Winning The Political Fight: Campaign Strategies With Woodrow Johnston Of Revere Solutions
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Fighting Genius podcast. My guest today is Woodrow Johnston. He's the CEO of Revere Solutions, LLC. We're going to talk about something very interesting and unique, strategies that can redefine political narratives. So his firm is a political consulting firm renowned for empowering underdog conservative candidates to achieve victories where they thought it was never possible before. So I think this will be very interesting. I

Woodrow has orchestrated campaigns across the nation for over 10 years, from city council races to presidential elections. He was formerly the senior vice president at McShane LLC, which is the fastest growing political consulting firm globally for two consecutive years, according to Inc. Magazine. And he's overseen 53 awards for campaign excellence and contributed to over 180 campaign victories. That's a lot. So welcome, Woody. Thanks for coming. Thanks

Thanks for having me on, Richard. So are you the new version of like Karl Rove or what? How would you define your your role in terms of politics? Yeah, I mean, you know, if people like ask me what I do and they try to think of like someone who's famous for doing what I do, I guess Karl Rove would be probably one of the best examples. He doesn't do a whole lot today. He's mostly on Fox News just, you know, with his whiteboard. But he certainly is.

One of the legends of my industry. Yeah, and I've spoken to Dick Morris. He's older now, too, but I guess he was a political consultant to the Clintons. And these are the only, I mean, this is not a world I live in. So these are the only names that I've really seen or heard. But I'm sure you're far more familiar with it.

Yeah, I actually know Dick pretty well. Okay. Yeah, he was a nice guy. I talked to him for the 2016 election. It was very interesting to speak to him. Okay. Well, tell me a bit about your background. Like, you know, in high school, did you run for class president or how did you get into the political arena?

You know, it's really funny. I remember I wanted to run for class president and I was best friends with the most popular kid in school. But for some reason, that didn't really apply to me. It didn't really rub off on me. And when he ran for president and I would give him all these ideas and how to run his and I was basically running his campaign without being a visible part of it.

So I think that was probably where I kind of got my start in politics and realizing that I was not a good candidate, but maybe a better person to help candidates win elected office. Okay. So when you got out of high school, what was your first campaign that really had a lot of significance that you helped run? Maybe a memory or two of, you know, what was involved in making a campaign successful for somebody?

Well, you know, you don't start off running campaigns, right? I mean, the first campaign that I, you know, I was a volunteer. I volunteered for Ron Paul when he was running for president. And Ron Paul is the reason why I got involved in politics. And then I think probably over time, maybe I got a little jaded and started doing it less for ideological reasons, realized I was pretty good at it.

And, you know, decided to turn it into a trade. You said ideological reasons. Like what's, maybe this is a very stupid question, but is it trying to get close to power? Is that why some campaign managers do what they do? Like what are their reasons? Is it ideology? Is it a mixture? What have you seen?

Well, you know, look, I'm a Republican and I do want Republicans to win. I would say that, you know, it probably is a mixture. I mean, you know, look, it's how I pay my bills. It's how I feed my family. It's how I pay my mortgage. So, yeah, absolutely. I do this for a living. But, you know, I would say when I first started, it was less about the craft and more about, you know, doing something for cause. And look, I believe in these causes, but

Now, for me, it's more about the art and science of getting people elected and being really good at it. And that's what I take a lot of pride in. So what's involved in a campaign? I mean, I know there's many levels, but are there core elements that are involved in every campaign? And if so, what are they?

Sure. So the first thing is probably is money, right? I mean, Frank Underwood in House of Cards said, you know, power over money is more important, but money gives power a run for its money, right? So you can't do anything without money. I mean, and the reality is that any almost any problem that exists on a campaign or really, I mean, honestly, you could think about just about everything else in life could be solved with enough money. So that

That's kind of, look, there's the financial aspect of it, the art of raising money, consistently raising money, and then they're spending it in the most effective way possible. And then that's kind of filtered down into various different aspects, right? So there's the communication side, interacting with the press, getting earned media, getting interviews for your candidate.

You know, stunts to get attention. There's the the paid media aspect shooting, you know, hard hitting TV ads and digital and commercials and digital ads. There's the polling side of it, the data side of it, making sure that the message you have is actually going to resonate with the people you're talking to, making sure that the messages you're sending are going to the right people. I mean, I could break it down even further than that. Right.

