If all we knew about the Democratic Primary Nominees was What they Wrote to Constituents

As of June 1, 2019 twenty-four people have decided to run in the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary. Of those, 14 have served as either federal Representatives or Senators in the last 10 years — Former Senator Mike Gravel served as a Senator from Alaska from 1969–1981.

Since 2009 I have kept a record of every electronic mass communication (e-newsletters) that members of congress have sent to constituents. You can search the contents of these communications at DCinbox.com. These communications are tax-payer funded and the contents are at the discretion of each legislator, with few restrictions against campaigning or soliciting donations. All of the 14 federal Representatives and Senators were provided with a members’ representational allowance to send official e-newsletters to constituents, all but Senators Booker and Klobuchar availed themselves to this perk of office to direct communicate to constituents.

On average, members of Congress send about 13 e-newsletters per year in office. Of the twelve democratic hopefuls with official email histories to study the member with the fewest texts is Senator Harris (4) and the candidate with the most is Senator Sanders (293).

What topics do these presidential hopefuls focus on? In order to get a top level view of what different members focus on in communication I used a straightforward content analyses to assess the most frequently used words in each member communication. Before any analysis I remove basic stop words (the, I, it, etc.) as well as some of email form words, and legislator office information, and some basic terms “U.S.”, “Americans”, etc. that occur frequently in these communications no matter who sends them. The results of this little exercise are below.

Most commonly used words and terms of Democrat Presidential Candidates (data: DCinbox)

This reads like an understandable hodge-podge of democratic priorities. Some members are health interested, others focus more on jobs, others prioritize certain types of constituents or constituent events in their districts.

“As A….?”

How do these members describe themselves? Legislators sometimes justify their stances on issues by first signaling what sort of perspective they approach a certain issue from. This signaling takes the form of “as a…” where they then let you know which identity feature seems most relevant to how they perceive an issue.

Warren, Harris, Gillibrand, and O’Rourke never describe themselves using these sorts of terms.

Representative Tim Ryan describes himself as a parent when describing why he introduced the Salad Bars in Schools Expansion Act (which died in the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education). He also sends pictures of his kids (the youngest was born in 2014 while he was in office). John Delaney repeatedly describes himself as a parent when writing about his introduction of the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act (which died in the Subcommittee on Health). He refers to himself as a “former entrepreneur” when discussing his views on AI.

Representative Inslee describes his duty to be responsive to the individuals he represents as a Member of Congress. Representative Gabbard describes herself as a, “veteran and soldier”, “veteran”, “member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees”, and “member of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus”. Representative Swalwell repreatedly refers to himself as a “House Intelligence Committee member” (11 e-newsletters mention this), as a “Member of the Homeland Security Committee” (4 times), as a “prosecutor” when describing his stance on the Iran Nuclear Deal as a sort of plea agreement, and as a former “Dublin City Councilman” when discussing his bipartisan know-how.

As voters, we are somewhat fortunate to have so much information about our candidates. This is going to be a long, potentially fractious fight to the top of the ticket so any available detail that helps distinguish members from each other can be helpful. The DCinbox database gives me lots of joy mostly as a way to see what members think matters to their constituents in real time. In terms of a candidate assessment tool its utility is less clear, but given that the corpus exists I’m happy to share what we can gleam from the words used by candidates themselves when they have been in their official governing capacity in the past.