Roughly 4,000 candidates were on the ballot Tuesday in primaries in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.

Every election teaches lessons about what actually works in political campaigns and conservative grassroots activism — whether the goal is:
a) turning out voters,
b) grassroots lobbying to pass legislation, or
c) registering conservatives to vote.

After watching dozens of races up close while our team knocked on 150,000 doors for more than a dozen candidates, the conclusions became even clearer.

The bottom line is simple:

1. Door-to-door canvassing started as early as possible remains the most effective activity.
2. Digital advertising is now dramatically more persuasive and strategic than traditional TV.
3. Direct mail still works — but only in moderation. Too much of it actually defeated at least two candidates with “friendly fire”

This piece is not primarily about specific campaigns, though our 36 team members were thrilled that more than two-thirds of the candidates they helped won Tuesday night. Instead, this is about what techniques consistently persuade residents to:

• vote for a candidate or issue,
• call legislators about legislation like our pro-life bill last year or our ActBlue legislation this year,
• or register to vote.

In 2024, candidates who backed our carefully worded pro-life legislation went 15-1 against candidates who opposed it:
https://wisconsinffc.com/2024/08/14/supporters-of-ab975-15-1-vs-opponents-in-gop-primaries/

This year, our ActBlue legislation was signed into law in Alabama during the first year our 501(c)(4) operated from Alabama.

Door-to-door is the marathon that wins all three types of campaigns.

The best example I saw this cycle started all the way back on September 26, when one candidate met with me and had us start canvassing more than six months before his primary to let us help gather feedback from constituents so he could become the best State Senator possible. That first day was like a rock hitting the middle of a lake — the circles just kept spreading wider and wider.

That effort eventually included the fourth generation of door-to-door campaigning in my own family. My daughter and her five-year-old twins live in his district. The twins started canvassing at about the age I had all nine of my children first go to knock doors with me. Before that my father had taken me door-to-door as a child in Richmond, Virginia. I still remember carrying letters asking neighbors to attend a city council meeting where my father introduced more than 300 residents we had recruited and the City Council listened to them and stopped a high rise building from being built. The only funny twist on this race was while the family was knocking I realized I was still registered to vote in that district – though I did not vote because I moved – but that is still my daughters district and as you can see the twins at least got vote with Mommy.

And it still works today.

My daughter and grandchildren’s State Senator may have had the most impressive race in the country Tuesday. Four years ago he won by one vote. This year he faced a tough opponent who had recently won a major election in the key county in the district.

But because he started early and spent months reviewing the feedback from constiteunts, he won in a shocking 69% to 31% landslide that may have been the most impressive showing by any of the 4,000 candidates on Tuesday’s ballots.

On the flip side, one candidate not only failed to organize any meaningful door-to-door operation, but actually publicly mocked the idea of knocking on doors (see the other Facebook photo above). Within a week of bragging online about not knocking on doors, he lost 73% to 27% — one of the worst showings in the country.

Long-term campaigning starts with personal contact. If candidates can knock doors themselves, great. If their jobs prevent that, then trusted supporters can still gather the information voters want candidates to hear and report it back.

This is one of two keys to every campaign, and the second is digital advertising, which is now the most important activity in the closing weeks of a campaign.

Many people who have not run campaigns recently simply do not realize how strategic digital advertising has become. Well-run digital campaigns can now activate voters several times faster than traditional TV buys used to.

The best digital operation I saw this cycle was once again run by my longtime friend PJ Wenzel of Ring Digital:
https://www.ring.digital/who-we-are

While I claim the first race as perhaps the most impressive showing in the country, I will get immediate argument from Holly Klucarnich who runs the national office of our 501c4 in Vestavia Hills, Alabama where PJ provided digital “air cover” in the House District, while Holly led the ground operation door-to-door.

Once PJ’s digital campaign began, our candidate’s favorability numbers jumped roughly 20 points in just weeks.

Obviously, the content mattered too. The candidate had a strong record as a prosecutor, built a successful business, and had a respected family active in local schools. But the speed with which digital advertising can now identify persuadable voters, gather feedback, and move numbers was remarkable.

Unless you are going to the door to answer the knock from one of our canvassers, almost everyone lives on their screens now.

Our opponent in that race had been elected for decades, had won his previous GOP primary by 50%, and had won his last general election by an astonishing 70% (in other words 84% to 14%). Noone in their right mind would have thought he could lose..

Yet our candidate held him to just 37.9% and won every voting location except the opponent’s home precinct — losing that box by only seven votes.

It felt a little like Walter Mondale losing 49 states but still carrying Minnesota because Ronald Reagan chose not to heavily contest Mondale’s home state.

Holly and her five children formed the core of our door-to-door effort there and also in the neighboring State Senate district where another major conservative victory occurred.

The lesson is simple:
Door-to-door wins races, and strong digital advertising amplifies it.

Direct mail still matters — but only in moderation.

In fact, this cycle excessive direct mail from outside groups directly cost two incumbents their seats.

At multiple doors every hour, canvassers heard voters say they were no longer supporting candidates because they had received “20 mailers in 20 days.”

The irony is that the candidates themselves had no control over the mail. The outside groups could not legally coordinate with campaigns, so candidates never knew when another piece that was supposedly going to help them was arriving or what it said until it showed up in their own mailbox.

Historically, voters often claimed to dislike negative advertising while still being persuaded by it. That happened with everything from Willie Horton to the Swift Boat ads.

But after decades in politics — and after speaking with dozens of canvassers who collectively knocked on roughly 150,000 doors — I genuinely believe the mail overload itself defeated these candidates, who lost by razor-thin margins of 52%-48% and 51%-49%.

During the hundreds of doors I knocked, voters joked about wallpapering rooms with the mailers. Others sarcastically said:
“I’ve heard of your candidate — except for the 20 mailers!”

But many voters truly had changed their votes.

Three things made this especially clear to me:

First, voters do not read disclaimer lines. They do not distinguish between 20 pieces from an outside group and three thoughtful pieces from the candidates themselves. By the end, many voters were simply throwing away all campaign mail — including the candidate’s legitimate closing argument.

Second, the same outside groups spent heavily on digital ads too, yet canvassers almost never heard complaints about the digital saturation. There is simply something visually irritating about giant stacks of political mail.

Third, several polls actually moved toward the candidate being attacked by the mail — something that almost never happens.

Those are the major takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries for anyone trying to:

• register voters,
• mobilize conservatives around legislation,
• or win elections.

There is plenty already being written about individual races, starting with my longtime friend from Virginia, Chris LaCivita, helping engineer another major victory with the defeat of Thomas Massie. The Swift Boat ads mentioned earlier were the first presidential-level campaign piece LaCivita produced back in 2004 that flat out won an election.

But for our purposes, the more important lesson is this:

Our team members working thousands of doors across multiple states were able to see firsthand what is working — and what is not — in modern grassroots politics.