This episode delves into the intricate dynamics of modern political campaigns, featuring the astute insights of Eva Posner, a renowned strategist with nearly a decade of experience in the realm of progressive politics. Posner eloquently articulates the necessity for reform within the political industrial complex, arguing that the current landscape is predominantly shaped by consultants who wield disproportionate influence over electoral outcomes, often prioritizing financial gain over genuine democratic representation. She passionately advocates for increased community involvement in local politics, emphasizing that grassroots efforts can significantly empower citizens and mitigate the adverse effects of political apathy. Through her engaging anecdotes and candid observations, Posner illuminates the often-overlooked realities of campaign life, urging listeners to recognize the profound impact they can have by simply participating in the democratic process. As we navigate the complexities of contemporary governance, her call to action resonates: it is imperative to reclaim our agency and ensure our voices are heard in the corridors of power.

Takeaways:

1. Eva Posner emphasizes the significance of local campaigns, asserting that they often hold more power over daily life than national politics, urging active community engagement.
2. The political industrial complex is critiqued for its opaque operations, where consultants wield considerable influence over democracy, often prioritizing profit over public good.
3. Posner advocates for reforming the relationship between consultants and politics, suggesting the implementation of ethics standards to ensure accountability and transparency.
4. The episode highlights the personal toll of political campaigns, with Posner sharing her commitment to supporting candidates who genuinely seek to serve their communities rather than pursue personal ambition.
5. Listening to constituents is paramount; campaigns should focus on grassroots engagement rather than traditional top-down strategies, fostering true representation.
6. Posner's candid reflection on her journey underscores the importance of understanding the complexities of political engagement, urging aspiring candidates to prepare for the inherent challenges of public service.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. evincostrategies.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Evinco Strategies
2. Democratic
3. Nevada
4. San Diego
5. Balboa Park

Foreign.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Perfect Union Pending, where we explore the things that help move our democracy forward.

Today's guest is Ava Posner, a sought after podcast guest known for her insightful, direct and often humorous takes on Democratic politics, campaigns and ideology.

She fearlessly pulls back the curtain on the political industrial complex, offering a candid perspective on its implication for the future of democracy.

Her firm is committed to transforming the political landscape by supporting progressive causes and candidates.

Beyond her work with a Vinco, Eva offers free presentations and trainings to political operatives nationwide, sharing her expertise across the.

She champions local politics at a national scale, having successfully supported staff, candidates and organizations across 17 states.

Eva, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, goodness.

Gotta love technology.

It's never a dull moment.

So I'm grateful that we're able to get our tech stuff fixed and we're here.

What, what drew you to politics?

I mean, I think I've always been a pretty political person.

My dad and I used to debate politics around the dinner table, so it was a, it, it's always been something that was kind of natural in my, in my personality.

I got my degree in political journalism.

I've just, I've always been very obsessed with it.

I'm kind of a history nerd.

Politics is history in real time, so I really enjoy that aspect of it too.

Yeah.

But, you know, for me, I was, I was working in journalism and then I got pregnant with my son.

And around the same time as both the, the Trayvon Martin Martin shooting happened and then Sandy Hook happened not too far after that.

And there were just these two, like, really stark moments of what kind of, you know, what kind of world am I bringing this child into and making a decision to try to be instead of just exposing problems, which I appreciate journalism for that.

You know, it really is an important part of society.

But I realized that as a journalist, by the time I got the information, there was some, you know, six, 12, 18 rooms that it's gone through before it gets to me.

And I wanted to be in those rooms where the decisions were made so that, you know, I could try to prevent the tragedies that were ripping apart these families.

And, you know, in my mind at that time as a brand new mom, were also an existential threat to my child.

Sure, yeah, I can understand that.

I mean, I think it's one of the reasons why I became an attorney was to have the knowledge that I could do to make change, to help change.

And I think that that's important that we have people that are looking to make change in the room where change is made.

Right.

Like we can't solve every problem, but we can solve some problem.

And sometimes that means that we have to have people that are available to help make those choices.

So how these last few.

It seems like a day is a week and a week is a month, and a month is a year, and a year seems like a decade these days with everything that's happening between Iran and Donald Trump being Donald Trump.

What are you doing these days to keep sane?

Oh, what a question.

I think I, I, my sense of time got warped before that because I started living my life in two year cycles instead of one year at a time.

2018 was a two year long situation, you know, that kind of thing.

And then covet happened and quarantine.

I was in California, so we were quarantined for a really long time.

And then, you know, the world has just stayed on fire ever since.

So it's been a whirlwind for a long time.

