By Nate Levin

When I worked as Deputy Political Director for the Texas Democratic Party during the 2020 election cycle, my job was to support candidates across the state.

I received a call from a woman in rural West Texas. She had been a teacher for forty years, had recently retired and was running for the school board in her community. However, she did not know how to run a campaign and could not afford staff or consultants to help.

The problem was that the current system required deep knowledge of campaign operations and the complex political structure to run a winning campaign—knowing things like filing requirements, how to raise and spend money effectively and which voters to talk to through which channels when. For those who did not have that knowledge but had money, they paid political consultants to access public office.

The result was a great candidate, like the teacher in West Texas, could not get elected, and political consultants were making a ton of money because they had a skillset few had.

In a world with artificial intelligence, that made no sense: the teacher in West Texas could win elections.

My bigger mission was to make sure that money did not decide elections. I wanted to go back to the issues that mattered most and democratize political campaign management.

I pivoted to political campaigns following the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election—as I observed democratic backsliding across the country. I was immediately drawn to the potential of AI to disrupt the industry and remove financial barriers to accessing public office.

I have since graduated with an Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and my background is in political campaigns, including the Biden campaign, Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns, as well as local campaigns. Prior to that, I was an early employee at an AI start-up where I was responsible for product development, as well as customer acquisition and retention.

After graduating in May, I have worked full-time at the company I founded — Campaign Brain — where we are creating an artificially intelligent political campaign management SaaS product to serve local candidates. Using machine learning, political science, and empirically proven campaign tactics and strategies, Campaign Brain will guide a political candidate every step of the way from filing to elected office.

Campaign Brain generates campaign branding, drafts social media and press release content, supercharges fundraising and executes digital ad campaigns, builds voter and volunteer support, and provides daily schedules and action items for candidates, ultimately winning more races. By incorporating artificial intelligence into all aspects of a political campaign, Campaign Brain will provide individualized campaign strategies at a fraction of the cost of consultants by removing financial and knowledge barriers to increase access to office for local candidates.

Campaign Brain was recently designated one of the winners of the SIPA Dean’s Grant Challenge (make sure to check out Brineworks, Basuriza, AmazonSeeds, and OwnYourData—all amazing SIPA organizations), and it was one of the six finalist companies selected from a nationwide pool of more than 125 applicants to participate in Tulane University’s Business Model Competition.

Over the past few months, my main focus has been understanding customer needs and product fit through discovery interviews with targeted audiences. I interviewed past and current candidates for the United States Congress and Senate, state-level positions including State House and State Senate, as well as local positions such as School Board, City Council and Mayor. These conversations highlighted consistent themes of pain points — including a lack of sufficient staff capacity to execute the tasks a campaign needed to win at the scale required and campaigns not knowing the best uses of time and money — which are informing the features Campaign Brain is developing to create solutions. This summer, I led a team of engineers that developed Campaign Brain’s product that will be a game-changer for local political candidates.

Across the country, as school boards ban books and city councils determine contentious fiscal expenditures— all while D.C. experiences increased legislative gridlock amongst heightened polarization — the impact of local elections has never been greater.

With the future of democracy at stake, the future of campaigns is in AI.

Nate Levin (MPA ‘23) united politics with tech with roles in the Texas Democratic Party, Biden's 2020 Campaign, Fusemachines' AI products and Campaign Brain.