Dive into our interview with Randi Weingarten on the fight for democracy in our classrooms and learn the digital lessons that helped Democrats dominate the 2025 elections.
I (Nicole Dunger) was thrilled to sit down with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, to talk about her powerful new book Why Fascists Fear Teachers.
We dug into what’s really at stake for educators right now and why sharing this book matters for anyone who believes in democracy. This conversation left me inspired by the courage of real teachers (including both mine and Ryan’s mothers 🤍) and reminded me how much influence authentic voices can have in pushing back against fear and misinformation.
Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.
By Ryan Davis, Founder & CEO, People First
I started my career in digital politics at 17 as John McCain’s Maryland State Youth Coordinator. We invested heavily in IRC (the chat of the day), message boards, AIM, eGroups, and all the other strange corners of the early internet where you could find people online in 1999 and 2000.
Since then, from my time on Howard Dean’s 2004 web team to launching the Social Media department at Blue State in 2010 and founding People First in 2019, I’ve been part of nearly every election cycle, helping Democrats improve their digital game.
Below, I’ve broken down some of the digital tactics that helped Democrats dominate last Tuesday. Let’s hope more of these approaches catch on in our uphill fight to retake the House and Senate in 2026.
The most effective campaigns in 2025 didn’t just adapt to vertical video, they were defined by it.
In Virginia, Jessica Anderson built a following of more than 600,000 TikTok users and earned over 30 million views by filming quick, personal clips about accountable leadership and accessibility. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill’s team learned that even serious policy messages landed when reframed as 20-second Reels and paired with local creators who already had loyal audiences. And in New York City, Zohran Mamdani turned the format into a campaign engine, posting daily TikToks that drew hundreds of thousands of views and made him feel more like a cultural figure than a candidate.
Even campaigns that weren’t as naturally cool as Zohran’s leaned on vertical video to humanize their message and stay visible in people’s feeds.
The small screen won: voters no longer meet campaigns on cable, they meet them on their phones, and the ones who filled that space with real storytelling—not repurposed ads—owned the conversation and the election cycle.
“Trump… appeared on 20 podcasts from July to November 2024, while Harris appeared on just 8 in the same time frame.
Those numbers appear quaint by 2025 standards… New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appeared as a guest on 31 podcasts in the time period between January and October of this year. His main rival in the New York City mayoral race, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appeared on 18.
Meanwhile, in neighboring New Jersey, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who won last Tuesday’s race for governor, went on 18 individual podcasts… Her Republican opponent in the general election Jack Ciattarelli fell just shy of that, appearing on 16.
The payoff of their strategies are clear… Mamdani reached approximately 12.5 million Americans 18 and older in an average week with his podcast appearances, trouncing Cuomo, who reached about 1.2 million Americans per week on average.
For her part, Sherrill was able to reach about 4.1 million Americans 18 and older in an average week via podcasts… while Ciattarelli reached roughly 972,000.
Far less effective were Democrats who started their own podcasts. Most of these shows, cringe and uninspired, struggled to attract listeners beyond paid campaign staff and the candidates’ immediate families.
Since my travel podcast Out of Office has more monthly listeners than all but the top three, I might have a future as an elected official.
It’s hard to separate influencers from these other tactics. Creators are podcast hosts, they can supercharge your YouTube and vertical video strategy, provide content for paid campaigns, and much more.
Influencers played a role in the strategy in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, and California.
As the cool millennial in the race, Zohran was able to involve influencers in his campaign in unprecedented ways.
Mamdani’s team got creative with influencers, hosting events that actually felt like events, not photo ops. One standout was a “paint and sip” social at a senior center, where a few TikTok creators spent the afternoon chatting with older voters over canvases and mocktails.
Instead of pushing scripted endorsements, the campaign just let things unfold naturally. One creator, Christian Divyne (700k followers), said he thought he was invited “to make political content” but ended up just having a good time, which, of course, became the content.
Statewide candidates in Virginia and New Jersey also benefited from creator program experimentation.
More on other influencer-adjacent tactics below.
People First hosted the largest creator briefing supporting Kamala in 2024, and since then the tactic has really caught on. We’re now in discussions with 2026 candidates across the country who want to connect with local and regional creators online or in person. Zohran took the lead here:
New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani hosted more than 70 content creators at his campaign headquarters for an influencer-only briefing. The event, which reached a combined audience of 77.3 million users across social platforms, represents a strategic shift in how campaigns engage with voters through non-traditional media channels.
More than any other Democratic candidate so far, Cuomo leaned into AI slop content to fuel his digital program. It didn’t work, and it won’t work for campaigns that actually want to connect with voters, who are 100% humans and 0% AI bots.
Few facets of Cuomo’s campaign underscored this more than its conspicuous embrace of using AI — tech that CEOs have promised will solve climate change and cure cancer. but in reality is mostly associated by young people with the slop posted by their boomer elders on social media. There was no chance that the actual Cuomo could out-charm Mamdani, so out came the AI Cuomo.
One particularly lampooned campaign ad was a garishly AI-generated video of himself doing all kinds of quintessential “New York” jobs, like operating a subway car or cleaning the windows of a skyscraper. The ad projected the opposite of authenticity: here was a man who wasn’t even bothering to pretend to put his real self out there, and who treated working class jobs like Halloween costumes. It didn’t help that during his campaign, Cuomo barely made public appearances or mingled with anyone outside his circle of cronies.
Generating clicks without paid media is always a challenge on social. Tools like ManyChat can help turn engagement into volunteer signups or even donations.
For more, read “How Zohran Mamdani Drove Over 20K Clicks from Instagram DMs.”
Perhaps the most original digital move in Mamdani’s playbook was turning the campaign into a citywide game.
In August, his team launched a scavenger hunt across New York City, promoted almost entirely through social media. Mamdani teased it in a playful TikTok where he joked, “I have something to hide… we’re doing a scavenger hunt,” and by the next day thousands of New Yorkers were showing up for the first clue. The campaign dropped riddles that led participants to seven sites tied to the city’s history and Mamdani’s platform, with volunteers greeting players and stamping “passport” cards at each stop. The final location, Little Flower Café in Astoria, was packed with supporters eager to meet the candidate in person, where the first finisher won a bag of Herr’s sour cream and onion chips as a wink to an earlier viral moment.
How can you make your campaign fun while grabbing attention?
No more flooding the airwaves and calling it strategy, 2025 marked a real correction: paid media got targeted again.
In Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats proved you can actually use data and storytelling to reach people, not just impressions. Instead of buying blanket GRPs, they layered surgical media buys over smart organic campaigns—cinematic CTV spots in Black and Latino households that tested for persuasion, Spanish-language placements on streaming and radio in low-turnout urban areas, and digital creative that mirrored field priorities zip code by zip code. The result was a return to intent-based media, spending where it moves votes, not where it makes consultants feel busy, and it worked. Virginia flipped, New Jersey held, and digital paid media got targeted again.
Of course, these aren’t all the digital tactics that helped Democrats get over the line in 2025. Smart canvassing, AI-powered voter contact tools, and other innovations are all things to watch as we head into 2026.
People First helps organizations, candidates, and PACs use creators in the most sophisticated and integrated ways, from one-off posts to creator events online and in person, fundraising, and GOTV. Reach out, we’ve built the largest community of social impact creators on the planet, and we can help you engage them.
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