The Future of Oppo: Part 1
But first, how did we get here?
Guest Columnist: Geoff Embler (geoff@concentricpa.com)
Note: These are my final posts as your guest columnist for June. Thank you to all the loyal Oppo File readers for your feedback, comments and, most of all, reading. It’s been an absolute blast to do this. Joe will be back next week from an undisclosed location, with his take on the first presidential debate and what it revealed about the Trump/Biden oppo research operations.
I often contemplate what the future of opposition research will look like. The development of new technologies and a massive change in the media landscape have been the most significant forces at play so far in my career. I thought it would be helpful and informative to find out what others in the business thought, so I reached out to a large group spanning the political spectrum to share their observations. Some folks wished to remain anonymous and thus have been given codenames; not the most clever codenames, I'll admit, but ones that will do the job.
Our Panel Of Experts
Pat Dennis: Dennis is the president of American Bridge 21st Century, the Democratic party’s largest research, tracking, and rapid response operation.
Christina Reynolds: Reynolds is the Senior Vice President for Communications and Content at EMILY’s List and has decades of experience in communications and research. She led communications, rapid response, and research efforts for the Clinton and Obama campaigns, in the Obama administration, and at party committees.
Benjamin Jones: Jones is the CEO and a partner at Jones Mandel, a Democratic opposition research firm. Jones has over 28 years of experience working with political campaigns, issue groups, and corporations.
Democrat 1: Democrat 1 is a senior researcher at a leading progressive political group.
Ryan Powers: Powers is the research director for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
Jack Stukel: Stukel is the research director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).
Christina Van Horn: Van Horn owns the research firm Crimson Street Strategies, where she works with campaigns, party committees, and public affairs firms. She has been doing opposition research for over a decade and ran the presidential team at the Republican opposition research firm America Rising.
Republican 1: Republican 1 is a veteran opposition researcher with more than 20 years of experience working for campaigns, companies, and in the public affairs space. They preferred to remain on background.
Republican 2: Republican 2 is another veteran opposition researcher with over 20 years of experience. They also preferred to remain on background.
What Has Changed?
I first asked our panel what has changed in opposition research in the past 5 to 10 years.
The Effect Of Technology
Technology has had a big impact during my career in opposition research. For example:
When I started in the late 1990s, field research was its own subdiscipline because it required specific skills to get copies of public records that are now easily available online.
Thanks to social media, there is so much more content to go through.
As the Facebook, Google etc. hollowed-out local news as a business that meant fewer opportunities to pitch oppo to credible news outlets.
Let’s go to the panel.
Republican 1 thinks opposition research has become less hands-on:
“How much more remote it's gotten over time. You used to have to be in the field. You used to have to interact with court employees and charm old ladies in government offices. And know how to use microfiche. So much is online now. There was a very visceral component to doing field oppo. You were getting your hands dirty and had people skills to get it done.”
Stukel agreed that more information is available online now:
“The patchwork of municipal, state, and federal records databases has slowly become more and more digitized. It is still by no means easy or intuitive to gather public records from government agencies. But, these days, a researcher can usually just search through old court records in an online repository instead of being forced to travel out to a county clerk’s office and squint at a microfiche reader in the basement for days on end.”
Democrat 1 said technology, like the note-taking and transcription generative AI service Otter.ai, enables oppo researchers to cover more ground, more quickly:
“Thorough research is tedious, but technology helps speed things up. Otter.ai for transcripts, video, is a game changer!”
Dennis said the decline of local news and the rise of social media as entertainment has made it harder to reach voters:
“The fragmentation of media attention, the decline of local news consumption, and the rise of social media as a passive entertainment mechanism have made it increasingly difficult to actually reach the voters – the persuadable people who live in the particular places we care about – with important political information.”
Dennis said that the decline in local news means opposition researchers are now the de facto watchdogs:
“We've gone from a de facto watchdog to, in many cases, the de facto watchdog. This role has driven us to become more professional, more efficient, and more effective.”
Deep Dives And Video Are Key
Stukel said video content makes for more effective hits because voters see damning statements come out of a candidate's mouth:
“Video as a medium has become ubiquitous. We have more ways than ever to consume short clips, from digital ads to cable news to X and TikTok – and most of the time, all you have to do is open your phone to see them. On top of that, video content is just more effective: when voters see and hear damning statements coming from the candidate’s own mouth, it just hits different than a news story or a mailer.”
Van Horn said the value of deeper dives on candidates beyond the standard "votes and quotes" has grown exponentially and agreed that video is critical:
“I would say over the past 5-10 years, the value of oppo outside just ‘votes and quotes’ has increased exponentially as voters are looking for information about what candidates have done and not just what they have said. In addition to deeper dives, the value of video has gone up as voters are more likely to get news and engage in content on social media.”
