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May 23, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
01:05:30
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Political Campaigns
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey folks, Doug Collins here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Glad to join us.
Got a special edition today.
This is going to be, if you ever wanted to get into a conversation with a candidate or someone who's been a candidate or who's been in a lot of political life and their consultant, somebody who they trust, somebody who's worked campaigns, and sort of what it's like to have a conversation or to eavesdrop in on a conversation, today is your day.
I am pleased to have, this is just going to be fun, Chip Lake, who I am also honored to say has been my general consultant on all my campaigns and couldn't think of not only a better working partner, but also a friend as well.
And we've went through a lot in We've been about 12 years, 14 years together.
A lot of different kind of campaigns, some very tough, some not so tough, some were just different.
So what I wanted to do in light of all these primaries, especially in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, we've had all these primaries all over the country.
Is really, let's just talk about campaigns.
We've had somebody on talk.
We've had John McLaughlin talk about polling.
We've had Phil Bakalakis from the Push Digital talk about digital size.
We've talked about vendors.
Now let's get into the heart of a campaign.
Let's start talking about what this means.
And then we're going to have some fun at the end because we're going to talk about Georgia.
We're going to talk about South Carolina.
I mean, which is, you know, coming up just on Tuesday.
So this is the day before we wanted you to get this out.
But Chip, welcome to the Doug Collins Podcast.
Doug, it's a pleasure to be here, man.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Well, this is pretty fun.
The first person, frankly, I ever...
Again, from a lot of things, Chip's introduced me to.
Podcasting was probably the first person Chip does and has done a sports podcast as well.
So, I mean, I learned in watching from him.
Now, we will say up front, you know, from...
Chip and I on football probably disagree.
Let's just say I was raised with George and Alabama.
He's a diehard Auburn, so we won't get into that right now.
Although I may have to get you to touch on the Saban-Jimbo stuff.
Are you kidding me?
We can't do this podcast without touching on Jimbo and Saban.
Oh my God!
I mean, that was just so cool.
But anyway, as you can tell, folks, just grab a can of Coke or whatever you want to do.
This is going to be fun today.
Let's start off, Chip.
One, sort of give a little bit of your background and how you got started in all this.
And the good part about it is, I'm going to say up front here to sort of keep us both out, neither one of us are in this cycle, really.
I mean, we know campaigns and we've helped some others, but for the most part, Chip and I Or experiencing something neither one of us experienced in a long, long time.
And that is the ability to just talk about these campaigns without being indirectly involved in them.
And I think, I know from my perspective, it's been a little refreshing.
I know talking to you, Chip, it has been for you as well.
But how'd you get into this?
That's a great question, Doug.
So, as you mentioned, I went to Auburn and I was, to age myself, I was in Auburn and The early to mid-90s, and long story short, I was a member of the College Republicans at Auburn,
and we had a state party chairman from an adjacent state, Georgia, come down to speak to us at one of our chapter meetings on, I think it was Tuesday night, because his daughter was a member of our College Republicans group.
And that person was Rusty Paul, who was the state chairman at the time for the Georgia Republican Party.
He since went on to become a state senator, and now he is mayor of Sandy Springs.
And I walked up to him after he gave a speech and I asked him if he had any internships available.
And he said, absolutely, call me next week and we'll get you set up.
And the reality is the rest is history.
I was a political science and public administration major down there and I really didn't know what I wanted to do for a living.
I'm 49 years old right now and I still feel like I'm in that position.
As you mentioned, this is my first cycle since I was a teenager where I haven't been directly involved in the campaign.
It's been a lot of fun to be able to watch this from the sidelines and watch things develop.
I have friends on On all sides of most campaigns, as I know you do as well.
And so it's been refreshing, especially as chaotic as this cycle has been so far.
Very much so, Chip.
One of the things that I learned from you a little bit, but also had known coming into this, because from my background, as people know, There's a certain time you have to use, and especially with politics, and I think it would be a good idea for Republicans, Democrats, anybody in between in campaigns, that in the, especially in the last weeks of the campaign, or even in the first weeks of the campaign, to remember the adage of Clint Eastwood, it ain't personal, it's just business.
And because the motion side, we're going to come back and talk about some other things, but let's get the last four or five days.
Isn't it tough?
Describe how tough it is in those last, say, couple of weeks to keep the emotion out of decisions that you need to make in those last 14 to 21 days coming into a cycle.
It's the toughest thing a campaign does.
These campaigns are tough.
They're grinding, as you know, as any candidate that's run for office knows.
When you get down to crunch time and you get down to the seven or eight day period, which is what we're in right now, you're tired, you're stressed, there's not enough hours in the day to accomplish what all you want to accomplish.
And so it's very tough to keep the emotions out.
For anybody that's been in this business for any length of time, they'll tell you it's one of the toughest things One of the toughest time periods there is.
Now, it's also the time in the campaign where you can really see the light at the end of the tunnel.
So you know you're going to find out on election day how you did.
I mean, running campaigns and elections, being candidates, being consultants, being on a campaign team is unique.
It's not like you can watch film on Tuesday, figure out what you did wrong, and go have another election the following Tuesday.
And then, you know, and have a 16-game season, right?
I mean, you know, depending on how long the election is, I mean, you know, they can be a year and a half, a year and nine months long.
I mean, you have one game day.
And so, you know, everything that you have done up until that point...
You know, is to make sure you maximize what you're doing on Election Day.
And so, you know, we call it the silly season because, you know, when you get within this time window that we're in right now, very little makes sense, right?