And it, the whirlwind only seems to be getting faster and more dizzying.

So for me there's a lot of, I filter my news intake quite a bit.

I try to make sure that I'm not constantly online.

I'm not constantly, you know, doom scrolling or falling into just getting bombarding myself with tragedy at all times.

I have, you know, a, I have a couple of newsletters that make their way to my inbox for, you know, one for the town that I live in, one for the town that I used to live in and then, you know, some political headlines here and there.

I have Google alerts on my clients and then beyond that I just trust that if something is big enough it will make it through to me.

During the week on Sunday mornings I read the paper, newspaper like an old person and I go through the A section and the nation of World section and I get my like 10,000 foot views of the world from there.

But otherwise I really do try to just not live in it all the time because I'm making decisions in it a lot.

And there's a fine line between being informed and being so so inside it and so worked up that you can't see straight.

And I made that mistake during the first Trump administration, and it almost got me arrested by border patrol a couple times.

So, you know, I this time have taken a much leaner approach to my information intake and that.

That helps keep me saying that.

And I. I go outside a lot.

A lot of walking the dog, touch grass, see the sky, hear the birds.

Nice.

Sure.

Kind of thing like the world.

The world is still here.

We still got time to save it, you know.

Yeah, the world is still here, thankfully, much to, I guess, Donald Trump chagrin, which I live for those moments.

What about Democratic politics?

Why did you decide to transition?

Because we talked earlier about that.

You started out wanting to do policy work for a senate senator or your state senator.

You ended up on the campaign side.

What did that look like?

How did that transition happen?

Yeah, I mean, I really.

I did love the policy side, but I am not a patient person and the government is slow and there's nothing.

You know, there's a lot of good reasons for the government to be slow and a lot of things, but I.

That's just not how my personality works.

I am a. I'm a chaos girly function very well with a thousand plates in the air and a bowl in the china shop.

And so the campaign vibes were much more my style.

The.

You know, you're always running out of time, you're always running out of money.

You never have enough people and like, you have to put together this puzzle and then you're gonn break it and then you're gonna put it together again and then you're gonna break it again.

Then you're gonna put it together again.

I found that my.

My skill set and my ability to see 10, 10 steps ahead and then my like, calm in chaos and like, not just calm, but like, I really do thrive in just like there.

This is a mess.

What are we gonna do?

Was much more in alignment with campaign life than with government life.

And I have so much respect for the government staffs.

I. I mean, governing is so difficult, and so I have a lot of respect for it.

I just.

I.

You have to know your limits.

And I'm not that girl.

Okay.

That's fair.

And you know, part of it is knowing that you're not that person.

Right.

Like, that you.

That when reality meets the.

The what you want that you have to go with what works, not what necessarily you wanted so to.

So what are some.

How do you decide what type of campaign you want to be a Part

of I have a set of questions that is the same five questions I ask every single potential client that crosses my desk.

And I use those questions to vet for, you know, values alignment, to make sure that we have similar goals and we are trying to do similar things in the world so that I'm not, you know, helping cause harm.

I also vet for, you know, how much they need me.

The reality is that I, I have a lot of infrastructure and I have a unique approach that not a lot of, not everybody needs and doesn't work for everyone.

I think, you know, more established candidates, people who have a lot of money, they don't need all of the infrastructure that I bring.

And, you know, I don't want to waste my capacity on somebody who, you know, can get what they need from any run of the mill campaign staffer.

And then I also vet for what it is the campaign or organization needs, like service wise, so that I make sure that I actually think that my infrastructure will help them is outside of my integrity to charge money for somebody to get something that they don't actually need.

I don't like those extraneous costs.

You know, I work, I came up in fundraising and so I know how hard it is to raise the money that you're spending on vendors like me.

And I want to make sure there is a match there.

Sure.

So what are, what was I going to say?

What type of campaign reform would you like to see happen?

Because I think there's a lot of room.

Yeah, I know that's a big question.

I think there's a lot of room for that.

Having never run a campaign myself, I have no, no knowledge.

I can tell you from leg things that I would like to see done in the legal field.

But I'd love to hear about, you know, campaign finance reform, whatever, wherever you see the biggest red, Biggest red spots at.

Yeah, So I actually think my biggest thing would be we need to reform the relationship that consultants have with politics.

The parties don't actually run our politics anymore.

They're run by people like me, private companies, private citizens who don't answer to anybody.

There's not a lot of regulations.

I don't have to, you know, I don't have to have a certification.

There's not a bar association that can disbar me if I, you know, do something illegal or terrible on a campaign.

