Can a Democrat Win a PA Primary Without Philly? Absolutely!

Think Philadelphia is the kingmaker in Pennsylvania's Democratic primaries? Think again. With a fresh analysis of recent election data, this episode shatters the illusion that a win in the City of Brotherly Love is the magic bullet for a statewide victory. We'll explore the real story behind voter turnout and distribution, revealing why focusing all your campaign firepower on Philly could be a strategic misstep. Discover the nuanced reality of Pennsylvania's political battleground, where statewide appeal trumps urban dominance and the implications it has for future races.

Gone are the days when traditional broadcast TV reigned supreme in the campaign world. This week, tap into the evolution of voter contact methods as we highlight the pivot towards digital platforms, targeted cable, and the enduring power of direct mail. As a veteran of selling voter contact services, I'll share insights into the effectiveness of different outreach tools and question the efficiency of Philly's famed 'street money' in the era of mail-in voting. Expect a candid take on data-driven strategies and why smart, targeted approaches could be the secret weapon for campaign success.

Wrap up the episode with a behind-the-scenes look at the Attorney General and Treasurer races, where winning Philadelphia voters didn't guarantee a ticket to statewide office. As we dissect the unexpected outcomes, you'll understand why geographic diversity and adaptability can outweigh the advantages of big-city endorsements. Join me and special guest Aaron McClellan as we discuss the actionable lessons from his campaign and why embracing analytics and innovative messaging is vital as we approach the November elections. It's a masterclass in strategic campaigning, tailored for those ready to conquer the complexities of Pennsylvania's vibrant political scene.

Learn more about the Keystone Reckoning Project at www.keystonereckoning.com

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Chapters

• 0:30 Reconsidering Conventional Wisdom in Pennsylvania
• 11:04 Analyzing Voter Contact Methods in Philly
• 17:11 Winning Philly Doesn't Guarantee Victory
• 23:15 Analyzing Statewide Election Strategies

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Hey, democrats, maybe it's time for us to all take a collective deep breath and turn our eyes towards the wisdom and sage words of Mr Rush Limbaugh. What, hold on? I'm going somewhere with this. Welcome to the Keystone Reckoning podcast. I'm your host, jesse White. It is Friday, april 26, 2024.

Speaker 1: 0:50

We are still continuing our breakdown and analysis of this past Tuesday's Democratic primary election. For more broad overview, please check out our last episode. We're now going to start talking about specific races and trends and things of that nature, and today we're going to talk about a trend in the statewide races that actually were contested. So we're talking about the primaries for Attorney general, auditor general and treasurer and we're going to look at those. And there's one thread that seems to run through all of them and it runs along with a piece of conventional wisdom that, from a campaign side, we have to talk about as Democrats, because it really played itself out in a very relevant way.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Now, I started this episode by saying we should listen to Rush Limbaugh. Okay, obviously you know, not really, but there is one thing that he said that actually applies here. And, by the way, do you know how painful it is to go through a Google search of Rush Limbaugh quotes to find the one you're looking for Like. It's like I feel like I have to take seven showers now going through all his quotes, but the one that is relevant here is Rush Limbaugh said I reject conventional wisdom, and I'm sure he was trying to sound smarter than everybody in the room or whatever. But there is, there's something to be taken from that trying to sound smarter than everybody in the room or whatever but there's something to be taken from that Because, as we went through the Democratic primary, I'm a political consultant it's one of the hats I wear doing a lot of different kinds of voter contact with several different kind of companies and organizations.

