Another thought inspired by Priorities USA’s decision to put a digital expert in charge of ALL paid media: when organizations choose managers from the digital campaigning world, they’re more likely to be looking at women and people of color. Digital (and field) teams are almost always younger and more diverse than the current pool of campaign managers, particularly on the Democratic side. Assuming everyone gets a fair shot, elevating digital staff to campaign leadership positions will naturally put more women and people of color in charge.
The trend is a healthy sign for small-d democracy, and it’s also likely to lead to smarter and more creative outreach strategies. Diversity isn’t just some pie-in-the-sky social goal: people with different backgrounds bring different insights into political communications and political strategies, particularly when it comes to outreach into their own communities. I’d argue that diverse campaigns and organizations are more likely to make smart and creative decisions compared with monocultural teams, particularly when the monoculture in question (the largely male and mostly white array of top campaign managers and consultants) is blinkered by an obsession with a single outreach channel: mass-produced TV ads.
Diverse teams will likely lead to fresh voter-outreach strategies, and they’ll bring a natural fluency in communicating with rising segments of the electorate. Let the (digital) hiring begin.
– cpd