Should You Give to Long-shot Candidates? And If So, Why and When?
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This week, Colin Allred — an NFL linebacker turned Texas Democratic congressman — announced he is running for the U.S. Senate against Ted Cruz.
Can Allred win? Maybe, but it’s definitely a long shot. Gov. Greg Abbott beat Beto O’Rourke last year by 11 points, while Senator John Cornyn won his Senate race in 2020 by 9.4 points. In other words, Texas is still a red state and I think Allred is nuts to give up a safe House seat for a likely kamikaze mission.
On the other hand…
Texas is the grand prize on an electoral battlefield that’s evolving fast, thanks to demographic change and progressive organizing. If and when Democrats flip this state blue, we’ll have a lock on the White House and two more seats in the Senate, as I explore in my blog series “Paths to a Democratic Supermajority.”
Things are trending our way. GOP win margins have been steadily shrinking as the state changes — Abbott won his first race for governor by 30 points! A 2022 memo by the Center for Voter Information points out that "Nearly three out of four Texans in the citizen voting-age population (CVAP) are a member of the New American Majority." The memo notes further that only 38% of CVAP people of color in Texas are registered to vote.
If donors invest serious money in Texas, we can accelerate the transformation of the state’s political landscape. But is backing Allred’s campaign a good way to do that? I’m skeptical.
No shortcuts
Democratic donors tend to swoon over candidates like O’Rourke or Jaime Harrison that they think can remake the electoral math of a red state. That’s a backward theory of change. Politics works in the opposite way: First, you change the electorate and then you win elections.
Stacey Abrams didn’t run for governor of Georgia in 2010 or 2014. She ran in 2018, after years of patient investment in grassroots organizing to capitalize on the state’s changing demographics.
If donors want to flip Texas, they should stop looking for shortcuts and start investing the kind of big money needed to scale progressive infrastructure across the nation’s second-most populous state. One good place to start is by giving to the Movement Voter Project’s Texas fund, which channels funds to many of the state’s leading progressive electoral groups.
When to take a chance
I’ve focused so far on Texas, but versions of this same dilemma — whether to invest in long-shot candidates — emerge every election cycle. I’m not saying never to invest in such candidates, but do consider a few guidelines for evaluating these situations. Giving for longshot candidates can make sense when:
They’re building a movement. Donors sank $450 million into Sen. Bernie Sanders’ two losing presidential bids — and if you ask me, got a great return on their investment, with Sanders turbocharging a progressive movement that’s helped transform U.S. politics. Down-ballot candidates can help play the same role in their cities or states. (This idea is key to the Working Families Party strategy.)
They seek to diversify Democratic Party leadership. Nearly half of Democratic voters are nonwhite and some 60% are women. But that electorate isn’t reflected in who holds office. It’s important that candidates working to change this can mount viable campaigns.
They can increase Democratic turnout or revive the party’s brand. I’m a fan of the organization Contest Every Race, which works to field Democratic candidates in red rural areas with the goal of making the party competitive again in these places. Even if these candidates lose, they can show voters that Democrats don’t have horns and boost turnout that helps candidates up the ballot.
It’s part of a balanced giving portfolio. If you’re giving for any of the above reasons, it should be part of a balanced set of investments — with the lion’s share going to safer bets.
Coming back to Colin Allred’s campaign, you can see the logic for backing his campaign in light of the above criteria. As always, though, we have to think about tradeoffs and priorities. Multiple Senate races — along with control of that chamber — may be decided next year by razor-thin margins. How are we going to feel next November if, say, Jacky Rosen loses in Nevada by a few thousand votes even as donors put $70 million into a campaign that Allred loses by 10 points?
Maybe we’ll feel the way I felt after last year’s election when donors burned $56 million on Tim Ryan’s doomed campaign and yet lost the House by 6,600 votes spread across five districts as under-financed Democratic candidates fell just short in winnable races. We also lost a very close Senate race in Wisconsin in part because Mandela Barnes was outspent by 50% by Ron Johnson. He lost by just one point.
And no, I’m not engaged in Monday morning quarterbacking. The misallocation of resources by Democratic donors has become a predictable fixture of recent election cycles. I get the reasons that this happens. But it’s got to stop.
