This week, we're joined by Laura Stokes, the campaign manager for Senator-Elect Saddam Salim, who successfully primaried incumbent Senator Chap Petersen this summer before winning the general this month. Laura breaks down her campaign strategy--including win numbers, voter-outreach, and overcoming a money deficit--that earned the historic win.

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope 

This is Pod Virginia, a podcast that is digging into election data this week. We've got a great guest here to talk about this. A campaign manager who had two very unexpected victories, one last year and one this year. Last year, she was the campaign manager for Catherine Reed, who won that come-from-behind victory against Sang Yi in Fairfax City for the Mayor's race. And this year, she was the campaign manager for Saddam Salim, who had that come from behind victory defeating longtime incumbent State Senator Chap Peterson. So, within just a few months, she had two earth-shaking victories. We wanted to have her on the podcast to discuss what might be takeaways from those two campaigns. Laura Stokes. Thanks for joining us on Pod Virginia.

Laura Stokes 

Thank you for having me. I'm a big fan of the show. So it's a thrill to be on.

Michael Pope 

Great, so I wanted to get a list of tactics or things you did with the Catherine Reed and the Saddam Salim campaigns that our listeners might replicate in future campaigns. So, I want to start with the place where most campaigns start, which is a win number. The number that the campaign thinks it's going to need to win. Typically, this is held under lock and key; you must go into a tiff to learn about the number and then forget about it. And people don't talk about it on Pod Virginia. But Laura Stokes, I hear that you are willing to share your win number from the Saddam Salim campaign. So what was the win number?

Laura Stokes 

So, the win number was based on turnout. We were expecting somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 votes, so we needed to win for Saddam to prevail over Chap Peterson.

Michael Pope 

Okay, so talk about calculating that win number. And then, as a sub-topic, you had separate win numbers for each and every one of the 48 precincts in the Senate district. Right to explain that.

Laura Stokes 

So, one of the things that redistricting does is it kind of presents an opportunity to create a new model for each of these districts. So that's what we started with. We went in, and four or five old districts made up the new district. So, we created a map and looked at the boundaries of those old districts. Then we went precinct by precinct into each of those districts and went through past election results. So one that was particularly helpful was the 2019 primary between Senator Dick Saslaw and his opponent, Yasmine Taeb; we looked at those results; who came out to vote? What were some of the characteristics in common for those voters? Who was motivated to vote against an incumbent? And we built that into our precinct-by-precinct model. We also did the same thing for the other parts of the district. And we looked at who had previously voted for Senator Peterson plus, where did we think we could flip some of those voters? So, it was an exact model. It took hours of work, but I think it's the kind of thing that if you do that, you put that work in you. You use that in the field, which gives you an edge that other campaigns relying more on a mail campaign wouldn't necessarily have. We knew we weren't gonna have a lot of funding. It just was reality for us. We understood that, so we put our time into this analysis so that when we went out in the field, we were very targeted in who we went to. In some cases, we were exact with our win number in each precinct; there was one where we got exactly the number of voters we projected. All of those won of the area that he came from, we either overperformed or we were exactly right about the number of voters that we needed to have come out. And then in the part of the district where Chap Peterson had been the incumbent, we looked at, okay, we're not necessarily going to win these, but how many people do we think we can flip. And so we spent some time on just the persuasion part of it, where we would go in, we had a very heavy door knocking campaign, we used to sort of joke like dollars and doors, and we don't have the dollar, so better hit the doors. That was the main thing. We had people knock on doors. So that's what we put our time into.

Michael Pope 

On the disparity there, the dollar disparity, let's just lay it out here for the listeners to this podcast: the Chap Petersen campaign had more than a million dollars. In contrast, your campaign had, like, $200,000. So there's a huge disparity there. And how were you able to overcome that?

Laura Stokes 

So it's important to remember that I had just finished a race where that was also true, where Catherine Reed spent a fraction of the money compared to Sang Yi.

Michael Pope 

I have the numbers here in front of me. So he raised about $150,000, compared to your campaign, which is about $100,000. So, 50% of the other campaign.

