Ohio Democrats Digital Director
I’ve created this “cover webpage” for you, because a typical cover letter just wasn’t going to cut it. Besides, the medium is certainly at least part of the message.
I’ll be sharing content that resides on a few different websites of mine, this just happens to be the newest one. Welcome to “Digital Dot Democrat,” a new framework for political digital infrastructure that’s actually based on a model I previously developed specifically for state parties.
But before we get into all that let’s back up a bit, to late 2017, when Ben Self (former co-founder of Blue State Digital and former DNC CTO) became Chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party. I had been working at a Louisville ad agency since mid-2016, but I definitely began to regret that choice as the 2016 election unfolded. Earlier in 2016, I ran a case study worthy digital operation for an extremely competitive primary campaign (outspent 4:1 by the second-place candidate, and we won by 116 votes). I had a lot of thoughts about how campaigns could generally improve their digital strategy, and I knew that my talents would be better spent electing Democrats than helping an old-school ad agency convince their boring old-school clients to spend money on digital advertising. When I reached out to Ben, he suggested that I might apply to be the party’s digital director. The gears started to turn, and I developed detailed plans for 3 innovative initiatives in addition to the party’s general digital comms & fundraising.
The first was a two-phase infrastructure program focused on the things that state & local campaigns seemed to need the most help with— digital advertising and websites. The ads program would come first— an in-house demand-side digital ad buying platform and a data management platform that any Democratic campaign in the state could use to run their ad campaigns, including multi-channel display, search, video, etc. This would have been groundbreaking, as it was set to launch a full year before even the DNC eventually adopted in-house ad buying. The next phase, for 2019 and beyond, was a platform to easily deploy quality campaign (or even county party) websites— built, hosted, and managed by the party. Of course, these are resources that would be paid for (similar to Votebuilder access), so the party gets to collect funds that campaigns would have been spending anyway (often wastefully, I might add). Essentially, this would be like the party running an in-house limited service digital agency.
The second initiative was to develop multi-format digital strategy training resources to be made available to anyone involved with Democratic campaigns or county parties, including candidates, consultants, organizers, volunteers, and students. The content would include published guides and videos on numerous topics, webinars, and in-person workshops.
Lastly, I planned to cultivate a network of people across the state who could be useful to campaigns, beyond the same old crop of political consultants campaigns had previously been limited to. This cohort would include different creatives, content creators, marketing strategists, copywriters, designers, developers, etc.
Part of this effort was the creation of an in-depth paid internship program, recruiting students from certain fields of study to fill specific roles on my internal digital team. I planned all kinds of exciting projects for each subset of interns— content/media, comms, strategy/ads/analytics, and design/web development.
In addition to interns for the party, we’d also recruit individuals who already work in marketing/ advertising/ tech fields, and facilitate their participation in campaigns as volunteers or freelancers. Around that same time, some other folks ended up having basically the same idea, and they went on to create the amazing startup Tech For Campaigns. So, it’s absolutely a worthwhile concept that makes a lot of sense for state parties.
Ultimately, the chair & executive director at the Kentucky Democratic Party really liked my proposals, so they hired me to get to work on all of it.
That’s just a general overview of what I set out to accomplish with the state party in KY. For more about everything I was working on, click here to view a Trello board with a more detailed list. Make sure to click on the cards with the paragraph icon or the checklist icon, as there’s more content to read in the card’s description.
I’ve heard that when applying for a job, you’re not supposed to say anything critical or negative about a former employer. I generally understand the rationale, but in this case, that’s just not going to work— it really wouldn’t do anyone any good. In fact, I think my ability and willingness to be open and honest about what happened at the KY state party is a big reason (in addition to my skills and expertise) that you should hire me. What I’ve learned from the mistakes made in Kentucky can help the Ohio Democrats build a more effective digital operation and avoid future pitfalls.
This is a longer story, which I’d be happy to discuss in more detail later, but here’s the short version— It turned out that the executive director never actually wanted to make digital strategy or technology a priority. In fact, she literally told me that “all of this stuff just isn’t that important,” when she fired me. A salient data point to consider is the budget she allocated for everything under my purview, which was exactly $0.00. Nothing for an advertising budget, nothing for media production, nothing for computer hardware, nothing for software, and nothing for my internship program. I literally couldn’t even get them to purchase post-it notes or other office supplies for me (no joke). However, despite the stonewalling, I did everything I could to continue doing my job. I even began conducting my own fundraising campaign ($160k) in order to move forward with all of the digital operations. But even though I was specifically pitching my innovative digital programs to donors, the executive director wouldn’t even commit to earmarking the funds I personally raised for the digital operating budget. As her passive-aggressive resistance to everything I was doing became increasingly problematic, she chose to fire me instead of doing what was necessary to make things work. As for Ben, he was mostly absent in his role as party chair. Despite the fact that he was the reason I took the job in the first place, I never once even had one-on-one time with him. Given his background, I expected him to be very hands-on with the digital program, but he wasn’t involved at all.
