The New Digital Political Industrial Complex: How Democrats Fight Back

Post by Jennifer Tomkins

Winning elections in the US has always involved money. Back in 1757, George Washington, who lost an election two years earlier, bought approximately $195 worth of punch and hard cider for friends, contributing greatly to his subsequent win. Nowadays, it takes much more than $195 to win an election. The focus of campaign spending shifted from the 18th century alcoholic persuasion version to the digital age version in which campaigns employ a range of modern technologies and a vast network of consultants, all of which have become known as “the political industrial complex.” 

This era of Trump—an ascendency of social media in politics and exponential growth of political consultancy—ushered in an unprecedented level of dollars in politics, a level progressives struggle to reach.

Fortunately, some new digital players, like Acronym, are widening the playing field, providing opportunities for progressives to compete digitally without compromising its values by prioritizing profit-seeking consultants or corporate interests. But, it’s been a long road to get here.

How we got here

Just as money has proven indispensable to political victory, so—very often—have lying and skullduggery. Theatergoers know how an infidelity scandal was used against Alexander Hamilton by his political opponents. Closer to our own day, Lyndon Johnson supposedly won one Texas election by suggesting his opponent had unsavory relations with a pig. More recently still, lies and innuendo destroyed the presidential hopes of both Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. 

Back in 2007, the Obama campaign seized the nomination with a combination of a charismatic candidate and tech-savvy campaign strategies that relied heavily on both a robust ground game and the political industrial complex. No matter the intention through which it’s engaged, that complex is deeply intertwined with the corporate world. The Obama campaign, for instance, employed such firms as Bully Pulpit Interactive whose other clients included Google and Exelon. It also hired GMMB, whose other clients included AT&T and Visa, to produce campaign ads. Even progressive champion and current candidate Bernie Sanders rolls with the same crowd.

After Obama was elected thanks to (in part) his superior use of technology, big political donors like the Koch took note and immediately set countertactics into motion. As Nick Fouriezos accounted recently in Ozy, Obama’s opposition began pouring massive funding into building new campaign ventures such as the analytics group Themis and grassroots canvassing tech i360. Simultaneously, Steve Bannon and GOP mega-donor Robert Mercer backed Cambridge Analytica, the British political consulting firm now infamous for its misuse of facebook data for political purposes.

The moral complexity of The Complex

Politicians’ dependency on the political industrial complex create conflicts of interest for both elected officials and for the consultants themselves: how much do they want to help candidates win versus simply making money. Critics of the DNC pointed out that Democrats continually use the same “insider” political consultants, whether they win elections or not, meaning democratic candidates have been stuck in the same strategic loop without innovation until just recently.

The new “small d”: digital

In this election cycle, Democrats find themselves playing catch-up in both their use of and spending on digital ads and social media, according to a recent CNN article: “The Trump campaign has already spent almost $20 million on Facebook ads since Facebook began publicly disclosing political ad spend in May 2018. These ad-buys eclipse that of all Democratic presidential primary candidates [combined].” Adding more hurdles for Democrats, Facebook recently announced that although it will strengthen its fact-checking of information overall, political ads will not be included in this practice. Now it’s open season for the liar-in-chief as he and his allies accelerate their efforts to lie their way out of impeachment.

So, Democrats are looking to up their game. But, rather than turning to mega-donors, they’re choosing the venture capital model. One such VC, Chicago-based Higher Ground Labs founded by former Obama campaigners, has invested $15 million in 36 startups working to bolster progressive politics. More than 3,000 campaigns have used its tools since the accelerator’s launch in 2017. Another such company, New Media Ventures, based in San Francisco, has invested more than $50 million since its inception in 2010, including $1.5 million in funding for 17 new startups announced in July.

These are the newcomers to the political industrial complex—welcome! Yet, the omnipresent fine line between the influence of money and the mission of winning elections remains. VCs are still profit-driven entities and the removal of mega-donors doesn’t guarantee this funding comes without strings. This is a serious question for progressive candidates and issues-based groups like those supported by Airlift. Both need the latest tools in order to compete, but who can be trusted?

Enter Tara McGowan: the new face of digital democracy come to save us. Founder of the consultancy organization Acronym, she’s bucking the traditional model, and luckily, more concerned with winning than getting rich.

By the end of 2018, Acronym “raised $18 million, registered 60,000 voters, run 105 targeted ad campaigns in 15 states, helped elect 63 progressive candidates and won 61 percent of the races it invested in.” It did this by setting up a structure that consists of a not-for-profit company, Acronym itself, beneath which are nested a group of for-profits: a campaign consulting firm (Lockwood Strategy), a political tech company with a peer-to-peer texting product (Shadow) and a media company investing in local left-leaning outlets (FWIW Media).  Acronym raises money for the for-profits and then channels the profits back into Acronym’s mission. This structure contrasts with typical consultancies that have one area of expertise: “Consultants push for more spending in their individual silos, as opposed to McGowan’s strategy to fold everything under one umbrella—making winning her chief incentive.”

McGowan has already attracted a good deal of media attention of her own as well as the attention of two of Airlift’s allies, Way to Win and Women Donors’ Network, who are looking for ways to help the groups and candidates they support get their hands on the campaign tools needed for victory. Better yet, McGowan’s take on how to operate in the world of consultancy offers a way us progressives and our allies can both compete effectively and maintain our values while not feeling beholden to outside interests or donors. In McGowan’s own words, “Too often, in any industry, a drive for profit can lead to greed. And I think that can blur the lines of the real objective here. This could be an election that changes entirely how campaigns are run. It could be a catalyst.” 

In other words, we could win, and win in a way that doesn’t compromise our goals of social and political change.