Author’s note: This is a condensed version of the White Paper available at Polinotes. The full version is available for free by subscribing to the newsletter here.
In her book about political strategies, Catherine Shaw wrote in the preface that “it is astonishing just how little candidates know about their path to victory or defeat.” The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior And Public Opinion argued that since the 1940’s the “consistent finding” about voters is that the voters “are anything but knowledgeable about politics.” The lack of knowledge among the candidates running for office and the voters in El Paso leads to wasted efforts and unnecessary expenses, and losing elections.
Running for political office is about getting the voters to vote for you. Specifically, any candidate needs 50% plus one vote to win. Political consultants call this the “win number.” Many consultants will tell you they have the magic strategy to help you win – for a price.
Knowing the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that goes on during an election, allows the candidates to better prepare to deal with the political consultants offering their services to them.
There are many election strategies that have served candidates well over the years but underneath the strategy is understanding what motivates the voters. In El Paso there are three voter demographics that turn out depending on the election. The voter that turns out in the primaries is looking to vote for the Democrat that will represent them because it is in the primary where El Paso’s partisan offices are filled because the November ballot is just an anecdote in almost every national and state election.
Although Republicans made gains in the November ballot, they must still organize their party’s leaders to work cohesively towards the goal of electing a Republican in El Paso. Many of the Republicans running for office in November stood alone with little support from their party leadership. This allowed the Democrats that won their primaries to take office without having to put too much effort into their campaigns in.
The psychology behind voter behavior as explained by the Michigan Model explains why candidates supported by Republicans outside of El Paso – like Renard Johnson was in the last election – can also have the visible public support of elected Democrats like Cesar Blanco without an outcry from the party’s leadership.
Understanding voter psychology is the first step to winning elections in El Paso. But to strategically mobilize the correct voter to cast a ballot, it is important to understand that El Paso voters can be divided into three major categories, the party voter, the uninformed voter and the motivated voter.
The Party Voter, The Uninformed Voter and The Motivated Voter
The three major El Paso voter demographics are the Democratic Party voter, the uninformed voter and the motivated voter. The first voter demographic is the party voter who is the Democrat that votes in the primaries (March voter) for their next national and states representative. The second voter is the uninformed voter, who predominantly votes in November. The uninformed voter is also known as the low-information voter. In the November down ballot elections, like the municipal elections, the uninformed voter overwhelmingly votes on name recognition. Voter messaging like lowering taxes to fixing streets does little to motivate the low-information voter. These types of messaging are just catalysts for drawing the attention of the voter to the candidate’s name. When it comes to the November ballot, the candidate’s name that made in impact on the voter is the one who wins. The last El Paso voter demographic is the motivated voter. The motivated voter is the voter that turns out to vote because a candidate motivated them to vote, either for or against the candidate, but motivated, nonetheless. The problem for the candidates with the motivated voters is that motivated does not mean a vote in their favor, it simply means that the voter is motivated to cast a ballot, for or against the candidate. Motivated voters are seen in the runoff elections and in the special elections like the school board races coming up in May.
Knowing the voter demographic and what motivates them is key to winning an election. It is, however, very important to understand that name recognition is the most important factor to winning with any of the three voter demographics. It is the building up of a candidate’s name recognition among the target demographics that a properly run political campaign must base all its efforts on. If the voter doesn’t remember the candidate’s name, or worse has a bad impression of the name, the candidate cannot win in El Paso.
Although all three voter demographics are drawn to the polls for different reasons, it is the candidate’s name recognition that wins the election. Voter turnout is different in each voting cycle.
Voter Turnout
Voter turnout is measured several ways including the voter turnout from the eligible population (VAP), who are 18 and older but ignoring whether they are registered to vote or not. The VEP model, uses age while ignoring voter registration but attempting to exclude those that are ineligible to vote because of a felony record or because they are not citizens. Both models do not apply to El Paso because only voters that are registered with the county are allowed to cast ballots.
Because national voting turnout data sets often use either VAP or VEP models, a comparison to El Paso voters is not constructive for the candidates.
El Paso candidates need only to know that, at most, only half of El Paso’s registered voters vote. In some cases, voter turnout can be much lower, like in the December 14 runoff elections where only 8.26% of the voters turned out.
Because historically, only about half of El Paso voters vote in any election, trying to mobilize the voters that do not vote is not effective for various reasons. The half that votes, cast ballots for different reasons. Understanding why they vote is key to winning the election. Many of the younger voters, those under 50 years of age, generally belong to the half of El Paso’s voters who do not generally vote. The notion that the younger voters, no matter how motivated they are when mobilized to collect signatures for petitions, will vote is not supported by the voting data. This is important to remember.
Commitment Is Important
As the book Winning Your Election the Wellston Way explains, a candidate wanting to win any election must be committed to campaigning. Too many El Paso candidates try to hang on to jobs as they campaign, dividing their time between work and the job. Voters expect to be courted, and the candidate must be willing to devote full-time to the campaign.
This, of course, brings up the age-old debate that Democracy is not about those that can afford to run, the wealthy, excluding those that want to make a difference in their community. Resolving that philosophical debate does not factor into those wanting to run in an El Paso election today.
