Mary Nichols wants to turn tweets into votes for mayoral candidate

It’s a typical day as Mary Nichols takes in a campaign strategy meeting, heads to Costco for groceries, catches up on marketing jobs for her half-dozen clients, hangs out with Charlie Hales on the campaign trail, and blasts off a round of Tweets and Facebook posts.

Oh, and in between it all she takes care of her six — yes, six — children.

“Working is good for my soul,” says the 43-year-old Eastmoreland marketing guru. “I need a break from my mama drama.”

With kids ranging in age from 3 to 13 (five boys and the oldest a girl), Nichols says she’s barely had enough time to vote, much less be part of the city’s most critical race.

“I’ve either been birthing, nursing or raising kids,” she says. “I’m pretty much one of the most unpolitical people you’ll ever meet.”

So how did she land smack-dab in the middle of Portland’s biggest election?

She blames it on Hales’ “awesomeness” — his campaign platform that inspired her to jump into volunteer mode this spring.

After hearing Hales in a radio interview in the months before the May primary election, Nichols says she loved how he seemed like a “regular guy” with city leadership already under his belt.

She put in several hours of research on all three candidates, confirming her convictions. But she found Hales’ campaign lacking in one department: its use of social media left something to be desired.

So she contacted Hales, offering her professional marketing expertise.

“I thought it needed help,” Nichols says diplomatically. “(The campaign) had a presence but wasn’t truly engaging people and providing engaging content. I knew I had my work cut out for me.”

After Hales’ 6,678-vote victory over rival mayoral candidate, state Rep. Jefferson Smith, in the primary (Nichols tweeted live from the corner of the room on election night), the campaign hired her on as a part-time marketing consultant to lead its social media efforts.

She got off to a running start. Last week, Hales’ campaign logged his 2,000th Facebook friend; he has about 900 Twitter followers.

Smith’s campaign has amassed 6,200 Facebook fans and 934 Twitter followers. Another 300 Facebook friends and 2,655 Twitter followers are signed on to Smith’s personal accounts, which he regularly uses to communicate with his supporters.

The youth vote

If cyber numbers alone told the story, one might predict that Smith would have the edge going into the November election.

Local elections pollster Tim Hibbitts, of DHM Research, says more Facebook and Twitter friends does not equate to winning the race.

“It is a factor, yes, but I don’t overplay it,” he says, noting that voters will consider advertising and the candidates’ statements and actions altogether as a package.

Social media is “one more way for people to communicate with each other and for candidates to communicate with their followers or potential voters,” Hibbitts says.

Nationally, politicos are talking about the role of social media in predicting the presidential election this fall.

An unprecedented use of social media undoubtedly helped carry President Obama to victory in 2008. Although voter enthusiasm has waned, he’s still off the charts with 27 million Facebook fans and 17 million Twitter followers, compared to Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s 2 million Facebook fans and 623,000 Twitter followers.

Hibbitts predicts that Portland voters might not be as excited about Obama as they were in 2008 but will still come out to vote for the Democrat rather than the Republican.

Hibbitts bets that the 41 percent turnout from Portland’s May primary election will double to the 80 percent range in the November general election.

Many of those extra voters will be young, between 18 and 34 or 44, Hibbitts says.

Smith, the 38-year-old founder of the get-out-the-youth-vote Bus Project, probably has a bit of a head start with most if not all of these voters, Hibbitts says, but that doesn’t directly translate to votes.

“They’re still being introduced to both candidates,” he says. “Just because Smith might appeal to them generally — ‘Hey, you’re close to my age’ — that doesn’t mean he has their vote.”

Inspiring people

Portland residents already have a mayor who is no stranger to social media. Sam Adams is one of a handful of U.S. mayors known for his prolific use of social media, with an “I saw Sam” Flickr photostream as well as 11,000 Facebook fans and 51,000 Twitter followers.

On a local level, 10,000 to 20,000 is typically considered “rock star” status, experts say.

Adams uses his Tweets — 140-word snippets — to share policy announcements and mentions of Portland in the national news and generate discussions on everything from the TriMet YouthPass to graffiti, garages and crosswalks.

