Sarah Iannarone ran an insurgent campaign for Mayor of Portland, Oregon. Iannarone – who had never held elected office – forced a runoff in May 2020, winning second place with just 24% of the vote after a grueling and crowded primary with 19 candidates. I became her campaign’s Communications Director for the General Election at the end of June. The challenge of the campaign was to redefine Sarah – seen publicly as an outsider and a bomb-throwing firebrand – as a viable progressive alternative.

I laid out and executed a three-phase communication plan for the campaign. Phase 1 used campaign communications to define the incumbent, Sarah’s opponent, as out-of-touch with Portland’s values. The capstone event in this phase was The State of Our Portland, a twenty-minute televised speech for candidate Iannarone to identify the incumbent as the source of Portland’s ills. I wrote the speech in its entirety.

Phase 2 of the plan, Meet Sarah, was to elevate Sarah as a relatable Portlander who could be trusted to stand with the community. We switched campaign emails to the “Dear Portland” format, and took a more informal tone that emphasized Sarah’s values and determination. Concurrently, we sought and received endorsements from prominent community leaders, to beat back the idea that Sarah was an outsider or in some way unfit for public office. Campaign social media focused on images of Sarah the person, particularly images of Sarah in relatable and memorable situations – on Zoom meetings, wearing a mask in the pandemic, sporting a gas mask during historic wildfires, and standing with the Wall of Moms when Donald Trump sent federal police to attack Portland demonstrators.

Select Phase 2 Emails:

August 11 – Don’t let them scare you

August 19 – I’m not pulling punches

September 1 – You own a piece of this campaign

September 15 – Tactical optimism can beat the status quo

Select Phase 2 Images:

Phase 3 of the communications plan – concurrent with the most public attention paid to the race – was drawing attention to Sarah’s detailed and forward-thinking plans for the city – The Plan for Progress. Press generated in this phase focused on Sarah’s intention to create a Guaranteed Basic Income pilot program, selected in the final phase out of economic necessity during the COVID pandemic, and equally to display detailed progressive policy chops. I conceived of, and worked collaboratively with the campaign team to produce, a First 100 Days plan foreshadowing to voters that Sarah was ready not just to make plans, but to implement them. And I worked directly with the New York Times to favorably influence coverage of our race. I also coached the candidate through approximately ten debate performances, which were solid messaging wins for the campaign.

Willamette Week – New OPB Poll Shows Mayor’s Race Has Tightened. It’s Now a Toss-Up With Many Undecided.

With many Portland voters having already received their ballots for the Nov. 3 election, the campaigns are working to find ways to communicate with voters in a socially distant environment where spiking rates of COVID-19 infection make door-knocking and face-to-face voter contact untenable.

Iannarone today released details of a pilot guaranteed basic income project she’d like to launch if elected: She’d give $1,000 a month for a year to “low-income Black mothers.” The program would cost about $1.8 million and put into practice a concept presidential candidate Andrew Yang highlighted in his campaign but that has been around for centuries.

“Guaranteed basic income is an idea whose time has come,” Iannarone said in a statement. “The wealth inequality revealed by the pandemic has led to massively increased support for a common-sense policy to alleviate poverty through direct aid. While Portland can’t currently give every deserving low-income person the money they need to escape poverty, I am confident we can direct funds to a group who will achieve better outcomes, as we’ve seen in other cities.”

https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/10/16/new-opb-poll-shows-mayors-race-has-tightened-now-a-toss-up-with-many-undecided/

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This introduction I wrote for the campaign website was the final plank we revealed in the Plan for Progress:

The New York Times – Opinion: Police Reform Is on the Ballot

As recently as May, Mr. Wheeler seemed popular and headed for certain re-election. During the city’s nonpartisan primary, he garnered about twice as many votes as his closest challenger, Sarah Iannarone, and almost avoided a runoff. But after a summer marked by protests, riots, and vigilantism, a recent poll shows him neck-and-neck with Ms. Iannarone, a self-described antifascist who has never held elective office. Many young people are excited about Ms. Iannarone, who has pledged to break with tradition and give the police portfolio to Portland’s city commissioner, Jo Ann Hardesty. Ms. Hardesty, a Black woman who has worked on police reform for decades and won citywide election in 2018, has put forward practical proposals to improve public safety, including using trained mental health professionals instead of the police to handle emergency calls involving mental illness and homelessness.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/police-reform-local-elections.html

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The campaign did not achieve its ultimate goal of unseating an incumbent Mayor during the coronavirus pandemic, racial justice uprising, raging wildfires, and economic downturn. Sarah faced unprecedented opposition from a write-in spoiler candidate which allowed the incumbent to ultimately win re-election with just 47% of the vote. Sarah secured 41%, just 19,000 votes less than her opponent, an improvement of 17% over her primary performance. But our work won national media attention, statewide significance, and ultimately compelled 40% of Portland voters – 90,000 of whom voted for Sarah for the first time – to view our candidate as a viable progressive elected official. Many of the policies the campaign advanced have gained traction as independent ballot measures proposed for the future. And Sarah, no longer a candidate herself, has launched a new PAC to carry forward the narratives and policies of the campaign through future political action. The campaign was lost, but the fight to enact our progressive values continues.