Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., is bracing for a Democratic wave in the midterm elections, relying on a unique homegrown field program to protect him from being swept out of office by what the Kansas Republican assumes could be a “500-year flood.”
Yoder, 42, has assembled a team of 75 high school and college student volunteers and divided them into teams of eight to 10. Each group is responsible for contacting and turning out approximately 22,000, targeted voters in 10 delineated territories of the suburban 3rd Congressional District that flanks Kansas City, Mo.
The strategy of matching teams to regions, and assigning volunteers from a community to the group knocking on doors there, is designed to breed familiarity and trust — especially with undecided or skeptical voters that warrant extra attention. Yoder’s campaign has spent about $100,000 on the program, an investment that has yielded 80,000 voter contacts since June.
“I wanted to build campaign that could withstand any storm,” Yoder, a fourth-term congressman, said Friday in a telephone interview. “Part of that is doing voter contact to the point where we engage with voters on a level that has not happened before in a district like ours.”
A political environment shaping up as a possible backlash against President Trump is threatening the Republican Party’s House majority. Affluent suburban districts like Yoder’s are on the firing line. Voters in these areas, white, educated, and professional, tend to vote Republican for Congress, but have not warmed to Trump, a factor prevalent among women in particular.
In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton narrowly defeated Trump in Yoder’s district, 47.2 percent to 46 percent. Republicans see an improved atmosphere since earlier this year, but the congressman isn’t taking anything for granted. Eastern Kansas, especially the 3rd District, has elected Democrats in the past. Democrat Dennis Moore held the seat for nearly a decade before retiring in 2011.
National Republicans are certainly taking Yoder’s race seriously. Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has had a field office in the district up and running for months.
“The Democratic base is energized,” Yoder said. “But the Republican base is more fired up than the media and pundits believe.”
Yoder won’t have a general election opponent until Democratic voters choose one in the Aug. 7 primary. But the Republican has been preparing.
The congressman raised $450,000 in the second quarter, closing the period with nearly $1.9 million in cash on hand. His campaign has invested $250,000 on digital and direct mail advertising since January; his field team deployed in June, with plans to engage through Election Day.
The operation was developed to mimic successful “corporate customer service” programs.
In addition to matching specific teams to the specific territories, the Yoder campaign has directed individual volunteers in each group to track the same voters throughout the process that begins with a contact and ends with a commitment to support the incumbent’s re-election, with the hope of establishing intimate personal relationships.
So, instead of a targeted voter hearing from various Yoder volunteers, whether via phone, at their front door, or through the mail with the follow-up postcards each team sends to undecided voters, a targeted voter’s first point of contact with the campaign becomes the primary contact.
Using data analytics, the campaign is targeting high to low propensity voters, on a partisan scale ranging from conservative, to legitimate swing voters, and even certain Democrats that have been identified as open to supporting Yoder.
“It’s old fashioned but it still works — asking someone for their vote,” Yoder said. “We’re going to test limits of how effective we can be.”