Well, I mean, in campaigns, I don't know, you know, supposedly we're told these are the issues. This is what people want. Who knows? I mean, is there really polling behind issues or the manufactured? You know, I've heard of like wedge issues and deliberate issues that are brought up and then provocated to to change the nature of the debate, the narrative. What is what is the reality of it? What are the real issues that, you know, let's say a city council.

or even, I don't know, mayor of a city, let's say, at that level. What are the real issues? Let me start off with saying you should never trust a poll that you don't pay for, right? I think there was like a lot of skepticism of polls because the polls most people see is a poll that they read about in the newspaper or

online somewhere. And keep in mind, a lot of polls never see the public eye. They're kept eternally to the campaign for their own strategic purposes. So, you know, one of Roger Stone's rules, Roger Stone, another gentleman who does what I do and has done it for as long

longer than I've been alive. He says one of those rules is trust your pollster. And I would also add to that and don't trust any other poll. Because, you know, so I couldn't tell you what the issue is in any given city at any given time. I can give you some educated guess based on my experience on other municipal races, which is better than not having anything. But it's always better to have some sort of, you know, specific data to where you're where you're camping. And there's ways to do that. It

it's not that expensive. I would say it's even it's cheaper to do it than to not do it because then you're just spending money talking about stuff that people don't care about. Now from a, you know, look from a broad strokes, we can't afford polling. We can only afford to do a few things. I would say, okay, well, if you're a Republican and you're running from this law office, talk about issues that Republicans already have a pretty good reputation on. So you're not like

creating a narrative from scratch, talk about things that are generally popular. So yeah, you know, talk about balancing the budget, bringing jobs, you know, supporting the police, cutting crime, things like that on a municipal level tend to be popular even in districts that

maybe aren't that Republican. So, yeah, these seem like generic issues. So do you have issues first and then you poll to see if any of them have life in them? Or do you go out and you poll and you ask people and then you take the aggregates of the wishes and then...

speak to them as issues. So, you know, when you're starting out and you're just putting your basic, you know, your palm card together, you can just put some pretty basic issues like that. But before you start spending money on like any sort of, you know, real advertising spend, yeah, you generally want to do some polling to determine what issue is most important to the people you're talking about. And more importantly, what issue will actually move voters? And ideally an issue that is separates you from your opponent, right?

Right. That sort of thing will make you much more efficient when you start actually spending money on TV ads or radio or digital ads. If it's on an issue that according to your polling shows, these are an issue, an issue that actually moves people. And then it's even more sophisticated. You can what we do. What we've done is is something we call it predictive analytics or modeling. And we can actually say, OK, everyone.

According to consumer data and demographic data that we have on this person, we can make a really good educated guess on where anyone in this district or the city or whatever we're running in on how they feel about a particular issue and whether or not it will motivate them. So it's no longer this kind of shotgun thing. It's this precision. Hey, we're only going to talk to this group of people who we think will be persuaded by this.

And because we only need, you know, this many people to actually win the race. And we don't need to talk to these people because these people will actually not don't like this message. And we'll just avoid talking. And, you know, what messages are important to which people? How do you test the waters? You run a poll. I mean, you can run a poll. You have a large sample size and then you ask the questions. How do you feel about this issue? How do you feel about that issue? And then you look at and this, you know, it's all sophisticated stuff, right? I mean, you have to, you know, you have to and then you could take a look at

what everyone who said yes to this question or no to this question, all the things they have in common with each other. And then you could take that and you can actually score their likelihood to feel one way or another. Okay. And then how do you know that when you've done polling, the polling is accurate? Is it hard to delude yourself when you're doing polling? And really, you know, if you're starting to get feedback that you don't want to get, do campaigns tend to want to cover their eyes and say, I don't care, we're going ahead? No.

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I haven't ran into that issue specifically. I mean, you know, I think that people tend to, you know, one of the rules of is it I think in politics is you got to trust your pollster. And if you don't trust your pollster, then why did you pay him? Right. And pollsters are very expensive. I mean, they're not.

on the low end, they're like on the, on the cheapest end, they're like five grand typically, like on the absolute low end. And they can be as much as I've seen them as high as a hundred, depending on the race, depending on the scope and the sample size and everything and how difficult the questions are. So, you know, people tend to agree with things that they pay a lot of money for. That's,

That's why, you know, yeah. And, you know, and I'll even say that even the public polls that, you know, I'd argue, you know, were put out there for propaganda purposes. The most famous one in recent memory is the Ann Seltzer poll that came out that said that, you know, that Trump was going to lose Iowa, which I believe was manipulated because I actually.

copied her methodology and applied it to a different state that I predicted Trump was going to win. And it and using her methodology completely flipped the result. So, you know, so again, like if I'm if someone's paying me money to put out a poll to help them, they tend to believe it. But when you read a poll and that, you know, that's put out there for including. I mean, you know, I think every poll I put out for public consumption has turned out to be right. But

