In the final stretch of a heated runoff between Gina Ortiz Jones and Rolando Pablos, text messages are flying from campaigns and the outside groups supporting them.
Political strategists say texting has grown in popularity as a relatively cheap way to contact voters — costing roughly 5 to 7 cents per message — though opinions vary on their efficacy as a campaign tool.
“Text messages are the 21st century robocall,” said San Antonio political strategist Kelton Morgan, whose firm CSG Campaigns specializes in direct voter contact and print mail. “They’re cheap, and for a lot of broke campaigns, that’s what they can afford to do.”
Of the nearly $1.7 million reported campaign expenditures in the runoff, Jones and her allies have been outspent about three-to-one.
San Antonio political strategist Bert Santibañez, who worked on a recent independent expenditure for the pro-Jones group Annie’s List, said political text messaging has improved since it first started, and offers a cost-effective way to reach voters, particularly those in a younger demographic.
“People use graphics in texts, they now use video within texts, so it’s a very direct and efficient way to get your message out,” Santibañez said.
This year even well-funded political operations are using them in the mayoral race, and drawing attention for the high-profile names popping up San Antonians’ phones.
Texts appearing to come from Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign team and Texas’ First Lady Cecilia Abbott reminded Republicans about early voting, while messages attacking Jones have been coming for weeks from a pro-Pablos PAC.
Abbott is one of the most prolific fundraisers of all time, and the Texas Economic Fund raised roughly $1.35 million during the mayoral runoff.
Morgan said campaigns have far more luck using texts to communicate with voters they already know support them, while broader efforts are generally less effective.
“It’s great as a get-out-the-vote tool for people you’ve already identified as favorable to you,” he said. “It’s terrible as a persuasion tool.”
Wondering how they got your number?
Both Republicans and Democrats have a voter file that campaigns and political operatives pay to access.
The files are built off of publicly available information collected when people register to vote, and updated with data points like whether the person participated in recent past elections, which primary ballot they selected and whether they typically vote early or on election day.
In addition to that public information, the parties’ voter profiles include private data collected or bought from other sources, such as email addresses, home value, income range, and ethnicity.
“They use third-party data vendors to enrich lists with phone numbers and demographic information,” said Santibañez. “They even use statistical model scores to predict partisanship, turnout, propensity, things like that.”
Among the most valuable pieces of information is a cell phone number, but having it in the voter file doesn’t mean campaigns can just blast out messages to people who didn’t opt in.
Unsolicited mass texting is illegal unless people manually key in the numbers — something campaigns hire out to get around that rule.
“You basically put it on the floor of a call center, just like you would an old fashioned paid phone bank,” Morgan said. “By people sitting there and actually hand dialing the numbers, even if it’s into an automated system, that makes it legal.”
Replying “stop” should opt out of a campaign’s texting list, but it won’t remove your number from the voter file that future campaigns and outside groups continue to access.
Strategists say the most reliable way to stop the texts during a campaign is to vote.
County elections departments distribute a list of who voted each day, which is run through the voter file to remove those names so that campaigns aren’t wasting money advertising to people who’ve already voted.
Unusual spending
Campaign strategy has changed tremendously with technology, allowing candidates to spend limited resources targeting only the audiences they believe are likely to support their messages — and more importantly, ones they believe will actually vote.
That dynamic has been on display in recent text messages both mayoral contenders sent to their respective supporters, sounding notably different from their broader stump speeches.
A text Pablos’ campaign sent Sunday warned that “Republican turnout is down — because too many voters don’t think this race matters.”
He went on to say that Jones winning means “soft-on-crime policies, higher taxes and a City Hall that silences our values,” and that if “Republicans can’t be bothered to vote, we don’t deserve to win.”
Meanwhile, a May 27 text from Jones asked her supporters, “Has Rolando Pablos been sending you racist texts?”
“Let’s show him that no matter how much money Greg Abbott and other MAGA extremists give his campaign, our city can’t be bought,” Jones said in a message that linked to a list of early voting sites.
While the campaigns are spending primarily on digital and mail ads, this year’s expensive mayoral race also saw an unexpected return of TV advertising.
Thanks to low municipal turnout and more efficient targeting methods, Morgan said San Antonio mayoral campaigns haven’t used TV ads in earnest since 2015.
Only about 102,000 votes — roughly 12% of San Antonio’s 840,000 registered voters — participated in the first round, though turnout in the runoff is on track to be higher.
Yet this year the Texas Economic Fund and the San Antonio Police Officers’ Association both spent big on TV ads promoting Pablos and attacking Jones.
So far no TV ads have been run in Jones’ support, despite rumors of a pro-Jones group inquiring about a large buy at a local station several weeks ago.
