‘There is no reference point’: 2020 campaigns scramble to adapt to coronavirus
Candidates are sending their staff home and vowing to campaign almost entirely online. Election officials are being urged to make major changes to the voting process. And operatives are beginning to wonder if either party will be even able to hold its conventions this summer.
The coronavirus pandemic that has increasingly disrupted daily American life is now suddenly upending the country’s politics in the midst of a critical election year. And no one has any idea when, or if, the process will go back to normal — or what the long-term effect will be.
“We are about to go through something we have never been through before as a nation,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “There is literally no way to predict how it will impact politics. There is no reference point. No data. No history to check it against. It is completely unknown.”
Already, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have cancelled upcoming rallies as the next set of Democratic primaries is set to take place next Tuesday, with President Donald Trump saying he would do the same. The two Democratic candidates delivered separate addresses to outline how they would tackle the coronavirus on Thursday in an attempt to contrast with Trump’s handling of the situation.
Most dramatically of all, the Biden and Sanders campaigns announced Thursday that they would instruct all of their staffers to work from home — an extraordinary decision that veteran strategists say will become the norm as campaigns grapple with a crisis unprecedented in recent political history.
Local political parties have also halted voter registration drives, and many high-dollar fundraisers scheduled for this month have been scuttled.
“It’s hard to even imagine what you’re going to have to do because none of us even know what the hell our life is going to be like in the next few weeks,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Driving the changes within campaigns is a recognition that the way many of them normally operate — bringing together large groups of people while emphasizing person-to-person outreach across entire neighborhoods and towns — makes them potential vectors for spreading the disease.
And the campaign alterations aren’t confined to the presidential race: Across the country Thursday, House and Senate campaigns began announcing their own decision to limit the impact of the coronavirus. Sarah Gideon, a Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, said her campaign would postpone all of its scheduled events after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the state.
In North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said he was postponing all of his campaign’s events for the next 30 days.
In Washington, strategists say they are advising campaigns to eliminate all in-person events in favor of digital outreach, like communicating with potential voters via phone conversation or text message.
“Our guidance to [campaigns] is, OK, you were going to hold a town hall? Maybe now you’re going to do a tele-town hall. And by ‘maybe,’ I mean you are holding a tele-town hall,” said an aide for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The aide, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said the group was now even sending guidance on how staffers should clean a campaign office in an effort to keep the candidate, their staff, and the voters they reach out of harm’s way.
CHANGES TO THE ELECTION PROCESS
The challenges posed by the coronavirus outbreak are also putting pressure on the rules governing elections and how they are conducted.
State and congressional candidates in New York, for example, have called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to reduce or suspend petition requirements needed to get on the ballot ahead of the state’s April 9 deadline.
The pandemic is also forcing state election administrators to make adjustments ahead of Tuesday’s primaries in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio. Hand wipes and sanitizing gels will be the new norm, as ubiquitous as scanning machines and “I Voted” stickers.
In Ohio, the secretary of state is moving 146 polling locations out of senior living facilities to reduce potential exposure. But there’s also some concern about a shortage of the estimated 35,000 poll workers needed to execute the election.
“They’ve been dropping off,” said David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, who held a bipartisan press conference on Thursday pleading for more workers. “It is a real issue. Now I think it’s getting worse, especially with elderly poll workers. If you don’t have enough you have long lines, and people aren’t getting the right instructions.”
Illinois officials are urging its residents to obtain mail-in ballots but the deadline to apply was Thursday. Many Chicago residents appear to have heeded the advice, as mail-in applications have more than tripled.
Still, the situation has upended political organizers’ best laid get-out-the-vote plans into the final weekend of the campaign.
“We’re trying to figure what to do about the several thousand voters we’ve talked to who we don’t have phone numbers for,” said Will Tanzman, the Chicagoland lead organizer for The People’s Campaign, a progressive group that has been canvassing doors for Sanders.
Tanzman said he’s in the process of moving much of his organization’s operation to remote phone calls, rather than the preferred in-person contacts, but predicted that participation would undoubtedly suffer.
“It’s a huge challenge,” he said. “I’m very worried about turnout on Tuesday.”
Arizona is likely to be least affected by the health risk since nearly 8 in 10 voters cast mail-in ballots, a potential remedy that more states may consider adopting once the crisis passes.
CONVENTIONS AT RISK?
Public health experts say they don’t know how long the pandemic will last or how long it will affect day-to-day life in the United States. But if it lasts for months longer, that could jeopardize both parties’ national conventions.
Republican and Democratic officials have both maintained that they have no plans to delay the convention or change its structure. But whether they’ll be able to do that is a subject of open speculation even among party leaders.
“I think this is going to last for a while,” Pepper said. “My hope would be by July you could have a gathering, but we’ll know well before if that’s true. You can’t have a large gathering in the current environment for sure.
“Hopefully we get through the other side and then make the bigger decisions for the summer months,” the chairman added.
Some of the problems facing candidates and local political parties are smaller in scale but nonetheless pressing.
Steve Simeonidis, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, said the party has stopped trying to register voters at community gatherings amid the outbreak.
And Tom Davis, the former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he’s heard from several candidates that even collecting signatures to appear on the ballot has become much more difficult in recent weeks.
“They’re not signing; they’re not opening the door,” Davis said. “That’s becoming a problem.”
Strategists also say traditional high-dollar fundraisers, where candidates gather with dozens or hundreds of men and women, often in close quarters, might also become a thing of the past.
“Candidates don’t want to shake a hundred hands as it is,” Sullivan said. “They’re sure as hell not going to want to do it now.”
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Join NowThis story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 7:11 PM.