I do have a bias. When I decide to publish a poll for a client, there is a propaganda purpose, usually to show that

you know, my candidates doing really well or, you know, or that the opponents really dishearten the opposition. Yeah. Dishearten the opposition. But yeah, you know, like I've never put out a dishonest poll ever, but I don't think everyone else is as honest as I am. Well, what makes a poll BS? What makes a poll real? Well, you have to have a significant sample size. And what is significant? You'd say, well,

I mean, it depends on the population of the voting district. Like 1% or 5% or how do you decide? You know, I have a calculator that I use to determine how large the margin of error is going to be, and I try to keep it under 5%. So, but, you know, for a congressional district where 20,000, 30,000 people are going to vote in it, we could probably get away with a sample size as low as 300, but I like try to keep it around 400 or 500. So, you know, 500 out of, you know, 50,000 people voting sounds like, oh my gosh, is that even...

And it absolutely is, as long as the sample is congruent and it has the same ratios demographically as the actual group. And as long as it's done scientifically and the questions are asked in a way that are not designed to push the voter any certain way. Okay. Do you get useful information from polls or are they really tools to reaffirm what your thoughts are to make the campaigns successful? Like,

Is it just a course correction thing or do you actually learn surprising things from the polls? Sometimes the poll, you know, is used to kind of confirm a lot of like things, things you tell people sometimes, you know, when you have your guts telling you that something's going a certain way and maybe your, maybe your client doesn't agree and you said, Hey, well, I'll tell you what, why don't we do a poll to figure that out for sure? Right. You'll review the questions the same way that I'll review them and,

And so, yeah, it'll be used for course correction. It'll be used as a temperature check to see if we're, you know, if we're already if we already feel like we're winning, we want to make sure we're winning and that we don't and see if there's any warning signs if we have to start, you know, spending significant money. So there's there's a bunch of reasons or, you know, to show viability. You know, maybe people don't believe a candidate's going to win or they don't have a good chance. But then a poll will show, hey, actually, we're we're going to win or we're close to winning and we just need a little push.

How do you influence people? How do you know who to approach, how to approach, how to influence their decision-making? Is it just through like media ads, like on TV or on the web? Like, like,

I know there's a whole arch to this and you can't condense it in two seconds, but maybe just to pull back a little bit of the veil and what goes on. Yeah. So let me start off with there's kind of this myth that it's like about convincing people to go to your side. And and really it's a lot of it is finding people who are already on your side and going to where people are at. Right.

And because a lot of times people think, oh, you know, don't vote. I do this. It says educated voter. I look at all the candidates and their viewpoints and where they're at. And I just vote for the guy who's most aligned with me. And that's just not how most voters act. That might be the 1% of people, right? You know, most people, you know, they vote for a name they associate good feelings with, right? And then they don't vote for the guy who they associate bad feelings with. So, and

And when I advise candidates on how to reach out to voters, you know, they might have all these ideas like, oh, why don't we register new voters to vote for us? I'm like, or I said, we can talk to the people who are already registered, are already planning on voting, already agree with you. We just need to tell them that you agree with them on this issue and they'll vote for you. That sounds a lot easier than registering a new voter who doesn't care about the issue, maybe doesn't even agree with you on this issue. Right. So,

A lot of what we do is making sure we meet people where they're at instead of trying to pull them in a large direction way.

You call that what, like mobilizing your base? Yeah. I mean, you can call it mobilizing your base. I mean, that's one aspect of it. Not necessarily. I mean, there's your base of people who, but there's also, you know, there might be swing voters who agree with your candidate on any particular issue and they care about that issue and you just need to hit them on it. You know, so it could be, you know, it really depends on the race. There's no cookie cutter solution. It depends on where we're running, what the demographics of the district are, the registration or, you know, where people are at.

And that's why polling is important. You can't just, you know, otherwise you're just guessing. Right. No, I mean, I'm in Austin, Texas, and the local races, it looks like, I don't know what they do. I see signs on the side of the road. But other than that, I see nothing. I don't know, maybe I'm a strange creature that doesn't, you know, listen to the same media everyone else does. But I just, it doesn't seem like local races, like almost anything is done. I have no clue who these people are. It's weird. You know, presidential race, obviously, it's outsized institutions.

