Check One: Does everyone know the larger point of the campaign?
Check Two: Does everyone know your ethical standards and expectations?
Check Three: Does everyone know where the lines are?
You can’t predict every challenge you will face in a political campaign. For example, “what if there’s a global supply chain disruption and we can’t get paper?” isn’t something most candidates think about. But campaigns should expect to face ethical challenges. With just over four months to go until the general election, and with primaries well underway, now is a good time to revisit your campaign’s ethical standards.
The best campaigns set their ethical framework when they write their campaign plans and budgets. A campaign should firmly state where it stands as it plans where to go and how to get there. That’s the idea behind the Campaign Ethics Workbook.
Campaigns are made up of a lot of moving parts. There are venders for mail, fundraising, social media, TV and radio ad production and placement. There are field teams, communications teams, policy teams, volunteers, and of course the candidate. Many may be involved because they know and believe in the candidate, others because they support a political party, and others because they are professionals who believe these things and have bills to pay.
The best campaigns ensure everyone, from the newby volunteer phone-banker, to the email fundraising consultant, to the campaign manager have a clear understanding of what the campaign will – and will not – do to win.
Consultants get paid to win the next election or pass the next bill. But we must never mistake the immediate goal for the greater stakes.
- Democratic strategist Oren Shur and Republican strategist Susan Del Percio in Campaigns & Elections
You work on campaigns or run for office because you believe our world should, and can, be a better place. There is a point to what you are doing beyond November 8th. You might want to ensure everyone is treated and fairly and with dignity, that the climate crisis is existential and we must do everything possible to address it, or that no one should worry where their next meal is coming from. You probably believe in a few of these things, and more. These goals are why you are doing what you are doing.
In one sentence, why are you involved in politics? Why are you on this campaign or running for this office? For example, “to create a world in which everyone is treated fairly and in which the earth’s climate is not destroyed.” (Your sentence doesn’t need to be poetic or inspiring – it just needs to clearly state why you’re living on pizza and adrenaline for the next four months).
Check One: Does everyone on your campaign know the larger point of the campaign?
Put it on posters, online, and on material for your field team. Everyone should keep a clear eye on the point of knocking on the next door, making the next call, raising the next dollar, and creating the next ad. It should be in your contracts with vendors and in creative briefs.
How you get where you want to go matters. Democracy is how we find solutions to shared problems. Democracy is how we get things done, and also how we do those things. The means and end of democracy are connected. Everyday, headlines remind us that rhetorical attacks on democratic institutions have physical consequences. And every day, politicians and pundits tell voters to hate, fear and even attack anyone who disagrees with them. How you make the case for your candidate matters.
It can be easy to lash out at your opponents in the heat of a campaign. A lot of campaigns also lash out at the press, their own staff, and the democratic institutions they are working so hard to be part of. Pointed and accurate attacks can be effective and important – but just lashing out rarely helps and often hurts.
Here’s a possible standard … what if you were the target of the communication? Would you think it was fair, truthful enough, captured the essence of the topic? Even if you didn’t like it, would you say it was above board?
- Jim Kessler EVP Third Way, former campaign strategist, Five Questions about Ethics in Political Communication
The best campaigns have a written set of guidelines or standards they follow. For example, when Pete Buttigieg ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination he had a “rules of the road” that everyone affiliated with the campaign was expected to follow. His campaign literally put it on t-shirts.
Not everyone followed all the rules all of the time (I don’t care how much you like the candidate or knocking on stranger’s doors, ‘joy’ just isn’t something campaigns have all the time). Nevertheless it was a public statement of “this is how this campaign approaches our work – this is how we treat our voters, our opponent, each other, and the process in which we are privileged to participate.”
Check Two: Does everyone affiliated with your campaign know your ethical standards and expectations?
Put those standards on t-shirts – and posters, yard signs, and social media.
A general statement of a platitude, followed by more aspirational statements, don’t always help on a late Thursday night right before a filing deadline or on a hot Sunday afternoon at a state fair. Without details and examples, the goals feel abstract and can easily be ignored.
The best campaigns offer examples of what they will, and will not do. No list is exhaustive, and you cannot anticipate everything (for example, a global pandemic in March, 2020 that turned a lot of typical campaign activities into potentially life threatening events). But a few examples can make the campaign’s ethical expectations clearer. Are there things your campaign will not say in emails, such as promising fake matches, automatically enrolling donors in monthly contributions, or engaging in absurd hyperbole?
Subject line from a Republican fundraising email in June, 2022
Negative ads can help voters see important differences between your campaign and your opponent, and can reveal information that may matter in the campaign, such as business dealings, active participation with hate groups, or past statements at odds with their current positions. But not all attacks are relevant or helpful. For example, is the candidate’s family out of bounds? How recent do actions or statement have to be in order to be relevant?
Your campaign might want to focus on whose money to take and whose to turn down, or whose endorsements to seek and whose to reject. You might decide you will not make promises you cannot keep (i.e. “pass single payer health care” – even you think it’s a good idea, one person can’t do it alone). Think about choices you may face, and the decision you will make when faced with those choices.
Check Three: Do your staff, volunteers and venders know where the lines are?
Write down and share examples of what is in bounds and what is out of bounds. Make sure your staff, volunteers and venders know what you expect. Hire staff and venders with a history of winning with your values, and fire those who think they have to burn down the house in order to occupy it.
Your campaign will only get tougher. Your life will only get more stressful. Take a moment to make sure that you are sure what you are working toward, that everyone knows how they are expected to behave, and give examples of acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
For a more complete discussion of campaign ethics, check out the Project on Ethics in Political Communication’s Campaign Ethics Workbook.
Now go knock on some doors.