would be surprised to know that Adam Schiff is absolutely shredding on YouTube. He just got the reps in and takes the time with it. That is great.

Jeff Jackson is the best communicator in the party on digital (he kind of stopped once he left congress), but he did direct-to-camera TikToks that would light the internet on fire by being earnest and assuming little prior knowledge about what was going on. He also was directly involved in the production/scripting of the content (very important).

Robert Garcia is quite good at driving attention (again because he’s a social native!)

On the other side: James Fishback is an absolute monster but he is doing interesting content stuff. Senator Kennedy has also started doing very funny TikTok videos that are very clearly just him posting himself. Worth looking at that – you don’t need to be AOC to do it!

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

Digital isn’t a tactic as much as it is a series of implications for how everyone’s work needs to change. It is a reflection of offline, whether you like it or not.

Voters consume most of their media on things that aren’t television. Why are you mostly advertising on television? Things get more reach when they are socially resonant because it shows people want to see more of it. Why aren’t you taking social resonance into account? 81% of the country goes to Youtube once per week. Why are you spending all your time focused on the 200,000 people watching day-side cable.

People treat digital as Special Teams: a kicker who comes on the field, does the digital, and gets off. And that’s cool – like I said before, everyone’s a tactician. But the big problems happen when your strategy doesn’t account for the reality that’s in front of you.

Lastly, and I realize this is 6 questions, who should we talk to next?

Liz Allen!! The GOAT. Kate Berner.

Tyler Steinhardt from Vocal Media is also really smart about the next wave of digital tactics. Daniella Hernandez Guerrero is an insanely sharp influencer strategist.

Thanks for your time, Rob.

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Turns out we should have spent some of that time pitching the Instagram account of the talking fish from SpongeBob SquarePants.

This week, I connected with State Department alum and Navigator Research Managing Director Melissa Toufanian on her group’s recent findings about “passive news consumers”. Her findings suggest that Americans who have “opted out” of traditional media are still seeking out news.

They’re just getting a lot of it from Bikini Bottom News, Nextdoor, and online creators most folks in D.C. are overlooking.

I’d encourage you to read Navigator’s complete findings here. And I hope you get something from this week’s conversation on how left-of-center communicators can reach these important, persuadable audiences.

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5 short questions. 5 quick responses. Featuring the wisdom of Navigator Research Managing Director Melissa Toufanian.

Melissa, if you could force our peers to remember one fact about passive news consumers, what would it be? How should it change the way we communicate with them?

Even people avoiding the news, especially traditional news sources because they’re viewed as too negative or aren’t trustworthy, are accessing information every single day about what’s going on in the country and the world. They’re scrolling social media for hours, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, seeing alerts pop up on their phone, posting on Reddit. So even without seeking out the news they’re staying informed. We set out to hear from “passive news consumers” – those who don’t seek out the news but say the news comes to them. But this research has made me question whether the description of “passive news consumers” is accurate.

This should underscore that any comms strategy needs traditional and new media outreach. This means we as comms people have to work harder than ever! A rollout needs a press conference, press release, X content, TikTok or Instagram creator video collaborations, a Reddit post and more – and it will be most successful when the new media content is creative and can hold attention in a media environment where content of all types is competing to be seen, liked, and commented on.

Your findings suggest we should be doing more with creators, but that not all creator content is equally effective. What should we look for before deciding who to work with?

It’s important to think about the audience you’re trying to reach and the style of the creator’s content you’re considering partnering with. We heard from participants that they like creator content that is entertaining, debunks misinformation or teaches them something. We shared three different creator videos – from Aaron Parnas, Don Lemon, and Dr. Jessica Knurick – and found Dr. Knurick’s video to be most popular with respondents. Many found her credible and compelling, although some who leaned Republican weren’t persuaded.

Think about the creator’s following – is it mostly Democrats? Very progressive? Is it a news aggregator that might reach people across partisan divides? How heavily political is their content? Essentially, will you be reaching people already bought in or will you be able to reach a persuadable audience? The latter likely means going somewhere new and, especially for an elected official, stepping outside of their comfort zone.