There's tons of money involved in all that. But I don't know, even governor, I guess maybe a governor of a state, maybe there's an apparent large amount of work done. But a lot of these races, I don't know how they do it, but what they're doing. Let me start with the political industry is very small compared to Hollywood or really any other. And there's like about four billion in political spending a year.

or every and it's you know when you which sounds like a lot of money but when you factor in like the amount of content people consume a very small minority of it is political and even the political content they do consume it tends not to be from campaigns it's you know it's from which it's from the news or various other thought leader type so

Yeah, I'm not surprised that you don't really hear anything from these people. And I think a lot of campaigns, they also prioritize the wrong things. Most campaigns think that to run, you know, most people who run for office, they put up a bunch of yard signs, a bunch of four by eights. I'm sure you've seen some of them. It sounds like you have. And then they go show up to a bunch of events and then they pray. Yeah.

that they, you know, they pray that they'll win. And often the person whose name sounds the nicest does win, right? So now if you're, you know, if all your opponents are doing that and you have a really nice sounding name that everyone like sounds nice, then yeah, okay, that works out for you. But, you know, someone who,

Again, is hiring someone, you know, who wants to, you know, maximize their chances of winning. They'll hire someone like me and we'll help them spend their money in the most effective way. And to me, a political campaign is not like a traditional marketing campaign, because if you're in a traditional marketing campaign, if you get one percent of your audience to purchase your product, you're in a good spot.

uh, most of the time in a campaign, you have to get 51% or more market share to win. Right. So what does that mean? It means that a lot of the times, uh, the things that people love buying like yard signs and four by eights and, you know, uh, stickers, I have to be the bearer of bad news and tell candidates not to waste their money on that. And, you know, get enough to keep you like your volunteers happy or whatever. But, uh,

the majority of your money, 80, 90% of your budget should be spent on voter contact, talking to voters and specifically your target voter. And that's usually determined by polling, but you can make some educated guess. You know, if you're in a Republican primary, you could talk to people who regularly vote in Republican primaries. Past behavior is usually the best indicator of future behavior. So yeah, you talk to people who voted in the primary before or regularly vote in primary. And that's the first people you should talk to before you talk to anyone else in that case. Well,

I mean, can you get those lists or how do you know that? You can get those lists. There's data providers that sell it. There's also usually your party. If you are running as a Republican, if you meet the right person, and this is why most people just end up buying it. If you meet the right county officer or state party employee, they'll give you access to GOP data center. Same with Democrats. I think most of them, I'm not a Democrat, but I think most of them use VAN.

which is another program. And, you know, that's usually where they'll get it. You can also do, like, depending on where you're at, you can usually request it from either your secretary of state or your county clerk's office. Okay, so what would a campaign look like? Is it emails that go out in poll? Is it, you know, issues come up and you're letting people know, here are some of the issues that, you know, other people like you are facing, and here's how my candidate plans to vote? Like, what does the marketing look like?

I mean, it depends on what the issues are. I mean, yeah. So and what campaign and what we're running for. But yeah, generally speaking, you the campaign looks like you raise a bunch of money and then you spend it usually on talking to your target voters about the issues that they care about and that your candidate has credibility. Right. So it could be any number of things. Right. It could be crime. And, you know, if you're running against a guy who used to be sheriff, don't run on crime because he'll beat you. But if your guy is the sheriff, you should

You should run on that, right? Or it could be about the economy. If your opponent is the sheriff and you're the business guy, that's an issue you probably can speak with better credibility than he does on, right? There's a bunch of different mediums that we contact voters on. It can be in their mailbox, in their phone, via text message or phone call. It could be at their door by having someone knock on their door. It could be on TV, depending on where you're at. The TV ads can be targeted.

Digital is probably the now becoming one of the more important ways to target people because you can target people pretty specifically on digital ads. You target their, you know, like their Hulu accounts and stuff like that. So there's a lot of things you can do. And I'm sure that as the media consumption habits of people change, political will have to always adjust. What are what's an example of a campaign you worked on that was like super interesting to you for whatever reason? That's a good question.

super interesting to me. Because it took a difficult turn or you're like, you know, just something crazy was going on with it that, you know, it was just unexpected and made it interesting. Maybe you were like, I did it, but any good stories? I'm sure I got one because I, I'm trying to, and I'm, but I'm also trying to, I also have to remember all the confidentiality agreements I have. Oh, I,

So it's tough for me to think of one that isn't covered by confidentiality because, you know, I do have to, you know, one of the things I do with most clients is we have to have some sort of confession where they tell me everything they basically have ever done wrong. Right. And I say, look, what's the worst thing you've ever done in the worst possible context? Because your opponent will not be fair and present your side of the story. Right.

