The power of Wheel of Fortune

You simply wouldn’t believe

I’m going to be very candid with you about something that campaigns almost never talk about openly. 

So here we go - but fair warning:

Some of this is going to sound strange, and some of this you’re not going to like, but it’s all true.

---

So, I’m running for Attorney General in North Carolina and we just had a couple polls come back.

One had us up a little, one had us down a little - but that’s not the interesting part.

What’s interesting is that, roughly 70 days from the election, the numbers show that my opponent and I do not exist to the majority of voters in the state. Well over half of them don’t know my name or his.

This is to be expected. The only reason people know him outside of his district is because he wrote the infamous “bathroom bill” that got a lot of media attention a few years ago - if you’re from North Carolina, you remember it - and the only reason people know me outside of my district is these emails and my social media use.

So the big question for the rest of the campaign is: How do I reach all those voters who don’t know me yet?

Well, it won’t be through social media. I’m at over 400 million views for my weekly videos (here’s the most recent one), so if they don’t know me that way yet, they’re probably not going to. As it turns out, for as popular as social media has become, there’s still a ceiling to how many people you can reach there - and it’s lower than you think.

And it won’t be through the news. Both my opponent and I have received fairly extensive press coverage over the years, and you know who that reaches? People who follow politics. Short of true saturation coverage due to some extreme event, the occasional articles about our race simply aren’t going to reach anyone who doesn’t already know we exist. Again, a pretty low ceiling.

Which means, at this stage of the campaign, there is one - and only one - way to introduce myself to millions of voters in North Carolina:

Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Law & Order, N.C.I.S., Family Feud, Chicago Fire, Judge Judy, etc. 

The commercials that run on big television shows - like those - are the single biggest way to reach new voters at the scale you need to have an impact on an election.

For those of you thinking, “That’s impossible. There’s no way that many people still get their political information from political commercials,” just keep in mind: You are currently reading a longform piece of writing from an elected official. By definition, you are the exception. Most people simply would not do the thing you are doing right now.

What I’ve learned from past campaigns is that the first day you start running commercials, it feels like your whole campaign lights up. You start hearing about it from everyone. It’s nuts. I’ve been through it more than once, and I’m telling you, them’s the facts.

So for everyone who is saying, “No, Jeff, c’mon, there must be a better way,” my humble response is, “Trust me, there is not.”

And here’s how much it costs:

For me to run one ad for a standard 10-day period across North Carolina, it will cost about $2 million. 

Just to be clear: 1 ad = $2 million.

Which means, I don’t get to run many ads. Very few.

So I have to take the 25 things I’d like to talk about with voters and shrink that way, way down.

And that’s painful, but I can only afford to convey a few pieces of information to the electorate - and the first one has to be, “I’m Jeff Jackson and I’m running for Attorney General.”

After that, everything becomes a tough choice.

I served with the army in Afghanistan and am currently a Major in the National Guard - do we mention that? 

I’d like to! But wait, then I don’t have time to talk about working as a prosecutor, and I’m running for Attorney General, so I really should… but then again, there are 700,000 veterans in North Carolina, so I’d really like to mention my service… but also, we have to talk about issues, so how many of those can we fit? Can we do an ad just on political corruption, or one just on fentanyl, or identity theft, or do we have to combine them so we can talk about more than one… and how would that work in 30 seconds? 

And then there’s my opponent. He wrote the infamous “bathroom bill” that nuked our state’s business climate for a year until it was repealed, says he wants to “smash the F.B.I. into a million pieces,” voted to overturn the last election, invested in a website that’s basically a safe haven for white supremacists, is deeply opposed to reproductive rights for women, and he’s running for Attorney General even though he’s never prosecuted a single case... So there’s no shortage of material there.

But what do you choose to say when every few sentences costs $2 million?

(For perspective, for me to convey roughly the amount of information you’ve consumed in this email - just up to this point - would cost at least $20 million.)

And this is the strategic crunch that almost all campaigns face in the homestretch. If it’s not on Wheel, the voters you need to reach probably aren’t going to hear it, and there’s only one way to get on Wheel, and it’s pricey.

For the record, if we could get to a point in our country where elections aren’t coming down to the commercials that run during game shows, that would be great - but that’s not where we are today.

Bottom Line: Help Me Exist

So:

My race is basically 50/50. Has been all year.

Helping us win mainly means helping us reach voters the way I just described.

Now that you know exactly what this is going to take, I hope you’ll lend a hand.

You can do that here (through ActBlue) or here (through a non-ActBlue site that still goes directly to our campaign).

Thanks for your support - I truly appreciate it.

Best,

Jeff Jackson