The Candidate
After Tish James assumed Eric Schneiderman's seat as Attorney General, the Public Advocate's seat was vacated and a 12-day mad dash ensued to get on the ballot. Former City Councilwoman and Speaker of the City council Melissa Mark-Viverito entered that race with a lot of support and a lot of name recognition by her side. The problem was, no one knows what the Public Advocate is or does, and more importantly nobody even knew there was a special election happening.
Our Mission
Running on a platform that would revolve around fixing the MTA and continuing her progressive agenda as Speaker of the Council, it seemed easy to convince people to sign to get a progressive woman of color on the ballot especially with her name recognition. However, we realized during the planning phase of this operation that voter fatigue from an intense 2018 cycle, bad weather, and almost 30 other candidates would make this an incredibly brutal 12 days.
Results
Our team recruited and trained canvasser a month in advance and trained them outdoors in the cold to simulate what it would be like during those 12 critical days. We overstaffed to account for the high turnover we knew would come with the brutal weather and the nature of the job, especially dealing with some of the rudest commuters in the country.