• No results found

58 continuously active people in the team was around 100. The campaign team, which had its foundations

in the extensive network Mr Piko accumulated over the years as a journalist and civil activist, had separate creative and political communication teams.

Mr Piko selected Tessza Udvarhelyi as his campaign manager based on her excellent organizational skills and embeddedness in civil society through her involvement in the running of several CSOs propagating participatory democracy. She also served as the candidate’s ‘moral shield’, preventing him from making bad compromises with political parties within the coalition. The head of political communication was Zsofia Nagy, assistant professor of sociology and social psychology at ELTE university, who was previously active in the youth wing of SZDSZ. Her team was responsible for the slogans, messages, videos, negative campaigning and political actions. She was also the head of the creative team of local creative artists, filmmakers and designers, producing banners, stickers and other merchandise. The head of programming was Gyorgy Molnar from C8, a former politician of the local MSZP and researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He coordinated the experts delegated by parties and civilians, and provided mathematical analyses of the district’s constituencies. A group of political analysts, strategists and consultants supported their work.

Several civil society activists associated with various CSOs joined the campaign, not as organizations but as individuals. Ms Udvarhelyi, a co-founder of the School of Public Life - an organization that provides civic education and develops strategic planning for NGOs - brought plenty of civilians, while the campaign itself also attracted many activists from Józsefváros and other parts of Budapest.

Campaign strategy

Campaign strategy rested on an energetic mobilization campaign, the choice of running a political campaign instead of a program-focused campaign, and the conscious conflation of local and national regime deficiencies. A key message was the coalition’s marked opposition to the incumbent’s ignorance towards the most pressing problems of the electorate. Therefore, the candidate’s most important promise was to be available to his constituents and listen to them. By not making costly and unrealistic promises, he projected an image of honesty, which was appreciated by people.

Careful strategic planning determined the campaign’s strategies and targeted messages, which represented a major shift from the civil orthodoxy of exclusively addressing poverty and homelessness in the district. The campaign team’s canvassing activities were guided by KPIs that set out targets for the number of people that had to be mobilized, and the number of activists necessary to reach them by the end of the campaign. Although there was a significant difference between the performance of civil and party activists, a turning point in the campaign dissipated ensuing tensions in mid-September. The political intimidation through a police investigation against the campaign team, coupled with the questionable results of an opinion poll, shocked them and compelled them to refocus the campaign purely on canvassing. First started by civilians, it was quickly joined by all the parties with full force.

Fortunately, the coalition had been conducting a mixed campaign based on Facebook, continuous street

59

presence and door-to-door canvassing without emphasizing any of the three. After two team coaching sessions, their campaign was back on track.

The incumbent was not prepared for the personal and systematic nature of the opposition’s attacks, highlighting the failures of the local elite. By discussing the billion forints worth of public procurements and inflated consultancy contracts, the coalition’s aim was to reveal the nepotistic system dominating local politics. The strength of this strategy lies in the dual image of a centered and people-oriented civilian politician who can raise his voice when necessary.

A campaign innovation tailored to the local specificities, was a strategy preventing vote buying. A long-time practice in Józsefváros, it was estimated that around 1.500 votes had been bought by Fidesz in each recent election. The coalition used a distinctly civilian technique - after mapping the most affected areas and the network behind this practice, the campaign team deployed 40 activists at respective polling stations with signs saying ‘5 years of respect instead of HUF 5.000’, referring to the sum usually offered in exchange for one vote. On election day, besides using deterrence by their physical presence, the activists were monitoring the perpetrators, and when they spotted these criminals, clung to them and followed them, thus blocking their operations. Analysis of election data later revealed that turnout in the affected area was significantly lower compared to previous elections, resulting in almost exactly 1.500 fewer votes.

Mobilization

To balance the disadvantages of not having access to local or state media, the campaign relied heavily on online channels for communications. Their Facebook campaign used plenty of professional pictorial and cinematic elements. The videos emphasized the civil and community-based nature of the campaign through displaying Józsefváros streets flooded with banners, the extensive use of the I ❤ NYOLC logo stimulating local patriotism, and the slogan ‘Piko for Mayor!’ spray-painted on the district’s main street.

Putting up the candidate’s posters in mid-September had an interesting effect: from then on, Mr Piko was stopped and approached on the streets far more often, even though the intensity of canvassing did not change.

‘City Walks’, an innovative mobilization strategy organized by C8, showed the opposition’s presence in the district. It had a message that the coalition was local, connected to Józsefváros, and conscious about its environment. This was amplified by the I ❤ NYOLC campaign, very ‘civil’ in its nature, which involved extensive networking. These walks were very useful to the campaign since the team met plenty of people who later - directly or indirectly - helped them; they had an important role in recruiting new activists.

The decision to stop all their mobilization activities and only focus on door-to-door canvassing came after they received the results of an opinion poll based on a representative sample of 500. Although the candidate did not agree with polling such a small sample, it was offered to the team as a donation.

