‘No manual’: How SC campaigns are adapting in the age of coronavirus
It was Wednesday evening and Jaime Harrison’s home was having internet connection issues.
Ordinarily, a Wi-Fi malfunction would just be an inconvenience. In the age of the coronavirus — the pandemic reality that has seized the world, forcing people everywhere into isolation to slow the virus’ spread — it threatened to disrupt an entire, carefully-orchestrated campaign event.
Technical difficulties caused awkward silences between speakers during the remote panel discussion on mental health resources in South Carolina, which Harrison — the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate — had convened.
Participants dialing into the event through Zoom were using the chatroom function to type out racial epithets and profanities.
Eventually, Harrison announced he had to go investigate “Wi-Fi issues in the house,” got up from behind his desk and disappeared from the view of the lens of his computer camera, leaving behind an image of an empty desk positioned in front of a sideboard decorated with knickknacks and a wall collage of his own campaign posters.
Kinks were eventually resolved. The campaign reported that more than 100 people tuned in to the event, which spokesman Guy King said was comparable to the number of people who would typically show up for a campaign event in-person.
But the rocky roll-out illustrated the new reality of campaigning during an unprecedented global pandemic, and the challenges inherent in reaching voters at a pivotal moment for congressional campaigns: a little more than six months before a general election that will determine the balance of power in Washington.
“Elections don’t stop. We have to press on and adapt to this new world,” said Tyler Jones, a Charleston-based campaign strategist who is a senior consultant for two Democratic congressional candidates — U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham of Charleston and Moe Brown of Rock Hill. “We are still trying to figure it out.”
In plenty of ways, every South Carolina congressional campaign is making similar adaptions to conform to a new normal where people are discouraged from leaving their homes unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Candidates are turning their political machines into public service operations. Volunteer phone bankers are calling constituents to just check in rather than ask for money. Campaigns are devoting virtual town halls to sharing information about community resources for combating the coronavirus rather than bashing political opponents.
Some of the candidates see an opportunity to reframe their message to voters around the global health crisis, highlighting a set of policy positions that directly relate to the emergency at hand.
“The lack of access to quality health care due to lack of expansion of Medicaid, the lack of leadership in Washington, access to rural broadband — we were talking about this before and we’re seeing it all play out during the pandemic,” said King of Harrison’s platform.
Other candidates are now hoping to show constituents they have what it takes to be a leader.
“As a candidate, my job is to show what kind of leadership I offer as the next congresswoman from South Carolina from the 1st Congressional district,” said State Rep. Nancy Mace, R-Berkeley, who is vying to win the GOP primary to challenge Cunningham in one of the election cycle’s most competitive races nationwide.
But candidates are also grappling with enormous setbacks from the stay-at-home orders.
They cannot initiate interactions with voters on the ground, relying instead on potential voters going through the trouble to click through a website — and overcome technical glitches — to watch a press conference streamed live from a candidate’s living room.
They have had to cancel fundraisers in the crucial weeks leading up to the filing deadline for first-quarter campaign finance reports, which are important markers of a candidate’s standing.
And virtual fundraising during a national crisis that has wreaked havoc on the economy, and people’s pocketbooks, presents its own set of challenges: it’s awkward to ask for money now, and even for candidates who do make the request, there’s no guarantee they’ll receive a check.
“The playbook is thrown at the window,” Jones said.
Money troubles
As Jones sees it, Brown’s campaign against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman was just starting to hit its stride before the pandemic hit.
A former University of South Carolina Gamecocks wide receiver with government experience and a record of reaching across the aisle — he worked in the state Commerce Department under then-Gov. Nikki Haley — Brown is running in the 5th District, which was a Democratic stronghold until the 2010 midterms saw a wave of GOP wins across the country. Since losing the seat, Democrats have seen the district as ripe for a comeback, even after a recent spate of recruiting failures.
Brown earned credibility through his affiliation with Jones, whose orchestration of Cunningham’s historic 2018 victory made him a heavyweight in state Democratic politics. Bakari Sellers, a star in the state Democratic Party with his own congressional ambitions, spoke at Brown’s campaign kick-off event on Tuesday, March 10.
Then, on Wednesday, March 11, President Donald Trump delivered the jarring prime time television address that marked the turning point in the country’s collective understanding of what disruption and devastation the coronavirus pandemic would cause. By the end of the week, schools, parks, stores and restaurants across the country were starting to shutter.
It struck a blow to Brown’s nascent, underdog campaign, where success hinged on putting the candidate in front of voters and boosting name recognition.
“Fundraising is the biggest challenge now,” said Jones. “You want to be respectful but you also want to keep the lights on, so we are fundraising and doing that as respectfully as possible, doing a lot of virtual fundraising and email solicitation.”
Brown sent out an fundraising email Tuesday night asking donors to “chip in” to defeat Norman, who opposes sending direct payments to struggling Americans. He raised $114,686 and has $55,946 cash on hand as of March 31, the Federal Elections Commission filing deadline for the first quarter of 2020.
Attorney Adair Ford Boroughs, the Democrat running against Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson in the 2nd Congressional District, is at less of a disadvantage than Brown, having declared her candidacy last August and has since that time attracted national attention for her fundraising.
