This Story Has Democratic Insiders Going NUTS

Hey, everyone. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the book, and I'm joined by Lauren Egan author of the opposition newsletter. And we are here to talk about a shocking, honestly, success of a newsletter. More so than I anticipated, not that the newsletter was bad. I thought the news was really good. But we got incredible reaction to Lauren's recent newsletter about how 2028 perspective presidential primary candidates in the Democratic side are already going about trying to get staff lined up for their campaigns. And this thing blew up. I didn't realize people were that interested in 2028. Do you have any theories as to why this blew up, Lauren? I do. But I don't appreciate you saying that it's so shocking that one of my new sliders would do well. Guys, Sam is the king of backhanded compliments. This is what our entire slack conversation looks like. That's not what I meant. I just was surprised at how many people are interested in this great issue. Well, no, it makes sense. I think that there are a couple hundred, a couple thousand, maybe a Democratic campaign staffers who are all very interested in what their job prospects could look like in a couple weeks. And they all started sharing this in the group chats and wanted some information about what they're going to do after November 3rd when they're done with their midterm races. And 2028's going to start heating up. So what do we find out about it? Like who's actually looking for staff and where are they looking? And why is it such a crunch? You would think that there's plenty of people out there who's willing to jump on a campaign to become next president, right? But apparently not. I think the competition is really stiff for like your top tier experienced campaign operatives. We haven't had a competitive Democratic primary in a long time. There are not that many people who are still in the business who have done this at a high level before. Think about it. 2016 was kind of weird. Like two people basically 2021 was a real primary. That's Martin Amalia Ratia right there. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever the wanted. 2020. 2020 was real. But it was also kind of still a weird year. It was kind of sure COVID was made that a little messy. And then obviously 2024 was what we all know it was. It was again another weird year. So there's not a huge well of people to really draw from. And this is especially tough because the primary calendar has been moved around. So South Carolina has always been an early state. But now South Carolina is the first state for 2028. And Democrats don't compete regularly statewide there. So what that means is that there are not a lot of people that have run good statewide statewide campaigns in South Carolina. I think there's probably like five or six people who I would say are really know what they're doing in the state. Maybe that's unfair. But five or six people who have like done stuff on the statewide level. And so if you're running for president, they're probably going to be I would say at least 20 candidates. Come on. 20. Obviously not all of them are going to be like hold on. Let's work through this. Do I take a bet? Yeah. Before I take hold on. Before we take a bet, let's work through this. So what do we have? Like let's talk through this. Okay, we'll start with like talk to you. People are going to take seriously. Yeah. Let's put Newsom Newsom. Andy Beshear, JB Pritzker, Westmore, Rokana. Okay, he's stopped here. Okay. Well, I'm putting it. I'm putting it because he's he's the furthest ahead, I would say. All right, Newsom. Beshear, Pritzker, Moore, Roe, Pete, Rahm manual, Kamala Harris. Is a question mark? That's fine. I'm just taking yeses for everything here. Okay, who is AOC? AOC is a maybe, but put her on the list. Sure. Why not? Who are we missing? Who am I missing? You should have come prepared for this. Yeah. If you told me I was going to list out 20 names. Booker. Thank you. Chris Van Holland. Awesome. War knock. Both of them running doesn't really seem likely to me, but put them on the list. Sure. And then we're going to have a ton of dark horse randoms, you know, like the Seth Maltons of the race. Okay. Okay. That's not 20. Just for the road's worth. That's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, charitable with some question marks, but I'll give you a couple of three dark hearts. Okay. There could be over under over under I'm putting at 15. Okay. You're taking the over. Yeah. Okay. All right. Mark. All right. So who's actually out there looking right now? Okay. So Rokana has people in three early states so far, South Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire. And then basically what's been happening is that every time a candidate like Newsom or Bashir or Westmore goes to one of these early states, they're doing a little happy hour with campaign staff behind the scenes and chatting with people. So these are kind of sort of, you know, informal casual conversations that are happening so far. It's almost like a little, you know, there's some there's some courting of campaign staffers every time that they make a visit to these states. So that's the handful of them. Bashir is another one. Buddha judge has been traveling a ton and I'm having some of these casual conversations with folks. And it's all going to