Speaker 1: 2:30

So I was in contact with a lot of consultants, a lot of strategists and a lot of campaigns going through the primary, working on strategy and voter contact, and the thing that we always kept coming back to that seems to be this conventional wisdom that just does not go away is that you have to win Philadelphia to win a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. You've got to win Philly, and that is just where everybody sticks. And this primary made it very clear that you don't. You don't need to win Philadelphia to win statewide, and now we have the numbers to prove it. Ok, so let's talk about it for a minute, this idea that winning Philly is the end all be all of a Democratic primary. You know it's, quite frankly, it's kind of lazy analysis, and 10, 15, 20 years ago I could see it a little more, because, for a couple of reasons. First of all, when you look at the number of voters, you know, in pure population density and everything, obviously Philadelphia is the the most, the richest trove of votes per square mile that you're going to find in Pennsylvania. Right, the city's overwhelmingly Democratic. It's really a turnout game. Right, it's a motivation game. It's a turnout game Just getting those.

Speaker 1: 3:56

You know, like every political campaign since the dawn of time, since, you know, 1776, has said if we could just get Philly to turn out and vote we'd be great statewide. Right, every presidential campaign has said that. Every you know statewide Senate race has said that all this, all the state, you know statewide judicial, statewide row offices, if we could just get Philly to turn out, we'll win this cycle. Because there wasn't really anything, any major Philly-centric races for folks to turn out for, for example, the congressional districts that are all that include Philadelphia. There were no serious primaries there. Dwight Evans had a token opposition but it was minor right, he was never in any danger. Those seats were all safe. There were no major state Senate primaries out there, things where there would be people on the ground working a field program to get people out to the polls for each side, which would then drive up turnout across the board, or you would have more media spending there. Right, you didn't have any of that and you often don't have that.

Speaker 1: 5:16

And it's this weird thing because you know, in Philly the primary is the general right. That is the election in Philly. Now, statewide it's a much bigger deal and turnout efforts and the money and the efforts that would need to be spent to turn out Philly in the general are obviously crucially important right In a general election because you need to run up the totals in places like Philly. Well, there's really no place like Philly. You need to run up the total in Philly to offset a lot. You know a lot of the other big red parts of the state, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a Democratic primary and in a Democratic primary, this time around it was a low turnout primary. Across the board turnout less than 30%. Total Democratic votes cast were 1,015,000. Of those, the votes cast in Philadelphia were 150,000. 14.7% of the Democratic vote came from Philadelphia. Now, granted, that's not nothing, right? 150,000 votes is no joke. If I'm running statewide, I want those votes Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 6:28

But and this is the part we need to look at there are a couple of factors here. First is, when you vote in a primary, your county is next to your name, right? So when people went to vote this time, for example for we'll use Auditor General because it's the only one it's one that had a Philly candidate. It's the only one, or it's one that had a Philly candidate, and so it was Malcolm Kenyatta, philadelphia, mark Pinsley, lehigh.

Speaker 1: 6:57

Okay, the general thought there is people vote geography, and I can tell you, being from Western Pennsylvania, I'll be totally honest. You know, from Washington, allegheny County, all things being equal, you usually weren't going to vote for the candidate from Philly. We're all kind of parochial in that way, right, we're going to vote for the people that live near us. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's smart, but it's what people do, right? Oh, I live in Washington County, you live in Allegheny County, if I don't know any of the other candidates, and that's the other thing.

Speaker 1: 7:29

These were relatively low information races. People didn't know a lot about these candidates were relatively low information races, people didn't know a lot about these candidates. So when they go in to vote they saw name and county, that's it. So what can you really pull from that? You can figure out where they're from and you know from their name you can probably figure out some ethnicity and gender. Okay, that's it, and that's if you take a second and study it. So then from there people could go in. Obviously they're like oh, philly, much more liberal, you know, uh, they're from, you're from Western PA, you're, or Central PA, you're probably more conservative. Again, conventional wisdom, right? We, we think we know these things and there might be some of it may be accurate, but it's certainly not all accurate. It's not all you know. It's nothing you can really say for certain. So there's that part of it. So that's part of it.

