Granny Flats: A Case Study Introduction Raleigh functions as a City Council, with seven councilors and one mayor. Two councilors are elected at- large, along with the mayor. The other five seats have discrete districts. In the at-large race, the top two vote-getters win the seats. Candidates must capture a majority or else the runner-up can request a runoff. In the mayoral and district races, that means 50% + 1. In the at-large, each of the top two need 25% + 1. Before moving forward, outlined below are the various players featured in the election, including incumbents and challengers: Seat Incumbent(s) Challenger(s) Mary-Ann Baldwin Charles Francis Caroline Sullivan Mayor <Open Seat> Zainab Baloch Justin Sutton George Knott Jonathan Melton Nicole Stewart James Bledsoe At-Large (two seats) Russ Stephenson Portia Rochelle Carlie Spencer Patrick Buffkin District A <Open Seat> Joshua Bradley Sam Hershey District B David Cox Brian Fitzsimmons Shelia Alamin-Khashoggi District C Corey Branch Wanda Hunter Ricky Scott Saige Martin District D Kay Crowder Brittany Bryan April Parker District E Stef Mendell David Knight Triangle Government Alliance 2019 Though many chose to run, only a handful of the candidates listed above were serious, in the sense that they had an infrastructure, support within some faction of the community and financial means to compete. The competitive candidates included all the incumbents: Nicole Stewart, first elected to an At-Large seat in 2017. Russ Stephenson, first elected to an At-Large seat in 2005. David Cox, first elected to his District B seat in 2015. Corey Branch, first elected to his District C seat in 2015. Kay Crowder, first appointed to her District D seat in 2014 after her husband resigned for health reasons. Stef Mendell, first elected to her District E seat in 2017. Every district had serious contenders. In the open races, the top candidates were: Mayoral Mary-Ann Baldwin, former At-Large councilor. Charles Francis, attorney and former candidate for mayor in 2017. Caroline Sullivan, former Wake County commissioner. District A Patrick Buffkin, a local attorney. Sam Hershey, a local businessman. Triangle Government Alliance hired Targeted Persuasion to lead the independent expenditure campaign. IE groups cannot coordinate with political campaigns, so all of the work done on behalf of one candidate or against another was entirely unknown to the respective candidates until an advertisement made it online or a piece of direct mail was delivered to a postal address. Midway into 2019, the Triangle Apartment Association endorsed the following slate of candidates: Mayor: Mary-Ann Baldwin At-Large: Nicole Stewart & Jonathan Melton District A: Patrick Buffkin District B: Brian Fitzsimmons District C: Corey Branch District D: Saige Martin District E: David Knight In the 2019 municipal elections, Raleigh found itself at a crossroads. The popular, incumbent mayor declined to seek reelection. The incumbent council, earning the moniker of “The Council of No,” stood in direct opposition to many of the policy prescriptions that would allow Raleigh to maintain its growth Triangle Government Alliance 2019 from a sleepy town to the metropolitan center it is today. Early in the 2017 term, a faction of slow- growth councilors overtook the mayor’s prerogative to assign committee positions, offering a list of their own that quickly passed. If the loss of control in that early vote was not enough, the City Council would continue to divide sharply over big-ticket items, often voting factionally. Though all incumbents, save the Independent mayor, were nominally Democrats, their true division fell on a different spectrum: NIMBYs and YIMBYs. The former, the slow-growth faction, were opposed to the urban development that is necessary for growing cities to house the scores of new residents who immigrate daily. The acronym stands for Not In My Backyard, the idea that the preservation of neighborhoods and character overtook the imperative to tackle issues before the city. NIMBY councilors included Stef Mendell, David Cox, Russ Stephenson, Kay Crowder and an occasional fifth councilor, Dickie Thompson, who declined to seek reelection. On the other side were the YIMBYs, or Yes In My Backyard. This wing of voices proposes smart, dense growth. In lieu of urban sprawl, which pushes new residents into the suburbs and clogs transportation, they advocate for upzoning: increasing availability of housing in dense areas by building upwards. They’re already coming, so build it. The market principle is simple: as demand for housing increases, the only solution is to increase supply. By the tail end of the 2017-19 council term, divisions between the NIMBY faction and the rest of the city council had only deepened. In a statement outlining her decision against seeking reelection, incumbent Mayor Nancy McFarlane said that, “We used to fight together for the things we cared about. Now it just seems like we fight with each