Does traditional media still matter for reaching persuadable voters?

Absolutely. One respondent told us they read the New York Times and follow Bikini Bottom News to stay informed. People, especially younger Americans, are tuning into traditional news less but also value getting multiple perspectives from different sources. Some say they check MSNOW or CNN and FOX before forming their own opinion. Traditional news outreach absolutely still matters, but can’t be the only outreach or engagement. It has to be one part of a comms strategy that also includes non-traditional / new media outreach. And in this fragmented media environment when you have a good TV news clip or story in a traditional outlet like the New York Times or Washington Post, it’s then critical to do the legwork to promote it: to post across your social media accounts, send it out to stakeholders to be sure they see it, post on Reddit, send out an ICYMI and more.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops about how we can better reach passive news consumers?

Engage in new places and embrace being interesting! People contain multitudes and elected officials should embrace going places outside of typical political channels when trying to reach people who don’t wake up and start their day with Playbook and Punchbowl.

For example, are you an elected official with young kids? Talk to mom or parent creators and weave in how you’re working to lower costs for working families. Do you love to read? Check out BookTok or Instagram creators who post about what they’re reading and pitch an interview where you can share your summer reads. Most important: don’t show up with stale talking points and practiced lines. Authenticity and relatability are key.

When we asked respondents what type of content they wanted to spend more time reading, watching, or listening to, the vast majority listed “content for an elected official” last. Some say it sounds like campaigning and not truthful, so electeds need to think about places they can show up far beyond their own accounts and make those engagements interesting.

And finally, listen to the creators – they’re incredibly knowledgeable about their audience and can be a critical source to better understand how their followers think and feel.

Who should we talk to next?

Talk to a content creator! I’d love to hear how they’re thinking about growing their audience, what style of content does well, and whether they want to engage more with elected officials. I would also love to hear their advice for how comms people should be thinking about working with creators and what supporting the creator ecosystem actually means.

Thanks for your time, Melissa.

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Lauren Hitt has. She’s helped everyone from AOC to the Harris-Walz campaign communicate in ways that still felt authentic to them. More than one person interviewed for this newsletter has told me that when facing a tough call, they ask themselves “what would Lauren do?” After connecting with Lauren this week, I get it.

I think you’ll enjoy hearing Lauren’s insight on when to turn down the TV interview, working with Democrats in different wings of the party, and not stamping the humanity out of the leaders we work for.

This is ON BACKGROUND:

5 short questions. 5 quick responses on what’s working, what isn’t, and what comes next featuring the wisdom of Lauren Hitt, former Communications Director for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Harris For President Spokesperson who’s set up her own shingle advising candidates and causes.

Lauren, as someone who’s worked for some of the best communicators in the party, any insight you can share on the balance between advising a principal without stifling what makes people like them in the first place?

If you’re working with someone who is a natural communicator, then my best advice is just to get out of the way. Let them be brilliant, and do the stuff they need you to do very well, so they have the bandwidth to be creative. To that point, being a ‘natural communicator’ still takes a lot of preparation and energy. Just because it looks like your principal can turn it on like a light switch, doesn’t mean you should be asking them to do that all the time.

If you’re working for someone who is not a natural communicator, then I think your job is to identify where they are at their best and then find a way to shine a spotlight on it. Do not just do what everyone else is doing. Don’t chase the trend. Figure out what people love about your principal or where they look their best and then figure out how press, influencers, etc can highlight that strength. It’s my feeling that politicians really break through when they’re most themselves.

Any specific examples come to mind? Selfishly I’d love to hear about how you advise someone as dynamic as AOC.

I really do not walk around telling people that I advised AOC lol. To my earlier point, in that gig, my guiding principle was to keep the trains running, so she had the energy and bandwidth to be her.

