FACT: Whether it's a political candidate, a legal battle or a corporate/issue advocacy campaign, WINNING starts with GREAT research.
And as one of the top opposition research firms in the country, we believe that GREAT research undoubtedly starts with detailed vulnerability research.
Because, in the words of the great 20th century philosopher, G.I. Joe...
So What Exactly Is Vulnerability Research?
While opposition research, also known as competitive intelligence, is the process of gathering information about an opposing individual, organization, or political entity to gain insights into their strategies, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses. Vulnerability research is the process of conducting opposition research on your own client or organization to determine how and when your opponent is likely to attack you during your political, corporate or legal battle.
Vulnerability research is typically conducted to gain a competitive advantage by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your client and it allows your organization to anticipate and counteract potential threats, devise effective marketing or political campaigns, and make informed decisions.
Rise of Big Money Campaigns
Why Do Top Opposition Research Firms Agree That Vulnerability Research Is So Critically Important?
Opposition research can be traced back to military strategy, as illustrated by Sun Tzu's Art of War written in the 5th century BC. This warrior's guide re-emphasizes the importance of gathering strategic intelligence, recognizing an adversary's vulnerabilities, and then attacking during times of weakness.
“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.” - Sun Tzu
This philosophy has been tested and retested by political campaigns, corporations, non-profits and legal entities for thousands of years because accurate research is critical to developing a winning strategy. But with the rise of social media influencers, podcasts, youtubers, artificial intelligence and fake news amateur reporters, opposition research and vulnerability research has become even more important to developing your team's strategic messaging, rapid response, and paid media campaigns.
At JTKE Strategic Research and Communications, we rely on the 4 strategic principles below when developing our next level vulnerability research products:
The Rise of Big Money Campaigns
With the rise of Super PACs and other outside groups, we have seen a major influx of money in political and issue advocacy campaigns. Consider that in 2012, candidates, parties and outside groups spent about $7 billion on the election. In 2024, that number exceeded more than $16 billion.
With that much money at stake, we as consultants, owe it to our client's donors to spend their money in a way that gets the best bang for their buck. That means having all the info. That means knowing where the attacks will come from. When the attacks are likely to come. How best to respond. When the best time is to respond. Who is the best person to deliver that response? Do we need to release it early to inoculate against the attack later in the campaign? Do we have a good story to tell? Are we vulnerable when we deliver our best attack on our opponent? All of these questions and more will be answered with great vulnerability and opposition research.
So don't be cheap. If you are going to spent millions or tens of millions of dollars in a campaign, make sure you have the best political opposition research. Too much money is at stake to rely on bad oppo...
Candidate Recruitment: Trust But Verify
With over 20 years experience providing opposition and vulnerability research products to our clients, we have learned too many times that while you can and should be able to trust your clients to disclose their perceived vulnerabilities, you must also VERIFY which vulnerabilities actually exist when selecting or even recruiting candidates. And with so much money at stake, this has become even more important.
Nothing highlights the need for using vulnerability research to verify a candidate's background and personal story more than the George Santos debacle.
Santos convinced donors to contribute more than $3 million to his 2022 campaign for Congress which he "blatantly stole from his campaign” and “deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit," according to a House Ethics Report.
With the balance of Congress and state legislatures at stake, we can't afford to drop the ball as we select our candidates.
Shifting Political Landscape
We've heard clients often tell us that they don't vulnerability research because they have been in office for a long time and they know all of the attacks against them. Or that they know how to respond to certain attacks.
Just ask Bill McCollum how that strategy works.
McCollum ran for Florida Governor in 2010 after spending more than 30 years in elected offices. His campaign team believed they knew ALL of McCollum's vulnerabilities and were prepared to respond. And while they likely knew of his vulnerabilities they did not know just how an unknown candidate named Rick Scott would message those vulnerabilities from the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of the 2010 tea party movement. The political landscape had shifted and the voters would reject what McCollum claimed was an "experienced statesman," that they viewed as a "career politician". Same candidate, different lens. The political landscape had shifted.
Shortly after 9/11, Republicans were extremely supportive of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republican voters supported bigger government (aka Department of Homeland Security, Patriot Act) to focus on keeping Americans safe. And some Republicans even supported efforts to grant Amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Well those policy positions sure don't resonate with the republican base anymore. This is another reason why it's so important to understand a candidate's full vulnerabilities and to weigh them in the CURRENT political landscape, each an every cycle. Otherwise, you won't be prepared to fight back.
Attack/Response
A vulnerability analysis is critical to developing your attack/response matrix. This is your blueprint for how to deal with incoming attacks. We break down our Attack/Response matrix into three key silos:
Silo 1: We know the attack is coming, but the opposition doesn't know all the facts. The incoming attack is actually going to be a good story for us to tell so we will wait for them to launch the attack and then we will fully respond with the full details and evidence which will help us amplify our messaging and turn our candidate into the victim of negative attacks.
Real Life Example: Years ago we were involved in a judicial race where both of the candidates had pledged to run positive campaigns void of any negative attacks. Despite the pledge, we convinced our client that we needed to run a vulnerability research assessment and found that our client's family business may have had a tax issue, but the record was a little suspect. After digging into the issue further we realized that our client did not have any issues because that business had been sold more than 7 years prior and there was documentation that the business had no tax issues at the time. In fact, it was the new owner (who had kept the name of the business the same) who had the tax issue. The sale documents specifically detailed that the business was free and clear of any tax issues at the time of the sale. So we knew we were in good shape. We also had a hunch our opponents would try to use the hit against us despite their pledge so we patiently waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, the Democrats and our opponent launched the attack and it changed the whole trajectory of the race. You see prior to that attack we had been outspent nearly 3 to 1 by our opponent and were down nearly 15 points in the polls. But once we were able to show voters the false smear campaign against our client, we began climbing in the polls and pulled off one of the biggest upsets in political history.
