With billions of dollars sloshing around political campaigns, businesses that know how to target messages to voters can get a piece of the pie.
That was the gist of “The Business of Politics” panel discussion held on May 5 at Pace University in Pleasantville.
This year”™s presidential election alone is expected to cost $11 billion. While it might be too late for new players to tap into that revenue stream, the increasing costs of local, state and federal elections will continue to provide opportunities for companies that want to get in the business of electing candidates to public offices.
The problem that newcomers face is figuring out what services they can provide in a business that is changing rapidly.
“The mechanisms of politics have probably changed more in the past three years than in the last 30 years before that,” said political consultant Bill O”™Reilly of The November Team, a firm that campaigns for Republicans.
Campaigns used to craft national messages and appeal to large groups. No more, he said. Now messages are aimed at small groups and individual households.
Digital media used to be the “weird cousin” of advertising. Now it is driving campaign decisions. Gut instincts have been displaced by analysis of data.
Campaigns start with voter registration records, but voter profiles go well beyond election patterns. Consultants identify the magazines people read, the causes they support and virtually every product they buy.
“Everything is sliced and diced and bifurcated and targeted,” O”™Reilly said.
“Smart, data-driven decisions” can overcome a fundraising disadvantage, said political consultant Evan Stavisky of The Parkside Group, a firm that works on behalf of Democrats.
He said new technologies can leverage old techniques, like direct mail advertising and door-to-door canvassing. Ultimately, he said, data enables candidates to “target individual voters down to the household level.”
Not just any voter will do. Former U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, a Democrat who represented Suffolk County from 2003 to 2015, talked about the “persuadable universe.”
He assumed that hard-core Democrats would vote for him, and he didn”™t bother with hard-core Republicans.
“We went to doors where we thought interactions might move them in the direction we wanted to move them. We learned that from data analysis and targeting.”
The panelists also discussed the dark side of emerging electoral technology.
Digital is effective, O”™Reilly said, but “we use it at our peril.” It emphasizes differences rather than commonalities. Campaigns have become increasingly angry and hateful.
“There”™s got to be a new way to deliver the messages to the American public,” he said. “Right now we”™re burning down the house.”
Stavisky said digital technology is not necessarily corrosive. Candidates have a duty to talk with voters.
“When you”™re smarter about how you talk to individual voters about what those voters care about,” he said, “the candidate is more likely to be successful.”
Bishop attributed the decline in civility to the Supreme Court”™s Citizens United decision, allowing unaccountable political action committees to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money.
“Super PACÂ ads are corrosive, ugly, nasty, and bitterly and brutally critical,” he said.
That leads to government paralysis, because even when a candidate survives the onslaught, “it”™s a little hard to lock arms and say, ‘OK, now let”™s work together.’”
Bishop said the greatest problem in politics today is public disillusionment. People can”™t be bothered to vote.
“I don”™t think we”™re going to heal all that”™s wrong with politics until we find a way to deal with that.”
The forum was presented by the Business Council of Westchester in partnership with Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp. John Ravitz, executive vice president and COO of the business council, and Laurence Gottlieb, president and CEO of the development group, moderated the discussion.
