How the Vegas mayor's race was won

Our initial polling told us this wasn't going to be a race we could just walk in.  We were at 45 percent and Stavros was at 20 percent, but amazingly 40 percent of voters had never heard of Stavros Anthony.  However, whenever an incumbent is under 50 percent you know you have some work to do.  What the polling also told us though was that the mayor was still very popular and her favorables were still very high, but the stadium issue was holding voters back.  

 

Given some of the polling on the stadium issue, we knew the economic argument could be won and so we knew that drawing the connection between the projects that have been spurred on by the Goodmans downtown and the economic recovery was how we had to lead off the race and hence, our first TV spot was born.  

 

However, we also knew that this was going to be a race where our field operation was going to be absolutely crucial to getting a few extra points and creating a margin.  That's why we brought in Billy Rogers and his team.  Knowing that Anthony was going to be running a very partisan race, one of the first things we did with the field is create an expansion universe and we started talking to non municipal voting history Democrats, especially Democrats who voted in the 2014 general.  We knew that if you made that election as a Democrat, you were a true believer.  And the polling told us we had much more room to grow with Democrats than Republicans.  We can analyze this better after the statement of vote comes out, but adding this expansion universe was a key move in our victory as evidenced by the size of the gap in TO between D's and R's, especially as compared to the 2014 General. 

 

Having been involved in a race against Anthony in 2009 when he won in large part based on his opposition to the new City Hall, I knew that he was going to make the mistake of forming his whole campaign around the single issue of the soccer stadium.  It worked for him before and he was hoping it would work again.  However, this created an opportunity to make his greatest strength his biggest weakness.  We noticed a pattern starting to develop when he couldn't clearly articulate new ideas or other items besides the stadium that he disagreed with Mayor Goodman on.  The breakthrough came on your show when he said "he isn't the kind of person who says he has the idea" when pressed for specifics.  We cut that into a TV spot the VERY next day after writing the spot until midnight after we saw the show.  And if the race had gone to a general, we would have continued that theme with the clip from the the Sun City debate of him telling you that he would "have to get back to you on that" when asked to name three specifics on items he disagreed with Mayor Goodman on besides the stadium. 

 

However the moves that ultimately closed this race out came at the beginning of early vote.  We had been executing our campaign on TV, in the mailbox, and at the doors and the phones.  But when we got our first few days of exit polling back, we knew we had a problem.  The race was close and after Sun City's first voting site concluded, we were actually down a few points in our exit polling.  We quickly pulled it back to even when the voting sites moved around the city, but we knew we had to put the foot on the gas.  

 

We revised the negative TV spot to include some quotes from the RJ and then pumped up our final week of TV to $100,000...he only placed about $35,000.  Then, we delivered our silver bullet.  We knew from our oppo research and our polling that Stavros had some tea party bonafides that were incredibly damaging with Democrats.  And when we saw that we were not performing as well with Democrats as he was with Republicans, it was time to execute the plan. So with Billy Rogers leading the charge on producing the pieces, we wrote 4 attack pieces around the tea party theme and dropped all 4 of them over a 6 day period, all first class postage.  The results were devastating.  We went from attracting 58% of the Democratic vote to grabbing 75%!!! at the conclusion of early vote....which is what helped us break away from the exit polling tie to being up three 49% to 46% at the conclusion of early vote.  

 

Also during this time we had really been working hard to rally the labor community, with Greg Esposito a key piece of that effort.  We got Culinary fully engaged, and they gave us 30 volunteer bodies on several occasions during early vote.  The Laborers also gave us 8 volunteers bodies. So while we were getting to Democrats on the air through TV and mail, we were getting them on the ground with a massive paid/volunteer field effort of almost 50 strong.   

 

We knew that we were only going to grow our lead on election day given how the end of EV had broken and what we were doing from a GOTVperspective....we knocked on almost 17,000 doors election weekend.  So, when EV posted and we were at 51.5%, I knew it was going to be over.  Of course, the final result exceeded even my expectations, especially because our modeling of the polling showed us with the ability to win the race with 53% on the high end.  We bested that by a few points even.  Best win of my life considering I was fully preparing for a general midway through early vote.  

 

Can't say enough about how well everyone on this team performed and had a hand in the victory, especially Tom Letizia.  He was a force of nature on this race that really pushed us all 1,000 MPH.  The reality is that without some of the moves we made in the final week, this could have very well gone to a general.