Speaker 1: 8:19

We have this big, this big chunk of votes in Philadelphia and I would argue that Philly is unique. It's unique of anywhere in the state for a lot of different reasons, and that's not bad. I want to be clear. You know I'm a Pittsburgh sports fan, so I usually don't have much good to say about Philly in general. It's one of my least favorite places on the planet to drive, as borne out when we were at a Phillies-Pirates game a couple of weeks ago, but OK. But from a pure Democratic politics point of view, obviously Philly's critically important in Pennsylvania and it offsets a lot of. There's a lot of good that comes out of Philly that offsets a lot of bad going on in other parts of the state.

Speaker 1: 8:56

So the key is then being able, in a primary, to harness those votes, and it's very difficult and a lot of it has to do with methodology, and if you've never worked on a larger campaign that would like encompass statewide or Philly and other areas, you really don't understand the different strategies that are in play. Okay, so one thing is you know we talk about different voter contact methods, and I think that's really what we're coming down to here is how do we talk to voters before an election? And nowadays you know I'm a big believer, I've always been a big believer in you. You can now, using technology, we can micro target voters right. I can use data to know how to get a hold of you Email, text, phone call, I can knock on your door. I can do all these things and the technology is really amazing, and we'll talk a lot between now and November about voter contact methods, of what works, and I've got a great episode coming up, uh, called mean texts from this primary. That's going to be hilarious, um, but there's all these different methods and there's no one way. That's. It's one of those things where I can't necessarily tell you the best way to, but I could tell you the worst way and unfortunately, a lot of the worst ways come from Philly in terms of how people try to contact and interact with voters and turn them out. Right, there's persuade them to support you, and then there's persuade them to participate, which in a primary you know was going to be a low turnout primary, super important, right? Okay, you've met me. You agree with me? Fantastic, how do we get your butt to the polls?

Speaker 1: 10:32

It's a two-part process and when you're talking about statewide, the amount of money it takes to effectively communicate with voters on such a large scale is a huge problem, right? Nobody has very few candidates have the kind of money to do that and almost nobody. The only statewide candidate that's going to have the money to do that on the Democratic side this year is Bob Casey. That's it, that's the list, and obviously President Biden, but a Pennsylvania person running statewide. The only one that'll have enough money to do this truly the right way is Bob Casey.

Speaker 1: 11:44

So what are your options? You can go up on TV broadcast TV cost a fortune, very expensive. Your options, right. You can go up on TV broadcast TV cost a fortune, very expensive In Philly media markets the most expensive in the state. You can also go up on cable. You can go up on what they call connected TV, which is, you know, ways to get out onto with streaming. Now I would argue that TV is less effective than ever. It's effective, but you know, now you have people that only watch streaming services. Right, you have all the cord cutters. You have all these. You know it's much more fragmented than it ever used to be. So it's a challenge Used to be, you save, you raise a bunch of money. You went up on TV Cable if you had to broadcast, if you could afford it, and that was it right For, like you know, the mass media. But now there are so many different options. So you know.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Then you have direct mail and I did get some direct mail for some statewide, this primary. I do direct mail. Direct mail is very expensive, you know, winning a statewide race with direct mail is very challenging, because direct mail, like all advertising, relies on repetition and it's not cheap. Then you get into digital right, which is you're seeing it, you know um seeing it, you know on streaming, you know on youtube, but also, uh, social media, primarily facebook, stuff like that uh can be very effective, because now we're getting into the things that can be targeted at cost. Right, you can, you can target them in a cost-effective way. You're still not going to hit everybody, but if you've got a good list, you can hit. You know 60 70% of your voters that way, and the hits are relatively cheap. Then you get into robocalls and texting as a disclaimer, one of the things I sell these services to campaigns and candidates, and so that is something I'm very well versed in. I also work in the AI space, which is another conversation we'll be having.

