Debriefing 2023
Today is Monday, May 1, 2023 and our Ward 3 DFL Convention was two days ago on Saturday, April 30. We did not adjourn with the result we had hoped for, but we can hold our heads high that we spoke truth and showed up as our authentic selves.
While the memories of this campaign are still fresh in my mind, as the candidate and campaign manager, I wanted to share my thoughts on what went well and what we can improve upon for the next progressive campaign in Ward 3. You can use these lessons for your own current or future campaign as well.
Launch
I launched my campaign on Thursday, November 10, 2022, the week of the midterm elections. I had heard that Donald Trump was going to announce on that following Monday — my original scheduled launch day. I wanted to avoid sharing the same media space day as Trump, so then I switched to Thursday once we had won a DFL Trifecta. If I had known that Trump actually would announce at a later date and also not earn as much media attention, I would stick with the later day of Monday.
With all that being said, no matter Thursday or Monday, I was the first candidate to announce my candidacy. That was really early for some people. But I am very glad that I did, because getting started takes time and there are certain things you can’t do in Minneapolis, like use Votebuilder or raise contributions, without being a public candidate.
My first email with the DFL’s Action Network was on Tuesday, November 15, 2022. It took four business days to get mass email set up, which required being a public candidate. Note to future first-time candidates that there will be a social media launch and then an email launch on likely different days.
Canvassing
We canvassed about 5,010 doors between November 21, 2022 and February 17, 2023. I strongly believe in the need to engage new people into the DFL endorsement process, and canvassing is a great way to talk about a random sample of the issues that are important to residents. We engaged in what’s called “deep canvassing” of rental communities, where we knocked on every door and left literature at every door. In the DFL caucus, you do not need to be registered to vote or a citizen to participate and vote for endorsement.
One fact that rental canvassers will find out on day one is that only about half of residents are registered to vote. So using Votebuilder and MiniVAN is often more a pain than simply writing down apartment numbers in a notes app.
Looking back on the experience now, my one wish is that we had used paper caucus non-attendee forms and had folks fill them out on the doors. At the end of the day, we had over 800 conversations, but about 150 caucus attendees with the final online caucus. If we had been collecting paper forms ahead of time, that could have been much more productive. I know other campaigns have used that strategy, and I would recommend it to future insurgent campaigns. My ideal solution would be fill out a paper form and hand the caucus attendee literature to take next steps.
Meet-and-greets
We had dozens of meet-and-greets from November to March. We had 20 sign-ups for in-person meet-and-greets, with Starbucks at 100 Hennepin Ave being the most popular with 9 sign-ups. We also had 12 sign-ups for virtual meet-and-greets on Zoom. Remember, we had about 800 conversations with folks on the doors, so never plan for meet-and-greets to be any replacement for direct voter contact.
But as somebody who works from home, it was a pleasant experience to get out of the house and see one or two people at a coffee shop and talk for a longer period of time, usually about 45 minutes to an hour.
I would recommend scheduling all your meet-and-greets for 12 pm noon, with a Saturday time slot as well. That way, your meet-and-greets don’t conflict with canvassing time from about 5 - 8 pm during the week or 1 - 4 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. During the campaign, I would visit my grandmother on Sundays, but if you don’t have that kind of weekly family time, than canvassing on both weekend days is ideal, and then take a break during a weeknight.
Texting and dialing
We used a progressive-affiliated autodialer and peer-to-peer texting system. The system both supports Votebuilder APIs and CSV uploads to use your own custom list with custom field variables. This was incredibly valuable during delegate recruitment and pre-convention canvassing. Over the course of the campaign, we sent 20,625 SMS text messages (2¢ per segment), sent 25,832 MMS text messages (5¢ each), and made 12,575 dialer calls (4¢ each). If you are a progressive campaign that wants to learn more, reach out to me at [email protected] and I can schedule a free training with you.
What we can improve for 2025
No matter who runs in 2025, I think we learned some valuable lessons.
Take action on the doors. We knocked over 5,000 doors, but in the end, there were only a handful of caucus attendees that only learned about us from the doors. If I could magically do it all over again, I would have collected paper forms from every supporter on the doors instead of just handing literature. That way, we are also able to collect contact information for residents who are not registered to vote.
Dial previous caucus attendees earlier on. I only started using the autodialer on January 30, 2023. I wish I had started in November. A good mix of dialer time and canvassing time would be ideal.
Start building a network of supporters early, before you run. One thing that I noticed about Rainville’s supporters at the convention was that they all came to the convention with their tee shirts and jackets from 2021. Rainville is a networking guy, he makes connections, and is a people person to a certain crowd. I did not fully commit to running until about June or July of 2022, so I just didn’t have the networking state of mind. If you want to run in Ward 3 or anywhere in life, start networking today even if you haven’t decided you want to run. You have 18 months starting today.
37 votes
I have a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth over how the credentials and rules changed literally on the last day. On March 20, we had 363 delegates, then it was 361, then it was 355, then it was 372, and finally on convention day the sheet shared in the morning had 399 delegates in addition to 160 alternates for a total of 559 possible convention attendees. According to DFL data, 247 attendees were unable to attend for the endorsement vote, which was decided by 37 votes.
During my call time with a previous list of attendees, we had about 51% for Michael Rainville and 33% for myself, with some for Mills and much uncommitted. There were several delegates who were signed up for the Rainville caucus who actually always had supported me and were surprised their caucus form said Rainville. There were also delegates who had no memory of signing up, but that was rare. So I thought we had a fighting chance to block the endorsement!
As I have shared before and the numbers enumerate, there were a lot of people who couldn’t attend the convention because of University of Minnesota finals, lack of childcare, or other socioeconomic factors. One of my goals for my work as a party leader is to have an online-first process in 2025 from the beginning, and only with Minneapolis DFL forms, both online and paper, with the return of address verification. I think if we had known the process would be online from the start, we would have signed more people up actively at the doors.
Thank you! ❤️
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! We definitely made a chip in the wall, we made him sweat, we made conservatives spend tens of thousands to defend an incumbent. I am really looking forward to campaign finance reports in August and calculating a total on the expenses from January 1 to April 29.
Congratulations to all the progressive candidates winning endorsements across Minneapolis and St. Paul. This is always a team effort to win progressive majorities. I am looking forward to a new generation of leadership at City Halls.
Let’s stay in touch! Email me at [email protected].
All my best,
Conrad