other. The mean politics of Twitter and social media is painful when it’s about you or someone you love. This social disease has exploded since I first ran for city council in 2007. Raleigh politics could use a reset.”1 With the political environment as fractured as it had been before at the local level, and with no mayoral incumbent to throw around political weight, the Raleigh City Council seemed poised for change. The Triangle Apartment Association, a group advocating for the rental housing industry, hired Targeted Persuasion to implement a campaign strategy for their independent expenditure group, Triangle Government Alliance (TGA), to help effect that change. Here’s how we did it. Informed by Data: Strategy and Building our Message The two most outspoken NIMBYs on council leading up to the 2019 contest were David Cox, in District B, and Stef Mendell, in District E. Cox first won his seat in 2015, while Mendell had just won in 2017. The most recent elections, in 2017, were the clear starting point to gauge the relative strength of these target candidates. 1 Raleigh News & Observer, 3/13/19 Triangle Government Alliance 2019 Councilor Cox seemed to have a solid base of support. In 2015, he ousted incumbent John Odom 53-47. Odom sought his old seat again in 2017 and lost resoundingly, 68-32. Cox clearly shored up support and was entrenched. Councilor Mendell presented a clearer opportunity for change. She captured her seat in 2017 by a razor- thin margin, upsetting the incumbent Bonner Gaylord, who ended election day with well over $100,000 in unspent campaign funds. With no candidate passing the 50% threshold, Gaylord was entitled to a runoff but declined. With these candidates in mind, we consulted polling data commissioned by TGA. The numbers showed clear room to message and reinforced the idea that 2019 was in fact a “change election.” Polling indicated that, while 53% of residents approved of the work done by city council, 43% thought it was time to elect new people to 33% saying all deserved reelection. Given the relative satisfaction with the council as a whole, we developed a messaging strategy to define Councilors Cox and Mendell, with a specific focus on the weaker incumbent, Mendell. While a loud minority of 33% fit well into the NIMBY category, and had their champions in Cox and Mendell, further analysis of polling showed clear room for movement: • 49%, a plurality, would be more likely to vote for a candidate that supported higher density; • 75% would be more likely to vote for a candidate that supported walkable urban development; • 84% supported the construction of more housing that could be afforded by middle class families; • 77% supported the construction of more housing that could be afforded by low income families; Triangle Government Alliance 2019 It became clear that, for wide sets of Raleigh voters, the policies enacted by the “Council of No” were anathema to the priorities they offered to pollsters. Given the anemic turnout of municipal elections, we set about creating a program that would revive interest and give voice to the issues we knew would resonate with voters after reviewing the data. A catchy and quirky character was developed: Granny Flats. One of the issues facing Raleigh was, and is, housing affordability. The City Council implemented stringent regulation on the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units, also known as a granny flat. It’s a small building adjacent to the main house where family members, like a mother-in-law, might stay. Many people use the structures to bolster their income, renting them out over short amounts of time. This strict policy, which made construction of new granny flats nearly impossible, was a clear way to personify the issues. An a la carte menu of character options was created to provide multiple characteristics for the Granny Flats actress. It was important to make the character relatable for the people of Raleigh whom we hoped to persuade. We ensured that the character fit with the environment she was set to inhabit. We landed on a character outline and moved forward with recruiting an actress who could embody the figure. After selecting the actress, a photo shoot was commissioned to ensure plenty of options were available when going to produce content for social media. Using intuition and backing it by polling data, we crafted messaging and gave voice to the issues facing Raleigh. Granny Flats herself was able to speak on the issue of granny flats, housing affordability, transportation – anything that could help move the needle in the direction of our preferred candidates and put the opposition on the defensive. Online Messaging Speaking to voters in order to persuade them has become extremely cost-efficient via digital targeting. We can find voters based off of myriad characteristics, like proclivity to vote, political leaning, issues they find important – any indicators online that one may think, and vote, in a certain way.