🎙 The Art of Crafting Voter Outreach with Charlie Varon

Hi Y’all! 👋🏽

Through my activism, I have met many incredible people. Charlie Varon has brought joy and art to political activism along with his decades of performance and story building. We carry that that same joy and humor into our conversation about voter outreach! Come for the Bernie Sanders impression and stay for the helpful tips on how you can get involved in this election. Charlie demystifies phonebanking, donation asks, and talking to voters to help more folks feel comfortable doing the uncomfortable!

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• Storytime for Democracy: Sharing our stories can actually help shift the political landscape, one voter at a time.
• Election Whiplash & Happy Shock: The “happy shock” vibe of Democrats. The usual dread? Out the window. Now, it's all about shaking up the narrative and enjoying the ride!
• Forget Postcards, Talk to People! Charlie shares how voter outreach is more like improv. Sure, postcards are easy, but nothing beats a good old-fashioned conversation (even if it's a little scary).
• Turning Fear into Fun: Turning the nerves of phone banking into something exciting—because what’s scarier than calling strangers? Oh, just a second Trump term, no big deal!
• Action Over Speculation: The importance of taking action and iterating on what works is emphasized, rather than getting caught up in speculative political punditry, which can reduce the ability to act effectively.
• Realism and Imperfection: The discussion acknowledges that no candidate is perfect, but stresses the importance of supporting those who can advance progress, despite imperfections, in an impure and complex political landscape.

📋 Learn more or sign up for a volunteer shift with grassroots organizations like Swing Left San Francisco, Northeast Arizona Native Dems, and All In for North Carolina.

About Charlie Varon

Charlie Varon is a playwright, comedian, director, mentor, coach, and amazing phone banking script writer. Listen to the many voices of Charlie Varon with his Comic BonBon's. My particular favorite, Bernie Sanders. 👴🏻

• Listen to Charlie’s Comic BonBon's
• Read Charlies guest piece from May: 🌱 Radio Waves & Horror Flix | the Sparks That Lit the Way

About Sam & Roots of Change

Sam Chavez is a storyteller, strategist, and curious human. She founded Roots of Change, a storytelling agency for activists, non-profits, and political organizations in 2020. Sam is a queer, white, LatinX activist who’s passionate about a livable planet & equitable societies.

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📖 Read Today’s Interview 👩🏻‍🏫

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Sam Chavez at Roots of Change — Hey y'all, this is Sam Chavez with the Roots of Change podcast

Sam Chavez: Hey y'all, this is Sam Chavez with the Roots of Change podcast, and we have a very special guest for you today. We have Bernie Sanders on the show. Um, I am so excited to have him here. How are you doing, Bernie?

Bernie Sanders: We are at a time of inflection, a time when we must ask ourselves to go deep into our hearts and find a way forward in this country. I personally, uh... I'm about to go on a 10-day meditation retreat. I am not characteristically the most silent of men, but it is out of silence that we can find victory.

Sam Chavez: Wow, that is beautiful. Thank you, Bernie. Haha. Um, in all seriousness, I have my friend Charlie Baron on the show today, and I'm really excited because you and I mix art and performance with politics. Haha.

Sam Chavez: Um, so a little bit about you for everyone. Um, you were raised on New York Public Radio in the 1970s, and you share—

Charlie Baron: Yes, I had no home, no parents, no... no, all I did was sit in a room for 15 years listening to the radio. No food, no deficit, deprived person other than auditorially, yeah.

Sam Chavez: Well, you seem to have never heard that phrase. "Raised under your radio" seems to have worked well enough, although you did move to San Francisco after that, so that raises some questions for you.

Charlie Baron: Yes, um...

Sam Chavez: And then, yeah, here you are. You’re a playwright, a comedian, a director, and an educator. Um...

Sam Chavez: I really love that you've moved a lot of your work to passing this on to more folks and teaching people that we all have stories, and we all can tell our stories to help move our world forward. Um, and so we do that through politics. We, um, connected through Swing Left San Francisco, and now we lament and get excited and celebrate our various voter outreach conversations.

Charlie Baron: Yes, yes. The ultimate theater, yes. The one-on-one improv theater of phone banking and canvassing.

Sam Chavez: Yeah, well, I wanted to start out because we've had a lot of whiplash in politics these days, and so just to get a start, like, how are you feeling about the election and things in general?