And that's why we call it kind of silly.
There's a lot of rumors out there.
Some of those rumors are true.
Some of them aren't, but you chase down every rabbit that runs into a hole.
And it's just the nature of the beast, right?
Because you could end up, you have to go into every election thinking that that election is going to be as close as the election we had Tuesday for US Senate in Pennsylvania, even though most of the elections aren't that close.
Let's go back.
I was sitting here as I was listening to you talk, and there's so many things, sort of those rabbits you can try.
I want to go back to one that happened to me this morning.
I was out.
We're four days out in the election.
Most people will be hearing this on Monday when this podcast drops.
But I was out at one of our local restaurants, there's a couple of candidates in, and there was discussion about a race here in Georgia, and it was a Senate race, but they were talking about others.
And they were talking about a candidate, and I'll leave the name out just for protection here, but they were talking about this candidate that they really like, but has no chance, just zero chance, never had the ability, the money, whatever, to make a difference in a race here in Georgia.
And the question came up, because this was a first-time candidate, one who had never really been on the ballot, but they were running for U.S. Senate.
Chip, have you noticed, like I have over the past, say, three or four election cycles, that the idea of going from zero in politics to NFL, you know, so to speak, with Senate campaigns, congressional campaigns, governor's campaigns, has that become more of a trend than it used to be?
And why do you think that is?
It's become a huge trend, and it's largely due to one word, and that word is outsider.
Being an outsider used to be a disadvantage when you ran for the first time.
It used to be an advantage in campaigns and elections to have experience as an elected official.
And that's much less so now, right?
I mean, you know, 15 years ago, you know, even 10-15 years ago, if you were a local elected official and you were running for higher office, you know, you had inherent advantages over an opponent who was running for the first time.
And those advantages are gone now in today's environment.
I mean, And, you know, a lot of that can be attributed to the success that Donald Trump had.
You know, he got into the race and had never run before and shocked the world and became president of the United States, you know.
David Perdue certainly is a different candidate today than he was eight years ago when he ran for Senate the first time.
But, you know, David Perdue became a member of the United States Senate, largely on a message of being an outsider.
He ran against Jack Kingston, who was a member of Congress.
I know your colleague.
And look, Jack Kingston ran a really good campaign.
David Perdue ran a good campaign.
David's message was better than Jack's.
And that really wasn't Jack's fault.
It was the fact that David was able to say, you know, I'm an outsider.
And his message was very simple, which was, you know, if you want a different result out of Washington, D.C., you have to send a different type of person to Washington, D.C. I remember hearing that over and over and over and over and over again.
And, you know, it resonated about eight to ten years ago is when that started.
And so, yeah, you know, the playing field is more level in that regard than it's been historically, at least.
Well, we're seeing that a great deal.
And the thing that gets me is it'll be interesting for me if you and I could probably take the crystal ball and look at some of these candidates.
Who are running in congressional races across the country, Senate races across the country, you know, that outsider.
Everybody's an outsider.
If everybody's an outsider, nobody's an insider.
Something's wrong at this point.
But how many of them who may have, if done a little differently in different races, would possibly have a good public service career, but yet We're good to go.
You taught me this, and campaigns are still about fundamentals.
The outside messages, everything else, but they're still on an inherent basis.
David Perdue may have been an outsider in his messaging, but he was a real insider when it came to understanding money, the team.
His cousin was a former governor of Georgia, so there's a lot there.
This leads really, and it's a perfect setup, Chip, where I want to go next for people out there, because I want people on this podcast, if you're out there wanting to run for office, from some of the lower offices up, especially the congressionals and others, there's a process to doing this.
Chip, when you look at a campaign, because I know how people, candidates do it, I want to go win.
I can win.
My mama wants me to win.
My cousin down the street says I can do it.
But when it comes to campaigns, you as a consultant, your general consultant hat on, how do you start laying that out for a candidate?
Because I'm concerned That you've got consultants now that are seeing it almost like some of these candidates, this is easy, I can make money, and I'm not really concerned about the result.
But if you're going to do it right...
Yeah, no question.
I mean, as I said, I'm not doing campaigns and elections this cycle, but in every campaign that I've always done, I would always sit down with a candidate before the campaign began and I would ask them this question.
Why are you running?
You know, and you can learn a lot by how they answer that question at the beginning of a campaign, right?
And that doesn't mean a candidate has to answer that question the right way.
I mean, it can be a difficult question to answer because it's a really basic question and their campaigns are ready for very difficult questions.
You know, why are you running is a difficult question, right?
Because you need to get to your message in a hurry.
And if you can't really explain to somebody why you're running in 30 to 45 seconds and kind of build upon it, then you need to refine that.
You need to learn how to do that.
With respect to your question on a lot of these people that are running campaigns for the first time that they really have no chance of winning, yeah, I mean, you can be an outsider in a campaign all you want to.
But as you said, I mean, back when David Perdue became United States Senator, you know, on seven, eight years ago, He hired a very seasoned political team that helped him navigate that process.
And as consultants, we try to maximize the strengths of our clients, and we try to minimize the weaknesses.
And the more resources you have, obviously, the more you can do that.
But you also have to have candidates, and you understand this from being a candidate yourself and from From, you know, playing the role that you're playing this cycle and getting to watch so many of these campaigns, you also have to have candidates that are willing and want to get better, right?
I mean, you know, most of the successful candidates that I've seen, whether I was working for them or against them, you know, whether we had a role in helping them get elected or Or whether they beat a candidate that I was running, the successful campaigns want to get better, right?
