On Call Time
What fundraising for my campaign is teaching me about power, poverty, and the politics of asking for help.
I hate call time. I hate everything about it.
For context, “call time” refers to the practice of candidates and staff cold-calling potential donors to raise money. A whole industry of data firms and list vendors exists to sell donor information – either for a flat fee or a cut of the contributions.
It’s gross.
As a voter and donor, few things annoy me more than unwelcome calls from campaign committees pressuring me to make a contribution.
But campaigns are expensive. Experts have told me they think it’ll take $4-6 million dollars to compete for the seat I’m running for. I can’t get there without call time – and a lot of it.
That makes me uncomfortable. Some of my apprehension comes from the personal discomfort connected with cold-calling strangers. No one enjoys rejection, and you face a lot of that when you spend your days hitting up strangers for money. I’ve spent enough time working call centers or sales desks to know how quickly that kind of work wears you down.
But I feel a deeper discomfort when asking for campaign backing – something hard to shake and even harder to articulate. Political campaigns hinge on warped expectations around costs, funding, and how we expect candidates to spend their time.
An unhoused man spends most days near my apartment building. I try to help him when I can, but lately I haven’t been able to do much — I lost my job at the beginning of August, and I’m doing my best to stay afloat.
When I try to explain to him that I can’t help him the way I did a month ago – that I lost my job and my financial situation is tenuous – he doesn’t care. He’s questioned the quality of my character more than once in the past month.
But I want to help him. More than I ever have before.
Running for office has recontextualized my relationship with my neighbors without housing — not just emotionally, but practically. Because candidates and politicians spend their days the same way he does: asking for help.
I need donations. I need volunteers. I need support.
So does he.
Our tactics and needs may differ, but it’s essentially the same job.
But I’ve been giving him money for over a year now, and it’s never enough. His situation never seems to improve. It feels like a cycle with no end.
And I can’t help but wonder: What would it take to help him more forward? Not just to survive another day? How can my money make the biggest impact for him?
I ask myself similar questions as a donor: Am I throwing good money after bad by contributing to this campaign? Is this really the best way to make an impact in this country?
And now, as a candidate, I can’t turn that voice off. Every time I pick up the phone to ask for support, that same doubt creeps in: Is this how change really happens? Or is it just how the wheel keeps turning?
During election season, as a voter, I get buried under mountains of fundraising emails, texts, and phone calls asking for money to field campaigns. And it’s no wonder: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee used to welcome freshman representatives with a PowerPoint presentation instructing them to dedicate four hours a day to calling donors – plus another hour for fundraisers and press. That left just three to four hours reserved for the actual work they were elected to do: legislating, voting, and meeting with constituents.
That schedule may be more than a decade old, but I see no reason to believe their “best practices” have changed. During every cycle, they ask for more and more – Congressional candidates raised $1.5 billion in 2014 compared to a whopping $3.3 billion in 2024.
And where do all those dollars go? With heaps of money at their disposal, why can’t they produce better results? Why should the American people spend their limited resources on a system that gives so little back?
I’ve been told, time and again, by advisors and experts, that political campaigns revolve around call time. And sure, if your goal is to pump $3.3 billion into Congressional elections, that’s the pro move.
But if the goal is to elect leaders who inspire the American people – who make us proud to be represented – then this is the wrong way to go about it.
How do I know? Because I can count on one hand the number of high-profile elected officials I genuinely respect.
There has to be a better way. I want to find it.