Charlie Baron: I think we're in the 90-day countdown. It is August 7th, and I sometimes ask myself, at least this week, I try to have a dialogue with the Charlie of six weeks ago and say, "What would you think if it was a Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket?" And they’ve shaken up the narrative; there’s this incredible excitement. The news cycle no longer belongs to the MAGA people. And I would say, "What?" Um, and I am in a state of happy shock, as I would say. Um, I was... you know, I was just on this Zoom call last night with 300 people, a fundraiser for four grassroots groups that are knocking on doors in North Carolina. The goal is to knock on 4 million doors, and as I did my fundraising pitch—I've done a lot of fundraising pitches—there was none more thrilling than this one. Not only because of these amazing grassroots organizers and the great Democratic candidate for governor of North Carolina, but just this moment. And I heard myself say, "It feels like we’ve all been shot out of a cannon."

Sam Chavez: Yeah, and I think, you know, the combination of the release of the dread we were carrying about trying to talk to voters while Biden was president, and the worry that he would have another gaffe or series of gaffes...

Charlie Baron: Yeah, so there's that release, and there’s the excitement and this sense that we suddenly have—Democrats were playing a new game. We’re not on the defensive; we’re having fun. Yeah, it is... I—you know, I'm on the train. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I’m energized, and I just... I feel like I’m in a totally different moment for myself politically. And I sense that in others, too—happy, yeah, haha.

Sam Chavez: I just wanna, like, sit in that for a second because I think it just—it feels good to win a little bit. And I think, you know, as we know with Democrats, we don’t do a good job of winning and celebrating. Or we do a good job of winning, but we don’t celebrate that, and so then we don’t know when we’re winning. Um, and I like to think of the past few weeks as just like a snap, and we sped up to where we were supposed to be. Um, because I feel like, at least on the ground, just noticing how people were talking on, um, phone calls and volunteers—like, there just was fear and dread for this election. Um, and being able to just have that fresh look to say, like, we actually can start talking about the future. We don’t have to only talk about combating the really hard and dark things about our country, which we obviously have to do both of.

Sam Chavez: Um, so I wanted to have you on because you're doing a lot with, um, people on the ground—organizations that are phone banking, asking for donations. Um, so just to start, do you mind just sharing kind of a lay of the land of, like, when we say voter outreach, what do we mean? What are the things that are most effective?

Charlie Baron: Well, I mean, when did I start? 2017. I mean, I was living in the happy cloister of theater, 30 years feeling like politics would do whatever it did, and my job was just to be an artist. And I got the bucket of cold water thrown over my head like everybody else on November 2016. Um, and what I found myself doing, beginning in 2017, was knocking on doors. It was the midterm race, and we were trying to help Josh Harder flip a district in the Modesto area, Central Valley of California. Majority Democrats of the registered voters, but the district had been held by a Republican congressperson. And so there we are, knocking on doors. I’m a total neophyte at this, and it’s only now that I have this language—that when you knock on somebody’s door, it is a scene. It is a piece of—maybe theater’s the wrong word because it’s private, right? But it has some of the same dynamics. Um, and this fascinated me. And so I’ve done canvassing, I’ve done phone banking. I had a brief dalliance early on with writing postcards.

Sam Chavez: I knew you would get there.

Charlie Baron: Which I believe to be the stupidest possible thing. And a lot of people do it. It’s very tempting because it’s easy—you’re in the comfort of your own home, you’re doing something physical with your hand, and you’re putting a stamp on something and putting it in a mailbox. It feels good. But I have come to believe that it is useless, um, and that it is a feel-good activity. I—I don’t feel like we’re—let me put it this way: the urgency, the emergency that we’re in, we cannot afford action that is not strategic. Uh-huh. So what happens when you send a postcard? You put something in the mail, pew, it’s gone, all is good, out of here, think I’ve done my part. And we don’t know whether the person reads it, throws it out, feels annoyed, or even feels—and maybe it has a postmark. You know, if I’m in Michigan and I’m getting a card postmarked in California, yeah, at best it’s "huh?" And at worst it’s like, "Why are these people in California trying to influence me?" So I think it’s delusional. It really bugs me, frankly, that some national organizations that should know better are encouraging people to do this.