And they make good fundamental decisions, even though they're outsiders.
And so, yeah, I don't know if that kind of answers your question, but you can be an outsider, but you're going to have to put meat on the bone and give people a reason, a compelling reason, To vote for you, because just because you're an outsider isn't enough.
You've got to be able to put a campaign together, put a structure together.
You have to make good decisions on resource allocation.
And I know that sounds very simple, but you could have all the money in the world as a campaign.
If you're not making good decisions on how to allocate those resources, then you're really, in many respects, leaving money on the table.
Exactly.
Because actually you're wasting it.
And I think that's the key.
100%.
And one of the things that I've seen coming up and talking to some candidates, you know, again, you know, I advise several, you know, look, you know, I think you're a strong candidate.
I mean, if you wanted to run for something else, but why are you running for the office that you're running for?
And one of the worst excuses I hear from candidates is, well, I've been talking to some folks and they really don't like so-and-so.
And, and, you know, I got a lot of friends and family and it, Does it take away, again, you can't deny that, okay?
And I'm not making fun of it either.
It's a real emotion out there because we go back to emotions that, you know, that, well, I can just go out and shake enough hands and win.
You taught me a great lesson one time, and I want you to expound on that, is that, especially, say, in a race for Congress, or Congress or even a statewide race, You physically can't shake enough hands.
There's just no way that the candidates themselves.
And that's why the money, the digital now, the other parts of that operation are so important.
How do you explain that to a candidate to say, look, you know, and what you think about, you know, just putting some signs in the front yard.
I'll let you talk about yard signs too, Chip.
I know your love of those so well.
Yeah.
But sort of explain how you would, you know, for somebody who may be listening to this and saying, you know, I really think I should have won and I could have, you know, nobody likes the incumbent.
I love those big words.
Nobody likes the incumbent.
Yeah, right.
Okay, come on.
Explain how you break through that in trying to get a candidate to understand.
Yeah, look, first thing I'll say is being a candidate is hard.
I mean, it always has been.
It's a huge sacrifice, usually for the candidate, the candidate's family.
The candidate's downtime, which he or she's going to have none of every now and then, or none of while they're going through the campaign.
And so you're right.
When candidates are out in the community, they're always going to be told that things are a lot better than they really are, or they're going to be told things are a lot worse than they really are, right?
Good campaigns make decisions on good data.
If you've got good polling and you believe you have good polling, you need to make decisions on that.
You don't need to make decisions based upon what somebody told you at the local coffee shop or the local barber shop or the supermarket.
That's going to be tainted.
And as a candidate, that's tough because you need to have good listening skills, right?
But you need to be able to filter that with how you're going to make decisions on resource allocation.
With respect to how I've always handled it, I didn't need to do this with you because you understood it, but it's a math, it's really a math equation, right?
You'd be surprised how many people run for office and they don't do what we call voter turnout modeling, which is we model what we think an election is going to look like.
And what that means is we're simply trying to guess, as best we can, how many people are going to vote in that election.
And so if we think that there's going to be 200,000 people vote in an election, Then we need 100,001 votes to win if the number truly is 200,000.
And so, you know, we're constantly looking at data to come up with a voter turnout model.
And then I like to cut that in half and add 3%, right?
And so, you know, if we do that, here's how many votes we need to win.
And then I normally go, you know, go back and say, look, You know, I usually sit down with a candidate and say, look, let's look at your last two weeks on the schedule.
And let's figure out how many people we think that you have met in the last two weeks.
And it's usually less than they think, right?
And then you say, okay, say you met, you know, 40 people a day.
That's a lot of people a day to meet.
You know, it's like 40 new people a day.
And that candidate's probably meeting those people at...
You know, at party meetings, at Qantas meetings, at Rotary Club meetings, at sporting events.
They're talking to people that are in the community.
And so, you know, with that, you do math and say, okay, you know, let's figure that 90% of them are registered to vote in your district.
Let's say that, you know, 40% of them are going to vote in the Republican primary.
You know, let's say that If they meet you personally, you have a chance to get three out of every four votes that you meet, even though they might meet your opponent, too.
And sometimes those numbers are aggressive.
And all of a sudden, you're looking at cutting the list from 90% down to 40% and then cutting it again.
And by the time you get there, in most cases, unless you're running in...
In a seat that's really small where you really can go door to door and meet a lot of your constituents, the math doesn't work out.
And so, you know, you have to raise money and then you have to spend that money on direct voter contact so that you can try to get in front of a voter as many times as you can.
I mean, a good rule of thumb is, you know, you want to make sure you have a minimum of 10 contacts available You know, with a direct voter contact with a voter before they vote.
And there are variables that affect that.
I mean, if you're running against somebody that has an unlimited bank account, like you found yourself in last cycle and I found myself in against, you know, Kelly Loeffler, you know, that number is going to have to exponentially increase.
And so it's really a math equation.
And you don't have to be good at math in order to realize that, you know, money is still the mother's milk in politics.
It doesn't mean you have to spend the most amount of money, but, you know, you better have enough to ante at the table.
Well, and it goes to another area that I want to talk about here.
And you talk about voter contact in elections.
You've got to also, especially if it's a competitive election, you've got to have voter contact in the same sphere as the person you're running against.
Okay, so in essence, if the race is only about mail, for the most part, the guy or gal that you're running against is only doing mail, And you do no mail and only radio, then you're missing, you're cross-passing there where you're missing probably voters.
Same way with cable and broadcast, a different arena here.
When you talk about true voter contact, what do you mean, Chip?
