Made on
Tilda
This review examines the social media program behind the 2026 primary campaign: what the operation built, where it fell short, and the strategy to compound it if Greg runs again.
Democratic primary, June 23, 2026. Greg took 9,938 votes, nearly 3,500 ahead of the next challenger. Bars show each candidate's share of the vote.
A post-mortem against a 70-point incumbent is not an autopsy. It is a measurement of how much ground a brand-new, unfunded operation covered, and a map of where that effort leaked. On the evidence, the digital program did its core job well and was held back most by missing infrastructure, not missing talent.
The program built a credible, on-brand presence from near-zero, diversified across three platforms, and carried a disciplined accountability message that drew the strongest non-incumbent vote in the field. No negative coverage of Greg surfaced at any point. Three days after the primary, a judge's ruling on county finances validated the exact argument the campaign had been making.
The operation was strong at the top of the funnel (reach, engagement, brand) and lighter on the bottom of it. We grew an audience we could not fully capture or activate.
Greg ran as a first-time candidate in this race against a sitting county executive with near-universal name recognition, a unified party apparatus, and a gubernatorial endorsement. In that context, the challenger numbers tell a more useful story than the topline.
The early-vote signal matters. A higher than average share of Greg's vote came in during early voting, the window where the most engaged, research-driven voters decide. That is the profile of a voter reached and persuaded by content, not by yard signs or name recognition alone. It is the clearest available evidence that the message landed with the people most likely to act on it.
The message outlived the race. On June 26, a Circuit Court judge blocked a $39.3 million county fund transfer, citing risk of irreparable harm and questioning whether the county was entitled to the money. A sitting judge imposed exactly the kind of external check the campaign argued the county lacked. For any future advocacy, that ruling is the most credible third-party validation of the accountability platform to date.
A program is graded against what it set out to do. These are the goals the social operation was positioned to influence directly, scored on the evidence in the analytics. Each one earned a solid grade for a first run with no budget.
The clearest win. Monthly views grew from 2.8K at launch to a 34.2K peak, the platform mix diversified from 93% Facebook to a balanced three-channel presence, and the top-challenger finish is consistent with awareness that exceeded every other non-incumbent. Profile visits ran consistently above 2,000 per month in the back half.
Verdict: the campaign was seen. For a zero-budget first run, awareness was the goal most fully met.
Persuasion is hard to measure directly from social, but the proxies point the right way. Greg overperformed among early voters, the most informed segment, and not a single piece of negative coverage surfaced across the cycle. The disciplined, positive-contrast brand did its job: it gave persuadable voters a credible reason to choose accountability without ever handing opponents an attack line.
Verdict: strong directional evidence, no clean way to isolate the social contribution.
All three platforms show elevated activity around June 21 to 23, and engagement tracked the early-voting window (June 11 to 18) and Election Day. The timing strategy was right. What is missing is proof of action: with no link tracking for most of the cycle, there is no way to show that content drove a voter to a polling-place locator or a how-to-vote page.
Verdict: correct cadence, no conversion tracking to confirm impact.
Across all three, the pattern is the same: the operation reliably generated attention and converted it into a credible, top-challenger profile. The work ahead is compounding that reach into owned audience, which is what the forward strategy is built around.
These are the strengths to protect and repeat. Several of them are rare in first-time campaigns at any budget.
The navy and gold system, the four pillars, and the positive-contrast voice held across every post. Visual and verbal consistency is what made a brand-new candidate read as serious. Consistency is credibility, and the feed earned it.
February was 93% Facebook. By April the mix was a balanced Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok split. That reduced dependence on any one algorithm and let Instagram emerge as the engagement engine, consistently out-interacting Facebook from March onward.
The mid-May sign-vandalism arrest reel drove a 34K-view month and proved the operation could move on a live news event and convert it into reach. That instinct, made repeatable, is a competitive advantage.
