Longshot relying on social media
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Jim Niedelman on a longshot Democratic gubernatorial candidate…
Alex Paterakis is arguably the longest shot of all of them. He is the youngest candidate in the race at 29 years old. The graduate of Purdue University is a civil engineer by trade who’s worked on highway construction projects in Illinois.
He has never run for political office before.
He has an economic agenda that sounds a bit like the current governor. Paterakis calls for spending reform to limit the taxes on manufacturing companies, tax reform that includes a property tax freeze, removing sales taxes on manufacturing and he supports term limits.
Then he has ideas that align more with Democrats: providing more money for primary education, reforming the financing system for college like being able to refinance student loans and cutting interest rates. He calls for increasing the minimum wage to $12 an hour. All of this seems hard to do while holding the line on taxes.
* Paterakis was also interviewed by Chicago Tonight…
CT: Many people may agree with you in terms of not liking how money can dominate politics but, nevertheless, the system as it is certainly favors people who can buy lots of political advertising and get their message out more easily. How are you planning on overcoming that disadvantage?
AP: Through my social media presence. To take advantage of the volunteers that have advocated for me and who are going to be working for me. Money does not always buy… it gets you to the table. Trust me it gets you to the table. Some of these guys running throw millions and millions of dollars – Bruce Rauner for example threw millions of millions of dollars (at his campaign) and it got him to the table, he’s self-funding the Republican Party, but I see it as I’m going to reject the system and reject that you have to spend $40 to $50 million on advertising agencies and am going to use social media platforms via live videos, via Facebook, via Instagram, via Twitter, via Snapchat – all those things to get my message out there rather than the traditional form of media which is going through advertising on TV and things like that. I’ll have to do some of that there’s no doubt about that but that’s how I’m going about things. And also visiting as many people as I can both in the north suburbs of Chicago, in Chicago and also the people that have been forgotten in southern Illinois.
Give the guy some credit. He’s working the social media angle hard. His Facebook page has 37,984 “likes.” That’s more than every other Democratic candidate, but shy of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s 52,570.
Chris Kennedy has 27,312 likes, Sen. Daniel Biss’ Facebook page has 13,121 and JB Pritzker has just 5,056. Ameya Pawar’s page has 25,563 likes.
Rauner and Pritzker have far more Twitter followers. But Paterakis has more Twitter loyalists than Kennedy, Biss and Pawar.
But, to give you a little perspective, I have more Twitter followers than all the candidates and the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet has almost twice as many Twitter followers as Rauner.
Paterakis has just $5,000 cash on hand. He’ll need more than that for gas money to get to southern Illinois from Vernon Hills.
- Rocky Rosi - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:05 am:
The state has too many issues for a feel good story.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:07 am:
It might work, if he can get the national cable news networks to hand over their programming to him like they did for Trump in the GOP primaries.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:09 am:
It might be worth looking into just how those ‘likes’ were generated…
- Team America - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:11 am:
=== Paterakis has just $5,000 cash on hand. He’ll need more than that for gas money to get to southern Illinois from Vernon Hills ==
Heh. Forget travelling anywhere else, $5000 won’t be enough to move the needle just in Vernon Hills.
- OneMan - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:13 am:
Heck by working on road projects he has more insight on how Illinois really works than a decent chunk of the Democratic field.
- Just Observing - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:19 am:
=== It might be worth looking into just how those ‘likes’ were generated… ===
My thoughts exactly.
- Liberty - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:20 am:
12 lines of Python code will generate 100 likes in 5 minutes. A few friends takes a little bit longer.
- Six Degrees of Separation - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:24 am:
William Proxmire routinely won congressional races in Wisconsin on a $5,000 budget, and he didn’t have social media. Of course, he was an incumbent for all but his first run.
- Dan Johnson - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:25 am:
Good for WTTW and Chicago Tonight for the platform. That’s very civic of them.
- JoeMaddon - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:26 am:
Paterakis has been running sponsored ads on FB for months. Yet somehow he doesn’t show that he spent any money in either of his quarterly reports.
And yea… does anyone believe that those likes/followers are real?
- Porgy Tirebiter - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:34 am:
Sanders had way more likes than Clinton. Clinton way more than Trump. So who cares?
- Dublin - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:42 am:
I follow the guy on Facebook (doesn’t mean I will vote for him). He is on there constantly and has live feeds, it seems, almost daily. Those feeds get viewers, comments, etc… and those will show up on other people’s feeds which generates more ‘likes’ and ‘followers’. That’s how it works.
He’s young and is using a platform focused towards young people. Not sure why everyone is so sceptical about the amount of followers he has.
- Paterakis truther - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 11:59 am:
Please just scroll through his tweets before any other media outlet does another interview on him. Actually I kinda like to see it happen.
Seriously though, the dude trolls for a living and has harambe on his website.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 12:55 pm:
He actually has some good ideas. Which of course means he will come in last. This is Illinois after all.
- Walker - Tuesday, May 2, 17 @ 10:59 pm:
Gadfly in training.