They're going to say it in an unfair way, right? And we got to be prepared for that. So my, and my ability to protect my clients is limited by what they're willing to tell me. And sometimes they don't tell you. I mean, that does happen sometimes. Either they forget or they think it will never come out anyway. So that does happen. You know, I've had, I've had clients where, you know, you know, where they're, where some might've had like a criminal record. I've had clients where it was a close family member who had a criminal record. You know, I've had, uh,

I've had races where, you know, where the election was called for us, that we won, and then uncalled and called for the opponent, and then refiled. You know, that actually, I can actually name, I can actually talk about that one. That happened in 2018 when I was running a campaign to reelect Congressman Will Hurd. And I'm really proud of that particular election because Will Hurd,

He was a very moderate Republican congressman, but he was running in a district that in 2016, Hillary Clinton had won and beat Trump in that district. And he held on in 2016. And in 2018, when there was a big blue wave, he also won. Right. And I was responsible for that. So I'm pretty proud of that. There there was a another race where we stopped a ballot initiative that would have defunded the police, of

of the town and uh of course they didn't market it that way the opposition who was running this ballot initiative they cut and they try to run it as like a transparency thing and what it was it was it was weakening the police union's ability to bargain with the city and uh but we marketed that as a defund the police measure because if the police are getting paid less than other departments then less cops are going to actually want to work there and therefore it

effectively is defunding the police out of the police officers pockets. And and of course, you know, the term defund the police is is fairly unpopular. Right. It's one of the biggest like messaging screw ups the Democrats have ever done. And when so what we did, I'm actually probably shouldn't admit this, but I'm already far too deep in. We have some individuals who

who, you know, dressed up like they were kind of, you know, liberal, left-leaning, you know. Trying to look like Antifa or something. Yeah, show up to polling locations saying, vote for this thing, defund the police. And we sent them to, you know, more to neighborhoods where we felt that that would turn off voters from voting for the proposition. And we did win that election. So sometimes you do things like that, right? Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, some people say politics is full of dirty tricks. Is that true? Like how, how crazy does it get? How do you feel like sometimes you didn't even know what's going on? I mean, there's such deception. It's funny because I think that's, I guess someone would call it a dirty trick. I think that's a pretty clean trick because it actually is how they felt. They just were smart enough not to send their people to do that. Right. And they were like paid, paid shills or paid rioters.

People I sent were paid. But... You know what I mean? Like, in terms of dirty, like, paid rioters would probably be real, real nasty. Oh, no. We didn't do anything. We never... I didn't, like, ask them to, like, commit any crimes or anything, and they never did that. I would never do that. No, but have you seen campaigns? Like, maybe you could say that. You know, it doesn't have to be your own, obviously, but what's the most underhanded, just evil stuff you've seen happen? Any examples? Man, so underhanded and evil. Well, I've seen... Yeah, you were like...

these stuff, these talking things have been broken into, you know, and people steal laptops and equipment. And, you know, I never know if that's the opposition doing it, but it, you know, it seems like really convenient that, you know, they stole the stuff that helps the campaign. So, so stuff like that. I think like one of the things that I, you know, to me is just like kind of the lack of professional courtesy and, and is like with lawyers, lawyers are not supposed to like

attack each other. Right. Like they're supposed to advocate for their client. Correct. What I've seen, I've seen political consultants put out news stories about other political consultants just to, you know, ruin their reputation and create this situation where the opponent feels like they have to fire their consultant. Right. Because of this negative news story about them. Right. I think that's a little underhanded. It's a little dirty because one,

it's often on issues that voters don't even care about. Like voters don't carry your political consultant as they don't like normal voters. Right. So I've seen things like that. You know, one time someone did something like that to me and it was like on election night. And of course my client was like, you told me about this already. It was an old story, but you know, it's just that that's just unfortunate. I've, you know, that and

And it kind of makes me feel like I wish we had something similar to like a bar association where we weren't allowed to do things like that to each other. But it happens. Have you had people like try to send prostitutes to your candidates to compromise them or, you know, set up crazy situations to compromise you? It's never happened to me or any of my clients. I've heard of things like that happening. But I think, you know,

It's funny. I think everyone's idea of politics mostly comes from shows like House of Cards, and they think it's like about pushing journalists into trains and stuff. And it's a lot more boring than that for the most part. But, you know, things like that. I'm not saying they never happen. I'm sure it does occasionally happen, but I haven't seen it. Okay. Yeah, I was just wondering. But that's an interesting question, though. Is there, have you seen consultants like cross over the aisle and...

and now comes over the other side or, you know, then it comes out of the way. Our mutual friend, Mr. Morris, actually famously did that, right? And you can really only do that once. In our industry, you're kind of expected to pick a side. The only people I've seen kind of work both sides with any success are people who are like only do like local races, like municipal races, and they maybe become more of a dominant player in their small fiefdom or region.