Laura Stokes 

And that $100,000, I don't know if I would say we really raise them. A lot of that is in kind, where people donate their time. And we, like you do, you put that in as a donation. So, with Catherine's race, it was very shoestring. On the day of the election, I was making walklits for the polls because we had completely run out of every piece of walklit. So it was a very shoestring operation. And so I know how to stretch a dollar, just absolutely, as far as I can. And I had done that with her. Because we didn't have the money like he did. And he had a lot of investment and support from Governor Youngkin. So we had to maximize what we had, which was community. So we got the Democratic committee very involved. And we rallied the people who are the stakeholders in that community. For the most part, that was suburban women, women between their 30s to their 60s, who were very concerned about having a hard-right Republican mayor, and what that would do to public schools, what that would do to our community. So we rallied those people and got them out. And they really carried it for us; they went to doors, they talked to their peers, they were talking to people in school drop-off lines. We used relational campaigning, where we had people posting about it on social media and talking about it in their community. And that is what really put us over the edge: getting out in the community like that and having a very strong community base; that is one of Catherine's things. And we've managed to have about 30 meet and greets over the course of that campaign where she was just out at people's homes, telling them her story, but also talking about their shared vision of the city. And that I took that from Catherine's race, and I really applied that to Saddam's race. So we brought in all of the community stakeholders that we could get and talked to them about the issues they care about. And some of the ones that really came through for us were Moms Demand Action volunteers who cared a lot about gun violence prevention and had been very frustrated with Senator Peterson's record. And the way he had received them at lobbying day and all that kind of thing. So they were very receptive to what we were talking about and what we were running on. And they became community partners with us. I like to have six or seven ways that I will reach out to a voter. One of them is community meetings; I want them to see a candidate out at community meetings, and I want them to get invited to a meet and greet. I want them to get a piece of mail. But I also want them to get a postcard handwritten by a volunteer because that says something about the kind of campaign you're running. And I wanted them to get somebody at their door. And I also use texting quite a bit at the end. It was like six or seven ways I was touching each voter that I needed to get to. And for a lot of those, I was able to stretch money far to make that happen.

Michael Pope 

I wanted to get a sense of what made this campaign, the Saddam Salim campaign specifically, so much more successful. You lead off by talking about the win number, which was the range I think you said was 10,000 to 12,000. Is that right?

Laura Stokes 

Yeah, and that was based on a couple of different turnout models to anywhere between, you know, 9% to 10%, up to 20%. Because you, you can't know exactly how many people will come out. So the winning number was 10 to 12; because of all those turnout models.

Michael Pope 

And the actual win number ended up being 10.5. So you were right there in the range.

Laura Stokes 

Yeah.

Michael Pope 

Now, that is something that most campaigns do. Right? So, what did you do differently with your modeling that other campaigns weren't doing?

Laura Stokes 

Well, I think, once we did that modeling, we really went out and took it out into the field, and we stretched resources to the absolute max. If we couldn't pay for it, if we didn't have a consultant, we could pay to do it. We figured out how to do it ourselves.

Michael Pope 

I think a lot of our listeners are going to hear what you just said about the consultants, and their heads are going to explode. Because there's a whole industry around this. And what you just basically said was, we don't need those people.

Laura Stokes 

Well, I don't know that that's true. I think we were unusually good at figuring out how to do it ourselves. I think a lot of it happened to be the talent of the people on my team. But I did pluck people from GMU right out of graduation. My deputy campaign manager, I think, if he'd gone to intern at a consulting firm, would have gone on to have an incredible career, but I saw him first. So I plucked a graduation and put him to work. And he is sort of like a Swiss army knife for campaigns; he can figure out any problem and figure out how to do it.

Michael Pope 

So I'm curious, is the lesson there? Before you hire the top dollar consultant, check to see what bright college students might be available.

Laura Stokes 

Not just any college student, I think you have to look at the talent of the person you're hiring. So there are some consultants who are incredible. And I would absolutely try to get them on my team and try to pay them. But there are others that I think you have to be a little more critical about what you're getting. And there are some that I think may be inflating what they're doing. And it's something that if people took the time to learn it, they could probably learn to do it themselves. I'm probably making a lot of enemies right now, aren't I?

Michael Pope 

Not necessarily; I think the minute many of our listeners are probably hearing this and saying, oh, yeah, I could do this in my campaign; I don't need to hire the top dollar consultant because I can do it, or I can put a team together to do it. This is kind of a DIY model you're laying out here. So you've got your modeling, and you got your win number overall. You've got specific win numbers for each and every one of these precincts, in your case, 48 and this senate district, and then you get into something I wanted to explore next, which is storytelling, the narrative of the campaign, all campaigns deal with this. How did you approach this differently than other campaigns?