I mean, for some, that's putting a sign in your front yard and saying, hey, I'm making a thousand contacts a day.
What is that when you talk about true voter contact?
What are we talking about?
Yeah, it's a great question.
So, you know, any type of voter contact is, measurable voter contact, is where you are spending either campaign dollars or campaign time Directly communicating with a targeted voter.
And, you know, that could be, you know, that could be phone banking, right?
Which doesn't cost money if you have volunteers to do it, but it is, it takes time.
And so, you know, if you have a list of 500 people, Let's say you're running in a city council seat.
You have a list of 500 people that you know are going to vote and need to be called.
You don't have to spend any money to call all of them, but you're going to have to spend a lot of time.
That would be considered a voter contact.
You mentioned digital.
Digital is a huge medium right now to communicate with the electorate because You have immediate results knowing who you've connected with, right?
I mean, any good digital vendor today is going to have market data That is per record, meaning per household.
I'm going to know if I have a good digital vendor that I'm spending money with, how many contacts, based upon my advertising or based upon my organic post to social media, how many of those voters interacted with that post?
That's a voter contact.
When you send a piece of direct mail to a voter, that's a voter contact.
When you run broadcast television, and I don't want to get too much into the weeds on that, but you're buying what you call a gross rating point.
And what you're spending on TV in the market that you're spending in depends on how much A gross rating point in that market is going for at that time.
And it fluctuates from month to month, from cycle to cycle, from week to week.
And so, you know, the old adage is if you can't put an ad on TV that gets the average viewer to see it seven and a half times, spend your money elsewhere.
In an ideal world, you wanted to see it ten times.
But the minimum you want to have that is seven and a half times.
And so, you know, you can get measurables from all of this.
And so, direct voter contact.
It's time and money.
It's digital.
It's mail.
It's a door-to-door contact.
It's radio.
It's television.
It's digital.
And when I say digital, You know, pre-roll.
I mean, we all go to websites and we click on videos and we have to watch that 15-second ad before we get a chance to get to the video.
And that's what we call pre-roll.
And, you know, it's used a lot in politics.
It's certainly when we get within this time frame and this time window that we're in now.
And, you know, the private consumer market uses it all the time.
And it's a very effective way I'll say this and then I'll be quiet.
If you're attacked in a certain medium and you want to respond to that attack, 100%.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to respond to a broadcast television attack with a robocall, for example, right?
Because you're not hitting the same audience.
That being said, you might not be able to afford, some campaigns might not be able to afford to respond in the same medium in which they're attacked.
In that case, you just have to do the best you can to say, okay, here are the resources that I have.
I don't have money right now to go on nine media markets across Georgia and spend $750,000 responding to my opponent.
So let's figure out the best way to do that, knowing that we can't afford the best way.
Those are difficult decisions to make, but it all goes back to what we talked about earlier.
Making good, sound decisions on data-driven decisions and resource allocation decisions.
The campaign that does that the best puts themselves in the best position to succeed.
They don't always have to be the campaign that spends the most money, even though many times that's the case.
Yeah.
Well, it also is doing this pre-planning before you get into the heart of the campaign.
It's as hard to just all of a sudden re-up and change directions when you've not thought about it before.
That leads me to two questions.
One, is broadcast still king?
Given all the different media out there, is it...
It's an easier buy.
You can do it in a little bit mixed.
Broadcast, especially for those of you who are listing all across the country, the Atlanta media market for political ads is one of the most expensive in the country.
It's just horrendous, the amount.
And that's because of several of the campaigns we've just recently had, some of which I was a part of, where the numbers just got jacked up and people were willing to pay for it.
Is it still king or not?
And then let's get into the infamous question.
Everybody wants a nice campaign.
The reality is contrast and attacks are what move numbers, correct?
Two questions there.
Number one, is broadcast still king?
The answer is unfortunately yes.
I wish I could sit here and say that it wasn't.
And I thought 10 years ago, with the emergence of all these digital platforms to be able to communicate with the electorate, You know, I really thought we were going to move away from that.
Well, that's not happened yet.
Broadcast is still king.
If you can afford to be up on broadcast TV and your opponent cannot, there is a 90 to 95% chance that you are going to defeat your opponent.
Those are the...
That's what the data says, right?
And so, you know, that doesn't mean you don't supplement broadcast TV with other items that complement your message.
But the answer to your question is yes, even though that's the most expensive.
The reason it's the most expensive is because it reaches the most people in the most effective way.
And then number two, yeah, look, I mean, if you were to sit down and do And do a focus group, per se, of likely voters, and you were to ask them their opinion on negative campaigning,
almost to a T, everybody in that focus group is going to tell you that they don't like negative campaigning and they wish that more campaigns would focus on the positive messages that they themselves have.
Then if you were to bring that focus group back, Let's say five days before an election and where they were constituents in a certain group or in a certain election,
they were constituents of a certain campaign that spent a lot of money on negative advertising and you were to specifically talk to that focus group about which candidate they're supporting and why, I can tell you what the focus group is going to say.
More people in that focus group are going to tell you why they're not supporting somebody than they're going to tell you why they are supporting somebody.
And so I always say there's always two rules when I was doing campaigns and elections that I would always follow.
Number one, the voters always make the rules.
It's not the consultants.
It's not the candidates.
It's the voters.
The voters always make the rules.
And then number two is If you're always running the last election, you're always going to be an election behind.
And, you know, we...
Expand on that a little bit, Chip.
Yeah, I mean, there's...
You know, look, every election's different.