There is the saying in opposition research that “if it’s not on video, it didn’t happen.” This is even more true today because video consumption is so widespread. We’ve gotten used to seeing everything on video. That’s made the dry, text-based “votes and quotes” research not resonate like it used to.
Social Media Gives - And Takes
Republican 1 said social media has fundamentally changed opposition research:
“Social media has added a completely different dimension to what we do. It seems like it's been around for a long time, but it really hasn't.”
Dennis said the development of algorithmic-based information distribution, like that on social media platforms, has shifted toward voters only seeing what they want to see:
“The past decade (some would say two decades) has seen a huge shift in the earned media environment. We've shifted from a world with very strong geographically-based information distribution — your local papers, your local TV news networks — to one driven far more by algorithmic-based information distribution. Information is fed to people who have demonstrated a preference for that kind of content. You see what you want to see.”
Reynolds said the growth of social media, including newsletters, has made it easier to circulate oppo without a media filter:
“The prevalence of social media (and newsletters, etc) means it's easier to get oppo out into the world and allows us to do it directly in many cases, without any media filter.”
Jones agreed that social media makes it easier to get oppo into the bloodstream of a race:
“The barrier of entry to get your research out has changed. When the only way to break a story was to provide a research hit to a reporter, they had to verify facts and get the story past their experienced editors. The barrier to enter the narrative/bloodstream of a race is much easier to cross. And at times, especially if using X, you can drive news from the main news organizations instead of convincing them to cover a topic.”
Stukel said social media platforms have become less transparent, taking away opportunities to find hits:
“There’s social media, which is trending in a less transparent direction. As users have become more concerned with privacy (or being canceled), social media platforms (especially Facebook) have made it more difficult for third parties to search old posts and activity. X’s decision to make likes private is a good example of this – problematic likes used to be a classic oppo hit.”
Social media has led to voters building their own worlds of information. Now the challenge for the researcher is to find information that can break through the wall and into that space. Social media created a free and unmediated distribution system for oppo that didn’t exist before. It also led to the creation of more content that could contain hits.
A Higher Tolerance For Hits
Powers said it's more difficult these days to find a hit that would end candidate's campaign:
“The days of a ‘silver bullet’ research hit ending a candidate’s campaign are far more rare today than it was a decade ago.”
Republican 2 said the breakdown in public discourse has obliterated the threshold of what can now be considered a hit:
“The complete breakdown of the public discourse has obliterated the threshold for what constitutes a research ‘hit’ in many cases. Ten years ago, behaviors or actions that would have been disqualifying for a political candidate are now just shrugged off by a lot of voters.”
Jones said the consequences of a campaign being fact-checked by a news organization are much lower now because the volume of noise drowns out non-partisan sources:
“The repercussions for an online fact check are much lower than they used to be. Because of the volume/noise of opinions and access to information those reputable, non-partisan sources are drowned out.”
Hits definitely aren’t what they used to be. Especially if an incumbent is entrenched in a safe district. Voters have seen so many hits and what they will accept has changed to such a degree that it takes something really big to take a candidate down.
More Dynamic
Powers said there is now a nearly limitless amount of information available to researchers, and the research process is a continuous one that requires ongoing coordination with all components of a campaign:
“The amount of information and content available for a researcher to review on any given candidate is nearly limitless, which makes communication and coordination with other aspects of a campaign (comms, political, etc.) far more critical so that folks are spending precious bandwidth and resources on things that matter. In the past, it was far easier for research to be siloed, given it’s marching orders, and then getting a finished product. Now it’s more of a fluid situation that is constantly evolving over the course of a campaign cycle.”
Jones said the volume of information to sift through means there’s now an even greater need for professional researchers to sort fact from fiction:
“Despite the amazing and rapid proliferation of records online and our society’s ‘just Google that’ mentality, with info at your fingertips, we have found that campaigns have a greater need to have professionals separate fact from fiction to help create meaningful messages.”
Dennis told me American Bridge had to streamline, invest in tools, and improve training to adapt to ever-changing political and media dynamics:
“Over the past ten years, we've streamlined our operations, invested in better tools, improved how we train researchers, and improved our ability to understand local political landscapes, even from afar.”
There’s always something new now, such as a new social media platform or new technology to implement. It’s a dynamic environment in which you have to adapt or die as a professional.
Money, It’s A Gas
Jones said campaigns are paying more for high-quality research and longer engagements with research teams:
“Campaigns are paying more money for high quality research. As campaign price tags have accelerated their ability to pay for higher quality and a dedicated team through Election Day. This marks a major change for the better for campaign research professionals. “
But Republican 1 argued political oppo is still underpaid:
“People are getting more accustomed to paying more for research. But political oppo is still underpaid.”
More money and more bodies have been thrown at opposition research over the last several cycles. But opposition research still doesn’t get the same money as other campaign functions, even though many of those functions are fueled by the research.
In Part 2: What changes do our panelists see in the years ahead?
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Almost sad that nobody mentioned the demise of the fax machine. Tsk.,