Speaker 1: 13:32

So there's a lot of different ways, but here's my point. In Philly, now, you have this other thing, right? So those voter contact methods are like uniform across the board, right, they work pretty much at all time zones. Once you get into Philly, though, there's the ward system, the ward leaders right where the Democratic Party, you know, has their elected ward leaders, and campaigns and outside groups to go around that system to get to the voters directly so that they don't need to ask the committee or the world leaders who should I vote for. And also, you know the days of patronage are gone right, so it's not like it used to be, but what they will do in Philly, and they used to listen.

Speaker 1: 14:32

I've had to do this in places in the past in Allegheny County and places like that. It happened and still happens, but you know the phrase street money to give cash to whoever the ward leaders, whoever it's going to be, to then distribute to people to stand at the polls and hand out literature or do whatever. And campaigns this time around felt a lot of pressure to invest in. You know they could say a turnout program or whatever, but basically it was give us cash and we will get you votes. That's what it is and I personally to me, I think you might be more effective taking your money, putting it in a pile, lighting it on fire and offering people a nice you know, to be able to sit by the fire and warm their hands as a way to get their vote as a more effective method.

Speaker 1: 15:30

And this is, by the way, coming from what I've seen, and this isn't just a Philly thing. I want to be clear. I'm not just. This is not Philly centric. But when you give money for people to be at the polls unless they are someone who knows everybody there those people are few and far between and they're usually the kind of people that are going to do it for free because they want to volunteer. But if you're paying someone to be there, they're either going to show up and just eat and sit and talk and not talk to voters, or they're going to just basically hand stuff to people that people don't want. And the other thing is we are now in a position where Democratic voters, especially, don't even go to the polls anymore because we don't vote by mail. So like 40% of the voters that you need to get aren't even showing up at the polls because they've already voted. It's a very ineffective, maybe one of the most ineffective methods of spending your campaign resources that you could possibly imagine in terms of voter contact. There are a lot of other bad ways. There's some.

Speaker 1: 16:23

We're going to tell some stories out of the campaign finance reports this time around, made finance reports this time around. But so how do you get Philly? And you know, and we again, we fall into this conventional wisdom. I'm a candidate. I've got someone telling me that I need to put this money into Philly. Spoiler alert it's someone from Philly, right, wouldn't be shocked if there's a finder's fee involved. We've all got to make money and you know. But you're literally just pouring money into a bucket and hoping that you get something out of it. There's no way to quantify it. There's no way to quantify what you get from that, whereas if I'm emailing, calling, texting, knocking, I have data coming back, or at least I know the message is delivered to the voter. But that's Philly. And we always fall into this trap of we've got to Somehow. Philly is different, right, and we always fall into this trap of we've got to somehow feel he's different.

Speaker 1: 17:11

And what this election taught us was that the two in the two truly contested races attorney general and treasurer the candidate that won Philadelphia lost the election. I'm going to repeat that the candidate who won Philadelphia lost the election. So, and remember that Anytime somebody is telling you this is how it is, you have to win Philly, you have to win Philly. No, you really don't. And I would argue that if you're not from Philly even if you are from Philly, right, you would take those votes, bank them and go everywhere else. If you're not from Philly and you're running against someone from Philly, even if you are from Philly, right, you would take those votes, bank them and go everywhere else. If you're not from Philly and you're running against someone from Philly, acknowledge they're going to you're.

Speaker 1: 17:59

You know, I had a situation this time where a candidate was being asked to put money in like multiple camps were being asked to put money into a Philly election day program and my question to the candidate was wait a minute, if they're taking your money and they're taking your opponent's money, what good does that do? And they were like we just want to cancel out what You've basically just given the people you're giving the money to an out to not deliver at all, because you're asking that. You're basically saying here I'm going to give you money to offset their money, to make sure you don't do anything for them. What Makes no sense, anything for them, what Makes no sense. And there are campaigns and we will talk about it when the reports come out that large percentages of their voter contact budget went to stuff like that instead of actual voter contact that was quantifiable and qualitative and that it was high quality and they could have talked to a hell of a lot more voters a lot more effectively for a lot less money. And they didn't, and the results will bear that out. So let's look very quickly at these couple of contests and to give you an idea, so let's start with the Attorney General.