Every electorate is different.
Even the same electorate changes over time.
And so, you know, we...
You know, we as consultants are always trying to make the best strategic, we're always trying to give our candidates the best strategic advice we can.
And look, you have to look at the past in order to put yourself in a position to give that best advice.
But if you're only looking in the past, then you're likely not, then you're likely going to be, you know, a cycle behind.
I'll give you a perfect example in this election cycle.
You know, David Perdue right now, according to polling, is really struggling in his race against Brian Kemp.
And I think one of the reasons that he's struggling is because he hasn't been able to capitalize on a message outside of a stop the steal type message.
And had this election been a month or two or three months after the last election we had, which in Georgia was January 5th, had that election been three or four months after that, that could have been enough and it could have been a winning message for David to succeed or maybe make this race a lot closer than what public polls look like now.
But we are now far enough away from what happened in January where it's a message that's, I think, going to get him to 35%, which is a considerable amount of votes against an incumbent governor.
But he's really struggled to put meat on the bone to have a message that resonates outside that.
And there are just a lot of people...
A lot of people that I've talked to that really believe the election was stolen from Donald Trump, and some of them are ready to move on, and some of them aren't.
But nobody was ready to move on right after the election.
And so you have to balance what happened in recent past and try to make good decisions with what the environment looks like today.
Given that, it hit me as you were talking about that.
I hadn't really thought about it in terms of time, except in the overall sense.
Do you think it would be different, Chip, if Georgia was like Virginia that held an off-year, off-presidential governor's race?
Virginia and New Jersey always hold that race right after a presidential, that next year, and it's always looked at as a bellwether for that.
In Georgia, if we'd have done that, it would have been a year out, less than eight months from...
Do you think the message would have been different, or do you think...
It possibly would still be the same.
You know, it's always hard to tell.
I mean, there's an old adage that time heals all wounds.
I don't know that I buy that old adage.
Time heals a lot of wounds, but it doesn't heal all wounds.
And so, yeah, look, what our state went through.
With as close as the presidential election was, and then with the two Senate runoffs that we had where we lost both of them, that was a lot for our state to go through.
I do think we're in a better position today than we were in, let's say, 2021. I guess from a macro level, my answer to that question would be, yeah, I think we're I think we will be in a better position in November of 2022 than we were in November of 2021. That isn't always the case, right?
Because, you know, there are so many variables that go into why people vote.
There are so many variables that go into the intensity of what the base has.
And, you know, one of the reasons that I think Republicans, in spite of having a, you know, A very nasty race for governor between David Perdue and Brian Kemp.
One of the reasons I've always thought, even from the day that David got in, that I've always thought that we could beat Stacey Abrams is because I think the environment in 2022 for Republicans, it could possibly be the best midterm environment that we've seen in our lifetimes.
I mean, this president and what the Democratic Party is doing nationally is nothing short of a complete and utter disaster.
I mean, I have Democratic friends that have no idea what issues they're going to run on in 2022. And, you know, that's not normally the case.
I mean, normally there are issues that can fire up your base and then there are swing issues.
I mean, you know, this party can't run on competency.
They can't run on the economy.
They can't run on national security.
They can't run on inflation.
They can't run on gas prices.
I mean, what are they going to run on?
I mean, you know, I suppose they feel like they have new life with the Supreme Court decision on Roe.
But, you know, if you are a Democratic voter, And that issue was a determining issue for you on how to vote.
Then you weren't voting for Republicans and Donald Trump before this decision came out.
And so, you know, I just I don't know that that's going to be an issue that can save them from an economy that's likely to get a lot worse between now and November.
I agree with you on that.
I want to stay in this train of thought before we jump back to the campaign dynamic itself, and that is, you know, a lot is being made about Stacey Abrams and her larger-than-life.
You know, I jokingly said that when she got back in this race for governor, that we'd never had in Georgia two people running for re-election at the same time, because she just never gave up, you know, what she didn't win in 18th.
But I also have captured at this a little bit.
Now, I think it's going to be a very tough race in November.
Georgia is just a little different for a lot of reasons than other states.
I'm still amazed, Chip, and I know you traveled, used to, with your former guy that you worked for, Lynn Westland, who was a great guy.
From a Republican standpoint, a forward thinker in redistricting and making the playing field good for Republicans.
As I travel right now, though, I sense that everybody thinks Georgia has just been this deep red state for so many years.
And the reality is this year is 20 years of the first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
There's only 10 years since the last two slots on the constitutional officer page were not Democrats.
And we've moved into this.
But I do think in some ways with Stacey Abrams, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, She's going to be close.
She's going to run a good campaign.
She's going to have every bit of money and every bit of resources.
But I just don't sense the same aura around Stacey Abrams this time as I do last time.
It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice.
It is.
Almost impossible to catch lightning in a bottle twice.
And I candidly was one of the few in the state, and I was wrong, but I was one of the few in the state that thought Stacey would run.
I didn't think she would run.
And one of the reasons I didn't think she would run is because what we just talked about.
We talked about in our campaign a lot, and we talk about In a lot of campaigns, as complicated as they are with as many moving parts as they have, everything that happens on a campaign can really fit in two buckets.
And that first bucket is, you know, activities that I have some control over and the second bucket is activities that I have no control over at all.
And that second bucket for Stacey Abrams this time is all bad, right?
I mean, she and Raphael Warnock both, they might not have come to grips with it yet because we really haven't gotten into the general election.
And I know our primaries are Tuesday, and then we'll transition into it.
