Tips for candidates, campaign staff, and supporters

Welcome Candidate (or Campaign Staffer or Supporter)!

Thanks for choosing Daily Kos to promote your own campaign for public office or to support someone you want to see elected.

We do not have an endorsement program at Daily Kos this election cycle. We still seek to elect more and better Democrats, and we welcome you to use our platform to reach constituents, prospective supporters and donors. Our community has a national (and even international) reach. Feel free to reach out to us at dkhelp@dailykos.helpscoutapp.com and to explore the user resources at Help Desk.

Guidelines for constructive campaign support

It’s great to have campaign staff and/or supporters contribute posts or comments to promote someone's campaign.

Volunteer posters in support of a candidate are like volunteer canvassers. For someone to feel strongly enough about a candidate to give their time to their campaign affirms the candidate’s appeal and offers another, often illuminating, perspective on the candidate. It's a different matter, of course, for campaign staff to post content promoting a candidate, though such posts can also be compelling and effective. Here are a few specific rules about these staff and supporter posts.

• Staff disclosures: Transparency required
• No “sockpuppets” allowed
• Boosting your campaign on and off Daily Kos

Staff Disclosures

Campaign staff and high-level volunteers with major campaign responsibilities MUST disclose their relationship with the candidate up front. It’s deceptive to keep such relationships under wraps. If staffers hide their affiliation and pretend to be ordinary voters with no direct connection to the campaign, they may face site discipline up to and including banning. If staff members post stories under the actual name of the candidate, they must disclose they are posting "on behalf of Candidate XYZ."

No "sockpuppets" allowed

No one person may create and use multiple accounts. That’s called sockpuppeting and is prohibited. However, it’s okay for one person to rally support for a candidate, and to suggest postings by multiple people under their own usernames. This collective activity is one of the key features of Daily Kos Groups, and that system of Groups is one that you can use (with some administrative support to start) to help generate interest in your campaign.

Boosting your campaign on and off Daily Kos

Support may come from unanticipated sources

Comments and Recommends are not the sole measurements of engagement. We have many regular readers who never comment, but they do pass along information they find here. So always make sure the campaign's contact information is visible and easy to access in every story. We also encourage sharing Daily Kos articles with relevant social media networks and community groups.

Daily Kos Groups

The Groups feature of Daily Kos is a powerful tool to help coordinate collective activity on a campaign's behalf. It's likely that there are already affinity groups that would be happy to promote a particular campaign, both inside and outside of Daily Kos. These groups can help republish or promote a story among Daily Kos members who live in the relevant state and community. Please each out to the Help Desk with any questions about connecting with current Daily Kos Groups or starting a new one, time and interest permitting.