SUHAUNA HUSSAIN reports for the Los Angeles Times
FEB. 23, 2020
A vocal Bernie Sanders supporter. A Chicagoan with zero followers on Twitter. A dozen registered Republicans. These are some of the digital soldiers Michael R. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has recruited in California to boost the former New York mayor’s online profile in preparation for the March 3 Democratic primary.
The Bloomberg 2020 operation is hiring more than 500 people at a rate of $2,500 a month to text friends and post on social media in support of the former New York mayor and billionaire media mogul. These “deputy field organizers,” as the campaign calls them, are focusing their efforts on California and its 415 delegates up for grabs. It has not been picky in choosing messengers.
A look inside the strategy — based on documents reviewed by The Times, interviews with five of these organizers and an examination of the operation’s social media output — shows that many have been using accounts created within the last month for their Twitter posts. At least two had openly posted in support of other candidates. And unlike the high-profile influencers the campaign recently hired to create viral memes, the vast majority of these organizers have modest personal audiences. On Twitter, many have fewer than 20 followers.
Rather than create their own content, organizers often use the exact text, images and links provided to them by the campaign. The result has been a stiff outpouring of tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts with little to no engagement and sometimes half-hearted text messages. Some organizers were so robotic in their tweeting, Twitter suspended their accounts Friday evening after The Times inquired about whether their behavior complied with the platform’s rules on spam and manipulation.
The Bloomberg campaign’s tactics have raised questions about whether posts by campaign employees constitute sponsored content, how social media platforms should regulate nontraditional political advertising, and whether hiring temps with no particular affinity for a candidate is an effective form of electioneering in the first place.
The goal of the deputy field organizer operation is to meet “voters everywhere on any platform that they consume their news,” Bloomberg spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said in a statement. “One of the most effective ways of reaching voters is by activating their friends and network to encourage them to support Mike for president.”
The effort — first reported by the Wall Street Journal — represents a few gallons in an ocean of spending: Since Bloomberg entered the presidential race three months ago, the campaign has expended more than $450 million to flood nearly every avenue imaginable — including radio, television and the internet — with ads.
Campaigning aimed at friends, family and acquaintances is usually done by volunteers excited about the candidate, said UCLA professor Tim Groeling, who studies political communications and new media. That Bloomberg can pay for people to try to convince their social circle is a sign of the strength of Bloomberg’s financial resources but also an indication he may lack the kind of organic support that inspires grass-roots volunteerism, Groeling said.
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The Times reviewed social media posts from some of the nearly 400 California deputy field organizers whose names and phone numbers appeared in a spreadsheet used by the Bloomberg campaign to track their progress. (The Google spreadsheet was not password-protected. After a reporter asked the campaign to verify its authenticity, the document was deleted from its location.) Organizers interviewed requested anonymity because of a memo from supervisors Thursday morning asking that they not engage with the press.
“A President Is Born: Barbra Streisand sings Mike’s praises. Check out her tweet,” Romir Kapur, a deputy field organizer for the Bloomberg campaign, tweeted to his zero followers, drawing on stock text provided by the campaign. At least half a dozen other users posted identical tweets; all were suspended Friday.
“WHO’S EXCITED FOR THE DEBATE TONIGHT!?” another organizer posted on Instagram, asking her followers to sign up for debate updates from Bloomberg’s campaign. The post received one like and a comment: “I hope you’re at least getting paid for this lol.”
Four out of the five organizers interviewed said the promise of money was the primary factor in their decision to work for the Bloomberg campaign.
One, a recent college graduate living in Sacramento, describes himself as an ardent supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination. But he hasn’t had a steady stream of income since October, and the Bloomberg gig seemed like easy money, he said.
The ambivalence shows up in his outreach efforts.
“Sam Donaldson just nailed it: Mike Bloomberg is the president we need to unite our country!” he texted one of his friends Monday through Outvote — the app organizers use to reach out to their personal networks. He drew on language provided to him by the campaign and logged the text as part of his Bloomberg organizer responsibilities.
But he quickly followed up with a personal addendum: “Please disregard, vote Bernie or Warren.”
Times staff writer Sam Dean contributed to this report.
Suhauna Hussain is a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining The Times in 2018, she wrote for the Tampa Bay Times, the Center for Public Integrity, the East Bay Express, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and independent student-run newspaper, the Daily Californian. Hussain was raised in L.A. and graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in political economy.
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