In the re-districting after the 2020 census, Texas Republicans were forced to draw a competitive legislative district in Collin County in order to shore up two vulnerable Republican members. Collin County has been trending more democratic since the 2016 election, but Democrats had failed to take a single county wide or state legislative election despite a series of top targeted attempts in 2018 and 2020. 

Mihalea Plesa was a native of HD-70, lived in the district, and had served as a legislative director for Democratic members of the legislature. When the new HD-70 was created, she saw an opportunity to change the face of Collin County representation. She went to work building a grassroots campaign team that knocked thousands of doors and cultivated leadership capacity among dozens of precinct captains. Ultimately, Mihalea’s commitment to organizing paid off in a primary victory over a better funded opponent.

Mihalea’s general election opponent, Republican Jamee Jolly, had one of the best resumes we’ve ever seen for a legislative candidate. She was the CEO of the local Chamber of Commerce. She’d worked for the local school district. Her husband is chairman of the Texas Realtors, which is one of the best connected trade associations in the state and has its own powerful PAC. She had the institutional support and social cachet to be a powerhouse in conservative circles in Texas.

We began the general election with a poll conducted by EMC Research. Polling showed a path to victory, but it required extensive education about Mihaela’s biography and values. That was an expensive proposition in the Dallas media market.

The primary on both sides was deeply competitive and divisive. Both sides went to run-off elections that zeroed out campaign accounts and created political divisions that had to heal quickly for either candidate to be competitive in the general election.

Problem

Historically, state Republicans heavily subsidize their legislative candidates in competitive races so we had to assume we would be heavily outspent, despite the best efforts of the campaign and institutional supporters.

Jolly came out of the gate in August with a string of positive ads that drove her biography and conservative credentials. Direct mail followed, largely funded by outside PACs. 

Then came the negative. They attacked Mihalea’s residency, then they lumped her in with the Squad. Ultimately, they attacked her mother over legal troubles that occurred when Mihaela was 11 years old.

By the end of the election, Jamee Jolly had spent over $800,000 on media. Mihalea spent $60,000.  

Solution

The campaign knew we could never keep pace with Republican spending, so we set out to be ruthlessly efficient with the resources we had.

The mail program, run by our colleagues at BerlinRosen, leaned on a rigid production schedule and creative segmentation to ensure we had mail in every box that needed it at a cost that the campaign could afford.

Our allies at Fair Shot Texas PAC were a huge boost to the campaign’s ground game, adding thousands and thousands of voter contacts to our core constituencies.

Our media strategy took a defensive position - if we could keep Mihaela at impressions parity with Jamee Jolly, our superior ground game and the demographic composition of the district would carry the day.

In her initial bio conversation there were two key things that stood out - 1. Mihalea could talk policy. Her work as a legislative director had given her the ability to communicate about detailed initiatives in a way that was direct and compelling. 2. She was deeply committed to empowering the activists and supporters in her community. She understood the necessity of delivering for her constituents.

We shot two thirty second ads in a one day shoot at Mihalea’s house in Plano. One that qualified her on policy and demonstrated her ability to communicate. The other was envisioned as a closer, an inspirational piece that appealed to our base universes and gave her supporters a rallying cry to put the campaign over the top.

Our media placement partners at Amobee used their Automated Content Recognition platform to help us devise the following plan for distribution:

• We captured Jamee’s ads and in addition to the media buys, used their digital placements to reverse engineer their media targeting.

• As we understood their strategy, we compared the universes that polling showed we had to to win with the people they were targeting. Those voters who were not part of our win coalition, we triaged and moved the money to more important segments.

• Those voters who were part of our must win segments and being targeted by Republicans received the bulk of our advertising budget. Those segments ended up being primarily composed of women, high Dem partisanship men, and a small cluster of no data voters.

• We were able to arbitrage the price differences between our OTT, display, and pre-roll campaigns to deliver more impressions at a lower price than Jamee’s cable and broadcast campaigns, ultimately drawing Mihaela to an effective media parity. For every Jamee ad female voters saw on Comcast, we were showing them one on Hulu.

Outcome

Beto O’Rourke lost Collin County 44% to Gov. Abbott’s 54%.

Of the targeted legislative campaigns across Texas, one new Democrat won - Mihaela Plesa.

Mihaela won her election 50.7% to Jolly’s 49.3%. A margin of 821 votes. Jamee Jolly conceded without a recount or threatening litigation.

Representative Mihaela Plesa was sworn into the legislature on Jan 10, 2023.

Team

Mihaela Plesa - The Candidate Who Wouldn’t Quit
Jordan Villareal - Campaign Manager
Matthew Arnold, Corsair Campaigns - Media
Isaac Goldberg + Cody Woodruff, BerlinRosen - Mail
Emily Goodman, EMC Research - Polling

Key Stakeholders:
Lisa Turner - Lonestar Project
Dennis Speight - TTLA 
Emily Amps - Fair Shot Texas PAC
Joe Hamill - Fair Shot Texas PAC
Sharon Hirsch - ‘18 and ‘20 nominee