I learned an enormous amount from just watching her, including this idea that politicians break through most effectively when they are doing something only they could do. I was working for her when the Dobbs decision came down. She instantly went to the demonstration that was gathering at the Supreme Court. It was very powerful. She took the bullhorn and someone gave her a green bandana, which is the symbol of reproductive rights movements in Latin America. After, as we were walking back to the Capitol, I remember someone on the team asking, so do we do an interview now? We were swamped with requests. I was fairly stunned by the news itself, but I just remember saying, I don’t think we should. Why would we do anything other than what she just did? She was amazing, it was such a natural space for her. So, she went back to her district and spoke at another demonstration in New York that night. People were so angry, and to some extent so angry with Democrats, after Dobbs. They didn’t want to see us giving staid cable interviews. They wanted us in the streets, and she was very, very natural there.

Is there a candidate or officeholder for whom you’ve thrown out the rule book to play to their strengths? And how so?

One of my first jobs was working for a very colorful mayor in Philadelphia. I loved him. I loved that job. Philly is the greatest city in the world, and I will die on that hill.

When I started working for him, back in 2015, reporters would always bring up his Twitter account because he had posted some pretty kooky stuff. I don’t mean like, Abolish ICE. He once tweeted, ‘I think someone put LSD in my Turkey burger.’ So on Day 1, I was like sir, please hand me your Twitter account, that is no longer yours. I was 24, and I was dead wrong. People loved that he had a personality. And because he’d been a really good Councilman for twenty years, no one doubted he could do the job - the tweets were just a fun sprinkle. Our digital director was really smart about running with that too, Stephanie Waters. She had him do videos where he’d respond to mean tweets from Philadelphians, and just really leaned into it. Our politicians are supposed to be people, stamping out their humanity in the interest of avoiding any kind of criticism is generally a bad move.

What do you want to shout from the rooftops?

I’ve worked for the Left and for more moderate Democrats. I used to be pretty self-conscious about the fact that I went back and forth because it seemed like everyone else just picked a team and stayed there. But now I am begging, begging people to be willing to hire across our Party’s ideological spectrum.

We all have things to learn from each other. The Left is clearly good at exciting people at a time where the Democratic Party brand is in the basement. The establishment could afford to be less defensive and more curious about that.

On the other hand, The Left still has some work to do to expand their victories into purple and red areas. We should be open to learning from people who have won those races - maybe also be open to shifting some messaging without seeing it as a complete capitulation of values. And this is where I’ll plug a recent survey from the Center for Working Class Politics, a pretty left-leaning group, which has some really smart findings about how progressives could win over working class voters on social issues, like police accountability, immigration reform, LGBTQ+ rights. Anyone who says we have to abandon those policies is dead wrong, in my opinion. But it’s pretty clear, we have to be willing to try out some different things to reach voters for whom those issues are not the top priority because they’re struggling to put food on the table.

Anyone you think we should talk to next?

Emily Minster. She’s what the next generation of Communications operatives will look like. She can do it all - box with the New York City press, engage with influencers, keep a good eye out for social. I worked with her on Brad Lander’s race this spring, and she’s now on Zohran’s team working with new media.

Thanks for your time, Lauren.

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It’s been a few years since that day. But Ofirah remains one of the Democratic Party’s best advocates for a go-everywhere, talk-to-everyone communications strategy. As head of external affairs at the Democratic Governors Association, she advises some of the party’s brightest stars on how to tell the story of the roads they’re paving, the jobs they’re creating, and the role they’re playing as a backstop against the Trump Administration. 

That perspective comes from years as a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.

I’m excited to share her thoughts on why more Democratic elected officials should call into ESPN radio, audit local pizza joints, and show up in places where voters don’t expect to see them.

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This is ON BACKGROUND:

5 short questions. 5 quick responses on what’s working, what isn’t, and what comes next, featuring the wisdom of Ofirah Yheskel, Director of External Affairs at the Democratic Governors Association.

Ofirah, what are you doing differently than you were 5 years ago? 

