The challenge: Pennsylvania Democrats were accused of using public money to pay legislative staffers huge bonuses in return for political work. The scandal had the potential to stain incumbents and put challengers for the state House in untenable positions. Our task was to neutralize this scandal as a campaign issue.
We conceived and executed the following steps:
- Developed the Pennsylvania Candidate Platform for Reform, or PennCPR. This simple, focused message listed 10 proposed reforms to various aspects of the legislature.
- Worked with candidates to integrate PennCPR with their overall campaign message.
- Planned and executed a media event on the Capitol steps with more than 15 House candidates.
- Built a website to serve as an online outpost where additional incumbents and challenger candidates of both parties could pledge to support the PennCPR reforms.
Results:
Our event swept the Harrisburg television media market and received coverage from all of Pennsylvania's newspaper capital bureaus and across the state blogosphere. We successfully prevented Republicans from creating false and misleading attacks that would have detracted from our candidates' messaging. Thanks in large part to immunization against the corruption issue, the Democratic caucus was able to expand their majority by two seats.
PennCPR press conference on Capitol steps
