The Challenge

For anyone who’s ever met Trey Gowdy, you know he’s a special person. He’s a non-politician. Someone who takes his job, the constitution and the rule of law very seriously. Likewise, he understands the nuances of how people may view the political nature of his job and it’s impact on his effectiveness as a congressman. In short – the man hates politics, doesn’t like raising money, and JUST wants to protect America.

• How do you avoid being political? No hyperbolic language.
• How do you raise money during the Benghazi hearings without mentioning Hillary Clinton? No mention of Benghazi even!
• How do we avoid all the political gimmicks? No birthday cards. No letters from the spouse. None of the stuff that works all the time, every time.
• These were just some of our challenges and constraints.

The Solution

Despite all the constraints – we had one thing in our favor: in 2015 and 2016, Trey Gowdy was everywhere. Literally a nightly fixture on Fox News, both in news clips and as an interviewee.

This national exposure gave us the ability to execute a strategy that was far reaching and could avoid the bombast normally associated with fundraising. Essentially – Fox News was doing the heavy lifting for us on framing who Trey Gowdy is and what he stands for.

On the acquisition side – we gathered a national house file by using “survey” petitions – “Trey Gowdy wants to hear from you!” was enough to get people to hand over their email addresses.

On the email side – our language was straight forward, even boring and self-deprecating at times.

The Results

The results were astounding. We gathered more than 120,000 individuals to our national house file and put away more than $1.6 million from our email donor program.

More than both Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi in 2016.

And never used the word “Hillary Clinton.”