Candidates for office wishing to win must understand that it is a full-time commitment, even more so when the campaign funds are limited. A committed candidate translates into lower costs for the campaign, in most cases. Along with commitment, especially when it comes to campaign costs, is the realization that waiting until the other candidates are campaigning is generally too late to start and leads to much higher expenses for the campaign to remain viable.
Name Recognition
A 2011 Vanderbilt University experiment proved conclusively that a candidate’s name recognition, especially in a down ballot local election, is fundamental to winning any election.
The Vanderbilt experiment found that the uninformed voter (the Vanderbilt experiment labels them as “low-information” voters) casts a ballot on name recognition alone. “Name recognition matters in low-information races because people want to support winners,” the researchers determined.
The Vanderbilt experiment placed a political yard sign with a fictitious name – Ben Griffin – in front of a school when candidates were starting to announce their intention to run for the school board. Parents of the school were then polled to select their top three candidates from a list of candidates running for the school board. The list contained seven names, the Ben Griffin fictitious name along with another fake name along with the names of five people that were running for the school board.
The experiment found that about a quarter of the parents who likely saw the fake Griffin political yard sign when picking up or dropping off a child picked the fake Ben Griffin as one of their three picks. Around 14% of the control group, those that did not see the political yard sign, added Griffin to their top three list.
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The Vanderbilt experiment proved that it is the perception of the name of the candidate that leads voters to vote for them, even when the name is a fake candidate. The same thing happened in El Paso with a realtor, whose name happened to be the same name as that of a former elected official. The realtor led the field of five candidates who campaigned heavily, while the realtor did virtually nothing to campaign.
Name recognition in the November ballots is the only way to win a down ballot election when the ballot is crowded with national and state candidates. Party allegiance serves little purpose in an El Paso November ballot. Every single municipal candidate won on name recognition although each candidate approached building name recognition differently, and at least one mayoral candidate gave up the advantage he had with his name recognition by ignoring fundamental branding guidelines. Voters in November may not be educated or too invested in municipal elections, but they want to be courted for their votes by the candidates, nonetheless.
Realtor Jose Rodriguez, who ran in the District 3 race, without spending any significant amount of money and with little campaigning received the most votes simply because he shares the name of the well-known former state senator.
Rodriguez went on to lose in the runoff election after Deanna Maldonado-Rocha explained to the voters that they weren’t voting for the former state senator. In the November ballot, the uninformed voters voted for the realtor. In the runoff, the motivated voters voted for Maldonado-Rocha.
Candidates in El Paso tend to shy away from controversy as being “too mean,” or because of the feedback they receive that they are being “negative.”
It is important to understand that political operatives operate extensively in an election. It is rare in El Paso that political operatives are paid operatives, but it happens. Political operatives are more likely well-meaning supporters of a candidate that take it upon themselves to target the opponents of their favored candidates.
They do this through social media and by direct contact with the opponents where they tell candidates they are being “too mean” or “negative” to dissuade them from the messaging that wins an election. When someone is talking to the candidate during the campaign, they are a motivated voter acting for the candidate or for one of their opponents. Every candidate should remember this every time a voter wants to engage with them.
Most political consultants will discourage candidates from negative advertising against their opponents. In municipal elections, negative campaigning can backfire in that it can tarnish the candidate’s reputation among their peers in the community. But it can be essential in winning an election.
The case of Deanna Maldonado-Rocha shows how informing the voters can be construed as being negative but essential, nonetheless. Another example in the November ballot was the race between Danny Robledo, the incumbent, and Mike Herrera, the challenger for judge of the City of El Paso Municipal Court 5 seat. Robledo, the incumbent, was defeated by Herrera, although Herrera had been reprimanded for his activities as a judge, simply because Robledo was too late informing the voters that his opponent had been reprimanded.
Going negative is one tool of many in the arsenal of running political campaigns and should generally be avoided. But avoiding it does not imply that it isn’t an effective tool when needed, and as the Robledo loss shows, avoiding it can mean losing the election.
The mayoral election between Brian Kennedy and Renard Johnson offers another dimension to name recognition in an election, specifically how to lose an election by ignoring that voters want to be courted.
Brian Kennedy was the front runner going into the election, but Renard Johnson outperformed him by out-branding Kennedy. Voters are consumers in El Paso’s municipal elections and like consumers they want to be motivated to vote.
The Brian Kennedy And Renard Johnson Strategies Side By Side
Branding is not the panacea to winning an election but it is an important element that is often neglected by El Paso’s candidates as we will observe in the Kennedy-Johnson race.
There is no question that Renard Johnson outspent Brian Kennedy, but to blame the lack of campaign funds as the sole reason ignores the reality that Johnson had to outspend Kennedy to equalize the name recognition that Johnson lacked going into the election.
Renard Johnson had to quickly put his name in front of the voters to get the voters to notice him. Kennedy, on the other hand, squandered his name recognition by delaying his entrance into the campaign trail and by Kennedy neglecting his campaign branding and voter messaging.
Kennedy allowed Johnson to build his name recognition to counter Kennedy’s name over ten months while Kennedy sat on the sidelines.
However, Kennedy compounded his decision to wait until the last moment to challenge Johnson by again ignoring his personal brand by running a campaign assuming the voters wanted to be informed about politics. Voters do not want to be informed. Kennedy’s branding was amateurish against Johnson’s polished brand. Kennedy relied on old style campaigning believing that it was sufficient to educate the voters about the issues that the uninformed voters didn’t care about.
