FEBRUARY 25, 2020 PETE FOR AMERICA OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN MEMO OVERVIEW There is a definitive path for Pete to secure the Democratic nomination. This memo is intended as a summary of our understanding of the state of the race and an overview of our strategy going forward. Pete’s historic victory in the Iowa Caucuses and strong performances in both New Hampshire and Nevada make it clear that Pete is the best positioned to beat Bernie Sanders in the primary and build the coalition we need to defeat Donald Trump in November. There are a few key takeaways: 1. This is going to be a long race. The later voting dates are extremely favorable to Pete. 34% of delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday, and 28% will be awarded in the remaining March contests. 2. Pete is the only candidate besides Bernie Sanders who has the potential to win a majority of Democratic voters. 3. Our goal is to minimize Sanders’ margins on Super Tuesday and rack up delegates in the March 10th and March 17th contests, which are much more favorable to us. 4. In each of these contests, we are maximizing delegate accumulation by districts, not states, and this informs our strategy. 5. This path is clear, but we need to sustain the campaign until the race narrows. We have to raise resources immediately -- roughly $13 million between the Nevada debate and March 3rd -- to execute our plan. To reiterate: Pete is the best candidate to take on both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and ensure victory for Democrats up and down the ballot in November. But he won’t get that far without making significant investments to raise Pete’s name recognition, and we need to do that to reach critical viability thresholds in Super Tuesday states, and to cut into Sanders’ expected delegate lead. PETEFORAMERICA.COM 1 THE KEY TO WINNING Contrary to the media narrative, this race will not be determined on Super Tuesday -- but only if Pete has the resources to compete. Bernie Sanders will be the delegate leader after the March 3rd contests, but whether that makes him the prohibitive nominee is highly dependent on Pete’s performance. If Sanders’ expected delegate lead is not held within 350 delegates coming out of Super Tuesday, it helps solidify his pathway to becoming the nominee. The key to winning is to minimize Sanders’ margins on Super Tuesday and rack up delegates in the following contests as the field winnows. In the current multi-candidate field, Super Tuesday contests are highly favorable to Senator Sanders, but his position will diminish dramatically as the field of candidates narrows and contests move to the Midwest. March 17th and April 28th states feature major delegate hauls and are highly favorable for Pete with a narrowed field of candidates. OUR TASK Our biggest challenge for Super Tuesday is raising Pete’s profile among voters just tuning into the race. Unlike other candidates, Pete does not have years of national media exposure (nor is he a billionaire), thus he has significantly lower name recognition than his competitors. This can be used to our advantage -- we have the highest ceiling (meaning we have the most potential for growth) with voters across the Super Tuesday states. Ceilings of Support Vary Per Candidate ACTIVELY CONSIDERING Biden 29% Bloomberg 28% Warren 30% Sanders 36% Buttigieg 32% 0% 10% GROWTH POTENTIAL 15% 20% 18% 15% 22% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Pete is the only other candidate with the potential to win a majority of voters. No other candidate, except Bernie Sanders, has the potential to win over 50% of Democratic voters. And, from the early contests, we know that Pete appeals not just to Democrats, but also to Independents and Republicans, too. PETEFORAMERICA.COM 2 In order to reach voters who engage less with news outlets but remain likely to vote in the primary, we must increase paid media spending and continue to resource our staff in Super Tuesday states and beyond. THE CALENDAR Here’s the most important thing to know about the calendar: The later dates are extremely favorable to Pete. So while 34% of delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday, the remaining March states will deliver 28% of the pledged delegates. The race to the nomination is a race for delegates, and these delegates are apportioned by congressional district (or, in Texas, state senate districts) -- not by state. We know that if we do not shrink Sanders’ margin of victory coming out of Super Tuesday, he will have too great a lead in the delegate race for anyone to catch up. So our focus is cutting into that margin by making significant paid media investments to raise awareness about Pete and ensure he pulls delegates from Sanders. SUPER TUESDAY The Super Tuesday map overwhelmingly favors Sanders, and it’s likely that coming out of Super Tuesday, Sanders will have the lead in delegates -- the key question is by how much. Our plan is to limit Sanders’ delegate lead to no more than 350 pledged delegates. If we do this, Pete will need to beat Sanders by approximately 10% in the remaining contests. We see this as the upper limit of a realistic path to victory -- there is a ceiling to Sanders’ support. If we are able to limit Sanders to no more than 250 pledged delegates, Pete will only have to beat Sanders by approximately 5% in the remaining contests. As we've seen in our research and in early contests, Pete has broad appeal and is often voters' first or second choice even in a historically crowded field. So as the number of candidates narrows, we see the 5-10% wins as highly attainable. To cut Sanders' delegate lead, and to maximize Pete’s delegate haul on Super Tuesday, our plan is to clear the qualification threshold in as many congressional districts as possible. The rules for winning delegates in any district require a candidate to capture 15% support from the voters in that district. So the importance of clearing the threshold isn’t just important in a multi-candidate race -- it’s existential. It is critical that our campaign has the resources it needs to reach the 15% threshold across Super Tuesday congressional districts to minimize Sanders’ margin. PETEFORAMERICA.COM 3 UPCOMING MARCH CONTESTS We believe the field will significantly winnow after Super Tuesday, and our research and internal polls show that the remaining contests in March are favorable to Pete. So while 34% of delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday, the remaining March states combined will also deliver 28% of the pledged delegates. Delegates Awarded by Contest Date 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 February Super Tuesday March (non-Super Tuesday) April May June OUR STRATEGY Organizing infrastructure We’re running an organizing program that will maximize our delegate count on Super Tuesday and beyond. With both the accelerated timeline and the size of Super Tuesday, the only way to effectively scale up to win delegates is through a massive grassroots network. We’ve known that since day one, and that’s exactly what