The accountability and oversight argument was not a campaign slogan that ended on June 23. A court ruling three days later echoed it almost word for word. Few campaigns get external validation of their central thesis at all, let alone within a week of the vote.
In the final month, Facebook link clicks jumped to 39 (up 875%) and Instagram produced its first clicks ever. It came late, but it proved the funnel could be fixed quickly once it was prioritized. That is a playbook to start with next time, not end with.
Every result in this report was achieved organically, by volunteers, with no paid media. The efficiency is the story. It also means there is enormous untapped upside the moment even a modest budget is added.
None of these are talent problems. They are timing and infrastructure problems, and each one is fixable before a single post goes out next time.
The content engine did not reach full output until April, when dedicated support came on. February and March, the entire exploratory and launch window, ran on a single launch-day burst followed by long quiet stretches. That early window is when a challenger is cheapest to introduce. It was underused.
Approval and production turnaround ran longer than a fast-moving feed needs. In a race, the cost of a slow cycle is a missed news window. Pre-cleared rapid-response templates and a designated same-day approval lane would recover most of that lost speed.
Views reached the tens of thousands, but the follower base stayed small in absolute terms (TikTok ended at 26). Reach driven by the algorithm disappears the moment posting slows. Followers, and far more importantly an email and SMS list, are the audience that compounds into the next cycle.
For most of the campaign there was no consistent call to action carrying people from a post to a destination. The fix in June proved the demand was always there. Building every post around a single clear action from the start would have converted five months of attention instead of one.
Framed as rules for a future run, each drawn directly from this cycle's evidence.
Standing up tracked links, a list capture, and a donation and volunteer path is a pre-launch task, not a mid-campaign fix. Going live without them means the early audience, the cheapest you will ever reach, is lost.
A 34K-view month feels like a win, but views that produce no clicks, sign-ups, or dollars are a vanity number. Tie every reporting cycle to list growth and conversions, not just reach.
Sensitive content rightly needs review. Routine and rapid-response content should not wait behind it. Separate the two lanes so speed is never the casualty of caution.
The arrest reel was a gift, but lightning is not a strategy. The follow-rate actually dropped during the viral spike, a sign the broad audience was less committed than the issue-driven one. Compounding owned channels beats chasing the next spike.
The 2026 cycle built something real: a recognized brand, a validated message, and roughly 10,000 voters who chose accountability. The strategy now is to capture and compound that base instead of rebuilding from zero.
The accountability argument was not rejected by voters. It was validated by a judge. The work now is to turn an audience that watched into an audience the campaign owns.
Strategic thesis for the next cycleThe voters, viewers, and engaged followers from this cycle are a list waiting to be built. Stand up email and SMS capture immediately and convert reach into owned audience before attention fades. This is the asset that makes a second run start at altitude.
Tracked links, list metrics, donation attribution, and volunteer conversion in place on day one. The single recurring failure of this cycle was running blind below the fold. Fixing it is cheap and changes every report from a vanity recap into a decision tool.
The September M-NCPPC trial and the data-center governance gap give a ready-made content runway through the fall. An always-on accountability voice keeps Greg the credible commentator on the issue he owns, so a future campaign launches into recognition, not silence.
Every number in this report came with no media spend. A paid social strategy should start much earlier in the cycle, not at the end, so paid reach is building name recognition while the candidate is still being introduced. Even a small, targeted budget behind the best-performing organic content would multiply that reach and let the campaign retarget warm audiences.
The two-month ramp cost the cheapest introduction window there is. A next run should open with the content engine and approval lanes already running, so the exploratory phase builds audience instead of waiting for capacity.
Make a single clear action the spine of every post from the first day. The June fix proved the demand was always there. Next time, capture it for the whole cycle, not the last four weeks.
Source: campaign monthly analytics, February through June 2026 (June through the 28th). Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Use the toggle to read any single platform.
| Metric | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun |
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June covers June 1 to 28 (28 of 30 days). TikTok had no published content in February. Instagram follower data became reportable in June.