Kennedy’s voter outreach ignored the fundamental fact that El Paso’s November ballot voter doesn’t care about property taxes or the influence of the wealthy in an election. The November ballot voter wants to feel courted by a polished sense that the candidate asking for their vote is the candidate that makes them feel like El Paso is moving forward.
It is like an advertisement for a hamburger. On the one hand you have a dreary burger while on the other hamburger advertisement the hamburger is steaming hot with juices dripping out making the hamburger appetizing. It doesn’t matter that the juices are water sprayed on the burger, that the burger is cold and that the steam is generated artificially for the photo in the advertisement. It just matters that one burger looks appetizing while the other looks dreary, although it is a photograph of a real burger without the photographic tricks making it look good.
Just like someone would prefer the fake burger, the November uninformed voter doesn’t care who promises to “lower taxes” or who is funding the campaign, they just care about the candidate that looks the best.
Kennedy’s campaign seemed to believe that they could motivate the voters to vote for him by educating them neglecting the fact that voters who vote in November are not motivated by down-ballot candidates and most don’t care about which candidate isn’t funded by the wealthy, or which promises to “lower taxes.”
Voters care about who looks better to them, which is the name they remember when they get to the line on the ballot where they choose their candidate in a down ballot.
Effective branding visually connects the candidate to the voter by emphasizing the candidate’s connection to the community. The star is an important element for an El Paso campaign because it connects the voters to El Paso.
Renard Johnson used orange and blue to emphasize his connection to El Paso using the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) colors, an important cultural connection to El Paso for the voters. Johnson’s logo further reenforced his connection to El Paso by using the star in his logo.
Brian Kennedy, on the other hand, neglected to connect El Paso voters to their hometown by his focus on standing out using a checkmark and the use of the bright green color in his logo. Using the bright green may have been effective in a community of Irish Americans but not in El Paso, where orange and blue, or the Democratic Party blue color are the most important colors to connect with the El Paso voters. Kennedy further hampered his branding by choosing a checkmark to represent his brand.
The checkmark did not connect to the El Paso voters because it was missing the context for El Paso’s voters. It is not known why Kennedy chose the checkmark, except that he has used it in the past and it may have been used to represent the “correct choice” on the ballot. But that connection, if that was the intent, was never made to the voters.
Moreover, Kennedy’s campaign made no effort to connect to El Paso voters. The green did not represent El Paso, which is a desert. The checkmark compounded the problem because it offered no connection to El Paso leaving the voters without the need to pay attention to Brian Kennedy’s campaign on Election Day.
With almost 33% of the vote in a crowded field with eight candidates on the ballot on Election Day, it is clear that the Renard Johnson Campaign had surpassed Brian Kennedy’s name recognition by almost ten percentage points. Going into the runoff, Kennedy was already behind because his campaign had squandered the name recognition he needed to get the voters to notice him on the ballot. His use of green and the lack of a professional campaign logo contributed to him losing the lead. Kennedy’s strategic decision to allow Renard Johnson about ten months to build his name recognition made things worse for the campaign.
It is typical of El Paso campaigns to ignore the design of their brand going into an election. Results like the Kennedy-Johnson race show that branding is important to El Paso’s voters, instead of trying to motivate the voters by educating them.
The Rudy Cruz Example
Rudy Cruz’s logo used one of Socorro’s iconic images to connect the candidate to his community. The church steeple was so effective that Catholic Church officials tried to force Cruz to remove it from his campaign materials.
Church officials argued that the use of the church steeple would invalidate their non-profit status. However, as pointed out to them, the symbology of the church steeple is so neutral that to tie it to a specific church was impossible. Additionally, endorsements of any candidates come from an expressed communication making the endorsement. To accept that an image resembling a church steeple is an endorsement is akin to believing that the use of the picture of the White House is somehow an endorsement of the candidate by the president.
Cruz won the election with around 63% of the vote, showing that branding is fundamental to winning campaigns when the branding connects the voter to their community. The Church’s reaction to the logo likely had more to do with political operatives working behind the scenes than the belief that their non-profit status was at risk.
In keeping Cruz’s campaign cohesive, the steeple element in the logo was used throughout his messaging further extending his name recognition among the voters.
Understanding who the voters are and the importance of name recognition, it is now important to understand that in almost every election in El Paso, the election is won during the early voting period and not on Election Day. Any campaign that delays organizing and campaigning runs the risk of not being ready when the early voting period begins, which is where winning the election is.
Early Voting Wins
Voting history shows that the two weeks of the early voting period in El Paso is where candidates overwhelmingly win elections. If the campaign has not finished their primary canvassing efforts the week before early voting begins then it is too late to catch up with the other candidates.
In every case in the city council races in November, the two top vote getters during the early voting period went on to keep their positions through Election Day. None of the candidates behind the leading candidate were able to make up their deficits on Election Day.
Candidates Ignore Campaign Planning To Their Detriment
Many El Paso candidates running for city council, school boards and judicial races decide to run for office and then wait until their opponents are campaigning believing that all that is needed to win an election is to attend forums and talk to voters.