But frankly, if you want to be a national consultant and work on congressional races or whatever races all around the country, you're generally you're expected to pick a side. Right. So, no, I don't see it a lot. It does happen, you know, but it doesn't happen that often. What's the highest level for presidents, those consultants, or is there another level that's also highly regarded?

Well, yeah. I mean, there are consultants that run presidential campaigns like, you know, Susie Wiles is now the chief of staff to the president. Chris LaCivita was, you know, was managing his campaign with her. And, you know, he could pretty much have, you know, run any race he wants to. Right. So but then there's people like Karl Rove, who also ran a presidential campaign. And now he doesn't have to work on a campaign ever. Right. He makes plenty of money just as a speaker. Right. So he's, you know, he's set.

So I guess it depends on what you consider the highest level. You know, there's people like, you know, one of them, another consultant that I highly respect. His name is Jeff Rowe. He runs one of the largest, the largest political consulting firm in the country. And his firm's growing, has been growing like crazy and it's huge. And, and they have a bunch of investors and they have like 200 people that work for them. And, you know, that's also another way of saying you're at the highest level if you're that, if you're at that status. So there's

There's a few different ways people go, whether it's, you know, they build this big mega company or they end up, you know, working in the public sector at a high level with like the president or they end up, you know, being like Karl Rove or they end up being a professional speaker, basically. Yeah. What are the other revolving doors? I mean, do consultants become candidates or do they become, you know, members of Congress or they become lobbyists? Like, where do they go?

Yeah, some of them become lobbyists. I haven't seen a lot of... I mean, there are a handful of people who are like consultants or professional campaigners who have won elected office. I find that most voters would prefer to vote for someone who has quote unquote a real job

And it doesn't happen that often. You know, I can come up with a few examples off the top of my head. I know our state controller used to be a campaign manager. There's some people who go into the nonprofit space because the skill set is very applicable. So, you know, and then honestly, probably most people who work on a campaign, they don't make it a career. It's like a stopover thing to campaign.

to get some experience, they end up, you know, doing something else because there is, I mean, a lot of people who, you know, politics is kind of, you know, it's called show business for ugly people. See, because I think a lot of people in show business, including politics, do not make money doing this and, or they make very little money and only, you know,

and only a small sample size, I count, you know, make any real money doing this. Like I'm blessed that I could do well enough to support my family and, and, uh, and do this and do something that I love doing. But, uh, the reality is it's a very small, small group of people who, who work in this industry. And it's funny. And I talked to people, they don't even know this is an industry. They just figured, Oh, I just thought you just hire like regular marketing people. And I'm like, no, that's funny. This last couple of questions.

What's the hardest part about what you do? Is it the raising of the money? Is it just managing the candidate from not blowing themselves up? You know, some kind of scandal? What is it? Yes. So one, what's hard is identifying and finding the candidates, right? The right people for the right time in the right office. Then it's hard.

helping them raise the money. But that's why people pay me money, help them do that. Then it's hard, you know, when a candidate doesn't always agree with your advice and then you got to, you know, convince them that you're, you're, um, that it's the right thing to do. They're often looking at it. It's the candidate's name, you know, often that, um, you know, when you, uh, sometimes a candidate can tell you information and I always advise people to talk things out with their, their client. I mean, if you have a political consultant,

who can't tell you why he's giving you the advice, you need to reconsider who you have on your team because he should be able to tell you why he's giving you this advice. And ultimately, it's your decision if you're running for office, right? Listen to your counsel, but you're making the final decision. And sometimes you've got to overrule the people who work for you because there's a lot of different considerations, right?

I mean, I had a client once who was, you know, upset because his opponent who he just defeated was talking trash about him and his wife on on Facebook. And my advice was just to ignore it. And because he was asking for my advice. And sometimes clients want you to want you to tell them what they want to hear. And he's like and he said, look, I'm going to I have to say something. I have to defend it because I have to show my wife that I'm defending her, her honor.

And I was like, okay, well, that's, you know, it's not my job to determine what's going to be, what's going to keep your marriage harmonious. So if you feel you have to do that to keep your marriage harmonious, then do that. Right? So sometimes, you know, a client can overrule you and it's probably the best thing. You know, I mean, you know, his marriage is, anyone's marriage should be more important than anyone campaign, I think. So what's the hardest thing? I mean, the hardest thing probably is that you can actually do everything right. You can do everything right.