The information landscape has become so much more fractured and personalized to each individual in our intended audience, which is an interesting challenge and one I try to see as an opportunity as well. It used to be enough to be building strong relationships with as many reporters and outlets as you could. Now, we’re doing that AND trying to figure out how to engage creators who, with the consolidation we’ve seen of local news, have become trusted sources of information for people at a time when our collective attention is being pulled in more directions than ever before. In my role at the DGA, it also sometimes means that I’m the person on the other side of the Substack Live or podcast interview, and let me tell you, I really empathize with candidates running today who have to try to find their sea legs on so many different mediums at one time.

What Dem governor is communicating with voters in a way that more folks around the country should be paying attention to? 

Just stating for the record that we have many incredible communicators among this class of Democratic governors. Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania (and his team) do an excellent job of both generating their own interesting content and also finding opportunities that are a great fit for him. Any time he pops up on ESPN, that’s a great example - he’s a genuine sports fan coming on to talk who just happens to be the governor and that’s when you’re really hitting the mark in my opinion. I hold out hope that one day we’ll have a Democratic governor who is as into Bravo as I am and we’ll achieve my dream of booking them on Watch What Happens Live.

What’s something interesting you’re seeing from a Democrat who doesn’t occupy a governor’s mansion?

Rob Sand in Iowa is literally going everywhere. He’s in the middle of doing 100 town halls across the state right now (it’s actually his second time on a 100-town hall tour since launching this campaign for gov), he goes on hunting podcasts, he reviews and “audits pizza” online. You can get a sense of who he is and what he’s about pretty quickly. That’s actually easier said than done a lot of the time, so I give him a lot of credit. 

What do you want to shout from the rooftops to your peers?

Look, it will shock no one that I think Democratic governors are who we should be looking to for the roadmap of where to go next. I get why there’s focus on what’s going on in DC, but Democratic governors are the backstop against all of the BS we see coming out of the Trump Administration, not to mention they’re actually getting shit done for the folks in their states, whether those folks voted for them or not. And good governing is good politics. Governor Katie Hobbs in Arizona is a great example of this. She’s expanded free school lunch, she’s canceling medical debt, she’s bringing in jobs and expanding affordable housing. All of that makes a real difference in your everyday life when costs are higher than ever. 

Who else do you recommend we hear from?

Turns out CJ and I both ask ourselves “what would Lauren Hitt do?” a fair amount, so I will point you in her very thoughtful direction. 

Thanks for your time, Ofirah.

Interested in more insights from the people writing the new playbook for Democratic communications?

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It’s hard to break through when running for a House seat. Which is why the most innovative tactics come from House races. That’s why I’m thrilled to connect with CJ Warnke. As Communications Director for House Majority PAC, few people have a better view of the full House map or which candidates are finding innovative ways to connect with voters.

CJ has led communications at HMP through two election cycles, and I’m excited for him to share his insight on using candidate time to drive a narrative and reach voters in places many of us haven’t thought to look for them. 

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This is ON BACKGROUND:

5 short questions. 5 quick responses on what’s working, what isn’t, and what comes next in Democratic communications, featuring the wisdom of CJ Warnke, Communications Director for House Majority PAC.

CJ, is there a candidate you see hitting a theme or tactic that others should be emulating?

This cycle, I am so thankful for the fact that Democrats have been able to recruit really stellar candidates that are contesting seats deep into Trump territory – and one of the candidates that stands out the most to me is Bobby Pulido in TX-15 who’s in a tied race in  a seat that Trump won by 18 points in 2024. Pulido is a small business owner and singer who completely flipped the script after his opponent Monica De La Cruz made fun of him for performing at quinceañeras.  

Pulido and his team are now consistently on offense and are barnstorming quinceañeras across the district.  It not only serves as a great opportunity to meet with voters but it breaks out of the mold of traditional campaigning, and every quinceañera he attends brings De La Cruz’s remarks back to the surface and shows just how out-of-touch she is. It’s a great example of how more Democrats should capitalize on a Republican gaffe. Don’t just issue a strongly worded press release about it. Take the case directly to the voters and find new ways to engage with them about it directly on the ground.