Elections are expensive and waiting until the last moment to start campaigning makes it even more expensive in most political races. The expenses in a campaign serve one purpose. It is to build name recognition among the voters. Candidates who start late building their name recognition spend more than if they had started earlier.
In the November city council races, the average amount spent by the winners was around $50,000, excluding the District 1 contest where one candidate spent almost $150,000.
Print materials and poll sitters/block walkers both serve the purpose of getting the candidate’s name in front of the voters, which is building name recognition. A well-planned campaign well in advance of the start of the election season allows for both identifying the appropriate voters to target, how to target them and more important, building a volunteer network that is free to the campaign and can be leveraged to build the name recognition needed to win the election.
With a volunteer workforce that is motivated, a grassroots candidate can leverage one printed item to reach the correct voter. Leveraged with a voter dataset able to track voters and volunteers alike, the costs for the campaign are minimized as the candidate builds their name recognition by talking to the voters directly through surrogates maximizing reach. Before exploring the most effective canvassing tools, it is important to quickly discuss campaign strategies.
Campaign Strategies
Campaign strategies come down to identifying the voter demographic that will be voting in the election, noting the win number, which is 50% of the voters that cast ballots, plus one, and how many voters the candidate needs to reach before early voting begins.
From this starting point the candidate can start to build target voter lists. Generally, to be effective, if we assume 100 voters will vote, the target list needs to contain around 200 voters to secure most of the ballots cast during the election.
Campaign strategy may seem daunting but if the candidate breaks it down to the most important element, attracting the right voter to win the election, then it becomes easy to understand campaign strategy. In any El Paso election, the campaign strategy is to understand that the voters must recognize the candidate’s name favorably when they come across it in the ballot.
Thus, the campaign strategy is about building name recognition.
The most effective tool in the candidate’s arsenal is block walking. It can also be the least expensive part of the campaign. But because of the work involved, most candidates tend to avoid it in the hopes that a mailer will work just as well.
Block Walking Rules Any Election
Understanding that name recognition is key to winning an election, it is important to accept that the best strategy to gain or keep the name recognition is by block walking. Block walking wins more votes than text messaging, direct mailers and other voter outreach strategies.
To understand the value of block walking one need only to look at the Lily Limón Campaign to see how effective it is. Limón was challenged by two well-funded opponents intent on keeping her out of office. Additionally, Limón had a political record she needed to defend on the campaign trail.
Talking directly to the voters at their homes isn’t about building rapport with them or increasing the candidate’s name recognition. Talking directly to voters is about mobilizing them to vote for the candidate.
It can’t be emphasized enough, the longer a candidate waits to organize their campaign and begin canvassing, the more expensive it becomes.
To canvass properly, any candidate needs to deliver the appropriate message to the voters. Voters in municipal elections are not interested in being educated. They want to vote for the name on the ballot that makes the greatest impact on them. Mailers with too many words is preaching to a voter that doesn’t care.
Forget Longwinded Messaging
One of the problems often encountered on the campaign trail is the need for long-winded campaign materials filled with lots of words with details about the candidate. The average person dislikes reading too many words.
Very few voters, especially uninformed voters, take the time to read lengthy biographies about the candidates running. The partisan voters, those voting in the primary, are looking for party allegiance and glean a lot about the candidate they will vote for from the party’s leadership’s endorsements. The informed voter is a small group in El Paso who may or may not take the time to read the lengthy material but nonetheless, they are a small demographic as can be observed in the last runoff election.
For an El Paso candidate, the most important strategy is building name recognition over educating the voters.
However, that does not mean that voters will vote for the candidate if the message is simply vote for “Juan” without explaining why it is necessary to vote for “Juan.”
Political messaging requires the tone the candidate wants to set, for example lowering taxes or fixing the streets. This is generally known as the theme of the campaign. The message, or single idea, follows the theme. The message is how the candidate will deliver on the theme. For example, the Lily Limón Campaign took the complex issue of high property taxes and effectively condensed it down to “hold the line on taxes.”
The “hold the line on taxes” slogan and its accompanying graphic became synonymous with Lily Limón enough to help her win a difficult election. The Limón campaign was consistent in its messaging and its branding which helped to cement the name recognition Lily Limón needed to win her election.
It is important to note that Lily Limón, as a previous office holder and community activist already had name recognition among the voters, but the campaign strategically kept her opponents from minimizing her name recognition, unlike what mayoral candidate Brian Kennedy allowed to happen to him.
Data-Driven Campaigns
Learning about the voters that are likely to vote for a candidate is crucial to winning an election. Data-driven campaigns analyze voter data to generate insights into who is likely to vote in a particular election. Generally, voter targeting does not tell the candidate how a voter will vote, but it will help the candidate find the voters to win.
Because of the low number of voters who turn out to vote and the costs associated with voter outreach, it is important for campaigns to maximize their campaign dollars towards the voters that will make a difference in the election. Television and radio advertising is like casting a wide net to catch some fish, along with the other junk that inhabits the water. The net may bring in some fish, but the junk far outweighs the catch.
A better approach is to use a targeted lure for the specific fish you want and reel in. It may take longer to have a good catch, but the cost to cast wide nets far outweighs the cost to bring in the right voter.
