Presidential Candidates Compete To Grab Scarce Digital Talent

Digital competency impacts politics as it has every other phase of life - and that includes the shortage of digital talent. JL

Tonya Riley reports in the Washington Post:

Unlike in primaries past, when campaigns relegated digital staffers to their own departments, candidates are now staffing digitally experienced operatives across operations, including fundraising and organizing. Part of the reason for the digital talent race is that technology needs are no longer just about social media know-how and email lists. Now, campaigns are using the most up-to-the-minute technology on everything from canvassing to even precision polling.
Democratic presidential candidates are not just fighting over whether to abolish private health insurance and how to tackle climate change. They’re also battling each other for staff, especially on the increasingly important turf of technology that can make or break campaigns. 
Unlike in primaries past, when campaigns relegated digital staffers to their own departments, candidates are now staffing digitally experienced operatives across operations, including fundraising and organizing.
Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke have all tapped operatives with digital or start-up experience for key nondigital roles. Now that the 2020 primary is fully underway, even the most long shot campaigns are bringing on a new wave of digital staffers across their teams.
The problem? There simply aren’t enough staffers to go around. 
“The demand for people who are digital-first thinking is through the roof,” says Betsy Hoover, co-founder of Higher Ground Labs, an incubator for liberal startups. But “even with staffs of hundreds of people over the last three presidential cycles, on the progressive side that doesn't go very far when you're talking about 24 campaigns.”
Tara McGowan, founder and CEO at Acronym, a digital start-up focused on advertising and organizing programs for progressive campaigns, has noticed a similar scramble for talent.
“I think that we have a huge gap in the left in terms of trainings and capacity for campaign staffers to really leverage the Internet to meet their goals,” says McGowan, who has seen some of her own staffers poached by 2020 candidates.
Part of the reason for the digital talent race is that technology needs are no longer just about social media know-how and email lists. Now, campaigns are using the most up-to-the-minute technology on everything from canvassing to even precision polling.
Take for instance the digital manpower behind the Bernie Sanders campaign, which has mobilized an email list, app, Slack group and even its own Twitch stream to get voters out and donating.
“Our hope is to broaden the audience to bring more people into the political process while reaching them where they are,” Sanders's digital communications director Joshua Miller-Lewis tells me. And that requires reaching potential voters on as many platforms as possible.
On the first night of the Democratic debate last week, the campaign launched a Twitch livestream and will soon go live with a stand-alone website exclusively for campaign livestreams. The campaign is hoping to give supporters a more interactive experience – and by teaming up with StreamLabs, a software to help streamers collect donations, more ways to donate.
For campaigns without as many resources, that’s where Higher Ground Labs comes in. Hoover and her co-founder, Shomik Dutta, were inspired by their own experience as Democratic campaign staffers who found themselves repeatedly facing the same problem: Their campaigns would build out technology, but it would be lost once the campaign ended. Staffers for the next cycle would have to start at the drawing board and the innovations were lost.
Higher Ground seeks to solve that problem by giving companies building political tech tools space and resources outside of the campaign cycle. It works much like a traditional incubator, but with a bent toward projects servicing progressives.
And for the over two-dozen campaigns who might not have the cash or know-how to build out proprietary technology, it’s become a potential equalizer. For example, one of its projects, Mobilize America, an events platform, helps campaigns quickly organize everything from viewing parties to phone banking and allows voters to find them all in one spot. At least 20 campaigns use the Higher Ground Labs-funded app, says Hoover.
Other Higher Ground projects like OpenField and OutVote allow canvassers to digitize their networks and employ messengers voters trust: their friends. It’s similar to what the Sanders’ “BERN app” does but with no in-house engineering required.
Of course, none of these tools can fully replace human staff. But they can make their work easier. 
“This allows those digital professionals to have the tools that are ready for prime time right away,” says Hoover, “And for them to focus on the things that they are uniquely suited to do -- reach voters with a particular message from their candidate, organize communities, communicate with their supporters. Things that a tool cannot do but people with a strong toolset can really take to the next level.”