Sam Chavez: Yeah, at best, it’s a gateway drug where you begin writing your postcard, then you do more. But it is—it is actually talking to voters. I’ve been doing theater for 40 years; I know something about stage fright, and it is scary for me every time I get on a phone bank. It’s scary every time I knock on doors. And I wish I could say that fear is completely unwarranted, but there are also conversations which open doors for me and for the person I’m speaking to. A lot of that has to do with how you frame the conversation up, and we can talk about that. But it’s interactive contact, which has an element of fear. Well, so does life. I am more scared of a second Trump administration. You can gauge either when you’re at the door talking to somebody or you’re on the phone, and you’re getting these signals from voice and pause—I mean, all these things we know as actors. You’re getting these signals, and you can calibrate. You can have a back and forth. It is two-way communication.

Charlie Baron: Yeah, television advertising is not two-way. Postcards are not two-way. Direct mail is not two-way.

Sam Chavez: Yeah, and I think the other thing that has happened for me in the last few years is learning from people who look at the work of voter contact as an art and not as a sales pitch, yeah.

Charlie Baron: Well, I think that’s the biggest thing. When people think about voter outreach, there’s this big fear of, like, "Oh my gosh, what does that even mean?" You know, like, maybe I’ll gateway into postcarding, maybe I’ll post about it online. And really, what we’ve come to find, especially in 2020 when the pandemic hit and we couldn’t canvas, is that people want to talk about these things. They want to be heard, and it’s a human need to be heard. Um, and we were just talking offline about that—how, you know, frankly, Joe Biden was not hearing the electorate. And now we have this energy because we are feeling that we’re being heard, right?

Sam Chavez: And for me, this started before 2020 because when we were canvassing in Modesto in 2017, 2018, particularly 2017, um, you know, you have the script. And they say, "Make the script your own." I have a great—I mean, I’m a playwright, I don’t—a lot of the scripts are awful and they’re not tuned into the moment. So we’re knocking on doors in Modesto, it’s 2017. We are in this Trump tsunami where it’s the Muslim ban and it’s, you know, the Mueller Report, which just—we’re all—

Charlie Baron: And let me just interject that most—when you’re, uh, doing voter contact work with the Democrats, you are generally talking to Democrats, registered Democrats or independents. You’re not generally talking to Republicans.

Sam Chavez: Especially now, too, like, if you’re wanting to get more involved in phone banking, a lot of the Republicans have been weeded out of those lists because

Charlie and I have been calling, yeah.

Charlie Baron: And so in 2017, we’re knocking on doors, and the question that we landed upon—this is my partner Myra and our little cabal, which we now call the Sanity Group, of about a dozen of us who’ve been working as sort of a political support group—what we found is you knock on the door and you say, "You know, we’re volunteers," and you can say, "With Josh Harder" at that time or "with the Democratic Party now" or whoever the candidate is, and we’re going around asking folks, "How do you feel about Trump?" That was the first, you know, question that we found allowed people to be listened to.

Speaker 1: And as opposed to this script that's like, "Hi, I'm blah blah blah, I'm a phone banking outreach volunteer," and it's very sales-pitchy, it just wouldn't work.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember people would just open up because they had so much to say. There was one Latina woman, and my Spanish isn't great, but when I asked her how she felt about Trump, she said, "No tiene la capacidad," meaning he doesn't have the capacity. People needed to be heard, and we found a way to tap into the energy of the moment, regardless of which candidate or race we were working on. We asked the questions that allowed people to feel heard, yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the principles I always share with clients is that your pitch, your messaging, your communication—it's not about you at all. It's about the people who will be impacted by you. I'd love to hear what you've found to be effective from a phone banking script perspective, especially since you're creating these scripts now and sharing them with other organizations.

Speaker 2: Well, there was that experience of throwing away the script and just asking, "How do you feel about Trump?" People had a lot to say. In 2020, I had an epiphany while calling voters in Arizona for a couple of Democratic state legislative candidates. I was getting a lot of no answers, and back then, most of the phone banking was manual—you had to punch in numbers on your own phone. So, after dialing all these numbers with no responses for about half an hour, I got frustrated. I went outside to catch my breath, and then my phone started ringing. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but I realized it was someone I had called earlier, maybe even left a message for. The guy was calling me back, so I rushed to the computer to remember the names of the candidates I was calling for.

Speaker 1: Oh, wow!

Speaker 2: Yeah, I said, "My name is Charlie, I'm calling for these candidates. We’re just trying to find out what's most important to voters. If you were in charge, what’s the first thing you would change?" I asked that because I was caught off guard—it wasn’t even the modified script I had been using. He said, "We have to enforce speed limits," and I thought, "Whoa, didn’t see that one coming." I was expecting to hear something about climate change, water issues in Arizona, education, guns—anything but speed limits. But I said, "Tell me more about that," and he went on for a good 90 seconds talking about speed limits.