happen really fast. Three more. Kelly. Gaiago. Whitmer. See, you were like googling while I was talking. I was talking. Slokkin. Slokkin. Okay. Maybe I'll put the over under a little bit higher. No, no, no, you can't take it back. Okay. 15. It is. All right. Fair enough. All right. Well, I guess the tension here would be, you don't want to look like two eager to run, but at the same time, if it is true that people need to be, you know, there's only a handful of staffers out there who are cognizant and capable about their states, like you kind of got to get going, right? I don't think that trying to play cool is like that much of an issue. The issue is just you don't want to get yourself into like some weird campaign finance stuff where you like accidentally say you're running even though you're not ready to do it yet. I don't think like in the past, people have had to be coy about it and do the whole like I'm not interested or you know, I'm focused on my family and my current job. I think people are kind of dropping that charade a little bit. I just think we're in a different moment in our politics where people just are craving a little bit more honestly. Like we all know what's happening here. Like don't don't don't tell us what we, you know, don't tell us you're just going to South Carolina for fun. You know, I, one time remind me of the story where I asked Rokana about like because he Rokana kind of famously does this where he goes to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and I did ask him. I was like, why are you keep doing that if not for running for president? And he did kind of drop the curtain veil a little bit where he was like, I do because when I go there, I get more press attention and so so I want you guys to pay attention to me and that's why I do these events there. And so there might be something to it like that. But it could be that they just feel like they need to get going. I mean, what time, when does, when do presidential campaigns traditionally start? I was looking back at this. I think Warren was the first person to announce if I remember correctly for 2020. And I only remember this because I think it was either New Year's either New Year's Day. I can't remember which one. I only remember this because I was the, I was at NBC at the time and I was the on duty person who had to write the breaking news story. So she was early, but I think some folks have already sort of suggested that kind of like laid like midterms this year as sort of the marker when they're going to make decisions. And when I was talking with some advisors to some of these can't top to your candidates, they all sort of expected that we'd have a few announcements in November and December. I think it's going to be different for the folks like Pritzker and Wes Moore who are running for reelection right now. More up for reelection. I can't remember Pritzker is. So they're going to have to focus on their, you know, they've got to get inaugurated in January and they're going to be a little bit more constrained. I think on that timeline, but there's other folks like Bashir who is not up for reelection. And yeah, who are going to be able to announce November 4th if they really want to. This message is brought to buy soul. 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Mellow is perfect for a cozy night and for unplugging. Or just try balance. That's the gummy that's great for a just right anytime vibe. Perfect when you're listening to I don't know your favorite podcast like this one. Whatever the moment, there's a soul mood gummy to match. Make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, soul is offering our audience 30% off their entire order. 30% go to get soul.com and use the code bullwrote. that's get soul, promo code, bullwork takes four, 30% off. What's the reaction been from the staffer community on this? Like, are they look, I mean, in theory, they have a lot of leverage, right? Like they can pick and choose who they want to go for. What is the reaction been to your piece? There's been a ton of conversation on Twitter about it. I think the big thing that people want to know is whether or not, where campaign headquarters are going to be. Can you explain why that's important? Okay, so just go through the Wilmington experience for some time. Yeah, so traditionally, like, go back to Obama years, you know, his campaign was headquartered in Chicago, hometown, the whole thing. Biden comes in nominee in 2020. His campaign is headquartered in Philly, Big City, on the East Coast. He becomes president. And he has this whole debate about, do you keep your headquarters in D.C.? Where a lot of his staff was living at the time working in the White House, work at the DNC, or do you try and do the hometown thing and get it out of D.C., try and get it in real America and, you know, get that whole facade going. And he decided to headquartered in Wilmington, which is, I don't mean to shit on Wilmington. I spent literally so many weekends of my life covering what else in Wilmington, Delaware. So I would hate it and love it. What do you love about it? It has a really lovely boardwalk along the river. There's some good restaurants. It's easy to get to from D.C. When did you ever go to Wilmington? I went there twice. I didn't like the restaurants, yeah. Let me guess, you ate at Bardaya. I did once, I