And you can still lose. Right. It does happen. There's just things that aren't in your control. Right. Right. And especially in like a presidential year, so much is dictated by national trends. You can do everything that you're supposed to do. But if the president of your party is unpopular and it suppresses your party's turnout, there's nothing you can do. You could lose just for that reason. Right.

And or I mean, like I've had candidates who they do everything they're supposed to do. You know, they you know, they win their primaries and then the powers that be who dole out the money sometimes to general election candidates or decide who to support or maybe the top of the ticket decides, you know what?

I'm going to help this guy and this guy and bring them across the line with me, but I just don't like you personally, or I just think you're going to hurt me. So I'm not going to help you at all. And as a result, you're going to be left behind. And that sucks, you know, when just things, how do you control it?

And then, you know, sometimes like knowing that, that not everything is in your control, you can get blamed for things you didn't do or have anything to do. Right. So that's, that's probably, probably the toughest thing. Interesting. How has Trump coming back changed the mood and, you know, for all, for Republican candidates going forward, people just emboldened and excited or, you know, now more than ever, they really got to buckle down and do a good job or what's happening? Well,

Well, I'm seeing a lot of excitement from people who want to run. You know, I'm getting a lot more people who are asking me, oh, should I run? Thinking about it and all that stuff. So that's from a business perspective, that's the biggest change. You know, there's there's a lot of but I would say more analytically, there's a lot of volatility. It's very volatile, right?

A lot of in the midterms, the success of any Republican candidate, actually any candidate period is going to be based on the perception of success of the Trump administration. You know, historic and historically speaking, the party in the White House does not do well in midterms. Right. And if I have money after 20 when 2020 when when Biden was certified as the winner, you know.

People were like depressed and didn't want to run. And they said it was all rigged. So why bother? Right. Which is stupid because 2022 was a red wave year. Just wasn't as big as it could have been. But, you know, all the signs showed it was going to be if it weren't for Roe v. Wade, it would have been. And now people are excited now when the reality is the pendulum is going to swing the other way. So honestly, it's, you know, Warren Buffett once said,

When everyone is scared, you need to be brave. And when everyone is brave, you need to be scared. Everyone's brave right now. Hmm. That suits me. So that's the time. Yeah. You don't want to lose your head. Yeah. I mean, look, people are going to run and people need to run. Yeah.

But, you know, I probably wouldn't run this cycle just because of the uncertainty because you just don't know when, if, you know, how Trump's going to do. You know, I think the things he's doing is amazing. But will the American people agree, right? Is there anything that a candidate can do besides killing someone in broad daylight that would just ruin their ability to run? Like, you know, they're seeing candidates. Well, no, I mean, yeah. How crazy is it? Like, you know, you said you asked the people that work with you.

look, tell me all the dirt because we don't want it to come out another way. We want it to be controlled, essentially, you know, putting words in your mouth. But is there anything that if anyone's thinking about running and they've done X, Y, or Z, you'd say like, don't bother. It's just, it's an insurmountable hill.

Well, I think the biggest thing is don't run if you've never done anything right with your life. If you're broke. Right. Don't run if your your marriage is falling apart. Right. Don't run if your kids hate you and regularly tweet what a terrible person you are about you. Like, I wouldn't suggest that, you know, like I would say, like running for office should not be your therapy.

Right. I would think that the ideal candidate is someone who's relatively successful, you know, but wants to, you know, wants to give back to their community and is willing to do something or wants to change things. Right. You know, a person who has no achievements, no nothing shouldn't run. Right. I mean, I just don't think it's the best thing for them to do now. Yeah. There's obvious things. Yeah. If you've been convicted of murder, you probably won't be a good candidate if you. But.

I mean, who's to say? I mean, you know, Trump's been convicted now, I don't know the numbers, like 36 times or whatever. You know, sham trial, my opinion, in many opinions, you know, political persecution for sure. But, you know, as I will tell everybody who likes to compare themselves to Donald Trump, you might be as brash and loudmouthed or whatever. Are you a billionaire? Right. So...

And are you as tough as nails? Yeah. Yeah. Trump had a hundred percent name ID already. So that's been like the most annoying thing about since Trump has been, you know, been in politics. Also he's made of this, this substance that's not in the periodic table called Trumpium that withstands every known attack to man somehow it keeps going. But no, but the annoying thing is people compare themselves to Trump when they're not right. I would crumble as no way I could withstand with. I'd love to meet him once and tell him like, I'm

Man, I look up to you big time because I have no idea how you withstand all the stuff you've been through. Unbelievable. Yeah. Amazing. Oh, yeah. But, you know, you might be shocked to hear that people who run for office or the people that a lot of them are narcissists. Right. I'm sure. Yeah. So and you have to have a little bit of that. Right. You have to have a little bit. You have to be a little bit delusional to run for office. Just a little bit.