On Wednesday, she posted having raised $234,000 in the first three months of this year, with over $524,000 in cash on hand. She has raised a total of $936,687 so far this cycle.
But her campaign manager, Lindsey Green, conceded that Ford Boroughs has, like everyone else, entered into “a new frontier” where the campaign must figure out “how we are going to fundraise in a new era that fits the moment.
“People are losing their jobs,” Green continued, “so donating to campaigns is not a high priority for these folks.”
Reaching voters
Ford Boroughs has been pairing public service events with virtual fundraisers and events targeted to specific communities within the 2nd District.
Over the last few weeks, she hosted live Facebook events where she broke down provisions of the two massive congressional coronavirus relief bills in terms constituents could understand. Her army of remote phone bankers has been asked to check in on potential donors first, then decide whether it’s appropriate to talk more about the campaign.
Harrison, in his bid against Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, has been working within a similar framework, pairing campaign-style messaging with the so-called “Harrison Helps” community service initiative he’d already integrated into his campaign in the months leading up to the pandemic.
Since the crisis began, he has held virtual forums focused on healthcare and mental health, moderating question-and-answer sessions with local experts.
And having already broken fundraising records for a Democrat running statewide in South Carolina — he raised $7.4 million as of March 31, just under $15 million this cycle so far and now boasting $8 million cash on hand — he is now separately raising money for four separate community organizations around the state.
According to campaign manager Zack Carroll, Harrison was one of the first South Carolina candidates to move his operations digital, recognizing early on his campaign crowds skewed older — the population most vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 — and in more rural areas of the state outside immediate proximity of hospitals.
Since then, said Carroll, Harrison has tried to keep his campaign on track as though he were still physically on the road for his “Restoring Hope” tour of the state’s 46 counties. He will be holding virtual town hall events geared toward specific counties that were on his list to visit in the near term.
For rural communities where internet access is either unreliable or unavailable, all live-streamed forums have also had a telephone component. Harrison has launched a six-figure radio ad buy on South Carolina radio stations targeted towards black audiences, which will also have the function of reaching voters who don’t have reliable internet access in their homes.
In a sign he’s looking to depoliticize the crisis, Harrison has also largely refrained from drawing regular, explicit contrasts between himself and Graham. His radio ads do not mention Graham’s name once.
‘No manual’
Candidates like Harrison, Brown and Ford Boroughs are using the coronavirus crisis to show voters how they would lead on issues of healthcare, broadband, economic development and education.
In South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, the dynamic is a bit different. The two leading Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to take on Cunningham — State Rep. Nancy Mace and Mount Pleasant Town Councilwoman Kathy Landing — are both GOP officeholders who are campaigning while navigating constituent services.
In that sense, their day jobs and political campaigns are one in the same as they aim to show people in their communities they are up for the task of being in Congress.
“My campaign social media has turned into a PSA by and large, a PSA on how do you file for unemployment, how to meet your medical needs if you’re feeling sick,” said Mace, who has also been calling for expanded rapid COVID-19 testing resources.
Mace said she has put her regular fundraising calls “on pause” during the crisis, though her campaign has hosted virtual fundraisers to replace the five major in-person events that had to be canceled in March. She raised $295,164 in the year’s first fundraising quarter, but she has raised almost $1.2 million throughout the campaign so far and has $805,610 in cash on hand.
Landing has sought to distinguish herself during the crisis by starting to air a new television ad that highlights her personal story of adversity: the loss of both parents when she was 13 year old and the decision not to let the tragedy overshadow her faith and ambition.
“We’d had this in place for a while, there were just internal questions about when we were going to start airing it,” said Landing campaign spokesman Michael Mule of the TV spot. “We decided there was no reason to wait because this story is introducing her to a number of folks and could inspire people in tough times.”
Landing has raised a total of $568,377 this cycle. She brought in $100,164 this fundraising quarter and now has $343,990 cash on hand.
Joe Cunningham has also been focused on meeting the needs of his constituents during the pandemic, aware that winning a second term in a battleground district requires him to directly serve the needs of the voters who will go to the polls to reelect him.
“Joe is spending every waking hour on the phone with small business owners, health care workers, and folks who have been laid off and trying to get them the help they desperately need,” Cunningham campaign spokeswoman Allie Watters said in a statement. “The campaign, fundraising, and the election in November are the last things on his mind right now. Politics can wait.”
Cunningham is one of the 2018 freshman class’ most prolific fundraisers — he has $2.5 million in cash on hand and has raised a total of $3.5 million this cycle so far — but he lost two weeks of active community engagement in late-March thanks to being quarantined after testing positive for COVID-19.
In the first fundraising quarter of this year, he reported receiving $705,687, which isn’t too inconsistent with previous quarterly hauls.
Yet with few signs of when stay-at-home orders will be lifted, the Cunningham team is looking at how to reimagine itself going forward. There is a possibility of a “virtual brewery tour” at some point, echoing Cunningham’s regular campaign meet-and-greets at Lowcountry watering holes, but there’s no agreement yet about how exactly that would work.
“There is no manual to this,” Tyler Jones said. “It’s all going to be a big experiment.”
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 9:59 AM.
