Hi all -
On Friday we announced CampSight, our new tool specifically to help candidates prepare for when Americans ask ChatGPT or other LLMs who to vote for.
We started building this last year some of our 2025 candidates started asking us two big questions: (1) How do I know what voters are seeing when they ask an LLM about me? and (2) How do I change those answers?
Our tech team, led by CTO Jordan Haines, built CampSight to solve for that and meets voters where they are. This is, as far as we know, the first of its kind AEO (artificial intelligence engine optimization) product in the political ecosystem — and it couldn’t come soon enough.
To get a sense of the scale of the problem, we set up CampSight to monitor the CA governor’s race over the last few months, tracking the LLM answers about the candidates. You can read that full case study here. An excerpt:
A Californian asking ChatGPT or Google’s AI about the 2026 governor’s race rarely sees a Sacramento Bee or New York Times article in the answer. They see a CalMatters summary, a Reddit thread, and information from candidates’ own websites. They see misinformation from social media and aggregator sites. When asking about progressive candidates, most responses also include details on Steve Hilton, a Fox News host who, well, isn’t progressive at all. The information environment for elections is being rapidly rewired, and most campaigns are still optimizing for the old one.
We’re thrilled that we can offer CampSight to local candidates for as cheap as $9 a month. But we know this isn’t just a tool for downballot — so for the first time, we’re opening up a Run for Something support product to all pro-democracy candidates, at every level. We’ve already gotten interest from dozens of candidates and organizations, from big statewide campaigns to major committees to issue-based groups and even some investors in media, who want to understand how their portfolio companies are showing up in LLM answers, and we’re currently onboarding RFS candidates onto the tool now in cohorts.
If you want to learn more about CampSight, you can sign up for a demo or get on the waitlist here.
If you’d like to support our efforts to expand, scale, and sustain this tool, you can make a donation here or reply to this email for details on larger investments.
We have a huge learning agenda and a product roadmap that includes multi-lingual support (what are Spanish-speaking voters seeing? what about Chinese, or Urdu, or any other language that might be a priority in race?) and expanding to other LLMs like Claude and Perplexity.
Personally: I am very excited about CampSight. It’s the kind of thing that usually only private companies or presidential campaigns build, and when it does exist, it rarely exists at a price point or usability that makes sense for the races we work on.
We are well-positioned to have spotted the problem (we had candidates deep in it last year!), build it (we have a great in-house tech team that focuses on solving problems), get it in front of candidates (through our huge endorsement program and pipeline) and expand on it (because we sustain our work year over year). This is also the rare moment where at least for now, it seems like our side is on offense on a communications tactic as opposed to defense. Gotta love that.
In the NYT this week: RFS candidates & alum David Morales, Burhan Azeem, Manny Rutinel, and Juliana Bennett as part of a larger story on the wave of young people running specifically on housing. This is a must-read, as it captures what we’ve been seeing for the last few years — millennials and gen Z leaders understand the housing crisis in a way that is personal and urgent.
In RFS community updates:
We had elections last week — plus some final results from CA!! Congrats to our big winners:
Stephanie Itkin-Goodman (Clark County Public Administrator, NV)
Minja Yan (Clark County Commission, District F, NV)
Ashley Painter (South Carolina HD-117)
Kiernan Majerus-Collins (ME HD-95)
Elen Astrayan (Glendale City Council, CA)
Jovan Jackson (NV assembly, district 6)
Alex Quagge (Clark County District Court Judge, Dept 29, NV)
Brenda Zamora (Clark County School District Trustee, NV)
Taylor Johnson (North Dakota state house, district 35)
Matthew Adams (CA state assembly, district 9
Estuardo Mazariegos (LA City Council, district 9)
Aram Ayra (Riverside City Council, ward 2, CA)“She’s young, working class, and determined to flip the Midwest” — listen to Jordan Zakarin interview Katrina Manetta, an RFS candidate running for MI state house.
CT Mayor Roberto Alves (Danbury) went public with a disturbing story: a recent ICE operation in the city left a child alone in a vehicle. He's been consistently vocal on immigrant rights since a June 4 raid sparked protests citywide. A few weeks later, he also flagged a city-state conflict with ICE continuing.
PA Sen. Nikil Saval held a press conference in Harrisburg alongside advocates to introduce "ICE Out" bills — legislation to stop local resources from supporting federal immigration enforcement in communities.
I am obsessed with this conversation with RFS alum CO Rep. Kenny Nguyen about how he went viral for posting from Colorado Anime Fest and the response was something like “Hey, I didn’t realize politicians can be cool.”
NY Sen. Kristen Gonzalez was featured in a NYT piece on the movement to stop data centers, noting that if all 28 planned data centers in New York fired up, they could expand the state's energy use by roughly a third.
NY Assemblymember Jon Rivera joined advocates urging Gov. Hochul to sign a one-year data center moratorium ASAP.
KY Councilmember Emma Curtis (Lexington) spearheaded a unanimous vote to pass a data center moratorium through the urban county council — and KY Councilmember Liz Sheehan was the one who formally proposed it.
WI Councilmember Garner Moffat (Superior) proposed a data center moratorium in Superior, saying the responsible move is to review the policy before applications start landing on the table.
NE Sen. Terrell McKinney co-sponsored legislation in the Nebraska Legislature to help regulate data centers and held a North Omaha town hall on the issue.
CO Sen. Rachel Ventura made a last-minute move in the Illinois legislature to advance a bill limiting institutional single-family ownership — part of a nationwide push to keep Wall Street out of residential housing.
PA Sen. Lindsey Williams has been pushing legislation to ban AI teachers in classrooms — she says electronic bots don't belong at the head of a classroom.
SD Mayor Sean Elo-Rivera (San Diego) — serving on the MTS board — proposed and won a fare freeze for low-income riders ahead of expected transit fare hikes.
PA Rep. Jennifer O'Mara got a big win: the PA House passed her bill on a bipartisan vote to protect the rights to fertility treatments in Pennsylvania.
NY Sen. Andrew Gounardes passed his CREEP Act through the state legislature — expanding anti-stalking protections to cover more forms of harassment and intimidation.
PA Rep. Emily Kinkead got her bill to combat image-based sexual abuse — including AI-generated intimate images — through the PA House.
MO Clerk Brianna Lennon (Boone County) filed an amicus brief with the Missouri Supreme Court, arguing that allowing the August primary to proceed under gerrymandered maps is legally indefensible.
Kicking off our partnership with Important, Not Important: A great conversation with Quinnie Prez, who’s running for Orange County Soil and Water, district 1, in lorida.
Our regular bench watch:
SC Rep. Dr. Jermaine Johnson won the primary for governor!! He’s moving to November — we’re rooting for him.
Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang is not only moving on to November — she’s in first place, beating an incumbent member of Congress.
CA Sen. Aisha Wahab officially moved on to the general in the race for CA-14, filling Eric Swalwell’s seat in the U.S. House.
Some related reading:
This was a super interesting column about the rise of effective leadership in cities — driven predominantly by younger mayors who really want to get shit done. I think this matters big-time, both for actual quality of life and also for ensuring people feel better about the Democratic Party because their local Democrats don’t suck.
Thanks for making all this possible.
- Amanda
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.