If Jefferson Smith is elected to replace Adams, it looks like another four years of social media mania will reign.

Before the primary election, Smith’s campaign paid BlueOregon blogger and social media consultant, Carla Axtman, nearly $12,000. Smith no longer has her on board but all of his staffers — as well as dozens of volunteers, managed by a core handful —share social media duties.

They all post a steady stream of quotes, photos, updates and videos to Facebook and Twitter as well as Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube from the field.

“It’s about being transparent and accessible,” says Henry Kraemer, Smith’s campaign manager. “It’s a two-way conversation all the time. We’re always accessible, responsive. It allows us to talk to way more people.”

Kraemer, who worked with Smith as organizing and political director of Smith’s Bus Project, dismisses any skeptics who might call social media a waste of time.

“Being responsive to the needs of Portland is the job,” he says. “It’s pulling back the curtain ... for some of the most successful mayors in the country, social media is core to their success.”

He invokes the names of two mayors who are famous for their social media use — Newark’s Cory Booker and San Francisco’s Gavin Newsome. Booker, in particular, has people Tweet him when a traffic light is out or another community problem needs fixing.

Says Kraemer: “We want to inspire them to not just identify problems, but help fix them.”

Building relationships

At Hales’ camp, Nichols isn’t fazed by Smith’s deep social media roots. With two marketing degrees and 19 years of experience leading the marketing efforts for major names like Coors Brewing Co. and Celestial Seasonings in Boulder, Colo., Nichols says it’s not quantity but quality that matters.

“It’s what you do with your people,” she says. “(Social media) is just another tool in my arsenal. I’m able to engage directly with consumers and followers, find what they like, want, need, build relationships that weren’t there before.”

In Portland, Nichols used social media long before it hit the mainstream, to boost the brand and customer base for Laughing Planet Cafe.

When her 6-year-old twins were 2, she started her own business, doing strategic marketing for a handful of local small companies.

She also draws on the daily challenges of her full-time job: Chief Domestic Officer of Nichols Family LLC, as she calls it on her LinkedIn page. Her profile reads: “Grew this small startup company to an impressive eight-member corporation in nine years with six direct reports. Daily activities include: project management, budgeting, transport of direct reports to various off-site meetings and non-union negotiation. Specialize in nutritious meals containing organic ingredients, many of which are grown on-site. Foster an atmosphere of independence, while stressing the importance of teamwork.”

Nichols says it’s her children’s future that she was thinking of when she added the Hales campaign to her crowded plate.

“I want to make the city a place to thrive and hopefully live when they’re adults,” she says.

She calls Smith “a great motivational speaker, but I want a doer.”

Nichols’ campaign work hasn’t just been her own introduction to politics; it’s also been a hands-on civics lesson for her family.

She cast her 8- and 9-year-olds in the TV spots in which she testified to Hales’ support of education; the whole clan also helped with house parties and canvassing and waved signs for Hales on the Hawthorne Bridge.

“We talked about garbage and recycling and the schedule change,” Nichols says. “I was explaining to them those are types of things we can all have a say in.”

In the four months until the general election, both Hales and Smith will spread their grassroots base through social media as well as old-fashioned door-knocking, coffees, public forums and television ads.

When The Oregonian published a news story last month about Hales’ campaign using material that had been lifted from one of its articles (at which the St. Johns Review and the campaign writer, no longer there, were at fault), Nichols was on vacation.

She called Hales from Southern Oregon, and advised him to address it immediately on Facebook. Hales agreed, she said, and posted to Facebook on June 22 his letter in response, which included the statement: “It was wrong and sloppy of my campaign, and I am sorry.”

“I am confident I will always get the truth from him and he’ll admit mistakes,” she says. “He’s not a perfect person and neither am I.”

Even as someone who swears by technology, she doesn’t let it consume her — or her family. When on vacation, during meals, meetings and especially mid-conversation, she puts her phone upside down next to her, checking for messages only when she’s done.

She has strict limits on screen time for her children; go over the limit and her kids can lose screen time privileges.

While multitasking is critical to her life, she’s learned a thing or two from being a mother six times over, like how to cut through the noise and focus on what’s really important.

“I need to unplug to recharge my batteries,” Nichols says.