HMP occupies a unique space in the campaign ecosystem. How are you thinking about how to best use earned media to amplify your paid activities? 

While traditional media consumption is definitely declining, it still touches every single department and can make or break a race. A great example of marrying earned and paid media together in a competitive race is PA-08 where Republican Rob Bresnahan is up for re-election. 

Bresnahan’s secret helicopter and hundreds of stock trades broke through not only on a national level but on a district level as well. Those stock trades in particular are probably the thing his constituents know the most about him – and they have set the tone for the race. The stories in the New York Times and local Pennsylvania outlets were devastating character hits that we can now double down on through every form of paid media, and they set up a clear contrast between Bresnahan and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who is best known for taking on the machine and corruption.

The paid media you’ll start seeing in the fall will hammer home the message that has been repeated over the last year and a half: Rob Bresnahan is a stock trading politician who isn’t looking out for you, only for himself. That devastating negative doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It comes from a year and a half of introducing it and making it a central theme over earned. 

What’s one thing you think Dems are getting wrong or need to change up? 

One of my biggest pet peeves is how Democrats retain talent over time. While I unfortunately don’t have a clear solution to this problem, it’s a slow ticking time bomb that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. We can not have some of the best staffers in Democratic politics sit unemployed for months after the end of every cycle. It not only pushes these folks out of politics, but it also erases any and all institutional knowledge. 

That knowledge and experience is crucial to leveling up our campaigns cycle after cycle – and it’s something that Republicans have actually done a good job with over the years. They don’t let their good campaign staffers sit unemployed for months at a time. They find the organizations, committees, and official side offices that are ready and willing to staff up right away and it gives them time to regroup and trade vital information and experiences on what is working and what isn’t working. 

What’s one thing you want to shout from the rooftops to your peers? 

A play-it-safe communications strategy of a press release and a few pre-drafted tweets just is not going to cut it anymore if you really want to break through – and this goes for both campaign and official sides. Two communications teams that I think are really embracing the “do it all” communications strategy are the folks working for Mayor Zohran Mamdani and North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson. 

In North Carolina, with over 2 million followers on TikTok, Jeff Jackson has done a phenomenal job of being able to translate what a member of Congress and now Attorney General actually gets done for their constituents. His team has been extremely proactive on local North Carolina subreddits in giving updates from his office – the responses from his constituents are almost always positive and people really appreciate the communication.

We all obviously see the Mamdani content on a fairly regular basis, but there is a whole operation out there ensuring that the videos of him are filmed in a way that allows for short form clipping that then can spread out across all major social platforms. Looking forward, it’s imperative that clipping operations become a central part of all communications departments moving forward.

All that to say, remember that we represent people who live very different lives than campaign and official staffers live – which means we need to always be on the lookout for how to best engage where they’re actually getting their news.

Lastly, anyone you think we should make time to talk to?

I would not be where I am in my career today without having worked for Lauren Hitt, and she is one of the top communications staffers out there. All these years later, when I come across a problem my first thought is always, “What would Lauren Hitt do?”

Thanks for your time, CJ

If you’re getting this email, it’s because I think you’re pretty smart.

And I think you’re part of the solution to figuring out what comes next for Dem communicators. What worked in ’18, ’20, and ’22 doesn’t hit the same in 2026, and it’ll feel even staler in 2028. I want to bring together smart people in our field to talk about what comms looks like going forward.

So, like every other person you’ve met in D.C., I’m starting a newsletter.

Five short questions. Five quick responses from a leader in our field. Delivered to your inbox every week.

I don’t have the answers to what the future of comms looks like. But I’m hoping we can figure them out together.

If you’re interested, you can opt-in below. If not, I still hope you get something from our first edition featuring one of the most seasoned flacks in our field and a good friend of mine from the Biden White House and Clinton 2016.