There is no like enforcement of a code of ethics.

You know, there's no kind of disclosure law that I have to tell the public what I'm doing.

And I think that that Gives.

I think that gives consultants way too much power.

And I think a lot of people.

There are a lot of good consultants, and I do not want to speak poorly of all of my peers, but there are also a lot of grifters and mercenaries and people who are not.

Who have a lot of access and a lot of resources and a lot of money and a lot of influence on how.

How our democracy functions every day that are behind a curtain that there is just no way for the public to get to.

And I think that that is extremely dangerous.

Sure, sure.

So I think what we're talking about here is having some sort of either national or, you know, statewide requirement for registration of some sort, some sort of ethics bar, you know, ethics standards, that type of thing.

Is that sound correct?

Yeah, I think that that would be, at minimum, some kind of ethics standards and some kind of disclosure standards.

You know, the woman who cuts my hair.

I live in Virginia.

And that is not to say it's not important.

You know, there's a lot of safety standards.

There's a lot of, like, hygiene standards and all of that stuff.

But at the end of the day, I can also put scissors to my own hair and, like, get a similar result.

I mean, probably not.

Let's be real.

And I just, like, woke up one day at 25 and was like, you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna pull the levers of power.

And there was no one to ask permission.

There was no one to stop me.

There was no, like, training central, like, here's what's good, here's what's bad.

Do this, don't do that.

There was none of that.

And I really think it's a problem in particular, because politics nowadays functions as an industry more than anything else.

And if you have a, you know, a monetized interest in the outcome of elections, you have a problem.

And if.

I don't know, one way to solve that problem, I think, is to hold people like me to a higher standard.

Sure, that makes sense.

What would you suggest as far as campaign finance reform?

I mean, it really depends.

There's a lot of different rules in a lot of different jurisdictions.

Right.

So one of the things that I think would be helpful would be to maybe have a uniform set of rules, at least statewide, if not across the country, of who you can and can't take money from.

How Much when and where, because it's extremely difficult to, to not go sideways.

It takes a lot of work and it makes it easy to be shady.

I think that there is a space for obviously overturning Citizens United I think is like a really just easy fix for a lot of things that has to go.

Having the ability of corporations and special interests to just pour crazy amounts of money and have money be speech, I mean that's just, that's insane.

I also think though, there are sometimes there are campaign finance reforms that are well intentioned that end up pushing things into the dark.

So for example, you know, there's a state law in California called the Levine act that requires that if a lobbyist or a principal or you know, somebody who is, has a stake in a project gives over a certain amount of money to an elected official that is voting on that project within a year of the vote, that that elect official has to recuse themselves.

And you know, in theory that makes sense because it would take away pay for play.

But what actually happens is that those special interests end up just pushing that money into pacs and ies that are not controlled by the candidate and have like, have fewer disclosure requirements and fewer rules to play by and they end up just spending like crazy amounts of dark money instead.

It pushes it darker.

So instead of take keeping it where like the, the public can judge the information and use it to, as to whether or not to vote for that person.

So I think there's some places where it's gone too far.

I think there's places where it hasn't gone far enough.

I'm just starting to work in areas with like public matching funds and things like that.

So I haven't fully formed an opinion on that that I think is interesting.

I think there's a lot you could do with, with campaign finance reform.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, what was that?

What does IE mean?

Independent expenditure.

Okay, so it's a committee that is not controlled by the candidate.

It's another word for a pack essentially.

And they have, they don't have the same campaign finance limitations as a candidate controlled committee.

Okay, gotcha.

Yeah.

Whenever I hear an acronym for something that I don't know about, because in my world growing up, I use Internet Explorer.

So, you know, that tells you how old I am.

But anyway, so what it's you, you offer free presentations and trainings to political operatives nationwide.

What do those look like?

My favorite one to give is called Please don't run for office.

The.

I mean, the idea is that, you know, it's not for everyone.

And if you are doing it for an ego trip or because it is the next logical step in your career, or because your daddy's buying you a seat, that maybe you should sit the hell down and let some other people who actually are interested in solving problems, you know, take.

Take the spot.

And I like to, you know, explore the relationship with power, what it actually means to be an elected official and what those responsibilities are, as well as the actual, like, the logistical hurdles of running for office.

Because running for office is.

Is a life decision, like buying a house or getting a dog or getting married.

It is something that is going to impact the way you live your life every day for somewhere between six months and the rest of your life, depending on how successful you are.

And there is a lot of focus on recruiting candidates, rightfully so, across the country from both parties.