Speaker 1: That’s such a unique response!

Speaker 2: Yeah, and after he felt heard on that, I asked, "What else?" He mentioned education and how underfunded it was in Arizona. Now, the candidates I was calling for were focused on education, which is a big issue in Arizona because the state doesn’t fund it well. So, I said, "Tell me more about that," and he did. I told him, "You know, our two candidates, that's their top issue," and I heard myself say, "I think they would be a good match for you." We talked for probably five or ten minutes, and this is where most campaigns get it wrong—they focus on how many voters you can reach in the shortest amount of time. But I think the opposite is true: how long can you engage with a voter so they feel heard and like they’re the protagonist, while you’re the supporting actor?

Speaker 1: Exactly, the more they feel heard, the greater the connection.

Speaker 2: Right, and then I could give him information on where the candidates stood on education. I didn’t know their stance on speed limits—not a lot of candidates talk about that, though maybe more should. But I was able to address his concerns about education, and we found common ground. It wasn’t until hours after I’d finished phone banking that I realized where my question, "If you were in charge, what’s the first thing you would change?" came from. I had heard it on Ezra Klein's podcast, where he was interviewing Jane McAlevey, one of the great labor organizers. She said, when talking to nurses about organizing, "I don’t bullshit, I don’t do pleasantries. I say, 'I’m here because the union asked me to talk to you. If you were in charge of the workplace, what are the first three things you would change?'"

Speaker 1: That’s brilliant!

Speaker 2: Yeah, those words flew out of my mouth unprepared, and it worked. The sad footnote is that we just lost Jane McAlevey; she passed away maybe a week or so ago, way too young. She changed the way I talk to voters without ever knowing it. I did send her an email thanking her, and she wrote back, "This is thrilling, keep going. We have so much work to do."

Speaker 1: That’s awesome.

Speaker 2: To bring it back to phone banking and canvassing, the work that my partner Myra, Elizabeth, Jackie Tulski, and Debbie BenRuby have done with Zoom trainings—sharing what works and what doesn’t when talking to voters—has reached thousands of people and changed the way a lot of them approach voter outreach. We’ve created two kinds of trainings: one is "Phone Banking for Introverts," and the other is called "You and the 34%."

Speaker 1: Those sound amazing!

Speaker 2: The 34% one is about making "I don’t vote" the beginning of the conversation rather than the end. I’m just thrilled to be part of it.

Speaker 1: I appreciate all of that rambling because I think it’s—

Speaker 2: I’m not a linear man.

Speaker 1: You are not.

Speaker 2: I’m not linear; I’m a right-brain person.

Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are, and I think authenticity keeps coming back to me. It’s about showing up as yourself, not as this two-dimensional character crafted by consultants, which is why someone like Tim Walz is so exciting.

Speaker 2: Totally. This whole moment is unscripted, and who knows where it’s going to lead. But there’s joy, laughter, and improv in politics right now.

Speaker 1: I think that's where a lot of people are fearful because they're like, "Oh, we're repeating 2016. We have another woman on the ballot, right?" And I know there's a lot of fear out there around whether the United States can elect a Black woman. Obviously, that's a question we're not going to have an answer to for another 90 days, maybe a little longer. But I think we are in a completely different moment now, and that's what I want to emphasize. Kamala has clearly learned from Hillary, and we also have a completely different electorate.

Speaker 2: I've been thinking about that too. When I talk to a voter and I see "age 18" pop up on my screen while I'm phone banking, I think, "In 2016, this person was 10 years old." I really think that's something that established Democrats are getting wrong. That’s why I’m so happy with the pivot towards younger generations, progressive values, and really talking about and believing in those things. We are moving towards a majority non-white country, and that’s increasing by the day. Our generations are more diverse, and the younger generations that keep coming up are going to change the electorate.