Laura Stokes 

Well, I mean, anytime you're doing a primary challenge, you have to talk about the incumbent's record. So we did that. We had sort of a webpage. And I think it's. I don't think anyone had really pulled together all of Senator Peterson's Greatest Hits and put them on one document before.

Michael Pope 

Because there are so many of them.

Laura Stokes 

Yeah, there's so many of them. And in terms of DIY, in opposition research, I had community support for that. There were definitely people who had kept track of some of them and sent them to me. And they were ready to help me put that together without me having to pay for it.

Michael Pope 

On that issue. One of the things you had to deal with in this primary campaign was not just defeating Chap Peterson and having all the oppo research needed to beat Chap Petersen; it was also defending yourself and your campaign from other people who also wanted to run against Chap Petersen, correct?

Laura Stokes 

Yes, there were originally two challengers in the primary. And that came down to who could mount a more serious challenge to Chap Petersen. And in that particular instance, I think it was the financial backing that we had versus the other candidate. But it was also the argument we were making. Not only were we, you know, presenting his record, but we were also telling a story about Saddam's history that I think really resonated with people. Because it is very much a story of the kind of people who live in the district. It's an immigrant story. It's a story about someone who, because of the democratic policies we have in Fairfax County, has been able to thrive in terms of housing in terms of health care. It's someone who came up through our public school system and is a product of both our public schools and our public universities. And so that resonated with voters because I think they saw that the things we care about as Democrats when we invest in those things, we get young leaders like Saddam. It was a very hopeful message that it was a really good counterweight to do the stuff we were talking about in terms of Chap Peterson's record.

Michael Pope 

Now, Chap Petersen is also a hometown guy, though, right? He was on the city council; it's not like he didn't have a story to tell. So, what made your campaign different?

Laura Stokes 

I think it is really a story about the future versus the past. I think when Chap Petersen talks about his story, it's very much, you know, about his roots and his Confederate ancestors. And I think that that resonated with people for a certain amount of time. But in the new northern Virginia area, with all the people coming in all the diverse communities, all of our immigrant communities, they're not as interested in that Confederate connection. And they're definitely not interested in protecting that at the cost of other things. So, Saddam's story is also about a hometown boy. But coming from a very different background, I think that lands differently now. And it is much more about the future of the district than it is about, sort of, the people who've come before, and I think people are focused on that in this area.

Michael Pope 

In terms of what people are focused on in this area, I noticed your list of issues for the Catherine Reed campaign struck me because of the order that you put them in: guns, unions, abortion, environment, and then schools. So explain for campaigns, the Catherine Reed campaign, and then later your work with the Saddam Salim campaign, how you would take these issues and tie them directly to the bio and the narrative, like each of the issues at a specific time to the narrative of the bio, right?

Laura Stokes 

Right, for Saddam in particular, his story is that story. He had to come to this country because of flooding and drought in his own country. And we know that flooding and drought in Bangladesh is connected to the climate crisis. So, he was kind of displaced by climate issues. His family was homeless, and they were able to finally get housing in Fairfax County because of the Affordable Housing Program that our Board of Supervisors has put in place. So, he benefited from those policies that Democrats had fought for. Also, his mother, after having children overseas and in a third-world country, had reproductive issues. She needed surgery, and she was able to get that surgery in our sort of pre-Obamacare, free clinics that were part of the social services in the county. So, she also experienced what it means to be able to access reproductive care. And Saddam, as a young person, learned why it's necessary for people to be able to make decisions about their own bodies. So you have a Bangladeshi Muslim guy who's also very pro-choice. And I think he comes to that from a personal connection. I think that resonated with voters, particularly women because they're looking for a leader who understands why it matters. And they weren't necessarily getting that from Senator Peterson in some of his town halls; they were having to argue with them about abortion access. But with Saddam, it's like he gets it naturally, just from his own story. So that is kind of like telling people about his experiences, reassuring them that these are his values, and he comes to these from his own life. And so that is why we would talk about those issues but also connect them to a story.