I think that the way my entire portfolio was intentionally subverted, and ultimately the decision to push me out, were terrible mistakes of behalf of the party’s leadership. If I had been allowed and empowered to do the job I was hired to do, Kentucky would have pioneered some of the most cutting-edge digital tools and strategies ever created for a state party. Instead, things at the state party completely fell apart without me. The party’s digital creative, strategy, and infrastructure ended up being profoundly inept and quite simply embarrassing. The consequences of their failed digital operation (among other factors, of course), became evident with the election results in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
It’s regrettable to have to say such things about this organization that I was so committed to and worked so tirelessly for. But I wholeheartedly believe in the work I was doing there, and I know that it can still make a huge impact at other state parties. There have been important lessons learned from Kentucky’s unfortunate missteps, and I think that the Ohio Democratic Party could be well served by my experience and perspective.
With all of that out of the way, let’s talk about what I can do for the Ohio Democrats.
While I have a comprehensive state party digital framework ready to go, with detailed plans and procedures, I’m not necessarily suggesting that Ohio needs to use everything that I was building in Kentucky. I was starting with a completely blank slate in Kentucky— there was no digital infrastructure whatsoever when I started there, not even a website. In Ohio, I’d want to begin with a thorough audit/ analysis, have in-depth conversations with stakeholders, and then build from the assets and infrastructure the organization already has in place.
Aside from the fact that this isn’t my first rodeo, I’d be very surprised if you were able to find another individual with a more well-equipped toolbox (pardon the mixing of metaphors). Design, branding, creative direction, full-stack web development, advanced email marketing, all things digital advertising, copywriting, photography & video production, and more; not to mention experience in political organizing, communications, and finance. I can basically do it all.
We need to start raising more money ASAP. Can you help with that?
Absolutely, we’ll want to make sure to get email campaigns running at full steam right away. So, let’s start there. Here’s a page with some of my old email design & copy samples.
I could go on and on about different email tactics, or my optimized HTML email markup, or deliverability best practices. But we can get into the weeds about all of that some other time.
However, I will mention email automation, which is a super important aspect of email strategy that most political campaigns and organizations just don’t seem to pay enough attention to. Thoughtful and purposeful automation (like auto-responders and drip campaigns) can be hugely impactful. Here’s a handful of auto-response email mockups (light & dark mode). For more details, check out the email section on this page about the Digital Dot Democrat framework.
Wait, why is that page on the Kentucky Democrats website?
That’s actually a prototype state party website, which I began building during my time at the KY state party. It’s got some pretty cool features, which you can read all about on this page. I think Ohio’s website is probably due to be revamped & replaced, but that’s a whole other conversation.
NOTE: I haven’t been updating or maintaining this website in some time, so there are things that might not look right or function as intended. The Digital Dot Democrat framework is like version 3.0 of this old beta site.
Speaking of websites, what exactly is Digital Dot Democrat?
Great question, thanks for asking. Basically, it’s a new approach to political websites that consolidates everything campaigns need as native functionality, as opposed to using 3rd party platforms where users have to navigate away to some other website. For a more in-depth look, read through this post. Like I mentioned, this concept is based on what I was initially building at the state party. The special features include native forms and payment processing, custom maps, an events organizing platform with ticket sales, user accounts, e-commerce, and more. This is remarkable because it’s all built into the website— one dashboard, one database. I know the post is long, but, well… there are pictures? But really, websites for political campaigns have never had such sophisticated functionality, and I believe this new approach will make a big impact on the way campaigns operate.
And you’re a designer too?
Sure, I’m a pretty okay designer. It’s maybe not my primary skill, but I get by for the purposes of digital content and web design. Here’s a page of design samples, such as digital ads, illustration, animation, and branding.
I know, that was a lot to go through. You’re a rockstar if you even read half of it.
I’ll wrap it up by saying that at my core, I’m a strategist and a creative problem solver. I’ve also become really good at a lot of different specialized creative and tech stuff, because that stuff was helpful to get me from a problem to a solution. The page about the state party website reveals a bit about my strategic process and obsession with making things work better to improve the user experience. The page about my new digital strategy framework shows that I’m uniquely capable of seeing the big picture, identifying challenges and opportunities, crafting elegant solutions, and then actually building something new and making it work. And of course, the email and design pages show that I have the creative & copywriting chops to support the day-to-day digital needs of comms, finance, and every other part of the organization.
I’ve always considered the digital director role to be the ideal role for me, because it actually gives me the opportunity to put my wide range of skills to use. Most jobs are too narrowly focused, such as the specialized roles that agencies look to fill. I like a challenge, and I don’t want to be stuck in a job where my abilities exceed the scope of the role.
I almost forgot, you’d probably like to see a resume, yes? Well, here it is. It’s a bit outdated, as I haven’t added anything since the KY state party. I figured it would be a more valuable use of time to create this page to show what I’ve been up to, rather than attempting to cram it on that page. I’ve already had to cut quite a bit relevant information— for example, my earlier political organizing experience and leadership roles in the College Democrats. I spent a couple months in Lakewood OH as an Obama field coordinator in 2012. I was a team leader with City Year (an AmeriCorps organization) for a year working with kids on the West Side of Chicago. I could also add a few skills in the development category, like Python/ Django, React, and Vue.js. Those things may not even mean much to you anyway, so whether or not I made those updates is probably not important.
I hope this has all been interesting and useful, despite the length. Surely I’ve given you a lot to think about, and hopefully what I have to offer broadens your perspective about what’s possible. I look forward to discussing it further with you.