There is no shortage of news stories out there about paid protesters posing as social justice warriors, disgruntled workers and generic advocates or detractors of all stripes. What we don’t hear about so often, however, is politicians and their campaigns paying for “supporters” to show up at speeches and rallies. They do — and probably more often than you think.
Writing for LibertyChat.com, Ian Cioffi recently reported that hearing crowds cheer on 2016 presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton made him ponder the question of political crowds for hire.
“It got me wondering, would someone like Jeb, or another candidate that’s been struggling like he has, hire a crowd? Pay people to attend their rallies to make them seem like they’re gaining in popularity?” Cioffi wrote. “We have seen Hillary Clinton stage appearances, knowing ahead of time the people she’d interact with. Would a staged rally be out of the question for a struggling GOP candidate?”
The recently staged Clinton appearances Cioffi mentioned include the former secretary of state’s attempt to pass political operatives off as everyday Americans in posed pictures on a swing through Iowa in April.
The Daily Mail reported:
Hillary Clinton’s astroturf candidacy is in full swing in Iowa.
Her Tuesday morning visit to a coffee shop in LeClaire, Iowa was staged from beginning to end, according to Austin Bird, one of the men pictured sitting at the table with Mrs. Clinton.
Bird told Daily Mail Online that campaign staffer Troy Price called and asked him and two other young people to meet him Tuesday morning at a restaurant in Davenport, a nearby city.
Price then drove them to the coffee house to meet Clinton after vetting them for about a half-hour.
The three got the lion’s share of Mrs. Clinton’s time and participated in what breathless news reports described as a ’roundtable’ — the first of many in her brief Iowa campaign swing.
Bird himself is a frequent participant in Iowa Democratic Party events. He interned with President Obama’s 2012 presidential re-election campaign, and was tapped to chauffeur Vice President Joe Biden in October 2014 when he visited Davenport.
‘What happened is, we were just asked to be there by Troy,’ Bird said Wednesday in a phone interview.
To explore the idea of rented political crowds, Cioffi got on the phone with Adam Swart, CEO of a California-based crowd arrangement company called Crowds on Demand, pretending to be a GOP staffer looking for a group of rent-a-supporters.
Here’s a portion of the conversation he published online:
Cioffi: I saw your case study on foreign candidates but has your system proven to work in U.S. politics?
Adam Swart: We have worked with dozens of candidates in the US primarily but not exclusively Republican. Mostly they are candidates who suffer from lack of enthusiasm/turnout at rallies and in need of a ‘game change’ (sorry, that’s a loaded term now!). The candidates have been primarily congressional/senate candidates. We’ve only worked with one (serious) presidential candidate thus far. I have found our approach has led to increased poll numbers and, in many case made the margin of victory for a few reasons:
- A) Photo-ops at rallies. Having a diverse group of people (race/gender/age) around the candidate is critical especially for those who are constantly followed by reporters but even for those who only get a couple pieces per day.
- B) Enthusiastic crowds bring more media attention and shift the narrative onto grassroots supporters. Press always want to understand why people support candidate x or candidate y. Giving them great footage of enthusiastic supporters speaking about their love for the candidate provides great quotations
- C) Gives a sense of legitimacy for the candidate among their existing supporters. When they see lots of enthusiastic folks at rallies, they feel like they’re backing the right horse.
- D) Bolsters the candidates’ self-confidence. Some candidates knew about the paid crowds and other times we have been hired by outside organizations. In both cases, seeing more supporters gave them the confidence to up their game on stage.
Cioffi: What reassurances do you offer that the crowd does not leak the fact that they were paid to arrive?
Adam Swart: We have all crowd members sign binding non-disclosure agreements. Our crowd members work for us on a regular basis and understand we value discretion given the sensitive nature of the business. The ‘leak’ issue has only happened on one occasion over the past three years.
In a follow-up conversation with Personal Liberty, Swart acknowledged that his company does indeed routinely work with U.S. politicians. And while he declined to answer many of our questions, he provided a few interesting details.
From the interview:
PL: Could you provide an estimate of how many congressional campaigns and/or their respective outside support groups have reached out to your firm for help bolstering crowds at rallies?
Swart: A couple hundred at least have reached out to us. But of those we’ve actually worked with around 50 or so in the past three years, if you include the outside support groups (those, as you might imagine, are the main folks we deal with). That’s not including state/local races.
PL: Are specific paid crowd members designated by your firm to seek out members of the press during events? Are they coached on what to say?
Swart: Yes, we do designate specific crowd members to approach members of the press and of course we tell them what to say. Sometimes it’s just a list of talking points, while some campaigns give us an exact script. More often than not, they want a specific type of person to approach the press to get a certain point across.
PL: Do political events make up a large portion of your firm’s business?
Swart: In this competitive environment, candidates must define a strong narrative around themselves to survive. That means getting diverse crowds of supporters around them, talking to the press and spreading the word about their ideas. So political events are an increasingly large part of Crowds on Demand.
We’re quickly reaching peak spin in U.S. politics.
The post For some campaigns, political rallies are just commercials … complete with paid actors appeared first on Personal Liberty.
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