I Built 7 AI Agents That Run Campaign Operations
In 2011, I was a nobody running for State Assembly against well-funded, well-connected establishment candidates. Nobody gave me a shot.
But I'd spent years helping realtors get online in the '90s and running social media for campaigns in the 2000s, so I understood something my opponents didn't: new technology isn't a gimmick — it's an edge. I won that race and served four years in Sacramento.
Then I lost a brutal reelection. And honestly? Losing a campaign teaches you more than winning one ever could. There's nothing more humbling or more clarifying. You see every crack in the operation with perfect hindsight — every system that should have been tighter, every process that fell apart under pressure.
That experience is baked into everything I'm building now.
The Insight
Here's what I know after being on both sides: the campaigns that win aren't always the ones with the best candidate or the most money. They're the ones where nothing falls through the cracks.
The follow-up email after a fundraising call. The donor research before a meeting. The thank-you note that goes out same-day instead of next-week. The RSVP confirmations for tomorrow's event. The content that needs to go out while your team is knocking doors.
These aren't glamorous. They don't make the news. But they compound. And the campaigns that execute them consistently beat the ones that don't — every time.
So I built a team for that.
The Agents
🔍 Varys — Donor Intelligence
Named after Game of Thrones' Master of Whisperers.
Your candidate meets someone at a fundraiser and hands you a business card. By morning, Varys has pulled their giving history from public records, their business affiliations, their political donations, and — most importantly — who you need to talk to first to make the introduction.
Every experienced fundraiser knows that getting to a major donor often means going through someone else first. A board member. A business partner. A mutual friend. Varys surfaces those connections so your team walks into every conversation prepared.
Think of it as your digital Rolodex that never goes stale. Nobody manually Googling donors. No spreadsheets falling out of date. Every seed your team plants gets enriched automatically from public data.
📧 Raven — Email Fundraising Engine
Your fundraising emails go out on schedule — segmented by donor history, timed for when people actually open them, and tested so every send performs better than the last. You approve the emails, the system handles everything else: list management, send timing, follow-up sequences, and compliance.
When someone donates, they get a thank-you that matches the moment. When someone goes quiet, they get a re-engagement sequence before you lose them. Your fundraising program runs while you're knocking doors.
👻 Ghost — Personal Email Agent
Where Raven handles bulk sends, Ghost handles the one-to-one emails that actually build relationships.
Fundraising follow-ups after a call. Thank-you notes to donors. Responding to political contacts who reached out. The kind of personal outreach campaigns know they should be doing but the day always gets away from them.
The difference between a donor who gives once and a donor who gives repeatedly often comes down to whether someone followed up properly. Ghost makes sure that always happens.
📞 EV — Voice Reception
Your campaign phone answered around the clock. Qualifies callers, routes to the right person, logs everything. No more missed opportunities because your entire team was in a meeting or out canvassing.
Campaigns miss calls constantly. Donors call back after a letter, volunteers try to sign up, press wants a comment — and it goes to voicemail. EV makes sure someone always answers.
🎙️ Swerve — Outbound Calling
Event reminders. RSVP follow-ups. Appointment confirmations. Volunteer coordination. The operational calls that eat your team's time — handled automatically.
These aren't fundraising asks — that's human work that needs the personal touch. These are the hundreds of backend calls that keep a campaign running: confirming the venue, reminding people about tomorrow's phone bank, following up on the volunteer who signed up last week.
🎬 Stan — Video Content
Fundraising videos, candidate introductions, issue explainers, event recaps, social content — produced continuously without a production company or a videographer's schedule. Scripts, voiceover, editing handled by AI.
Every campaign struggles with content. You need constant social media posts, fundraising videos, email graphics. Most campaigns can't afford a production team. Stan keeps the content calendar full.
👑 The Hand — Operations Coordinator
Every king needs a Hand.
This is the agent that coordinates all the others — managing schedules, documents, follow-ups, and making sure nothing slips between the cracks. You talk to it like you'd talk to a chief of staff. "I need follow-up from tonight's event." "What's our donor pipeline look like?" "Draft a response to that editorial."
The Hand is the interface between your campaign and the entire system. It orchestrates everything.
What This Isn't
This isn't about replacing your team. It's about making the team you have dramatically more effective.
Your finance director still builds relationships — but now she walks into every call with a complete donor profile she didn't have to research. Your comms director still shapes the message — but the content pipeline is always full. Your field coordinator still knocks doors — but the follow-up happens automatically.
Same team. Dramatically more output.
The iPhone Moment
We are at an iPhone moment for campaign technology.
When the iPhone launched, people thought it was just a nicer phone. It turned out to be the foundation for an entirely new way of operating. That's where AI is right now for political campaigns — not a novelty, but a fundamental shift in how operations work.
And here's what makes this moment different from every previous technology wave I've ridden: it's accelerating. Last month, a new AI capability came out that changed how I build these systems. It'll happen again before your yard signs go up. And again after that.
If your campaign is locked into a static platform — a CRM that updates quarterly, a fundraising tool that shipped last year — you're falling behind right now. And it's going to keep happening every few weeks until Election Day.
The campaigns that figure this out first will have an edge that compounds every single day of the cycle.
Three Waves
I've watched three technology waves reshape how campaigns operate:
1990s — I helped realtors get online when "internet" was still a novelty. The ones who moved first dominated their markets for a decade.
2000s — I brought social media to political campaigns when "digital strategy" was pioneering. The campaigns that embraced it won races they had no business winning.
2010s — I won my own longshot Assembly race using a technology edge my opponents didn't understand yet.
Every time, the people who adopted early had an outsized advantage. Every time, the majority waited too long.
2020s — AI operations for campaigns. We're in the early adoption window right now.
What I'm Building
I'm building this at AutomatedTeams. It's a consultancy — not a software company. We join your team and operate AI systems alongside you. When the technology shifts (and it shifts constantly), your system adapts overnight.
If you're running a campaign or working on one, I'm happy to talk about what this looks like for your race.