Editor’s note: We know so many of you are interested in seeing what it actually takes to run a campaign (a process we’re not usually privy to). Lauren Pinkston is running as an Independent in the Tennessee governor’s race and is sharing some behind-the-scenes content with us. This article is not a political endorsement.
I have considered running for office for years. You know, something normal like serving on our local school board or city council. Although I have a hobby of studying national politics and foreign policy, my political ambition maxed out at a county mayor race… I thought.
I’m a mother of four kids (ages 15 down to three). My husband works in the medical field and has a very busy schedule. I am a staunch Independent, with a voting record across the political spectrum. I live in an R+12 “safely red” state.
So naturally… I launched a campaign this week to be Tennessee’s next governor.
Tennessee’s first female governor.
Tennessee’s first Independent governor.
“Will you make history, Mom?” my eight-year-old asked me yesterday.
“That’s the plan,” I told him. And I’m thrilled to be writing for The Preamble this year to show you what it’s really like to run for office. The good moments, the tough ones, and everything in between.
I will be the first to admit that there are plenty of individuals who run for office because they are motivated by a single issue rather than by a desire to govern across many issues. In order to establish a successful campaign, I knew that I needed to be surrounded by a whole host of people who were smarter than I am in different areas.
Here’s whom I needed to get this campaign off the ground:
Administration: In order to be able to focus on people and policy, I needed a strong campaign manager and personal scheduler.
Design: We live in aesthetic times, and I am just dangerous enough with a Canva account to know that I needed real professionals to help me create a branding package.
Strategy: I called well-respected Republican and Democrat strategy firms in Tennessee for help with my campaign, but they said working with an Independent would hurt their business. So I reached out to a former connection who took a huge chance on me and has kept my team moving toward our goals each week.
Experience: Since I began considering this campaign, I have tapped dozens of individuals in my social network to ask every question I could imagine about the process of running, governing, and balancing public life with private values.
But was the election winnable? I needed to know that there was a clear path to victory before I asked all of these incredible people to quit their secure jobs and risk working for an unprecedented campaign.
You will either love or hate to know this: the company L2 Data holds an unbelievable amount of voter information that you can access without paying to download a tailored dataset. Depending on the way your state registers and tracks voters, the data may have significant holes, but it is still a robust body of useful information.
We analyzed quantitative voter data (How many votes would it take to win across the state? Where do the majority of most likely voters live in TN? How many votes would be needed from center-right and center-left voters?) and qualitative voter personas (What type of voter is looking for a campaign like ours? What is her job? Where does he spend his time? What are their strongest social networks?).
We discussed our current opponents in the field (white female leads, neither of them centrists) and unique opportunities for the campaign (my comfort with new media, Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots success in NYC, and my already engaged national network of Independent voices). In the end, we concluded that, indeed, with the right strategy and a tenacious effort, we could pave a solid path to Independent victory.
I am running for office in a state where a single party controls all three branches of government. That situation can be wildly disorienting for voters who do not align with that particular party. For Tennessee, this is especially true, because we have traditionally been very effective in maintaining a moderate balance of government powers. I knew that, at a minimum, I needed to gather some people in a room and ask some questions about the issues that mattered most to them.
We took feedback from listening sessions, data analysis, and voter personas to draft some video scripts as we launched our campaign. Then we had to work on getting some videos done, like the fundraising ad you saw in the video.
Once we decided on a launch day, we worked back our schedule for making print assets like pamphlets, stickers, and coffee cups — what did we need to design, how much time would it take to have those things printed, and where should we prioritize the financial burden for campaign swag?
So many spreadsheets… so many edits… so many votes on photos and layouts and textures and language.
But all of the careful attention to detail is returning dividends.
We made an official statewide announcement of our campaign on Saturday, November 22, with a progressive meal across all three regions of Tennessee. In just two days, we have registered over 100 volunteers on our website and engaged 300 unique donors, many of them making recurring gifts to the campaign.
You can watch our recap videos here on your social media outlet of choice. The day was absolutely incredible, and my home now looks like a major bomb of campaign materials exploded… But it smells like flowers (and a whole lot of them!).
Now, it’s off on the campaign trail. Here’s to a year of peddling bumper stickers, QR codes, yard signs, and an endless supply of good Tennessee vibes. I look forward to sharing this exclusive content as we take you behind the scenes of a governor’s race!