A campaign needs an organized platform to manage the data, and importantly, to gather canvassing data that becomes extremely important as it gets closer to Election Day. It is the canvassing data that makes or breaks an election. The only way to have actionable canvassing data is to collect voter outreach data in a centralized and organized digital platform.
There are other data points, like voter models, which can be useful to the candidates. But without making the effort to collect canvassing data in a centralized and organized fashion, the other data points will not make a difference.
Targeting voters is about identifying the sinners, the saints and the “savables,” as Catherine Shaw identifies voters in her 2018 book. According to Shaw, the sinners are the voters that will never vote for the candidate. Targeting them will only lead to motivating them to vote for the opponent.
The saints, according to Shaw, are the voters the candidate should be targeting. Targeting the saints voter will mobilize them to vote for the candidate. The “savables” are the undecided voter that can be convinced to vote for the candidate with the correct messaging.
Shaw writes in her book that the “ideal target” voter is “the friendly, lazy voter-someone likely to prefer your issue or candidate but needing a little motivation to actually vote.” In El Paso, this voter defines the target voter for most campaigns.
Social Media
In today’s internet-driven society, “reaching voters where they are” has added social media as a tool that some consultants advocate as necessary for candidates running for office. Experience in El Paso’s latest elections reveal that social media channels like Facebook and Instagram are good fillers for messaging, but their effectiveness is just that, as fillers to the traditional outreach required to win an election.
The important thing for candidates running for office to understand is that the social media channels, at best are fillers and ego boosters but do little to get the voters to vote.
Likely the most ineffective form of online platforms for political candidates are podcasts and videos on Youtube.
Podcasts
Tied along with social media, podcasts are just not effective tools for campaigns. The video format of some podcasts and the podcasts make some candidates feel like they are using the traditional tools of radio and television without the expense.
However, the experience of three candidates’ use of podcasts in the last election demonstrate that podcasts, especially paid ones, are unnecessary and a waste of campaign funds.
From the onset, the effectiveness of the podcast was known before the campaign funds were spent by simply looking at the Youtube channel that hosted them. The channel has been available since 2017. The Power at the Pass channel has less than 600 subscribers at the time the candidates paid for it. The Power at the Pass was established by Don Shapiro and Valentin Sandoval. Mostly, the channel acts as a portfolio for the self-proclaimed “incubator” for multimedia creators established by Sandoval and Shapiro.
Among its 384 videos, the channel offers an eclectic mix of music and film content, and some recent political content.
Around July, the Youtube channel started posting short videos in support of Kenneth Bell, who was running for the District 4 city council seat. Six videos for the Kenneth Bell Campaign were posted. The six videos had accumulated 138 views when they were last reviewed in early 2025.
The channel added a new program hosted by Paul de la Peña named American Voices. The program published six videos for three city council candidates. They were Alan Serna, running for District 7, Kenneth Bell running for the District 3 seat and Monica Reyes running for the District 2 seat.
In the case of the Monica Reyes Campaign, the campaign paid around $4,800 for three podcasts. It is impossible to know exactly how much was paid specifically for the podcasts because the Reyes campaign used three different names to report the expenses for the podcast with descriptions that were not clear. For example, on November 20, the campaign reported paying Power at the Pass $1,000 for “consulting, studio time, facilities.” Because the podcasts had video components it is likely that the studio time included the production of the podcast. In another campaign expense entry, the Reyes campaign reported paying $1,000 to Southwest Government Affairs for “consulting, studio time, facilities,” again on November 20. Both used the address of 1931 Myrtle Ave. On that same day, another payment for $1,350 from the campaign was issued to “Southwest Gov’t Affairs, Teams Infographics, LLC, and Power at the Pass, LLC.” The expense was described as “content consulting, creative imaging, photos, podcasts” and again listed the 1931 address. Another payment for $950 was made to the three organizations for “content consulting.”
By the time the election was over, the first video had a total of 90 views. The second video had 44 views, and the third and last video had 58 views. With less than 200 views for the three videos, the podcast expense had very little to offer the Monica Reyes Campaign.
To get some clarification about the podcasts and the payments, we discussed our findings with Paul Franceschi. Over several days of emails and telephone calls, Franceschi explained the payments, and discussed the podcasts.
Before going into the discussion with Paul Franceschi, it is important to point out that Franceschi goes by two names: Paul Franceschi and Paul de la Peña. When asked about how we should address him in our writeup, Franceschi said that it was Paul Franceschi if the topic is his company Southwest Government Affairs, and Paul de la Peña for everything else.
We were unable to clarify how much of the $4,800 reported by the Reyes campaign went towards the podcasts, but Franceschi explained that the “podcasts are nonpartisan and worked to reach different demographics in this past cycle.” He added that “our data shows that this was an effective way to reach populations that traditional mailers, texting, and phone banking was not reaching.”
As explained, voters who do not traditionally vote will not vote, especially the voters that “traditional mailers, texting, and phone banking was not reaching.” The low viewer counts show that the videos were not having an impact on the voters for the Monica Reyes Campaign.
We asked Franceschi about the fees for the podcasts. He explained that the “podcasts were contracted through our partnership with PATP (Power at the Pass) and a local Podcast company Hosted at PATP.” He was unable to break down the costs to us.