Why do you say that? I mean, you have to have this confidence that you have the ability to rule over other men, right? You have the, that you know, the solutions that you know how to answer, you know, the answer to these problems and that you're going to fix them. What if you did something like this? Like, what if you ran, I thought about this, man, I was trying to bounce it off you. What if you ran to be like, I don't know, mayor of a city?

And you said, like, I have my guys attend every important meeting, you know, that goes on in the city. Economic stuff, school stuff, you know, all the major issues. And I'm going to report to you every week what's happening in these meetings and the issues that are there. And the Pareto of how I'm going to handle them, I'm going to ask you guys. I want to pull relationships.

regularly and see like I'm going to put the issues on a leaderboard and I'm going to poll and whichever one of you guys in the constituents say is most important to me to address I'm going to address that I'm going to be as transparent as possible in addressing it what do you think

Would they be laughing in the room? You know, it's funny. I knew of a candidate who did something similar. His name was Brian Marriott. I had nothing to do with his campaign. And his campaign was, I'm going to run a poll. It was the main plank of his campaign platform. And a live poll every time there's a vote and you're going to vote. And here's the ironic thing is that if you polled it, people like voting for people with authentic beliefs. They don't.

want to vote for someone who you know they have to live poll for like first of all like we live in a republic for a reason that you know we're not a direct democracy where we all vote on every single thing so so no i don't think that would be a good campaign strategy and and uh you know most people who vote don't pay attention enough to want to read a bunch of reports or

or research all the issues. I mean, a lot of times people win elections not because of their positions on issues, but because of who they are and their biography and the kind of person they are and their just general values, right? You know, people like voting for veterans, business people, you know, but

firefighters, you know, people associate. I mean, a lot of times when I told you earlier in this, in the show was people vote for people that they associate good feelings with and against people that they associate bad feelings with, or they go,

I feel really bad feelings about this other guy, and that's why I got to vote for this guy. So they don't want to deal with it. They want to vote for someone that will, quote unquote, take care of it, represent what they think. OK, you know, candidate A, he or she seems to be along with my values, align with them.

I'm not going to worry. They're going to do a good job. That's who I pick. I don't need to hear from them about every piece of minutia. Do your job. Let me get back to my life. But I've done what I need to do by voting for you. And now you take the rest. Yeah. I mean, they might not like say that out loud or, or even know that that's how they feel, but that's about right.

Okay, very interesting. Oh, very good. How can people find out more about what you do if they have a curiosity about it or if they want to run for some kind of office? How do they start going about that? Well, I mean, they can talk to someone like me. You know, it doesn't have to be me, but, you know, if you go to tacticalcampaigns.com or reveresolutions.com, you'll find my website, a way to contact me. You can find, I'm very Google-able because there's not a lot of Woodrow Johnstons out there, very unique names.

You can find me on Facebook. You search Woodrow Johnston. You'll find me. You'll find me on LinkedIn pretty easily. Woodrow Johnston. I'm Liberty Woody on Twitter. Real Woodrow Johnston on Instagram. And so if anyone would like to hear what I have to say about their particular race, we've spoken very broad strokes today. I'm happy to talk to them and look at the viability of such of a race or what would be involved with it. But

You know, like I said, I'll repeat what I said earlier. Don't run for office if you don't have a job or never had a job or never had any real success in your life. Or you said for therapy or if your personal relationships aren't going well or that's good. Yeah. And so on and so on. And I'm sure, you know,

It's actually funny. I feel like I spend more time persuading people not to run for office than to run for office. I just, you know, look, I, this is, it's a noble undertaking. It's an unthank undertaking. People, we need good people to do it. You know, I think that, I think, you know, you're right. Donald Trump did not have to do this. He was a, you know, a billionaire and he could, and he's lost money running for president. So, you know, but I'm glad he did because he

I mean, frankly, he's fixing this country, and we need people like that at every level of office. Okay. Well, very good. Well, I guess the best thing is any best ways to contact you. You said you're very Google-able, so I guess we'll leave it at that. But it's been an interesting call, and I appreciate your honesty and your upfrontness. So thank you for being here. Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me on. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on iTunes.

You've been listening to the Finding Genius Podcast with Richard Jacobs.

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