When Josh Hicks tossed his hat in the ring for Congress, he couldn’t wait to wade into the body politic to press the flesh, if not kiss babies.
Likewise, when Al Cunningham announced his second bid for the state House of Representatives, he was looking forward to returning to the traditional hustings.
The best laid plans …
“We’re going to do everything that the medical experts and the health experts tell us to do for as long as they tell us to do it,” said Hicks, a Lexington Democrat who wants Republican Andy Barr’s Sixth District seat. “We won’t come back out and do the old face-to-face campaigning until they tell us it’s safe.”
The public health crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic has forced Hicks, Cunningham, and thousands of political candidates at all levels nationwide to abandon the usual retail politicking for social-distancing campaigns.
Door-knocking, rallies, huddling with voters in living rooms, fire house fish fries, and hot dog and hamburger fund-raisers are out. Online is in.
“Campaign officials and strategists are trying to carefully game out the new reality,” Carl Hulse wrote in The New York Times. “The crisis could prove to be a boost for incumbents who have a built-in advantage in providing services to constituents at a time when voters are on edge and in need. But it is also shining a potentially unflattering spotlight on Washington’s response to the pandemic, which could hurt lawmakers who were already facing an uphill climb to re-election.”
But absent fresh polling and other new information, it’s hard to say if incumbents or challengers have the edge in a social distancing campaign.
“There are multiple logical scenarios, but it’s too early to know,” Hulse quoted Nathan L. Gonzales, editor of the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Elections. “The response is just getting started and there won’t be enough race-specific data to make a sweeping conclusion for at least a few weeks.”
Meanwhile, the emergency’s effect on state and local campaigns is probably harder to determine.
“It’s unlike anything we’ve had to do before,” said Daniel Hurt, campaign manager for Cunningham, a Benton Democrat who wants to take on Sixth District state Rep. Chris Freeland (R-Benton).
Before he signed on with Cunningham, Hurt, 27, from Grand Rivers, managed eight House campaigns and a senate campaign for Democrats in his native western Kentucky. “There hasn’t been anything like this since the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918.”
“We see this more as an opportunity,” said Hicks, an attorney, former police officer and Marine veteran. “We’re very fortunate to have all of this technology available to us. It gives us an opportunity to develop these new ways to move our campaign events online to reach folks where they are – staying safe and healthy.”
Hicks narrowly missed unseating state Rep. Stan Lee (R-Lexington) in 2018. He faces fellow Lexingtonian Daniel Kemph in the June 23 Democratic primary.
Chuck Eddy and Geoffrey M. “Geoff” Young, both of Lexington, are taking on Barr in the GOP primary. Frank Harris, who also lives in Lexington, is running as a Libertarian.
Two years ago, Cunningham, a retired International Union of Painters and Allied Trades officer, lost in the Democratic primary to retired public school teacher Linda Story Edwards, also from Benton. They’re again vying to square off against Freeland.
“We can’t be doing door-to-door because it’s the pollination effect,” Hurt said. “If we have the virus and knock on doors, we could potentially give it to every person that we talk to, so we’re not going to do that.”
Hicks and his helpers aren’t either.
“I love to be in front of folks and I really appreciate the opportunity to be face-to-face with people,” Hicks said. “But I think this is an opportunity for us to blaze a new trail in campaigning. Frankly, it’s been very well received.”
Besides social media, his campaign includes video and teleconferencing.
“Social media is a part of it,” Hicks explained. “But it doesn’t really give us the interactions that we really need to have. You can do some interactivity over Facebook live. You can do Twitter videos, and you can do responses. You can do Instagram videos. But really what we’re finding is that teleconferencing software and videoconferencing software are two of our biggest tools right now.”
He said the software is making it possible for his campaign “to gather together small or large groups of folks so that we can have that interaction that we really should be having. It’s that kind of old-school one-on-one where I’ll answer your questions, and if you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. Let’s talk about why we don’t agree, and let’s find the things that we do agree on.”
But both the Hicks and Cunningham camps haven’t abandoned old-fashioned phone banking. “The method is tried-and-true; it’s classic and still works,” Hurt said. “The problem is that you’re going to get cell phones, and people aren’t going to answer because they don’t recognize the number, or you get disconnected numbers.”
Team Cunningham, too, is employing telephone conference calls so the staff can get together and plan strategy, which includes a hefty helping of social media outreach. “Now that everybody’s home, the statistics have shown that the usage and traffic on social media websites as well as other websites have gone up significantly,” Hurt said.
He said the campaign is also looking at social media advertising. “You could use it for any website you go on, like WPSD [Paducah’s NBC TV affiliate]. If you were to go on WPSD’s website and look at the weather, you might have an ad for Al Cunningham for state rep.”
The Sixth House District, which encompasses Marshall and Lyon counties and part of McCracken County, is well within the station’s coverage area.
Hurt said the campaign might also use Facebook for posting videos of Cunningham speaking, similar to how Gov. Andy Beshear is using Facebook for daily updates for Kentuckians on the pandemic. “We could potentially use Facebook live for Cunningham to discuss whatever he feels like talking about on a particular day and then allowing for time for questions from people who are watching.”
But Hurt cautioned that technology needed for social distancing campaigning is expensive and may be beyond the means of some cash-strapped candidates, especially challengers. “If you don’t have access to PAC money or haven’t had time to fund-raise, you have to pay out of pocket.
“You can’t have in-person fund raisers. The only way you can fund-raise now is online. But raising money that way is difficult because so many people are at home and not working. Can you afford to donate to a campaign if you need to buy groceries?”
Hicks said lessons learned from campaigning via social distancing can apply to running for office after the pandemic is gone. “This brings us back to our roots of campaigning, which was that old-school way, one-on-one contact, even if we are doing it with technology.”
He said that in a traditional campaign, the same technology could help candidates by enabling them to reach more voters more quickly. The Sixth Congressional District sprawls over 19 counties in central Kentucky. “They’re tough to get to all in one day and have any meaningful conversation. But by implementing this technology not just during this crisis but going forward, we can reach so many more people if not face-to-face in reality, then face-to-face virtually.”
Historically, face-to-face campaigning meant visiting “an old country store, or going to somebody’s church or being on somebody’s front porch,” Hicks said, adding that kind of retail politicking will make a comeback post-COVID-19, too.
Candidates can return to “shaking hands and saying hello and making those personal connections that are so important and somewhat lacking in politics today. But by carrying this technology with us, we can expand our outreach.”
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