Franceschi, explained the campaign report discrepancies by stating that “as far as Campaign [sic] finance reporting, this too varied based on services provided…each campaign was instructed on the ways to report.” He added that “whether that was followed, again, lies with the campaigns and their Treasurer’s,” and not him or the other companies related to the podcast fees.
Whether the cost to the Monica Reyes Campaign was $1,000 or $4,800 is immaterial at this point as the low viewership attests to the fact that videos on Youtube and podcasts simply do nothing to help a candidate get elected.
As we have observed, social media and podcasts have little effect on how the voters vote. But yard signs are another matter, but not in the way most believe.
Yard Signs, Waste Of Money Or Necessary?
Political consultants will tell candidates that yard signs are a necessary strategy to win an election. In El Paso, the deploying of poll sitters at election stations is a cottage industry for paid poll sitters who hold political signs outside of the polling stations and a necessity according to traditional campaign strategists. Along with the poll sitters, yard signs line the walk up to the polling booths.
But do they work?
Very little empirical studies have been made to gauge the impact yard signs have, if any, on the outcome of an election. As we explored earlier, the Vanderbilt experiment demonstrated that a yard sign, even one with a fake candidate’s name, accounted for a 10% increase in voters’ attention. Nonetheless the Vanderbilt experiment also showed that the uninformed voter will pick a fake candidate’s name when presented with that option.
Yard signs are used to activate support for the candidate, not to target them.
The political yard sign at the polling station is the last-ditch effort to attract an additional vote.
The consistent use of the yard signs together with a cohesive branding strategy helps to cement the voter’s name among the uninformed voter, i.e. name recognition.
Text Messaging
The most effective campaign strategy is face-to-face canvassing with the voters, better understood as block walking. The more voters a candidate can interact with during the election cycle, the greater the return on the candidate’s investment in time and resources.
But block walking is time consuming and can be cost prohibitive if the voter pool is significant.
Text messaging is now likely the second most effective campaign outreach strategy behind block walking because it offers the ability to effectively interact with the voters. It can be automated and is more personable than a mailer. It is also less expensive. Texting also offers candidates a vehicle to reach the peripheral voters that may not be voting but may respond favorably should they be motivated to vote. Text messaging also allows for feedback from the recipients, adding another dimension to the data collection efforts of the campaign. After text messaging comes direct mail.
Direct Mail
Direct mail, because of its expense, comes in as the third strategy in voter outreach but an important component for any candidate in a down ballot race.
A good mail postcard needs to convey the important message in as few words as possible. Too few voters take the time to read them when there are too many words. The flow of the direct mailer from the mailbox to the voter has three channels.
The first and most common flow is the mail piece has around five to seven seconds between the mailbox and the trash bin to make the recipient take a second look. Within those first few seconds, the recipient has, hopefully if done correctly, seen the candidate’s picture, their logo and the campaign slogan like “hold the line on taxes” before being tossed in the trash can.
In the second flow, the mailer recipient is grabbed by an element in the mailer that causes them to spend another 15 to 20 seconds scanning it for additional clues to fill in the missing pieces around what caused them to take a second look. For example, an effective technique is a mockup of a negative newspaper headline about an opponent, complete with a grainy black-and-white picture of the opponent to create the illusion of something sinister. It is important to remember that the headline mockup must be accurate. Two examples of mailers designed to grab the attention of the recipient was one mailed by Daniel Robledo showing that his opponent, Mike Herrera, was unqualified to hold office because he had been reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, while the second explained to voters that they were voting for the wrong candidate.
The second mailer pointed out that the realtor, Jose Rodriguez, was not the same as the former state senator with the same name. Rodriguez had run a shoestring campaign that capitalized on his name being the same as a well-liked former elected official, which shows that voters vote on name recognition without knowing anything about the candidates they are voting for. Deanna Rocha-Maldonado’s mailer asked voters not to allow themselves to be misled.
Not all mailers need to be negative to grab the voter’s attention. They just need to have the correct elements to force the recipient to take a second look. For example, Lily Limón’s mailer with a sad elderly couple is not the type of mailers voters expect to receive. The elderly couple was used to grab the voter’s attention while at the same time tying it to the likely voters – the elderly. The mailer effectively tied everything in a few words. The use of “abuelos,” instead of grandparents effectively tied it to El Paso’s demographics. The slogan graphic, “hold the line on taxes” brought everything together for the Limón campaign by its consistent use throughout the election while also keeping the campaign’s color scheme intact building upon the foundation the campaign established from the onset.
The third group of voters receiving mailers are the informed voters that want to read every word the mailer has. This type of voter is a small group that researches as much as possible to decide. Making a mailer for this voter is not cost effective and does not serve the greater audience that the candidate needs to win. The informed voter is served by the mailer nonetheless by including the website address where the minutia they want can be readily found.
Regardless of the type of mailer the candidate wants to send, the following are items that must be included in any mailer. Good photography is a must. Each candidate should have a high resolution professionally taken photograph. What looks good on a smartphone or a computer screen rarely translates into print. Every mailer should have the campaign’s logo, keep to the campaign’s color scheme and include the campaign’s website. In El Paso, the political disclaimer must be included in most campaign material.
The only thing to remember about campaign materials is that imagery gets noticed and the words are usually ignored.
