You’ve Got Targeted Political Mail

By Clint Reilly

I remember the moment well. The year was 1979, and I was walking precincts in the Richmond District of San Francisco with mayoral candidate Quentin Kopp.

The Richmond was a diverse neighborhood that contained homeowners and renters, Asians, new professionals, Irish and Italian native San Franciscans, married couples, singles, seniors and young people.

The Richmond was supposed to be the most politically moderate neighborhood in the city. But as we walked door to door, day after day, I saw something else – an amalgam of every point of view from very liberal to very conservative.

The Asian families had far different concerns than the young white singles. The homeowners were 180 degrees from renters on fiscal issues. The working class ethnic Irish and Italians were mostly high school educated, while the young professionals were college educated and earning more that most of their neighbors.

The idea that the Richmond district was a homogeneous, monolithic voting bloc was erased by the experience of walking the 45 avenues that comprised the neighborhood.

Then a light bulb came on in my head.

What if we could speak only to the Asians via direct mail? And what if we could speak separately to the seniors, the young singles or the homeowners?

Also, what would happen if we could target mail at highly specific constituencies instead of the generic, one-size-fits-all messages that characterized almost all political communication?

Then I met Frank Tobe, a Los Angeles based computer whiz who had already created the computer software to do just that. Tobe produced mailing labels, computer letters, and other direct mail products. But he also developed a new tool for managing political campaigns called a count book.

The count book enabled consultants to quantify and aggregate groups of voters across geographic lines like neighborhoods or cities or regions.

Tobe’s biggest client was the Southern California powerbroker team of Michael Berman and Carl D’Agostino. Berman-D’Agostino was the political arm of the Waxman/Berman Los Angeles political machine controlled by Assemblyman Howard Berman and Congressman Henry Waxman.

I immediately saw how using this computer software could permanently change the way political campaigns were managed. Within a few years, it would radically transform American politics as well.

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