Tucson’s Closest Race in Decades
In 2025, A&E Insights began managing a grassroots campaign for Sadie Shaw in Tucson’s Ward 3 City Council race with only 30 days to collect the signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. We continued to manage the campaign through Election Day, and despite being the least-funded competitive campaign city-wide, we built a disciplined, data-driven operation that finished just 19 votes short of defeating the incumbent in what was Tucson’s closest race in decades.
Highlights
- Ballot Qualification: Collected and verified the maximum number of nominating petition signatures in under 30 days, validating each against voter records to ensure every signature could withstand legal scrutiny.
- Clean Elections Funding: Managed finances with precision and successfully completed the City of Tucson rigorous Clean Elections audit, securing crucial public matching funds.
- Data-driven Strategy: Our team developed an integrated data framework that turned every supporter interaction into an opportunity to inform strategy. By capturing and connecting supporter activity across different points of engagement, we created a system that fueled smarter decisions and stronger results.
- Community Reach: Engaged thousands of Ward 3 voters through targeted canvassing and outreach, building momentum across neighborhoods often overlooked in Tucson politics.
- Messaging and Media: We directed the campaign’s communications strategy, including messaging development, social media management, advertising, and production of the official campaign video. The result was a persuasive, consistent narrative across channels, effective engagement with supporters and voters, and advertising guided by data insights to deliver maximum impact with limited resources.
Outcome
The campaign ended just 19 votes behind the incumbent, a mere 0.27% margin that demonstrated A&E Insights’ ability to achieve competitive results with limited resources against a formidable opponent.
Key Takeaways
This success story demonstrates how A&E Insights helps campaigns:
- Ensure financial accuracy and compliance under rigorous oversight
- Leverage data to guide every decision, from petition signatures to field strategy
- Deliver competitive results with limited resources
- Mobilize grassroots energy into measurable results
- Design effective strategies under compressed timelines
At A&E Insights, we turn challenges into success stories by combining data-driven strategy with grassroots organizing power.
Helping deliver climate wins across the US
Starting in 2022, A&E Insights began mobilizing community members in support of Climate Action on behalf of the League of Conservation Voters. After working to successfully pass the Inflation Reduction Act, A&E transitioned over to directing electoral campaigns in key battleground states, mobilizing large teams of paid staff to elect climate champions throughout the country.
Highlights
- Large Scale Field Programs: A&E coordinated door knocking over a total of 10 offices throughout Arizona and Georgia. They were successful in electing Senators Warnock, Kelly, and Gallego. Culminating in over 800,000 door knocked and 100,000 face-to-face conversations with voters over a two year period.
- Community Engagement: Organized Climate Action community events in order to put pressure on elected officials to pass key climate legislation. They accomplished this by collecting petition signatures in support of the Inflation Reduction Act, recruiting volunteers, capturing social media content, and building long-term coalitions within the community.
- High-level strategy: Drafted and presented statewide precinct-level outreach plan to clients. Tracked and reported daily outreach progress and ensured data integrity project wide.
Outcome
A&E delivered major policy and electoral wins over the last two election cycles. They helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act and were integral in electing candidates in highly-competitive races throughout the United States.
Key Takeaways
A&E Insights helps campaigns:
- Run highly successful large-scale field programs
- Recruit, interview, hire, and train paid staff and management
- Keep large, high-stakes projects on track in highly-competitive races
- Ensure data integrity and use data to inform outreach in order to be as effective as possible