Speaker 1: Exactly, and it’s really interesting when we look at mainstream media. Their talking points are very much the same: "We’ve got to get this white, rural voter from the Midwest," or "We’ve got to get white, suburban women." And yes, we do have to work to get as many votes as possible, but the way they’re thinking about those people isn’t really how they’re living their lives in reality.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s a lag between the old thinking and what I’m seeing. I’m just a spectator when it comes to watching the Harris-Walz campaign, but what I’m seeing is improvisation. I mean, the fact that I didn’t know Tim Walz’s name a month or two ago, and now he’s this totally non-traditional pick who happened to stumble upon the word "weird"—it captured something. This is what I love—they’re stealing the news cycle.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: They’re saying, "You know what, let’s be loose, let’s have freedom." Theater is not a medium of intellectual ideas primarily; it’s a medium of character, emotion, and energy. When I watch an audience—and I’ve been doing it for 30-40 years, whether I’m on stage or in the audience as a director—I’m watching how the energy moves between the performer and the audience. I watch when they’re slumping, when they’re sitting up, when they’re leaning in, when they’re fidgeting. Energy doesn’t lie. And when you see Tim Walz say, "They’re just weird," and you pick up the energy in the air, and the media picks that up, there’s vitality there. What excites me about the Democrats is this sense of discovery.

Speaker 1: Yes, like, "Let’s try this out. Okay, this works. What else?" It’s like they’re saying, "You’re the vice president? Okay, that seemed to work, let’s try it out."

Speaker 2: Exactly. That is what strategy is all about. That’s literally how I talk to my clients—you have to put yourself out there, try different things. So, how does that work with a client? It goes like this: Let’s say we’re talking about social media. You try all the different approaches—try an intellectual argument and see how many likes you get, see how many comments you get. Then try a use case, where you’re like, "This is the real-life reality of how this works." Or try the emotional angle. You’ll start to see what works, and then you lean into that as you go. It’s all fluid, and you’re rapidly iterating. You are looking at data, but you’re not beholden to data.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s the nimbleness that the Harris campaign is finally bringing us.

Speaker 2: So, Charlie, we’ve been talking about strategy and tactics, and I want to end with a bit about emotion. How are you doing in this moment? The last question I always ask everyone is, how are you staying grounded in this wild world right now?

Speaker 1: Right now, I’m just riding the train, feeling like in 90 days, I’m going to have as much fun as possible, do as much as I can. For me, the trick is to find where I’m effective politically and, ideally, where there’s some joy and fun. It’s important to practice my craft. Oh, and my new rule as of six months ago—I will look at headlines in The New York Times and The Washington Post, but I will not click on anything in the subjunctive voice.

Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, that’s a good idea.

Speaker 1: "Democrats might do this," "If they would do that," "Maybe they can win"—the level of speculation in punditry is just not helpful. What is their track record with all these "might," "would," and "maybe"? Not good. And what does it do for my ability to act? It reduces it; it moves me into their energy of speculation rather than my energy of action. So that’s one rule—no subjunctive headlines. The other is to take the next step, put one foot in front of the other, act, and iterate to figure out what works. I had no idea fundraising for North Carolina would feel so good, but it does. It feels good, seems effective, so I keep going.

Speaker 2: Action first, then hope—not waiting until you feel hopeful.

Speaker 1: Absolutely, and not being pure, like some of my radical friends who won’t dirty their hands with electoral politics. I used to be one of them. But we live in a fallen, impure world, so it’s about thinking about consequences rather than purity.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. That’s a great way to end on—we want to end on hope. I think we’re in the home stretch of this election, and I’m just happy that we’re continuing to make progress, seeing that our actions can create change. And to your point about purity, no candidate is going to be perfect—Kamala Harris isn’t perfect, Tim Walz isn’t perfect—but they are people who can get us to the next stage, so we can keep moving forward, keep creating positive change, and feel the hope because we’re taking action.

Speaker 1: Absolutely, well put.

Speaker 2: Well, thank you for your time.

Speaker 1: A pleasure. Yay!

Speaker 2: Yeah, go Team Democracy!

Speaker 1: Go Team Democracy! Oh, do you want to pitch some organizations?

Speaker 2: Sure. Swing Left San Francisco is a big one for me because that’s where our home is. It feels strategic to focus on swing districts in the Central Valley that are totally winnable. Then, Northeast Arizona Native Dems is one of my favorite groups because they’re doing amazing work, voter by voter, with people who have been marginalized by society—people on tribal lands in Arizona. They are winning votes in a very close state. And then, my new fling—feels like I’m having an affair—is All In for North Carolina.

Speaker 1: You’re a non-monogamous political and artistic person.

Speaker 2: I am. Politically promiscuous and artistically promiscuous, but not trying to be a dilettante.

Speaker 1: I love that, that’s perfect. Well, thank you again.

Speaker 2: It’s been amazing. It’s been fun. Yay!