Everybody's saying, come on, come on, you can do it.

You're amazing.

Step up.

You can do it, you can do it.

We're going to support you.

Everything's going to be great.

And then they don't tell you what it actually takes, what it actually requires of you as a human being.

And I've seen people ruin their lives.

I've seen them get divorced.

I've seen them take second mortgages out on houses.

I've seen them cause rifts in their families.

I've seen them lose their job.

I have seen people bust their mental health.

I have seen people have, you know, some serious, like, long term traumatic things happen to them because nobody tells you the reality of being on the campaign trail and what it means for your life.

And so I really like to take the mystery out of it and make sure that when people decide to take the leap, that they're doing it from an informed place so that they don't lose touch with their humanity.

Because when that happens, that's when they make bad decisions that impact us negatively as Americans.

Sure.

So you've.

You teach people how to run for office and then you manage.

Do you manage multiple campaigns at the same time or just one Multiple?

We have 22 clients right now, and we'll probably get up to 35 or 40 before November.

Okay.

Because of midterms and all that fun stuff.

Okay.

And do you focus on statewide or nationwide?

So I prefer to do local elections, local and state elections, but I will take them in any state in the union.

So local politics at a national scale.

I think that all communities deserve access to the political infrastructure that gets them the, you know, empowers them to have the tools they need to make change.

And a lot of communities don't have that.

And so I, you know, I.

Lots of big city work, but then also rural Nevada and rural Nebraska and rural Georgia and on and on and on.

So city council races, DA races, state legislative races.

I've got a governor's race.

I've got a couple of Congressionals.

I also do non profit work and PACs and community or community organizing organizations.

Cool.

And Democratic parties.

Can you share who you're managing or is that like, not allowed?

I'm not familiar with that.

I mean, it's not allowed.

It's more that I am not going to sit here and list off my entire client list.

And if I pick a favorite, I'm going to have an issue.

Sure.

I will tell you, the governor's ace, because that's the highest level ballot that I've got is the.

I'm working for Alexis Hill.

I'm doing her fundraising.

She is the primary challenger for Democratic governor of Nevada.

Okay.

And cool as hell.

You should check her.

Okay.

I'm in California, so my value, my.

My opportunity there is limited as far as helping on a campaign, but I would certainly be interested in having them on the.

I'm in San Diego, so.

Oh, I'm okay.

So I.

From.

Well, I lived in San Diego for, for 12 years.

I started the company in San Diego and I have a lot of San Diego clients.

Supervisor Monica Montgomery Step is my client.

Council member Henry Foster is my client.

And very cool.

Yeah.

So I worked for a, a number of folks there and I've got nonprofits.

And that Balboa park ballot measure that you just saw in the news?

That's me.

Yeah.

Oh, very cool.

Very cool.

Now where are you located at?

I didn't.

I'm in Richmond, Virginia.

Okay, so you're back east.

Nice.

I haven't been back east in years, so.

I loved Virginia when I was there.

It was beautiful.

Quite a beautiful place.

So that's really fascinating as far as, like, don't run for office.

I think that's a great name.

I'm sure a lot of people find that intriguing and certainly the contrarian perspective of things.

So why do you yourself not run for office?

Because I have no desire to put myself through that.

I think I eat, sleep, dream, breathe political campaigns and I love it.

But I have something going for me that my clients do not, and that is I am pretty anonymous.

The public doesn't know who I am, in spite of all the podcasts or whatever.

Like, I'm not a public official.

And the Pressure that I see them put themselves under the public judgment in particular, I work for a lot of women candidates and women of color candidates and they get threats and they get, you know, they're, they're.

I've seen my, my clients.

Kids have gotten doxed.

Doxed.

I've had a client who had somebody threatened to burn her house down with her family inside.

I've had clients stalked by.

Yeah, it's been, it's been pretty crazy.

And so I think I am, I'm much better suited to be the attack dog from the back than I am to take the handle the pressure of putting my own name out there.

And I think I can impact more change doing more than one campaign at a time than I could if I just ran for one office.

Sure, that's fair.

And it seems like you like what you do quite a bit.

So why change it if you don't, if there's no reason to.

It makes a ton of sense too.

I'm kind of addicted to it.

Kind of addicted to it.

That's interesting.

What is your favorite part about running a campaign besides election night?

When you win?

I got that one.

That one's easy.

That one is easy.

Yeah.

I mean I think my favorite thing about it is that I'm never bored.

Every day is different.

You know, you're.

One day you can be sitting in a meeting about pig farming and then the next day you are like on a tour of like, you know, refugee resettlement, non profit.

