Politique
I was Julian Bell's campaign manager in his 2015 gubernatorial bid (JB4G), handling the campaign's graphic design, social media, messaging, event coordination/planning/scheduling, photography and video, as well as phone banking for numerous campaigns, including coordinating with Bernie Sanders' Portland team.
We created a 501(c)3 and a PAC in efforts to lobby for climate activism in the years that followed. I handled the paperwork until bowing out sometime around 2019, when Julian decided to write a memoir as a guide for grass-roots progressive candidates to avoid many of the pitfalls of running an election without mainstream party support.
Placed at a major intersection in Portland.
Portland, OR
Julian's whole thing was that having kids made him want to run for office to try to stave off the hazards his children would be dealing with in their adult lives, and so they were an essential part of the campaign. It seemed evident to us that the only way to persuade people was to make the emotional stakes real to them, concretely associating the future with their own children, and our choices today with the world our children live in tomorrow.
Political candidate headshot.
Some people thought it was in poor taste to use children in a political campaign, but I can't disagree more, given the nature of the campaign and our undertaking being directly influential on their health and livelihoods.
Then again, this was 2015, a very different year for children in media. AI deepfakes didn't exist, and the Epstein files issue hadn't blown up, so it was kind of a more innocent time in some senses.
We didn't win, but we got 7% of the vote despite active opposition from the Oregon Democratic Party, such that we were blacklisted from interviews with local journalists (afraid they would lose access to incumbents & established players), were excluded from media that supposedly factually documented candidates running in the upcoming primary (we filed on time, we listed on the SoS website, but were still excluded from mention, and no redactions were ever printed even when I called to correc the papers). Despite all that, we still achieved more than double the votes of other opponents of the incumbent governor.
The goal wasn't exclusively to win. The core goal was to gauge the interest in climate change action within the state, and nudge the party establishment to act on behalf of the expressed will of their constituency. I don't think it worked, unfortunately, though it's hard to say. Rather, as I see it, a lot of red herrings were dragged over Sockeye Sam to divert from the growing interest in progressive politics. And then we got Cheeto, so the unifying cry of corporate liberals became, "Hey! We're not Cheeto. Vote for us."
I took every photo on the billboards except for this one of Julian's son, which was taken by Julian with his phone.
To be clear: Julian drew a draft of Sockeye Sam on our campaign office whiteboard. I vectorized him, tidied him up, and provided various colorways and contexts. This was a collaborative logo.
Placed at a major intersection in Portland.
Placed near a Catholic church, at a major intersection in Portland.
Placed near Mt. Hood, in the line of sight of likely snowboarding enthusiasts.
Listen. I didn't choose or agree with "fixing" climate change as a slogan. It's not scientifically accurate. But Julian was adamant that it was emotionally effective. And the more I dealt with the voting public, the more I agreed that emotionality was what drove people. That being said, the imprecision of language never ceases to bother me.
Brown's "landmark" Coal2Clean bill was drafted in collaboration with the fossil fuel companies and major utility companies, and was ultimately another pro-fracking ("natural gas: the cleaner solution!") bill disguised as abolition of an already dying coal-industry in favor of a more lucrative anti-environmental lobby. No doubt she and her minder Tina Kotek profited heartily off of it in one way or another, cos you really can't get the Oregon Democratic Party out of bed with the fossil fuel industry. Pre-MAGA, Oregon Republicans were actually more favorable to sustainable solutions due to the job-creation incentives in rural precincts, but post-MAGA, most candidates have represented an onslaught of human sludge and/or at very least misguided yet idealistic social climbers with minimal sway, so the problem remains.
Seth Woolley of the national Green Party sold a digital advertising package to Julian (despite my reservations); I was tasked with creating the ads. The compromise was to make them as silly as possible so they'd at very least be less obnoxious. Analytics were vague as to whether or not they increased site traffic or campaign awareness.