Michael Pope 

I want to touch on what you just said about Senator Peterson and being at a town hall and the discussion around abortion which I get the sense from you that you feel like your campaign had a narrative. And there was no counter to that narrative.

Laura Stokes 

Yeah, I was consistently surprised that Senator Petersen didn't get more into those issues. I kept waiting for him to counter. I think he was struggling to understand, and I think this is a larger issue for him as a state senator; I think he had lost a sense of what his constituents were thinking about. I think he was listening to a minority of people in his district, who were more conservative. Still, he wasn't in touch with the democratic community and what they were thinking about. And so he struggled to really connect with his constituents. That had started at town halls before the primary. As a constituent, I had seen it, but in the primary itself, I didn't see him adapting to what we were talking about very well. And so we were able to just keep taking advantage of that and keep putting out that message to people. And the contrast just remained very strong. All the way through.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, and one of the things you said to me when we were preparing for this podcast was, and I wrote this down in my notebook, "I couldn't believe I was getting away with this." what do you mean by that?

Laura Stokes 

I mean, I also felt that way about Catherine's race. I couldn't believe I was getting away with calling out these elected leaders on the way that they had let down their constituents; I felt like somebody was going to come back strongly. And I think there's a lack of accountability going on here, which I'm not sure people are used to. And it may be because we're in a low media environment where we just don't have the local media like we used to have. But when I started my career, which was years ago, and I worked for the Mayor of Nashville, you had daily newspapers that were covering local issues. So there was a very healthy, vigorous debate going on all the time; if you called out an elected official, that elected official adapted and had a response. And so there was always, like, a current of, like, really good crisis communication, and I feel like we've maybe some of that's been lost because we don't have the level of looking into what the legislators are doing for the regular people, people are having a hard time following what their legislators are doing in Richmond. So maybe they don't call out their legislators as often as they used to. And so I was always like pushing the envelope with what we were talking about in terms of Senator Petersen's record. And I couldn't believe that there wasn't more pushback on that. Or the pushback certainly didn't seem to understand that we pitched the battle on a certain ground. And I think Senator Petersen wanted it to be on a different ground. And he couldn't ever get us back to what he wanted to be talking about.

Michael Pope 

So, you touched on your past here with the Bill Purcell campaign. Mayor Bill Purcell, you sent me a great YouTube link that I would highly recommend to our listeners; you can find it on YouTube. The title is the Bill Purcell desk ad, which was fascinating. Explain to our listeners what if they were to go on YouTube and watch the Bill Purcell desk ad, what they would see.

Laura Stokes 

That was the ad that was created by the team that I was a part of in 1999. Bill Purcell is going to work as the Mayor, but he goes to work at a desk in his front yard. And the voiceover talks about how he's not going to a high-priced, cozy office; he's going to work in neighborhoods for you, the people of Nashville. And the goal there was to really highlight what we were running on, which was quality of life in the city. We were talking about what makes living in Nashville such a valuable, rewarding experience. It's the nuts and bolts things like managing our stormwater, taking care of our neighborhoods, making sure we have the services we need, making sure that you know, you get the garbage pickup you need. It was very unsexy. And so, to make it a little bit more charming and friendly, we put the desk in the yard, and it became like the symbol of that race. None of the other candidates could come close to that. And so he became known as the neighborhood mayor. And that is how he won. Essentially, that one symbol took him all the way to victory.

Michael Pope 

Do you feel like you kind of replicated that with Catherine Reid's campaign for Mayor of Fairfax City?

Laura Stokes 

Yeah. I mean, one of the things she ran on, and she got criticized for it, but I think it was right. She ran on putting municipal bathrooms in our parks. And she got a lot of flack for it because people would say, How could you be talking about bathrooms on the stump? But it's the kind of small thing that matters a lot to people. She talked about mothers with small children using the parks and having to use a porta-potty, which is kind of unsanitary. And just the fact that our public services need to be better. And you could see every woman in the room nodding like, yes, this is exactly what we need. We brought that in from my past history; I would tell her to go with that because people care about that quality of life, nuts and bolts, practical things; they want to see their quality of life improve. That's why they live in this community. And that's what you need to be talking about. So she then installed these toilets that are called like Thrones or something. And so she jokes that she's the Mayor of Thrones. And that is a great line. That's exactly the kind of thing that people want; they want to see practical services like that coming in from an elected leader like a mayor.

