Coronavirus Pandemic Forcing Candidates, Campaigns to Pivot

The coronavirus pandemic has upended life as we knew it, forcing us to figure out new ways to live, work and play. Politics is no different, as candidates and campaigns are trying to reinvent themselves, too.

Take Sepi Shyne. She announced she was running for the West Hollywood City Council with a video message back in November that proclaimed she was running on "people power."

There’s never been a woman of color on the West Hollywood City Council, and Shyne, whose family fled Iran when she was 5, is hoping to become the first. In early March, she had a fundraiser at her mom’s place in San Jose. And that’s when she realized everything was about to change.

"Some people were scared to come, and the flights got canceled that night," Shyne said. "We were supposed to leave after the fundraiser but we ended up having to take a rental car, getting home at four in the morning."

Campaigns have always thrived on people — volunteers making phone calls and knocking on doors. Candidate meet and greets in living rooms, handshakes, selfies and rallies, are all pretty much forbidden right now. So with a momentous election just a few months away, the political world is racing to meet the new reality.

For the past few weeks, dozens of women running for office across the country have tuned into a five-part webinar called Campaigning Through Crisis. It’s put on by Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office.

"I can't imagine how overwhelming it is to be a candidate right now," said Jill Barkley Roy, the webinar facilitator. "So allowing them to get together in a group setting like this and share advice and tips and just, you know, encouragement, is really important."

Beyond the encouragement though, Roy says with the political environment so dramatically changed, she urges the candidates to get back to basics.

"And that they remember that the reason that they ran for office in the first place is still true and that there's probably new reasons now for why they need to continue to campaign, continue to stay in this race and win," Roy said.

A’shanti Gholar, president of Emerge America, says the idea for the Campaigning Through Crisis series came from one of their graduates, San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

"So when she started implementing social distancing, banning large gatherings, that's when we knew that things were going to change," Gholar said. "So, she actually helped us with knowing that we had to pivot very early."

That pivot includes recalculating the number of votes a candidate needs to win their race and where those votes will come from. In the current environment, that could require number crunching.

"If you have a lot of college students in your district and all of those college students are gone because campuses are shut down, how are you recalculating your win number?" said Gholar of just one example of the new campaign reality.

Conventional wisdom holds that this new political environment favors incumbents, those with higher name recognition and deeper donor bases. So Gholar says challengers and first-time candidates have to bring their A-game now.

"Everyone has had to shift and learn and that this is a really good time to be innovative and come up with new ideas and show people why you're the perfect candidate," she said.

For Shyne, in West Hollywood, that’s meant pivoting from asking voters for support — to supporting voters.

"We started a group called WeHo Neighbors Helping Neighbors. We created a Facebook page and Instagram and Twitter," Shyne said. "I've really just done it to help and be of service. I think it's important for people, anyone who is especially running to be a public servant, to show what type of leader they will be once they're in office by who they are now."

Using social media, she now has a small army of volunteers helping constituents survive the pandemic — sort of like how an elected official would. Shyne and other candidates like her hope that being there for their community in a crisis will help them win their election come November.