And the next day you're doing a deep dive into water policy so that you can write a platform for, you know, something.

And then the next day you are sitting in a community meeting learning the ins and outs of community and relational organizing in, you know, multi faith situations.

Like it's, it's just never boring and there's always a fire to put out.

There's always someone to yell at.

There's always, you know, it's.

I'm a fiery lady and really feeds my need to just constantly be going, sure, sure.

And it sounds like it'd be quite a bit of fun.

I mean my only experience with the campaign is when I voted for people and or what I've seen on West Wing.

That's the extent of my.

Actually I take that back.

And what I've seen on.

What was it called?

Franklin and Bash, but very limited otherwise than I know for a fact.

Those are all very skewed entertainment type things.

I'm sure there might be some truth to them, but very limited.

So what been your favorite campaign to

work on so far, Supervisor Montgomery Stepp.

And it was, it was the most horizontal campaign I have ever been a part of to this day.

She really challenged me as a person to under and really change my relationship to campaigns because she, the way she ran her campaign and the way she held me accountable to her model taught me that campaigns can and should be infrastructure for the change that a community wants to see.

Not just this idea that some strategist comes in, parachutes down and like shouts at the public about what it is that the poll numbers say.

And I have worked with her ever since.

And working with her is.

It's the best.

I love all of my clients.

They're all wonderful.

But Monica changed my life.

Okay, that's fair.

You don't have to.

And I totally get that you don't want to pick a favorite per se, but I figure over time there might be one that leads the pack on that one.

What do you mean by.

I follow her off a cliff.

Okay, what do you mean by horizontal?

You said the horizontal campaign.

What does that mean?

So most campaigns traditionally have a very, like, vertical hierarchy.

Sure.

So it's, you know, you have campaign manager or the consultant, and then below those people you have, you know, a fundraising director or a field director or communications director.

And then below those people they have somebody.

And then below those people they have somebody.

And it depends on the size of the campaign.

Excuse me.

It depends on the size of the campaign as to how many layers there are.

But it is, it tends to be a very top down industry of there's like this one person at the top working with the candidate on, you know, whatever the strategy is that the candidate thinks they're going to do.

Hopefully they're partners with the candidate.

A lot of consultants or a lot of campaign operatives think of themselves more as puppet maps masters than partners.

So you have that going too.

That dynamic is weird.

And then it's just very top down.

We said, do this, do this.

Monica ran her campaign by committee.

The community was extremely involved.

I wrote a campaign plan for her and she made me defend it in front of like 90 people.

Not really, it was actually only like five, but it just felt at the time I was like, what are you doing?

Who are these people?

What do they know?

You know, can we trust them?

What if they leak something?

Like politics makes you very paranoid and very protective.

And she, and she said, this is my community and if you can't, if, and what they know is this community better than you.

And if you, if they don't think your strategy is going to work, you're going to need to write a new strategy.

So figure it out.

And you know, there was a fundraising committee and there was a community organizing committee and everything was really relational and grassroots and bottom up.

And it was beautiful.

It was held together by duct tape.

It was wild.

I mean, it was, it was a wild time, but it was such a stunning victory and no one in the, like, political echo chamber in San Diego saw it coming, but the community did.

And so I, I really tried to carry that ethos forward and try to make sure that I am partnering with the people on the ground who know their communities better than I do, that I come into this with, you know, I have an expertise in political campaigns.

That does not mean that everything I say is the right thing to do for your community.

And you have the expertise on the ground in your community.

And if we put those two things together, then we can run something that is authentic to the candidate as that they'll be proud of, win or lose at the end of the day, and also will put at the forefront the meeting the people in the community where they are, and actually having representative democracy that has listened to people in order to get to victory as opposed to, has done a lot of mass broadcasting, setting money on fire and yelling at people about what they think they should do, care about.

Right.

So you do a lot of focus groups, I'm guessing?

No, actually just a lot of, A lot of canvassing.

Okay.

Canvassing, deep canvassing and some, I mean, some focus groups, some polling.

I don't love polling.

There's some new technologies that we've been able to use to do some like long form interviews and things like that asynchronously, but really just like slow roll, multi cycle relational organizing is really the key.

What I was going to ask you, what is something.

So most of us have no idea what a campaign looks like.

I mean, again, we have very skewed versions of that.

I guess my question to you is, what would you tell the general public about a campaign that would help us make better decisions to be better informed about a campaign?

That is such an interesting question.

Wow.

I think the thing that I would say is that Campaigns are collections of people, and it's literally about who can collect the most people by a certain day and get them to do the same thing.