Speaker 1: 19:05

The statewide winner was Eugene DiPasquale, who had geography on his side. He lives in Allegheny County now he's from there. He's from Pittsburgh originally, but he was a state rep from York County for a lot of years. I was in there with him, so that's where his political history is from. His political history is from, and then as a two-term auditor general, he was well-known, obviously in the other part of central PA, because this is a company town and everybody just knew who he was. So he didn't need Philly. And if you look at the heat map of where he won, he basically won everything but Philly. He won everything west of Harrisburg and he won it handily. Okay. So let's look at his overall. He got 368,000 votes, which was 35% of the vote in a five-candidate field Okay. So he came in first In Philly. Sorry, I have to click it In Philly, oops, that's Montgomery County, is not Philly.

Speaker 1: 20:10

In Philly, di Pasquale got 8.3% of the vote. He got 13,500 out of 150,000. He did the worst by almost half. The next highest performing candidate was Joe Kahn with 15%. Fourth place candidate pretty much doubled the fifth place candidate Okay. Deepest quality gets crushed in Philadelphia. Wins handily everywhere else wins the primary.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Now, the inverse of that Keira Bradford Gray, philadelphia. She was a Philadelphia public defender. Only woman in the race. Only woman. Only person of color in the race Okay, transgender only woman in the race. Only woman. Only person of color in the race. There should have been a statewide appeal there to Democratic primary voters who want to vote for women.

Speaker 1: 21:02

And these were all five qualified candidates. This is a great race to look at because all five candidates are qualified. So you can't look at one and be like, yeah, but they were a bad candidate or whatever. They all had their strengths and I think that had something to do with there not being an endorsement in the race. I think people recognize that. So Kiera Bradford Gray wins Philly handily 36%, basically the same amount that Deepa Squally wins the state by.

Speaker 1: 21:27

She wins Philly with 36%, 57, almost 58,000 votes. The next closest was Jared Solomon, with only 22% of the vote. She beat him by over 22,000 votes in Philly right. So she won Philly handily right. So she is clearly you know she's running for mayor at some point or running for city council or whatever. I mean she did very well and especially because the other three candidates Joe Kahn, jack Stolmeyer and Jared Solomon all Jared Solomon, they're all Philly adjacent, they're all Eastern PA. So she did very well.

Speaker 1: 22:01

Now, 36% in Philly. How did she do statewide? Well, you ask. She got 15% of the votes statewide. She came in second to last. She got over a third of her votes statewide out of Philly. She disproportionately won Philly and she came in fourth out of five and she was only avoided last place by about two points. So she didn't need Philly to win and we'll look at the reports. If she did put money into Philly, that's insane, because she just didn't need it Right and she clearly did it everywhere else. She had a great profile, could have done a lot better in a lot of places, didn't happen.

Speaker 1: 22:39

All right, let's look briefly then at Treasure the other one I want to skip Auditor General for a massive amount of reasons, mainly because it was not a competitive race. As the numbers bear out, malcolm Kenyatta was from Philly. I mean, he won. To give you an idea, he won 65% of the vote statewide in Philly he won 89% of the vote, but it didn't matter. The Pensley campaign didn't do enough outside of Philly to even put a dent into that. I think that the campaign finance reports will show that they probably should have.

Speaker 1: 23:15

All right, let's talk Treasurer for a second, and this will be the last one. Okay, this is a great example. Ryan Bizarro, democratic, endorsed statewide. We've talked about this. He had all the endorsements. Whatever, he wins Philadelphia handily, 62% to 38% over Aaron McClellan. He has 86,000, almost 87,000 votes to her 54,000. So he almost he hasn't quite, but he's like didn't double her up, but he like one and a half der up in Philly, right, and, by the way, this is a good test because he's from Erie Bizarre is from Erie McClellan's, from Allegheny County. So there was nobody west of, like you know, venango. There's going to be east of Venango on the ballot, right, like that was it. This was a western PA thing, so Philly was fertile ground for everybody. Okay, bizarro does great there Almost 62%. But what did he do? Statewide, he loses not even 46% of the vote. He loses McClellan 54-48.