Radio, Newspaper And Television Advertising
In today’s digital age, radio and television advertising for the most part is expensive and irrelevant for a campaign using data to target their voters. Television, especially, is an expensive proposition that does nothing for the candidate who is running a data-centric campaign. Even as a tool to increase a candidate’s name exposure, television advertisement is an unneeded expense, and very ineffective.
Placing political advertisement in a print weekly or print daily is also not cost effective because there is no way to know it is reaching a significant part of the 50% of the El Paso voters that generally vote.
There is little to no return-on-investment (ROI) for any advertising in a print publication, television station or radio station because the expense far outweighs the number of votes the candidate can get from them.
Paid advertising is rarely a good thing for an El Paso campaign.
The Endorsements Game
Unless the election is a primary where the party affiliation is important, chasing endorsements is not generally a good use of the campaign’s resources, especially in El Paso. For the March primaries, the endorsement builds upon the party bona fides for each candidate.
In El Paso, the primary is where the Democrats elect their next representatives and where Democrats fight among themselves to be elected. It is here where chasing endorsement is an effective tool.
However, whether it is the primary or any other election, it is important to understand that in El Paso, endorsements are not the fair and equal affairs that the organizers wish candidates to believe. The El Paso Black Democrats, for example, had already agreed on who they were endorsing before they started interviewing candidates, according to several sources.
The candidates that went before the El Paso Black Democrats not knowing that the decision had been made beforehand wasted campaign resources in preparing for the endorsement they were not going to receive.
The El Paso Tejano Democrats were also accused of deciding beforehand which candidates they would be endorsing before giving the other candidates the opportunity to make their case.
The fact is that most community organizations make the decision to endorse a candidate based on whether they believe the candidate will win because organizations do not want to be associated with a candidate that loses. Those that may choose to pick candidates to endorse through qualifications are few. Nonetheless, except for a few endorsements, which we will explore next, the endorsements from most of the organizations endorsing candidates are nothing more than a badge of honor.
However, the El Paso Municipal Police Association, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Officers Association, the El Paso Association of Firefighters and the Greater El Paso Association of Realtors (GEPAR) are endorsements that include significant campaign contributions to the candidates.
In the November 2024 elections, the firefighter’s association contributed $12,500 in campaign contributions to several city council races. The sheriff’s group only contributed $1,000, whereas the police association contributed $8,500 to several candidates. But the largest campaign contributions came from the El Paso realtors (GEPAR) who made $35,000 in contributions to several campaigns.
The case of GEPAR is constructive for El Paso candidates to understand how organizations generally choose to select who they endorse. There were several realtors running for office, including Renard Johnson, Isabel Salcido and Isabel Ceballos.
One would assume that the realtors would choose one of their own to endorse, especially in that the offices they were endorsing affect their ability to sell properties or protect property investments. Yet, the committee, made up of local realtors, had already decided who they would endorse in at least two crucial races before the interviews with the candidates had started.
Realtors who had firsthand knowledge of the process and deliberations of the local GEPAR committee’s evaluation of the candidates explained what happened behind the scenes.
The committee first met to decide how much to contribute to the candidates. After determining the amounts to contribute, the GEPAR committee sent out questionnaires to the candidates and set interview dates for them.
But before holding the first interview, a controversy arose among the committee members about the realtors running for offices, with one group asking that the realtors be given priority consideration. The other committee members wanted to select one incumbent, as the “safe” choice, and wanted GEPAR to sit out the mayoral race because both Renard Johnson and Isabel Salcido were both realtors. Some members on the GEPAR endorsement committee did not want to be forced to pick one over the other.
A realtor involved in the discussions explained that the selection committee chose to sit out the mayoral race. In another case involving a realtor, the committee chose to endorse the incumbent even though he was not a realtor and his opponent was. The choice to endorse the incumbent was made because he was the “safe” endorsement.
What is important to note about the GEPAR endorsement process is that the deliberations and the decision to endorse a non-realtor incumbent as the “safe” bet was made prior to interviewing the candidates looking for the endorsements.
The process for many of the other groups offering endorsements was largely the same where the decisions had been made before the interviews had begun. Several candidates expressed disappointment in the endorsements and interviews saying that they felt it was fixed before they had the chance to make their cases to the committees.
The groups in El Paso offering endorsements without monetary support generally make their decisions on candidates that are members or have supported the causes of the groups. Many times, the endorsement decision is made early with the interviews and questionnaires just a formality.
In the case of the groups representing the fire, police and sheriff, generally the decision to endorse follows the formula of endorsing the likely winner in the contest, usually the incumbent, or an opponent had the incumbent chosen to vote against the association’s requests before the governing body. These groups endorse the “safe” bet in the hope that the endorsement will lead to support from the candidate after they are elected.
Generally, the endorsement is nothing more than a badge of honor, and except for the monetary campaign contribution that some endorsements carry, they are generally not worth the resources for the candidate unless they are in a primary where the stronger Democratic Party groups can influence voters.
The News Is Not Your Friend
The adage that “any advertising is a good thing” sounds good but is rarely beneficial to the candidate. This does not mean that a candidate using the news media when strategically planned isn’t important, it just means that when the news media comes asking for a quote it usually doesn’t help the campaign.
In El Paso several news outlets including El Paso Matters, El Paso Times and Telemundo asked candidates to fill out questionnaires for news profiles. Candidates should always respond to these requests timely and completely, with one exception.