we’ve been building. Our staff has built a sophisticated grassroots organizing team, well-trained on modern relational organizing. The most effective way to mobilize voters is through personal connections. Our volunteers and organizing teams aren’t just phone banking or knocking doors -- they’re reaching out to their own networks to make a personal case for why they need to vote for Pete. They’re doing this in every single congressional district in Super Tuesday states. PETEFORAMERICA.COM 4 Our volunteer leads have already hosted over 3,000 events across Super Tuesday states – including more than 250 events this past weekend alone. And we have staff on the ground in every single Super Tuesday state providing resources, guidance, and trainings to empower our expanding volunteer network to host events, Pete-ups, and outreach at community events and within their own neighborhoods. Paid media Advertising across paid media channels is critical to helping Pete secure the 15% threshold across Super Tuesday congressional districts. We need to do this to minimize Sanders’ margin and keep his lead within reach going into the contests later in March. Here’s why paid media is important: When one candidate is spending money on advertising and another candidate is not spending at all, the effect is significant. Michael Bloomberg’s recent rise in national and Super Tuesday polls has illustrated the significant effects created by an imbalance in paid media spending. However, when an opposing candidate begins to spend even just a small amount, it can dramatically mute the effects of the other candidate’s massive investment. This is true even against the unprecedented expenditure of Bloomberg’s campaign. Digital advertising is another highly efficient and effective medium for us to share Pete’s message and reach voters who are just tuning into the race. Because of how delegates are awarded at the individual district level, we can precisely target each district on platforms like YouTube and Facebook without any geographic spillage. We will also concentrate our efforts on premium, non-skippable inventory on connected-TV devices through ads on platforms like Hulu and Roku. Key media markets Our goal is to maximize Pete’s delegate haul across Super Tuesday districts. Our team has identified 22 critical media markets that include more than one of our targeted districts. This maximizes efficiency of our buys. Investments in these media markets and in national cable are critical to our Super Tuesday strategy. In total, this will cost $3,500,000. PETEFORAMERICA.COM 5 Example B Example A Norfolk - Portsmouth - Newport News, Virginia Media Market (VA-02, VA-03, NC-01, NC-03) Vermont’s First Congressional District VT-01 is the entire state of Vermont. Polling averages have Pete as the only candidate besides Bernie Sanders that can When we think about communicating to voters on television, realistically clear the qualification threshold in Sanders’ home particularly when we’re in a race for delegates where state. Clearing the qualification threshold would likely be congressional district lines matter a lot, it can often be a worth three delegates, and would cut Sanders’ net delegate challenging puzzle. haul by 6 delegates. Sometimes this makes paid media allocation really frustrating Because of that, VT-01 is the highest-leverage district in -- like in the case of New Hampshire, where approximately the country because of the amount of delegates we expect 70% of Granite State voters live in the Boston Media Market, to gain from an increase of one percentage point in Pete but only 20% of the Boston Media market is made up of New support. Hampshire voters. This is a huge opportunity to minimize Sanders’ margin. This meant that when we advertised to Granite Staters in Our plan should include: advance of the February 11th primary, we were forced to make really inefficient buys that not only reached New Broadcast TV into Burlington DMA Hampshire voters, but also reached large numbers of a. Cost: $92,000 Massachusetts voters who were not voting on February 11th. 25 impressions of high quality Sometimes, however, this can work to our advantage. (non-skippable) digital ads to all Vermont For example, the Norfolk, Virginia media market straddles likely voters several extremely competitive districts for us -- North a. Cost: $37,652 Carolina’s 1st and 3rd congressional districts and Virginia’s 2nd and 3rd congressional districts (with spill into the 1st and 4th congressional districts). If we were only playing for state wins and losses instead of trying to maximize Pete’s delegate haul, a market like Norfolk would never emerge to the top of the list, but here we see it can be one of the most efficient in the country. Our plan for the Norfolk DMA is to supplement our national cable buy with robust digital and broadcast buys. Here’s the minimum we should spend: 1. Broadcast TV into Norfolk media market: a. Cost: $83,200 2. Digital ads into Norfolk media market: a. Cost: $63,720 PETEFORAMERICA.COM 6 Our team has done a full analysis of Super Tuesday and the remaining contests through March. They’ve identified the key districts, like the ones described above, where Pete can win critical numbers of delegates if voters have the chance to learn more about him and hear about his vision for the country. SUMMARY We have a definitive path to the nomination, and our team should be extremely proud of what they’ve built and where this campaign is headed. But we need to increase our paid media spending in order to broaden Pete’s name recognition as we head into Super Tuesday. It’s critical to note that when voters are provided with even just brief biographical information about Pete, we see significant increases in support -- so we need to aggressively expand our Super Tuesday programming immediately. This nomination is a fight for delegates, which we intend to fight for district by district. We will need to rack up delegates in the states considerably more favorable to Pete in the March 10th and March 17th contests, which will be necessary to minimize Sanders’ expected margins on Super Tuesday. We need to continue to build out our volunteer leadership structure in every state, and volunteer leads in every congressional district across the country. In order to execute this plan effectively -- to fund everything from offices and organizing capacity to paid media and direct donate ads -- we need to raise $13 million before the Super Tuesday states vote on March 3rd. It is essential to remember that while 34% of delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday, the remaining March states combined will deliver 28% of the pledged delegates. We know what we need to do to win. We know that elections are won on the margins, and we know that Pete is the only candidate capable of building a broad and diverse coalition ready to defeat the sitting president. We need to be asking anybody who believes Pete is the leader we need to go to peteforamerica.com/donate and help us fund this campaign to and through Super Tuesday. PETEFORAMERICA.COM 7