But the unofficial real start of the general election is Labor Day.
And, you know, they're going to have to defend what their party is doing nationally, and I can't fathom how they're going to do that in this state.
I mean, you know, look, we are a purple state now.
Absolutely.
And in order for...
In order for us to defeat Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, we can't take anything for granted.
We've got to run really good, solid campaigns.
But the environment that Stacey Abrams has chosen to run in, that she chose to run in this environment, knowing what it might look like, is a little bit of a surprise to me.
And she doesn't, I don't think, have the national aura that she had when she ran four years ago.
And I also think, you know, part of it too is when Stacey ran four years ago, she was a state rep in Georgia, in the Georgia House of Representatives, who at that time had a record of I'm not a progressive Democrat, per se.
I mean, you served with her in the House, and her record in the House was not what it was as a candidate.
And her record today, with respect to what she's done over the last four years, is extremely progressive.
And I just think it's out of touch with where our state is now.
And it was out of touch with where our state was then.
And so I think she's going to have obstacles that she did not have four years ago.
And look, if Brian Kemp wins on Tuesday, and it certainly looks like he's on his way to doing that with what polling data looks like now, it's going to be very, very difficult to just blanketly You know, to blanketly try to put the governor in a box that most Democrats are going to try to put all Republicans in because,
you know, it's no secret that the former president, President Trump, has been very outspoken about his displeasure of the governor.
And I think it's just going to be hard to paint him with a broad brush That Democrats are going to inevitably try to paint all Republicans with this cycle.
It didn't work in Virginia, as you mentioned, the Virginia race.
I don't think it's going to work here either.
Well, and that's an interesting point of reference.
And without being specific, I think the one thing that I've noticed in this, and as someone who still keeps in touch with, has had touch with the former president and is very active, as you've seen all across the country in races, what I have found, though, is...
It's been interesting, and now we're getting ready to see it a little bit more, is that the endorsement is coveted, needed, and wanted, and powerful in the Republican primary still, but it also still has to match with candidates That relate to the audience that they're being endorsed in and also are willing to do the work around that endorsement.
And I think we've seen some of that, you know, we've seen it happen.
And then, you know, there's a possibility here in Georgia, we may see some campaigns come up short from some, some for not a lack of trying, it was just a timing issue, but for some, this seemed to depend only on the endorsement a little bit.
Yeah, I mean, Look, you said it.
I had a discussion with a reporter a couple weeks ago, and the reporter asked me, they said, does this mean that an endorsement from Donald Trump isn't what it used to be?
And I laughed, and I said, you know what?
I mean, is it not what it used to be?
I mean, he was president of the United States for four years, and so now he's a former president, so is it what it used to be?
Well, I mean, I don't know that that's really a fair question, given the fact that I don't know that any president's support after their president is as strong as when they're a sitting president, right?
I mean, it's just so, you know, from that perspective.
But yeah, look, you know, you and I had this conversation a year ago.
And, you know, what we didn't know then and what we know now is we were having a discussion, and I remember it, on, you know, What is Donald Trump going to do in 2022 with respect to his political capital?
Is he only going to pick five or six, seven races around the country and really focus on those races?
Or is he going to cast a wide net and get into a lot?
It looks like a ladder, right?
And he's cast a wide net.
Now, the danger in casting a wide net is, you know, you're going to win some and you're going to lose some.
You know, that's just the nature of the beast.
That's politics.
You know, that being said, if you're a Republican running, you still want Donald Trump's support.
But like you said, I do think there are going to be a lot of candidates in Georgia that have his support that falls short.
And if for no other reason, you know, there are a few statewide candidates that he's supported that I think are going to fall short.
And they're going to fall short because voters don't know who they are, right?
It's very expensive to get known in this state because we have over 11 million people.
In order to be known, in order for folks to go to the polls and know that you're supported by Donald Trump, they first have to have almost universal name ID over who you are before they can be able to connect the fact that you're supported by Donald Trump.
I think that's That's kind of what you alluded to in the question.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, you got to have the name ID and it's just hard.
It's not because you don't try.
It's just because, I mean, you got to have time, effort and money to do that.
The shorter time, the more money.
And I think that's a gap that is across the country you can look at, which brings me back.
All the way around where we've been talking about, and that is campaigns.
And that is the actual dynamics of a campaign, that internal...
I always go back and tell people if they ever wanted to see it, just update the clothing and update the talk a little bit.
And the old movie, The Candidate, with Robert Redford, is probably one of the better looks at how a campaign starts, its genesis, and how it iterates through with media, with messaging, with all the stuff that goes on.
But I make this comment, and you'll laugh about this, because I have said it, I said it yesterday on an interview, I've done it several times, for candidates who come to me for advice, I say hire a good team, trust them, or fire them.
But how many times, Chip, have you seen the issues where a candidate or the family of a candidate Is it odds with the team and it just makes life miserable in that regard?
Most of the time, right?
I would say the alternative is the outlier, right?
I mean, and that's because, look, you know, when I go into...
I mean, you and I have worked together.
I consider you a friend.
You know, we didn't have that dynamic, you know, in the last...
It doesn't mean we didn't have disagreements within the team.
Of course we did.
You know, that's natural, right?
But it can't get to the point where it's counterproductive and destructive.
And look, campaigns, as we've said before, and I've said before, they're very, very hard on families, right?
And I don't have all the answers.
I've never been a part of a team where I've professed to know the answers.
And so, as you said, You know, I like working with good teams with diverse skill sets and diverse mindsets.
