Last fall, I did some interviews with my favorite, Campaigns & Elections Magazine. We had a great discussion on a variety of topics. Here are a few clips:
Nicole Schlinger, president of CampaignHQ, discusses down ballot benefits of using phones for Campaigns & Elections Magazine
Nicole Schlinger, President of CampaignHQ, discusses non-obvious party cues for Campaigns & Elections.
Check out the latest installment of our Fun with Phones videos where Morgan discusses how ConTEXT saved the say for the Indiana Republican Party on Election Day.
Back at the beginning of the year, I submitted a piece for Campaigns & Elections featuring my predictions for 2020.
Take a look into my crystal ball:
The 2020 cycle will go next-level starting in February with the Iowa Caucuses. President Trump’s campaign will swarm the state with surrogates, including many who are getting attention as 2024 GOP contenders. By the time June rolls around, 2024 hopefuls of the on both sides of the aisle will begin visiting Iowa, under the guise of “helping the ticket.” How serious they are can be determined by how many miles they are willing to drive from the Des Moines airport.
As we near Election Day in November, you’ll see a significant uptick in campaign spending on peer-to-peer texting. This new tech, which successful campaigns are now harnessing to their extreme advantage, will far eclipse robocalls. Campaigns that use P2P texting as a real-time conversation tool will see the greatest impact. This area remains a bit of the “wild west,” so rest assured, regulations are coming after the 2020 cycle.
You can read them all here – there are some pretty fun ones.
Thanks for reading,
Nicole Schlinger
If you’re new around here, you may not know that we’re fans of the Big Bang Theory. This past fall, we had a little fun with this at CHQ – you can read more about that here CHQ Fun With Phones or check out my video.
What I like best about this picture (aside from the world’s most beautiful dog) is the fact that this bag was NOT custom made for me. Someone at Frances Valentine thought, “there are enough women CEO’s, I think we can make some money by selling these.” What an amazing thing capitalism is.
Frances Valentine was founded by the original Kate Spade who in 1993 left her safe job with nothing but a dream and a bag almost exactly like this one.
In the fall of 2019, Campaigns & Elections magazine allowed me to write some articles discussing a variety of topics. Campaigns & Elections is a publication every campaign operative should be tracking. They constantly have insightful information and features from the very best in the business.
Right around Thanksgiving, they published another one of my pieces, Will Relational Organizing Prove a Breakthrough Tactic for the GOP in 2020?
Here’s a small clip:
Every cycle seems to bring about a fresh innovation that reaches voters differently or a new tech that helps a campaign run more efficiently. But one campaign principle that hasn’t seen much change over the years is how we utilize volunteers. I predict this is the next big thing for the GOP.
You can read the full article here
And don’t forget to subscribe to Campaigns & Elections to keep up on the biggest trends in politics.
Thanks for reading,
Nicole Schlinger
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I’ve been spending some time recounting the history of CampaignHQ in my updates about selling our original building.
I recently stumbled upon a couple of articles from The Des Moines Register, written by Jennifer Jacobs in 2011 that I thought would add more color to the storyline of what was happening for our organization during that time.
This article features Mitt Romney and his time in Iowa at that point.
Many of my friends are featured in that article – like David Kochel, Christopher Rants, Jill Latham-Ryan, Doug Gross, Gentry Collins and the list goes on.
This is a write-up Jennifer Jacobs did when I signed on with the Time Pawlenty campaign.
Speaking of Jennifer Jacobs, she is now the Senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. She is always breaking news and continues to be a fair and dedicated reporter. You can follow her Twitter feed for many updates.
Thanks for reading,
Nicole Schlinger
Election Night 2010. The last with our team under one roof at #700EastPleasant.
Jake Ketzner asked if I’d be in the room with Governor Branstad. They needed three people to man three computers to check election results. Basically, they needed a third body to hit “refresh” over and over again until Governor Branstad was announced the winner.
At first, I declined.The last time I’d been in the room with a candidate had been in 2006 with Bill Dix. Before that, 1996 with Mike Mahaffey. Frankly, my record of being next to a candidate while they watched election returns was bad.
Jeffrey Robert Boeyink told me if I was asked, I needed to be there.
So on Election Night 2010, I sat in a room and hit refresh over and over and over again alongside Jake and Lynn McRoberts. And lo and behold, Terry Branstad was our Governor again.
After being told I was a terrible fundraiser, after working hard and coming up short for Jim Nussle in 2006, I was finally been the Finance Director for a winning gubernatorial campaign.
Shortly after, we were brought on to help with the fundraising and ticketing for the Inaugural celebration. And while working for Governor Branstad’s campaign was a great experience, the Inauguration was not.
Our call center was growing. Our national clients that year included Tea Party Patriots and Americans United for Life.
It was time to leave Iowa fundraising behind.
We moved our call center into the new building at 109 West Front St in July 2011. The rest of us moved into the basement we now call home in October 2013.
The last Iowa fundraising event I attended was Governor Branstad’s birthday in November 2014.
And as you read this, I am no longer the owner of #700EastPleasant.
If we met in the early years of this century, you may wonder how an establishment Republican major donor fundraiser became a Tea Party conservative.
I was tired of staying in my lane while our candidates put up loss after loss, despite record fundraising. I was tired of Republicans saying they wanted limited government, and then voting for a lot more government. I was tired of being told “we only hire our friends” or “we don’t play in primaries” when all that got us was a lot more cookie cutter and a lot less authentic emotion.
So when I heard JennyBeth Martin for the first time in 2009, shortly after Rick Santelli’s CNBC rant, I knew this was the moment I’d been waiting for. (Not just a conservative, not just a fire breather, but a woman. Someone who looked like me.)
It was time to play full court press. Play like every day is the last play of the game. Let’s push people on their principles, even in primary campaigns, especially in primary campaigns.
At that particular moment, few people wanted to play in that niche. It seemed like a passing trend, and maybe a little dangerous.
Well, I wanted it. So CampaignHQ would be the Best Conservative Call Center in America.
***
2010 was a transition year for CHQ. Several key players who would build the foundation for what was to come joined us that year. Marlys De Witt Popma, Trevor Dodds, and Staci Shepard.
Marlys had been the Campaign Manager for a candidate for Governor who left the race shortly after Terry Branstad announced he was in. A key person on our staff had just quit and we were looking to fill the gap. But the notion that THE Marlys Popma would fill that gap (and more) #CHQ seemed outlandish.
Chad Foster and I giggled like little girls when I told him my big idea and read him the script of what I’d say when I called. But lo and behold in January 2010, she showed up for work and a new chapter began. When we hired Marlys, we didn’t have a place for her desk. So I moved out of my office into the vending machine closet, and my office was split in two so she’d have a space.
Trevor and Staci started on the call floor with amazing talent. We didn’t have assigned seats for everyone, and the day Trevor got a desk of his own (actually a $29.99 coffee cart from Wal-Mart) was a milestone. It was … as we like to call it… “Toilet Adjacent.”
#700EastPleasant was getting overcrowded.