And so none of these candidates can do this without other human beings.

The donors are human.

The volunteers are humans, the staff are humans, the consultants are humans.

You know, the candidate is a human.

Is.

Is a human enterprise.

It's a giant group project.

And you actually have significantly more influence than you think you do on this process just by showing up.

If you show up in the campaign office, show up to a canvas, show up to a fundraiser, the candidate will remember that, and you have the ability to then potentially build a relationship with a future elected official.

And so campaigns, what I would say, are actually a fantastic access point for the public to influence their elected officials because they are like, we're just constantly looking for people.

We need people for everything.

And so if you're just.

If you're somebody who can take the time or has the ability or the resources to show up for a campaign in any way, you are.

You have at that point gained access, a level of access in your democracy and a level of influence in your democracy that is above and beyond another member of the general public who is not showing up.

So I highly recommend volunteering for a campaign not necessarily because you think this person is Jesus, but because they're going to win, right?

And they're going to be making these big decisions and what.

And don't you want them to listen to you when.

Don't you want them to pick up the phone when you.

When they're, like, doing some work in your neighborhood, you know, and you.

I don't know, they left the power lines uncovered or whatever it is, don't you want them to pick up the phone when you have a problem and try to solve it for you or with you?

And if you want that to happen, you have to build a relationship.

And if you get in on the campaign level before they're important, then they'll remember you.

That's interesting.

I hadn't thought of it from a volunteer perspective, how important that could be for someone.

I've thought about volunteering, but to be frank, I haven't volunteered for a campaign yet.

I'm not saying that's a never.

It's just a not yet.

So how often do.

I mean, I don't know, do you see the.

I think West Wing being the only one that, again, I have reference to.

And I'm not saying it's accurate at all, but, like, because you see them volunteering for the campaign and then they get transitioned into actually working for the policy side of things.

Does that happen ever?

Or is it just a Hollywood thing where you volunteer and then they hire you later?

No, I mean, it does happen.

It is, it is, it happens less than Hollywood makes it look like, because there's more need for more people on the campaign than there are in the office.

So like you have a campaign that needs, you know, 50 volunteers at all times or whatever, and then the office has five spots.

Like it's gonna, it's gonna filter.

But yeah, if you, if you volunteer or work on a campaign, that's a great way to end up in a public sector job.

Gotcha.

Either the, and the political hires, like the electeds are allowed to hire in their offices with a different, in a different way than like having to go through all of the official HR for like a city or a county or a state.

That's not to say that there isn't, you know, HR involved, but they have a lot more leeway to just pull in whoever they want on the political side.

And then there's also, like relationships.

Maybe you don't want a job in their office, but maybe you want an appointment to a board or commission later.

Maybe, you know, there are, and there are boards and commissions.

I mean, San Diego county has dozens of commissions that do work on women's rights and environment and parks and recreation and, you know, the Civil Service Commission, all kinds of things.

And so if you have an issue that you care about, there is probably a committee somewhere that does some work that needs volunteers from the community to be appointed into those positions.

And those appointments go through the elected officials.

So.

And they're more likely to appoint people they know.

Politics is an access game and campaigns are where the access point is.

The gate is the widest.

Sure.

Okay, that makes sense.

That makes sense.

See, what else was there?

Had a question about.

Oh, so do you have people that work under you that work for campaigns or are you a one woman band, so to speak?

Oh, no, I have a lot of employees.

I have.

How many employees do I have?

I have 13 employees.

So.

And they, most of the staff works on campaigns and does like the political side.

I also have the operational team that does, you know, HR and marketing and things like that.

But everybody touches the campaign at some point with something.

So we have, I have myself and then my leadership team that they run.

They run their teams and they run general consulting and fundraising teams.

And then that though we have strategists under them that are the like, point of contact for the campaign and then they run, you know, each of them runs 3, 5, 8 campaigns depending on what's going on.

And I also run my own campaigns and like all of us have some have somebody that we lead on.

But no, I was a one woman show for the first few years.

But at this point I have a very lovely team of like minded and competent and creative and diverse individuals who help me keep this going.

Nice.

That's good because I know I, I'm a solo practitioner attorney myself and so I do, I wear all the hats and it's, it can be exhausting at points because there's, there's not enough hours in the day for me to be able to do everything that needs to get done.

So I can imagine that it's very similar when you were running this show by yourself there.

So any, I don't know any words of wisdom for people that are, that might want to look into doing what you do?

Yeah, I mean, I think first things first is just to make sure that you understand what problem it is that you're trying to solve.