And, you know, there are some things I feel very, very strongly about as a consultant, you know, back when I was doing it.
And there are some things that I feel less strongly about that maybe another member of the team feels strongly about.
And so, you know, yeah, look, I always tell candidates, you know, my job is to get you elected.
It's not to make you friends.
It's not to make certain that if this race ends, you won't have some people in this district that might not like what you did.
But my job is to get you elected.
And if you get elected, then you're going to be happy with the campaign.
Now, you might regret running four years later.
What you signed up for might not meet your expectations.
Yeah, look, you and I, when you ran for U.S. Senate against Kelly Loeffler, we didn't have the discussion of, can we win this race?
Against $60 million.
And we had the discussion, can we win this race against $20 million, which is an obscene amount of money.
$20 million is an obscene amount of money because that was the number at the time, Doug, that was being floated around by By Kelly and her team.
And we made the decision that after lots of discussions that we could get outspend $20 million to $5 million, $20 million to $6 million and win.
But we didn't know that when you included the money that was spent by the campaign and the outside groups that she no doubt funded, that it ended up to be $60 million.
And so one of the reasons we went into Election Day within the margin of error In polling.
And one of the reasons that we went into election day with the chance at winning, even though we came up short, was, you know, is because of that dynamic.
I mean, you know, you and I, we didn't always agree.
I mean, there were times you'd call and, you know...
You weren't happy.
There were times I'd call it I wasn't happy, but we trusted each other and we knew that each other was all in.
It put us in a position to have a chance at winning late, even though when you look at the money that we spent and the money that she spent, We probably should have been maybe more like what the polling looks like right now for Kemp and Purdue.
And we were just never there.
Now we ended up losing by five points, and that was disappointing.
And we both wished for a different result.
But I think one of the reasons that we were in that campaign up until the end was And was because of, you know, the team that we had and really kind of the tone that you said, too, and the tone that was also down.
We were all rowing in the same direction, even though, you know, like I said, that doesn't mean we're all going to agree.
We had heated conversations about strategic direction, and that's normal, and you want to have that.
But it doesn't need to get to the point where it's destructive and it didn't get close to that.
Well, and I think, and for me, and this is for candidates out there, I want you to listen to it.
I mean, it's not, you know, there are a lot of you going to have bad experiences with campaigns, consultants, and everything else.
But I want to just say, for me, it was very easy.
And Lisa and I both had this understanding that, you know, if we hired people, we're going to trust them or we're going to fire them.
There's just no sense in worrying about it.
And I'm going to give an example, Chip, and you may have forgotten this one, but it's an example that I want, if they're listening, I want them to understand.
In my very first real campaign, that was the one for Congress in 2012, we were in a tight race against a very worthy opponent, very well-known, much more well-known than I. And in that environment, had the names come in, had everything.
We were sort of an uphill battle.
And we won in a runoff.
And I'll never forget, there was a certain...
You're talking about negative pieces.
We had a male piece that...
It was hard.
It was, and I'll just put it that way, it was a hard mail piece.
And I remember looking at it and saying, oh, and I had that, and you always said that good mail pieces, if they're negative, they got to make you go, wow.
Well, this one, I went wow and sat down.
It was just a piece of social, just a piece.
It was that.
And I remember calling you and we had had developed a good enough relationship.
I said, look, I said, Chip, I'm concerned about this.
And the very first one, if you remember, we both had some concerns about it.
It was a little bit too strong.
We nailed it back.
And I looked at Lisa and I said, yes, people are going to be mad that we send this out.
But what would happen if we didn't send it out and we lose?
You know, I don't mind sending it out and losing.
And I remember you and I having that conversation, and I trusted you enough to say, I trust Chip to do this.
And I think that's the relationship of consultants.
Unfortunately, we're seeing a model today, Chip.
And I'm not wanting to throw us dispersions on any campaigns or anything else, our consultant shops.
But consultant shops are becoming bigger.
The GCs are becoming more hands-off.
And that is a concern to me that what we went back to a little bit earlier in this podcast, when you have people who've not run campaigns, who are just saying, hey, you're a great guy.
You run for Senate.
You run for Congress.
You run for governor.
They're getting consultants that have come in.
And I've already heard this.
Well, you know, for eight grand a month, 10 grand a month, I'll run your campaign.
Oh, we can do it.
We'll do this.
We'll do that.
We'll do that.
Well, they get their money and the campaign goes nowhere.
Is that concerning to you that there's all of a sudden, not just that anybody can be a candidate, but that anybody can, quote, hang a general consultant tag out there?
Yeah, look, you don't need to be licensed to be able to do this.
It's not like we're putting siding on a house or we're putting shingles on a roof.
You don't have to be licensed or bonded.
Anybody can call themselves a consultant if they can get clients.
You can be very good at sales and you can make a strong pitch to a candidate, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be a good consultant.
Look, There are a lot of consultants out there who are very good business people, and they're much better business people than me.
As you've said, I mean, I was never a volume guy, and it was just never my deal, right?
I always liked to do a few races and probably limited, certainly limited my income potential as opposed to being a bigger shop where I did a lot more volume.
You know, I was taught from the very beginning that winning and losing don't equate and they don't.
You know, and so, you know, I always, you know, I love to get in.
I love the strategy, right?
I never became a pollster or a media vendor or a digital vendor or a direct mail vendor.
And it's not because I didn't think about it.
And it's not because I didn't want it.
That's because, number one, I... I knew a lot of people who were a lot better than I was in those regards that I had worked with.
And number two, I really enjoyed the strategy.