60

Results indicated Mr Piko standing on 40%, as opposed to the incumbent’s 99%. Although these numbers were quite depressing, the coalition tried to interpret it as a guide to the final weeks of the campaign - they need to reach out to as many new people as possible through canvassing, for which they gathered 70-80 activists, including the candidate. Mr Piko was surprised seeing how clearly people understood - and accepted - that the regime is corrupt and unfair. The only thing they could not get over was how politics became disconnected from the electorate - nobody listened to them.

Word of the campaign quickly spread throughout Budapest, drawing many helping hands to the team.

The candidate encouraged his team to campaign like it was the greatest campaign of their life, no matter if they win or lose. The background to the whole mobilization campaign was a professional strategy that made it possible to address every potential voter, based on sophisticated calculations.

On election day, turnout was continuously monitored using data from the official and constituency turnout reports, and canvassers were sent to areas where it was lower than in the EP elections. The coalition knew that high turnout would benefit them - Fidesz had considerably less activists to mobilize.

When going door-to-door, the opposition’s activists met Fidesz canvassers several times, and it turned out that they were paid student workers, meaning they were not committed and did not know - and were therefore unable to argue for - the incumbent. Students could distribute flyers and tell people to vote for Fidesz, but the coalition had a considerable advantage with their highly trained activists, who had a personal relationship with the candidate and knew his program. The incumbent led a successful campaign since he could increase the number of his voters. However, the civil-led coalition was able to take those to the polls who had not previously voted in municipal elections.

Campaign budget

The coalition’s budget of approximately HUF 10 million equaled half of the originally planned amount.

Mr Piko’s Facebook advertising budget was above HUF 1 million. Momentum covered half of the costs, and about 60% of the civilian-raised HUF 5 million was donated by some major individual supporters whom Piko contacted. The rest was collected from microdonations. It was a very important element of the campaign that the coalition in Józsefváros got all its printed materials and posters from the Budapest-level campaign, ensuring a uniform design. Although each mayoral candidate received a package provided by the campaign coordination, Mr Piko’s posters took a bit longer than expected.

Incumbent campaign

The incumbent’s campaign had an incomparably larger budget, providing him with countless posters, billboards and flyers. The local newspaper, Józsefváros újság, acted as their campaign newspaper.

Comparison of the individual Facebook campaign expenses of the candidate and the incumbent shows a 1 : 3,5 ratio, but adding up total support for each side brings it closer to 1: 6.

Józsefváros, the capital's poorest district was a sort of ‘extreme case’ for the opposition, since it was so heavily repressed by Fidesz’s tight grip on local politics that if they could win here, they could win

61

anywhere. Vote-buying, police brutality against vulnerable groups and local businesses’ systemic infiltration by government-friendly entrepreneurs paralyzed civil society. After losing the election, the former mayor is believed to have legally obstructed the takeover of the city hall in order to destroy physical evidence of local corruption cases. There is much debate about the extent to which the Borkai scandal has stimulated local opposition voters. In the last days of the campaign, posters of the Józsefváros incumbent were amended with the mocking subtitle ‘Endorsed by Zsolt Whoremonger Borkai!’.

Challenges

According to Mr Piko, the large-scale intimidation exerted by Fidesz’s local chapter, the police investigation against the coalition’s campaign team, the lack of access to local media and the constant smear tactics of the incumbent’s campaign constituted the biggest challenges to the opposition. For him personally, the most challenging aspect of the campaign was sacrificing his career as a journalist, since it would have been risky to employ him in case he lost the mayoral race.

At the beginning of the campaign, the coalition considered establishing its headquarters in Aurora, a community center whose mission is to create a safe environment for CSOs. Mr Piko did not want that, because the campaign could have easily been identified with the ‘enemies of the state’ - ‘Soros-soldiers’

and ‘drug addicts’. Therefore, they explicitly left Aurora out of the campaign. The only mention was in their promise that the new district government would not establish a relationship with NGOs and other local communities - or discriminate or persecute anyone - on a political basis.

Budapest primaries

Mr Piko believes that Gergely Karacsony’s resounding victory in the primaries gave him huge legitimacy, which certainly helped him to act as a real challenger against Tarlos. Karacsony and Piko organized a joint event during the campaign - one of the ‘City Walks’ led by the two. Mr Karacsony participated in a solidarity protest against government intimidation organized in response to the police search targeting Mr Piko and his team.

There was an effective coordination between the Józsefváros and Budapest-level campaigns in programming, and related to campaign materials provided by the central Budapest campaign. Mr Karacsony’s campaign staff included civil experts and activists, who currently aid the mayor’s work in running Budapest. A program initiated by Transparency International and other anti-corruption NGOs, setting out minimum necessary requirements of transparent local governance, was signed by both mayoral candidates, increasing their trustworthiness.

Findings

The uniquely civil-dominated opposition coalition in Józsefváros was the outcome of local civil society’s lengthy journey to self-governance. Having started preparations for its leading role in the alliance nine months before the elections, C8 became an important player in the local opposition.

62