Like what is your goal in this space?

What's your North Star for getting involved in politics?

Because this industry is crazy, it's toxic, it is full of everybody, people who all think they're the next AOC or the next to Barack Obama or the next George Bush.

And you know, they, there's a lot of power struggles, there's a lot of gatekeeping, there's a lot of lying, there's a lot of backstabbing, there's a lot of saying you're gonna do things you're not gonna do.

I mean there's a lot of just drama.

And so, and you're going to be faced with moral dilemmas both like from a like transactional standpoint, but then also from, you know, the existential nature of politics.

Do I want to support this?

Is this candidate good for the public?

You know, those kinds of, of things.

And keeping in mind, you know, that ultimate goal that you are working toward is the thing that is going to keep you sane and keep you going when everything feels like it's spinning out of control.

And if you're entering the industry now, it's already out of control.

And so you're just, you're gonna step into a blender.

And I highly suggest like keeping your spot on the wall so you don't get dizzy.

Okay, fair enough.

I think that's wise and important that you're framing it in what your priorities are and what your purpose is.

What about the Prison.

Oh my gosh, sorry.

My bachelor's is in criminology.

So we talk about the prison industrial complex.

What about the political industrial complex is certainly more relevant than the prison industrial index industrial complex at the moment?

What about the political industrial complex would you say is our greatest stumbling block towards a better, more just society?

I mean, I think so.

First off, I love.

I'm just going to take an aside to talk about the prison industrial complex because I'm a criminal justice reform and I do the politics of criminal justice reform.

I do a lot of DA's races, sheriff's racist judges races.

And it's an incredibly important concept.

Part of, part of they're, they're intersectional.

So I can use that as an example because part of that is that, okay, law enforcement has a political arm.

Law enforcement has lobbyists, law enforcement has, has, has consultants.

There is an entire law enforcement like political mechanism and it is bigger than either party actually.

And it's much more sophisticated and nobody ever talks about it.

And yet those folks are paid to represent this side of an issue, right?

The side in which they shovel poor black and brown people into these detention camps and use them for slave labor.

And now then you have the, and you have those people staying in the same space as someone like me who is trying to, who is trying to increase representation in government, make sure that more black and brown people have access to power.

Right?

Okay.

And you have those two things clashing.

And we're both paid interests representing our ideology and we're competing at all times for whatever our piece of the pie is.

Right.

And that competition is in victories and losses.

Yes, but it's also in money and funding and the economic output that is dictated by the outcome of election.

And you can trace that issue by issue across our government as it exists right now.

The other thing to understand going like away from the issue specific piece is that while the political parties are technically like they're small d democratic entities, right?

Every.

The DNC is a national party that is made up of delegates from the states which has a state party that is made out of, that is made up of delegates from the counties, which has a county party that is made up of delegates that are elected in whatever, like districts or whatever that they represent in order to vote on who they're going to endorse and this, that and the other.

And that is all true.

And it is one of those ways in which, you know, the political parties are actually relatively representative of the general public, if you like, know where you're looking.

But That's a difference.

That's a different topic.

However, it's not the political parties that are making the big strategic decisions.

It is not the political parties that are putting out the ads.

It's, it's not the political parties that are putting out the messaging.

It is vendors like me.

Okay, it is, it is.

They hire us to do this work.

They hire us to create the strategy, to put out the product, to do the polling, to do the commercials.

If, you know, if you didn't like Kamala's messaging in the presidential election, like, yes, there's blame to go around, but the, the piece, you know, everybody.

Oh, the Democrats have a messaging issue.

The Democrats have a vendor issue.

Yeah, it's, it is a, there's a private industry behind all of this that is competing for contracts.

And they're not chosen by these elected delegates.

They're, they're chosen in, through this like closed door RFP process.

It's, it's not healthy and it's not actually representative of what the public wants.

That's part of why there's such a disconnect between what the public says they want, what election results say, what poll after poll says about issue after issue.

And then you don't have the output come in from the elected officials because there's this like middle ground, this wall that blocks the input.

And really.

And there's like, you know, six old white guys on K Street in Washington D.C. who need to make money for, you know, they need to make their money for the cycle.

So they decide to buy whatever billion dollar TV buy.

And that's our campaign strategy because it makes the most money, not because it persuades people, not because it turns people out, but because that's how they get paid.

Right?

Yeah.

What does it mean?

So again, my reference is very limited to Hollywood and I get that Bruno Giannelli on West Wing talks about I get a percentage of the ad buy.

I don't.

What does that mean specifically?