believe, yeah. Yeah. Okay, whatever. This is not a Wilmington cuisine podcast. No, but if you want to do that one day, I have plenty of recommendations. So people really did not like living at Wilmington for a couple of reasons. One, the restaurant scene. Two, it's actually kind of annoying to find housing. You have hundreds of people moving to this small city. And there's just not a ton of housing options. So that was a huge problem for a lot of people. They just genuinely couldn't find a place to live. And then three, you know, people just like they want to be a bigger top tier as some would say, American city. And Wilmington is not one. You know, people might scoff at it and say this is too precious. But I actually think this matters a lot. When we ran the Rob Flarety piece, so for those people who don't know, Rob served his Biden's like top digital guy on the campaign and then Harris's when the switch happened. And he wrote this really extensive autopsy about what went wrong for the Bower. People should check it out. And one of the sections that he talked about was Wilmington. And just how, not just spiriting, but how difficult it was to decamp there, how so too often basically the campaign staffers were heading home to DC on the weekend, sometimes after work, like huge commutes, right? And that created a real friction and a problem. And then they became too kind of competing factions, like the Wilmington faction and the DC faction. And just wasn't like a great, it didn't create good vibes for the campaign or great operational efficiencies. So it does matter. And I can understand why campaign staffers not because they're being precious, but because like this is going to be a mass of two-year commitment potentially. I don't know. Like do I need to, is Louisville like the best place for me? I love Louisville, but you know, it's a big commitment. Yeah, and not to just like pick on Louisville. Louisville is great. Yeah, I love it. It's a great, I think it'd be a great place to live for two years. There's also the West Coast element of this too. You know, it's not just like these smaller cities. A lot of democratic staffers are East Coast people. And so moving out to San Francisco or an LA or a Phoenix, whatever it might be is also a big ask. And it's a lot harder to do your jobs out there. Like the news cycle just moves on East Coast time. And so that's always been a challenge for people who are for candidates who are coming from Pacific Pacific States. Is they got to figure that out. Can't remember the last time there was like a, well, I guess Harris wasn't they. And she put in her campaign in Baltimore. Oh, right. It wasn't in Oakland, wasn't it? Yeah, 2020. If I remember, she might have had a small office. But the headquarters HQ wasn't Baltimore for Harris in 2020. Fascinating. Are there any like, and this is really inside-based people? There are like any star staffers that people are looking at. I mean, this always happens in every cycle. People won't know these names and nor should you. It's really, really inside your stuff. But it used to be like there was like the, you know, the chief of staff or the campaign manager that everyone was trying to court and get on their team. And, you know, this happened during the, you know, McCain, Romney, Aaron. And I'm vaguely remember the operative who was being courted. But like, is there that version of someone this go around? Or is that too early? I think it's a little early only because there's a lot of questions about who from 2024, like who from Biden world would work on this presidential again? And like, who would, we can't even watch them on their team? There are some names that are coming up in South Carolina, just because I think candidates right now are so focused on setting up teams in South Carolina. Um, there is a lot of attention on a staffer named Jelisa Washington Price, who's from the Columbia area. And basically like every campaign staffer that I had up in South Carolina, when I was like, who should I be paying attention to? They were like, whoever she decides to go work for, that will send a huge signal about who has a lot of liability in this race and who can win this state. Um, so that's kind of like the early staffer watch. Okay. Well, this piece was massive. It was a great piece, really well reported ahead of the head of the curve, really a testament to what an accomplished newsletter you are. And you're fantastic. And there's nothing I, there's no critiques whatsoever. Nice thing you've ever said to me. I don't think so. Please clip that for me. And every time Sam says something mean, I'm going to respond. This is the thing. People, I read the comments. They do think I mean like they legitimately do think they're right. They're right. Stop it. I'm kidding guys. I work for, I wouldn't keep working for Sam. I spend like five years now. Five years of torture. Yeah. No, it's great. And if you haven't read the piece, you should go click on it now. In fact, why don't you add to our subscriber total if you aren't a subscriber. I go to the piece. It's doing monster numbers because it's great. And it's been fantastic to watch. Lauren Egan, author of the opposition newsletter. One of the best newsletters in the business tracking. Democratic politics and their efforts to regain power in the age of Trump. Subscribe to the feed, Lauren. Thanks so much. Talk to you later.