Speaker 1: 24:15

So in a race where there was no Philly candidate and we'll see we know he was up on TV and I'm curious to see where. But if he did so, yes, he won Philly, but did he overspend in Philly at the expense of other places? I don't know. We're going to find out out. I'd be willing to bet that he did. I would be, and I know I looked at some. You know he out raised bizarre. Out raised mcclellan, I think, like five to one. Don't quote me on that, but it's somewhere in that neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 24:44

So you have the money comparatively, um, and I know what mcclellan did for some voter contact. It's been out there and I will just close. It was involved in some of the outreach that she did. I'm not part of the campaign, I want to be clear about that, but we did some vendor work for her race late. So I know what they did and didn't do.

Speaker 1: 25:06

So I'm speaking from some serious knowledge here. I know exactly what was said and who was said to at least part of it and it clearly the strategy and I'm not considering it was all mine, but I contributed to it, that part of it, that strategy worked. So the point is, you know the show Heroes. I never really watched it but I was like I knew it right. But if you remember that show Heroes, for a while there was that phrase save the cheerleader, save the world. I don't know what it means, but I know everybody was saying it and it just whenever I was thinking about all this conventionalism stuff.

Speaker 1: 25:41

It's like win Philly, win the state, win Philly, win the nomination. No, no, that's just not accurate. I'm not saying it's never accurate. There are times where that can very easily be a very smart strategy for a campaign to take.

Speaker 1: 25:58

But campaigns are not monolithic. Philadelphia is not monolithic. I think that's actually pretty offensive to suggest that Philly is this monolithic. It's a massive city, county with an incredible amount of diversity racial, ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic. I mean it is maybe the least monolithic voting bloc in the state and I think it's done a disservice that people in the candidate world and the consultant world just treat it like it's just this big blue bucket and it's not. But to assume that that is the beginning and the end of an election statewide is just not accurate. And now we have the numbers to prove it. There's a lot more of these results are going to tell us, but that was the thing. When I looked at these on election night and the next day that was the first thing I went to because I'd been hearing about it. I've been hearing you hear about it every year, but this this year especially.

Speaker 1: 26:55

Everybody's strategy was built around Philly and the cost and the uncertainty of voter contact to Philly voters as compared to the ways you could talk to voters all over the state and the fact that Philly will generally vote for Philly. Other areas will tend to not vote for Philly and those are kind of burned in biases, you know, geographical biases that are hard to overcome not impossible, but they're hard to. But why? Why go against the grain when you don't have to? So there are huge lessons to be taken from these races that need to become part of the conversation in lieu of or in replacement of the conventional wisdom, because the people that look at this and actually understand it will be able to take this information and use it next time to actually be successful, because they'll actually know what works and what doesn't work, or they'll know what doesn't work, know what works and what doesn't work, or they'll know what doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 27:56

And that's what we need to be doing, because learning how to do these things smartly in the primary is how we can do them successfully in the general obviously not just about Philly, but about voting strategies in general, and that's how we win elections and that's how we beat the Republicans. And we do it by being smart. And we do it by having a combination of good analytics not just getting the numbers, but knowing what they mean and what they don't mean and then using that with good messaging that will move votes in those areas where we can move them. That's what we need to do, because we are really, we have our work cut out for us in November and we've got to be smart and we've got to get past conventional wisdom because if you look at where it's gotten us, it's gotten us way too close for comfort and there's too much at stake. Thank you for taking the time to join me. This has been the Keystone Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, jesse White. Let's do it again next week as the deep dive continues. Have a great weekend, everybody.