One news media outlet – El Paso Matters – demanded that the candidate provide a date of birth for a “background check.” Several candidates expressed concern about providing their date of birth asking why it was necessary. With the rise of identity theft, providing a date of birth with other biographical details without knowing who has access to the data can lead to identity problems down the road.
When a candidate balked at providing their date of birth, the reporter insisted that it was needed. The candidate explained to the reporter that background checks can be made without a date of birth, adding that identity theft was a concern.
As the candidate told El Paso Matters, background checks can readily be made online by almost anyone. Asking for the date of birth suggests that the online publication was not interested in reporting on the candidates running for office, but rather in creating a “gotcha moment” for one or more of the candidates.
When dealing with the news media, it is important to remember that their number one interest is in creating catchy news headlines to attract news consumers. Candidates should keep their answers to the news media focused on the talking points they created when they were planning their campaign.
If the candidate is concerned that a past indiscretion will come up during the election, it most likely will. Rather than hope it doesn’t, or they will deal with it when it does surface, it is better to plan the response before it comes up and have the necessary statements ready to be released as soon as it happens.
The most important thing for any candidate to remember is to never lie. Most candidates can come back from an indiscretion or two, but a lie on the record follows them throughout each run for office.
The Money Factor
Campaign funds will make it easier for the candidates to win races in El Paso. This is because building the necessary name recognition among the voters requires connecting with them. Because candidates in El Paso generally wait until one-to-three months before the election to start campaigning. The short period to mobilize voters forces the candidates to spend money on direct mailers, paid block walkers and other forms of messaging the voters.
Basically, the shorter the campaign window the more expensive the campaign is because reaching voters without taking the time to block walk requires spending money. Campaigns that start to campaign earlier can leverage volunteers and the time to block walk reducing costs to run for the office. As Catherine Shaw explains, “the down-ballot candidate can often level the playing field with shoe leather.”
Starting to campaign early maximizes the campaign funds by allowing the campaign to order yard signs, for example, from national providers that cost less than the local providers charge. Ordering materials from out of town takes longer to arrive because of the time required for shipping. Moreover, early campaigning allows time for building out the brand, the strategy and recruiting volunteers to help with the campaign, not to mention more time to talk to the voters directly by block walking the target precincts.
As discussed earlier, block walking is the most effective tool in a campaign’s arsenal. More votes are collected from personal contact with the target voter. In November, the Lily Limón Campaign was characterized by her block walking. Even though Limón started campaigning relatively early, she nonetheless paid block walkers to help her reach her voter demographic, although the candidate also walked extensively.
Limón spent $7,111 on block walkers. For the runoff election, Limón spent an additional $5,722.40 for poll sitters. One of Limón’s opponents, Chris Hernandez, spent $4,360 in block walkers. Two of Limón’s other opponents, Fabiola Campos Lopez and Alan Serna did not report any expenses for block walkers.
El Paso campaigns can expect to pay block walkers between $12 and $17 per hour, with the average around $15. In addition to the hourly rate, provisions for creating the walking lists should be accounted for, although usually that is covered by the fees associated with the campaign’s data needs for voter lists.
Block walking voter outreach is the number one strategy for winning an election, but it costs money that many candidates do not have. Volunteers are difficult to recruit and organize because although a candidate may have broad support in their community that does not translate well into the campaign oftentimes.
Having a base from where to recruit volunteers saves campaign funds while utilizing one of the most effective voter outreach techniques, person-to-person canvassing.
Favored Democratic Party candidates get the benefit of the party’s infrastructure for support reaching the voters through the party apparatus. Grassroots activists can leverage their activism to build a volunteer base.
Candidates in El Paso, whether they win or lose an election, almost never work to keep their election apparatus in place after the election. This forces candidates to begin from the beginning each time they run for office.
Simply keeping the data of voters that was collected during the last campaign and engaging with voters who demonstrated support with a simple holiday greeting or birthday message keeps the candidates’ campaign largely intact for the next campaign, and engaged with the voters that are likely to help them win the next time around.
At the end of the day, any candidate that continues to aspire to hold office in the future should keep their data updated and available for the next election.
Another campaign expense for El Paso candidates are door hangers and postcards for direct mailing. In addition to the design fee, the printing costs must be factored in. Generally, door hangers in groups of 1,000 cost around $700, including design and printing fees. Direct mailers, generally run around $1,200 for printing, postage, design and target lists per 1,000 mailers. The costs can be reduced by ordering larger quantities. It is important to keep in mind that the costs increase the sooner the material is needed and the closer the election day is.
Anyone running for office should have cash on hand to pay for the initial services when they launch their campaigns. It is a common mistake to wait for campaign contributions to trickle in before ordering campaign materials because it ends up costing more as the date for the early voting period to begin gets closer. It should also be noted that those who make significant contributions will contribute to candidates that invested in themselves by producing a professional campaign strategy, including an online presence and printed materials before soliciting campaign funds. Major contributors will contribute to candidates they feel can win the election.
The most important takeaway from the November elections is that those with the names that the voters felt comfortable with won the election because the candidate built up the necessary name recognition needed to win in El Paso.
More detail and information about sources and methods is found in the White Paper.