On Background w/American Bridge President Pat Dennis

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.

This is ON BACKGROUND:

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.