And I remember that conversation you and I were talking about.
And I've had it with a lot of people.
And I think the conversation you and I had was this.
We might win, we might lose.
But what we don't want to do is wake up The day after the election, find out we were a point and a half short and have regrets about, I wish we would have done this.
I wish we would have done this.
I wish we would have done this.
And so any consultant that's ever been in this business is going to win some and lose some.
I don't know of a consultant in the world who's won all the races.
It's not possible, right?
No matter what they say.
If you lose those races, you want to be able to wake up the morning after the election and say, we left it all on the table.
And I think we went into election day.
We won that race, but we went into election day knowing that we had left it all on the table.
And to your point that you made at the beginning, We're both likely going to our mailboxes now, and I have for the last three weeks, and I'm getting out a lot of political mail.
A lot of political mail.
And, you know, I don't want to say that all the mail is the same because it's not.
I mean, there's some good pieces, but, you know, the pieces that stand out are the negative pieces because most of the pieces in my mailbox right now are positive pieces.
And it's people talking about their family and talking about the American flag and talking about how they're pro-life and how they're pro-gun and how they're MAGA and how they like Trump and how they're conservative.
And those are all good things.
But if you have, you know, I bet over the last four or five days, I've probably gotten 16, 18 mailers.
You know, 12, 14 of them are positive and they all say the same thing.
The ones that stand out are going to be the ones that have contrasts and are considered, you know, quote unquote negative.
And those are the ones that are, you know, that people are going to look at a little bit more before they throw them in the trash.
And I know I'm getting those pieces because I'm a likely primary voter.
I know you're getting them because you're a likely primary voter, but it is.
I mean, just anecdotally, it's a good lesson in what sticks out.
That doesn't mean that I'm against positive mail.
You absolutely need to define yourself and do that.
But you just also have to make your stuff pop if everybody else is doing the same thing.
It is.
And right now, if you're still trying to define yourself to the voter in the state of Georgia and you're four days away from the election, you're probably in trouble.
If that goes...
Well, look, Jim, there's one of the things we're getting to the close here, and I want to...
One of the things, we're going to come back on it, and this is...
I want for you to get in, because you've been with a lot of campaigns, and I've been around a lot now, especially in Congress.
And there's some funny stories.
What I want to do is come back in a couple months and you and I are just going to tell some stories.
We'll leave it.
We may change the names to protect the innocent, but we'll have some funny stories.
But I'm going to leave the folks with one that has stuck with me forever.
It's a funny story.
Shows you how much folks, podcast listeners, how much I love this man, Chip Lake, and his family to me.
And...
There's never a campaign that if I ever go into, I would ever think about not being with Chip.
But it was one time in our 12th campaign.
We had just got into the runoff.
You know where I'm going with this.
We have a debate on a radio station, which by the way, this little radio station is not very far from where I have an office now.
And we went in that morning.
It was myself and it was Martha Zahler.
She was the other opponent.
And Chip was listening over the internet.
And, okay, as a candidate, okay, you like to be buffed up a little bit.
You know, hey, you do.
And so I did the debate.
It was a tough debate.
Martha was a good campaigner.
I'll never take that from her.
But we had already got her several times.
Got in this race.
I was tired.
It was like three days after.
We'd just end to the runoff.
And I come back and I sit down in the car and I look at my phone and I'm saying, you know, okay, wow, at least we made it through that.
I think it was good.
And I look down and there's a text from you and it says, pathetic.
If that's the way it's going to be, we'll just do paid advertising the rest of the time.
And I say that to laugh now, but I remember at that time saying, Really?
But what it did was, and this is why I say it because it's funny, but it's powerful.
At that point, I knew Chip Lake cared about what his job was, winning.
He cared about Doug Collins, even when Doug Collins couldn't see it.
And that shook me.
And Chip, as you well know, we torched the next couple of debates.
I mean, with an audio recording and everything else.
I was all in, because at that point, you got my attention.
But that's what it takes for a consultant sometimes.
Would it mean anything if I told you that I meant to send that text to somebody else?
Yeah, no.
It was exactly where it was needed to be.
Because you and I talked like three minutes later.
No, folks, Chip Blake, one of the better ones out there.
He's been all around campaigns all across the country, especially here in Georgia.
Georgia's tomorrow.
You go out and vote.
You've heard it from me before.
If you're listening in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, anywhere else there's a primary, and then only the general...
If you don't vote, then shut up.
I don't want to hear from you.
You've got to get out and vote.
This is what it's all about.
Find you a candidate, make your candidate pick, and go.
Georgia's going to be tough in some ways for some folks who are going to have these kind of conversations that Chip and I have just had.
I will say this, Chip, you brought up a point about the Senate race.
I am proud of Of what we accomplished, even though we did lose, and I know everybody says that, but you put the dynamics of that Senate race in a jungle primary, getting outspent 10 to 15 to 1, depending on how you look at it, and coming within what would be considered margin of error in a polling, I'm very happy with where we were.
I'd love to have won, sure.
I think that it was a mistake.
I think it's caused a lot of problems we're seeing in Georgia today.
But we did what we had to do.
And that's why it comes, folks.
If you're a candidate out there and you're wanting to run maybe next time in cycles, you've got to find people who can help you and are honest with you.
So, folks, Chip Blake, great friend.
We're glad to have you on.
He's going to come back on, though.
We're going to do the funny campaign stories because you will not believe some of the stuff out there.
And it just makes for a great time.
Chip, thanks for being a part of the podcast today.
Thanks, boss.
Appreciate it.
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