Independent Expenditure Campaigns

When planning for an independent expenditure, it’s critical to avoid common mistakes that can drain your budget or even backfire. A strong independent expenditure program should be strategic, compliant with the law, and designed to complement–not harm–your favored candidate. 

Here are three areas to look out for to set yourself and your independent expenditure up for success. 

When it comes to your independent expenditure strategy, earned media doesn’t need to be your enemy, it can be your friend. Earned media can actually help you raise awareness for your independent expenditure campaign and improve engagement with your campaign amongst the general public. Whether you attract positive or negative attention, well, that’s on you!

While they share a number of similarities, independent expenditure mail and candidate campaign mail also have quite a few differences. Both independent expenditure mail and candidate campaign mail may have the same primary goal (i.e., getting a candidate elected), but the means that they use to get there can vary.

What information independent expenditure (IE) campaigns can use depends on who you ask, and what set of laws you’re covered by. In recent years, you may have seen candidate campaigns that appear to bend over backward to make photos and b-roll videos publicly available on their website (a classic example of this being “McConnelling,” which went viral in 2014). Why? What are voters going to do with all this stuff? Well, it turns out that in most cases, the audience isn’t the run-of-the-mill voter at all. These campaigns may instead be trying to make information publicly available for independent expenditure campaigns to use.

We wanted to answer some basic independent expenditure frequently asked questions (FAQs). From simply defining what an independent expenditure (aka IE) is to discussing contribution limits, this article aims to provide background and clarity on IEs and how they work.

Here at The Campaign Workshop, we have written a lot about independent expenditure strategy in the past, but the key takeaways never change:

1. Know your goals.
2. Do no harm.
3. Don’t duplicate efforts.

All campaigns, including independent expenditures, should spend time creating a written strategy statement during the beginning of the campaign planning process. The strategy statement should clearly lay out a path to victory (or how to achieve the campaign’s goals) and act as the campaign’s north star. Keep the strategy statement in mind when making major campaign decisions involving its people, time and money. Every effort the independent expenditure is making should fit in with the strategy statement.