Michael Pope 

A porcelain Queen, I like it. So, moving to Saddam Salim vs. Chap Peterson. This is kind of like Slayer of Giants kind of stuff. There are a lot of people out there who are considering perhaps running against somebody. Still, they look at that person and say, well, that's a longtime incumbent. This person has been there for decades. They've got all this history. They might even have a family history and a gold-plated last name. I'm never going to. If that person, what would you say to those candidate potential candidates in the future? Or maybe even future campaign managers that might work with those candidates? What would you say to those people in terms of yes, you can do it?

Laura Stokes 

I'd say, first of all, we do need to hand over leadership to the next generation; that's an ongoing process. It's an important process. And participating is never a bad idea. I would also say get to know the district you're running in and really spend time understanding the community dynamics. The primary challengers that I've seen have not pulled off one of the common denominators; I don't think they had strong enough ties to their community. And that mattered. Because when people go to the polls, it is sometimes a gut decision, and they're going with the guy they know if they know that guy is going to do right by them. And this person, they don't know, it's harder for them to choose that person. So spend the time forging those alliances, those connections in your community, because that will be the deciding factor when you're doing a primary challenge. Take the time to understand past election results, understand, like, the various precincts and how those people vote in those precincts, and then go out to the community, be very visible, be very present. I certainly hope our VA-7 and VA-10 candidates will take that to heart because I think that's going to be the thing that really resonates with voters, whether they think you are connected to those districts and you understand what those people in those individual areas are dealing with.

Michael Pope 

I think a lot of people would hear what you just said, take the time to get to know the district, and they would say, well, yeah, I mean, like that's campaign 101. Of course, I took the time to get to know the district. Of course, I did the analysis, and of course, they're gonna win the number. What are those people missing?

Laura Stokes 

I think they think that money forges connection. And if you send mailers that's a connection, that's like gonna feel real and authentic to a voter. And I don't think it does. I also think people will fall back on more impersonal connections, like texting and mailers. And they don't realize that you really have to get out; a candidate should be doing 100 doors a day or more; the more you're out, the more people talk about it. And the more personal and face-to-face it is, the more people feel it. So if you're not out there doing that, if you're kind of relying on money to wash your name out to those shores, your reputation isn't resonating as much with people as you think it is. I think we're a little addicted to money in Virginia campaigns. I think we've forgotten that that, like the old-school campaigning model, worked because it made people feel connected to their elected leaders. And once you're in office, you can really rely on that kind of thing in terms of your constituent services. As we all know, constituent services make or break a politician if you don't have good constituent services. That's it, you're done. So, you know, that's your way of stating that it really is on the campaign trail.

Michael Pope 

All right. I really appreciate you taking the time to come to Pod Virginia and explain all of that. What is next for Laura Stokes? So you've won the Catherine Reed campaign; you won the Saddam Salim campaign. Congratulations. After the celebration is over, the clock turns, and we've got 2024. What's next for you?

Laura Stokes 

Well, I think my, I mean, this is a funny thing to announce after I've talked about DIY. Still, I believe my deputy campaign manager and I will be offering our services as consultants, maybe at a discount at this point. And I'm also going to go back to my roots and work in municipal government. I'm coming in as Chief of staff to Chris Belkin, who was the newly elected clerk of Court for the Fairfax County Circuit Court. I'm really excited about that because my home base is municipal government. So I'm looking forward to going back to that.

Michael Pope 

You mentioned a possible consulting firm; what's the name of the consulting firm?

Laura Stokes 

We haven't set up a name yet. We're still working on it. I think we're considering a different model and a different approach to consulting, and we're trying to decide how we offer that to people; definitely, campaign management is going to be part of what we do. My deputy campaign manager is incredible. Will be running some campaigns next year. And I think people will start to see more of our work out in Fairfax County. And we're hoping to offer a different way of doing things, possibly a little bit more affordable, because we really want to support first-time candidates, especially candidates who come from diverse backgrounds, people of color, and women who struggle to get that big heavy financing. We want to be able to support them and help them get elected in a way that's not going to break the bank. So you'll see us out there doing that next year.

Michael Pope 

All right, Slayer of Giants Laura Stokes, thanks for coming on pocket.

Laura Stokes 

Thank you so much. I'm going to put that on a business card right now.