The Challenge
A seat up for grabs that hadn’t been open in 14 years. A controversial incumbent who appealed to both Republican and Independent values. A moderate Republican trying to defeat a 4-year incumbent. Three challenges facing Oregon House Democrats as they try to find a way to a supermajority in 2018.
Our Approach
For a legislative caucus, gaining a majority is the first order of business. But achieving a supermajority — which, among other things in Oregon, allows Democrats to pass revenue bills without Republican support — is another matter altogether. Over the last few years, House Democrats have built a national reputation for driving a successful progressive agenda. That brand, however, plays very differently depending on the district. Working with FuturePAC, we created distinctive strategies for top targeted races that built on the unique characteristics of our candidates and their opponents, found the right validators, and established narratives that matched the moment.
The Results
A Democratic supermajority in both the House and Senate.
Helping progressive champions win is our bread-and-butter.
During the 2018 election cycle, we employed both direct mail and digital advertising campaigns in highly contested swing districts, helping Oregon Democrats secure a supermajority in both the House and Senate.
Tiffiny Mitchell: The Open Seat
Oregon’s House District 32 had not seen an open seat since 2004. When Tiffiny Mitchell entered the primary on the last day before the filing deadline, she had no name recognition and faced two opponents, one of whom had represented the district for 8 years and was a current county commissioner. Because of this challenge, the campaign invested significant resources from the start, defining Tiffiny as the clear choice for working North Coast families and executing an 8-piece mail plan and robust digital program that led Mitchell to an upset primary victory of over 10 points.
November posed its own challenges. While the district had been held for 14 years by a moderate Democrat and had a slight Democrat registration edge, it had been carried by Donald Trump two years earlier.
We established Mitchell’s brand and messaging early on in the primary as the progressive choice and a “working-class” Democrat and union member. During the general, while not contradicting our earlier framing, we pivoted to a defender of working families and the middle class who would be their voice for the basics: good schools and local jobs, health care, affordable housing, and tackling the opioid epidemic. At the same time, we seized the middle ground by defining her opponents as simply too extreme. Tiffiny defeated Vineeta Lower by 6 points, completing her surprising rise to the Oregon House.
Rachel Prusak: Taking Out the Top Target
Oregon’s House District 37 was the top, but challenging, take-away target seat. It was a district that Democrats should be competitive in but was held by a popular and politically savvy Republican incumbent, Julie Parrish, since 2010. As part of a progressive coalition effort to put this race into play early, we designed a social media campaign to soften the incumbent up even before the eventual opponent, Democrat Rachel Prusak, was recruited.
Prusak had a strong profile as a hospice and former Planned Parenthood nurse, and initial polling indicated that our starting point in 2018 was better than in past cycles. But she was still a newcomer, filing for office just weeks after moving into the district. Both the caucus and the funders’ table were torn about how to approach the race since they had spent considerable resources on comparable past races without success.
As a result, we ended up developing two different mail plans for this campaign. The first plan proposed was a traditional 11-piece plan, starting in late September and going through Election Day. But based on past experiences, the caucus wanted to track, evaluate, and adjust as the campaign progressed, so we adjusted and executed a Pre-Track/Post-Track plan that changed the order in which the pieces were sent out based on results from the tracking polls, along with the formats of certain pieces to better convey messages.
For Pre-Track, we sent out early pieces of mail, introducing Prusak and touching on key issues in the district, while still using every piece to hit her opponent. We also included a postcard for the Prusak campaign to send out from volunteer voters who had voted for Parrish in the past but had changed their support to Prusak. We waited on the mid-cycle polling to come back before moving forward on the full Post-Track plan. While the horserace had not changed since the August polling, we saw promising movement underneath the toplines which led to a decision to move forward on the Post-Track plan.
The result of all these efforts, from the opponent-defining social media plan to the intensive evaluation at every stage of the campaign, led to the most celebrated Democratic victory of the cycle: a 5-point victory for Rachel Prusak.
Paul Evans: Defending a Difficult Seat
Paul Evans represented Oregon’s House District 20 since 2014, and had been a top Republican target in every one of his races. In 2018, Evans faced his most serious challenge in Selma Pierce, a wealthy and well-funded opponent who presented the district with a nontraditional moderate option. Evans was a solid, moderate Democrat who fit the district. But his history provided a somewhat target-rich environment for Republicans. From the beginning of her race, Pierce and her allies launched merciless attacks intended to erode Evans’ support among women and question his ethics.
Our strategy was three-pronged. First, we did not let the attacks go unanswered. We used both earned and paid media to not only expose them as being misleading at best and dishonest at worst, but also called into question their shadowy origin. As a result, at a time she was seen as a nice, moderate community volunteer, we were able to tie Pierce to dirty campaign tactics that she refused to disavow. We then executed a direct mail and digital campaign for Evans, focusing on positive messaging around Evans’ well-rounded bio, accomplishments, endorsements, and effectiveness as a State Representative. Once that messaging was well-established with voters, we defined Pierce as an out-of-touch millionaire who tried to hide conflicting positions on reproductive healthcare.
The direct mail campaign used modeling to create 13 pieces of mail to six highly targeted universes. The digital advertising campaign amplified the mail plan, reinforcing the messaging tracks, while also providing a more nimble medium for responses to attacks on Evans. Ultimately, Paul Evans defeated Pierce by 8 points on Election Day, defending his seat for another term.