This is ON BACKGROUND:

featuring the wisdom of Andrew Bates, Senior Deputy White House Press Secretary for President Biden and currently a Managing Director at Orchestra where he’s steering clients through an increasingly bumpy landscape in D.C.

Andrew, what are you doing differently than you were 2-3 years ago?

Sleeping. Also, not spending 14 hours a day with y’all in the Press Office.

In terms of specific things I’m doing differently now, I’m trying to weed out “rules” communicators have been expected to follow but that don’t make sense anymore; rules that stifle creativity and put unhelpful distance between us and the people we’re trying to reach. The ways Americans get their information are changing faster than at any other time in history. The style and tone that people will accept has shifted, too. In politics there has often been a dangerous pull to sound too official, technical, or process-y. Now there’s a more intense demand from voters for personal openness, for getting to the point right away, and for constant relationship-building, especially through “heart on your sleeve” interviews, town halls, and streaming videos. Part of that is because old institutional walls have broken down. But it’s also because social media has been effectively anti-social, leaving a lot of people feeling less connected to each other than ever - and making them want to know who leaders are on a human level before they evaluate positions or agenda.

I think all of that means that there needs to be more empathy and more of a personal touch across the board. I try to act on that by listening to some of my own first instincts that I used to ignore because they seemed too unorthodox, and then figuring out how to combine those with lessons from practical experience.

What’s one interesting thing you’ve seen a Republican do recently?

I was surprised that Bernie Moreno, a Republican senator from Ohio, wrote an op-ed with Elizabeth Warren supporting an increase in the cap on the payroll tax, which funds Social Security, from $184,500. It’s rare to see a high profile Republican support higher taxes on the wealthy in order to expand opportunity for working people. Warren and Moreno wrote, “Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck than a wealthy corporate lawyer?” It’s a good question.

What’s one interesting thing you’ve seen a Democrat do recently?

I really feel like the best way to reverse the harm that’s been done by social media and the exhausting crises people have been through during this whole period is to build up a healthy, unifying sense of community. So I’m always intrigued by Democrats who tap into what makes people proud of where they’re from and that show they want to win Trump voters over, not stereotype or vilify them. Like how Roy Cooper and James Talarico made their faith cornerstones of their campaign announcements. And how Cooper and Talarico both talk about the economic struggles that almost everyone can identify with weighing down morale in all the places they visit, and use that common ground to debunk attacks on immigrants and call out the billionaires and monopolies who are really at fault. That kind of community-based approach used to be much more common and it led to our biggest successes, like the Obama wave in 2008 or Bill Clinton’s underdog win in 1992. In the time since then, this drift toward being overly judgmental about people who disagree with us and becoming too technocratic in the way we talk about policy have been extremely debilitating.

What’s one comms thing you want to shout from the rooftops?

Don’t preach to the choir. Grow the congregation. A lot of candidates, executives, donors, and communicators fixate on what they want to hear themselves say. But that’s like getting onto a stage and talking to yourself in a mirror with your back to the people who took the time to show up. Instead, I feel like we should always be asking, “How can I make the tent bigger and more diverse? Have I put in the work to really know the people I’m talking to? Where do my values and theirs come together? How can I meet them where they are, in good faith and with cultural competence? How can I prove that I believe in what I’m doing enough that I want to talk about it every chance I get, including in challenging territory?” Voters are not play-doh. They’re human beings with agency. And there’s a good reason it’s called “earning” support: they are interviewing you, not the other way around.

What’s a good work story that you haven’t shared publicly before?

During the confirmation for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, I was one of the staff on her confirmation team who went to a lot of her meetings with senators in both parties. But I needed to miss her sit-down with Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from my home state of North Carolina. After Judge Jackson’s meeting with him I got a call from a colleague who told me Tillis had asked, “Where’s Bates?” I was surprised he knew who “Bates” was. He had printed out a tweet of mine from 2020 saying he’d lose to his Democratic opponent, Cal Cunningham, and signed it “Best regards, Thom Tillis.” That honestly made me like him.