Okay, so let's say you are running for office.

Okay, sure.

And you, and, and, and you hire me and we are, you're going to run for mayor of San Diego.

And San Diego is a really big city, so you can't knock every door and you're going to raise a whole ton of money.

And the, and the strategic question becomes like, how do you reach all these people so that they know that you're the person to vote for?

Right.

So that is, that's that the question that is then answered by some kind of voter contact mechanism that might be TV that might be mail.

It might.

Whatever.

When I make your TV ad, if my contract was written that way, which my contracts are not, they're retainer contracts.

I do it differently.

But most consultants, would they make your.

If I make your TV ad, I go in, I go to the ad buyer, and the ad buyer tells me, okay, this TV ad is $200,000.

I come back to you and I say, this TV ad is $225,000.

And I mark it up, and I make money on the markup.

And then the ad buy, they've already marked up on their end, whatever that is.

And then they also kick back part of the buy back to.

To me as like a finder's fee.

So I'm doubled it.

Gotcha.

Now, I want to be very clear, because I just put this all in the first person, that I do not do that.

But that is how a lot of it works.

And so you have to then beg the question in those situations, are we doing the TV by.

Because it is the best way to talk to people.

It's the best way to break through to them.

It's the best way to get them to turn out.

It's the best way to engage our democracy, or are we doing the TV buy because that strategist that you hired gets a buyback?

Gotcha.

So the ad buy is that percentage that they get for finding the.

For implementing the ads, essentially.

Okay, okay, that makes sense.

Again, they don't explain that all you get is by context in the television show.

So since you work on campaign, I figure, why not ask.

To ask you what?

I don't know any.

I don't know any more questions that I had off the top of my head to be able to ask you.

What would you share with the general public about kind of like final thoughts about campaigns and getting involved?

And what would.

If you had the largest megaphone, which you have a bigger megaphone than many, what would you share with the world, I guess would be the best thing.

I mean, I think the biggest thing would just be to say that I understand why voting feels pointless sometimes.

And I understand.

I actually do understand the whole concept of, like, both parties feel the same.

I get that, you know, the managed atrophy that the Democrats often put forward feels the same as the act of destruction that the Republicans put forward.

When you can't pay your bills, when you are choosing between health care and food, you know, when you lose your insurance.

I completely understand all of that.

That said, even though the revolution is not going to happen on the campaign Trail, the campaign trail is harm mitigation.

And it is a tool that we have in our toolbox to be able to protect our communities, to be able to implement the laws that at the very like, at the very least, like, protect you, your friends and your family.

Right.

Your bubble is protected at the local level.

The local campaigns, the city council campaigns, the.

The mayor is racist, the county board of supervisors, the district attorneys, those are so much more important than I can ever tell you.

And those people are much more heavily accountable to you than Donald Trump is ever going to be.

And you have the potential to genuinely increase your quality of life over the course of just a couple months if you get involved locally.

And so I just, I understand why it's a tool that not everybody wants to exercise.

But I also just have to say, like, surrendering this space just gives into fascism faster.

And so I highly, highly recommend getting involved at the local level.

Volunteer for a campaign, get that access, get that influence, and it doesn't have to belong to them.

They're borrowing it from you.

So take up the space in the room.

Okay.

I think those are all very, very wise.

You know, it's funny because I got called for jury duty not long ago, and I say that because no one ever.

They never pick me because I'm an attorney already.

And, you know, they don't want.

You don't want an attorney on your jury most of the time.

There's a few exceptions to that, but for the most part.

But it's really interesting to get to see people's perspective and see how they change, how their view of the justice system changes as they interact with the justice system.

And not from a litigant perspective, but from the neutral observer that's supposed to be a jury.

Right.

Obviously, as a volunteer for a campaign, they're not necessarily neutral, but they're not looking to have the same pull that, you know, as an attorney that you have invested in a system.

Right.

Like that, or advocate or judge or whatnot.

Eva, it's been great speaking with you.

Any final thoughts before we let you go?

I know your time is pretty precious, so I don't want to keep you too long.

No, I appreciate it.

This has been fun.

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

Where can people find you if they'd like to reach out and talk with you more or schedule you for one of your fun presentations?

Yeah.

Evencostrategies.com so it's e v I n c o strategies dot com.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

That was Eva Posner who is a campaign strategist and absolutely fantastic.

Interesting to learn more about campaigns and how they affect our democracy and some great ways that we can improve.

Until next time, keep working and keep trying and certainly let's make our democracy work better for us.

Thank you.

And we'll see you in the next episode.