Silo 2: We know an attack is coming, we know we don't have a great explanation, but we also know the issue is either too complicated or simply not that big of a deal to the voters because there are other issues more important. We also know that our opponent has a vulnerability that is way worse and will resonate more with voters. So we will wait for our opponent to attack and then we will change the story and counter-attack with our opponent's larger vulnerability.
Real Life Example: In 2024, everyone knew that the democrats would try to attack President Trump over what they described as the issue of Protecting Democracy, more specifically they wanted to focus on the events that transpired on January 6th. That strategy quickly unraveled when the Trump campaign began counter-attacking Biden and Harris for lying to the American public about President Biden's cognitive decline, the Biden/Harris record of being soft on crime and the failure to secure the border. These issues made the entire protecting democracy messaging a total joke. Moreover, the Democrats lost any moral authority they had related to January 6th when they failed to arrest looters, rioters and protestors following the black lives matter protests. The Trump campaign attacks were much stronger and resonated much deeper with the American voting public than the Democrats' failed messaging.
Silo 3: The last silo is for attacks that we know are going to come, the attack is pretty damaging, and we really can't refute it because our candidate did in fact take that specific vote or make that particular quote. So rather than wait for our opponent to launch the attack on their terms when most voters are paying attention, we want to release the issue early in the campaign on our own terms to define the issue first. We use this strategy to inoculate against potentially harmful attacks.
Real Life Example: In 2004, while doing opposition research on John Kerry for the Republican National Committee, we came across information that suggested Kerry might be involved in an extramarital affair. We set out to verify the details and were working on putting together a bombshell report. But before we could get to it, an anonymous report was sent to the media in February of 2024 (almost 9 months before the election) accusing Kerry of having an affair with a young intern. The media tripped over themselves to dig into the story. The problem was, this was not the story we were looking into. In fact, this story was clearly false. I remember thinking to myself at the time, Kerry's campaign released that story on purpose so that the media would investigate it, find out that it was false and then when the real story comes out later, Kerry can say, "See we already answered these false attacks and now the Republicans are doing it again." Even if the next story was real or verifiable. We knew immediately that this line of attack would be a dead end. So we moved on. I don't have any evidence that verifies that Kerry's team released the false story on purpose, but it would certainly make sense if they did.
Step By Step Guide to Executing Winning Vulnerability Research...
So you are ready to embark on your vulnerability analysis. So where do we start?
First and foremost you have to answer a few introductory questions to help you determine which direction to go:
Is this vulnerability research book created from the perspective of a potential primary opponent or a general election opponent? This is very important because what may be a big issue in a republican primary may not resonate with voters in a general election and vice versa. Understanding the perspective of your opponent is critical.
What office is my client seeking? This is also very important as congressional voters in the Florida panhandle are much different than voters for Governor of Maine. The issues that matter in New Hampshire may not matter to voters in Alabama. So understanding the office and district is very important to the overall process.
Who are the other candidates in the race? Who else is in the race? If its 5 republicans in the race, they may all have the same vulnerabilities when it comes to their voting records. If so, those might cancel each other out. Or if its a republican and a democrat, they may have similar donors who are controversial, but if both candidates took their money, the potential hit loses its luster.
Who is the audience? And lastly, who is going to be using the info? Is this for a state legislative caucus to help recruit candidates? Is this for an individual who needs to see under every rock? This will help streamline the process once you know who is the ultimate audience.
You've looked at the political landscape. You know the players, now it's time to build your vulnerability analysis. So what goes into a good vulnerability research book? Below you find the critical components of a good vulnerability analysis:
Bio and Timeline: Understanding your target's biography, when and where they have lived, worked and studied. This will help you create the entire layout of your book.
Public Records: This section includes details related to personal financial issues (bankruptcies, judgments and tax liens), property records, personal financial statements filed by elected officials, lobbying reports, campaign finance reports, and non-profit disclosures. This information comes from publicly available information.
Legal Records: This section includes lawsuits, criminal records, depositions, etc.
Corporate Records: This section includes SEC filings, investor relations documents, annual reports, corporate board minutes, international exposure from business dealings, etc.
Political and Civic Engagement: Boards, organizations, political affiliations, voter registration reports, voter participation history, non-profit donations, etc.
Votes and Quotes: This section is contains information about a candidate's voting record (if an elected official) and their quotes to the media. This section has also been referred to as a Media Analysis. One of the most important parts of the research analysis.
Social Media Intelligence Report: This section contains all social media posts to ensure there are no vulnerabilities from social media. Likewise, a candidate often thinks that deleting a social media post makes them safe, when in reality it can become a bigger issue when you try to hide info from voters.
Getting Started...
Now that you have an understanding of the importance of the vulnerability analysis and what information you want to know, its time to get started.
You can either hire a top opposition research firm like JTKE Strategic Research and Communications to build your report using our state of the art proprietary research tools or you can use some of the following links to get you started:
Option 1: Contact Josh Cooper at JTKE Strategic Research & Communications at 850-524-4101 or at Cooper@strategicore.net.
Option 2: Do your own research using the following resources:
Bio and timeline - Linkedin, LexisNexis, Google, etc
Public Records - LexisNexis SmartLink, PACER, County Government Websites, etc
Legal Records - LexisNexis Court Link, PACER, County Courthouse Websites, etc
Corporate Records - SEC Filings, LexisNexis, State Websites, etc
Political and Civic Engagement - OpenSecrets, Guidestar, Propublica, etc
Votes and Quotes - LexisNexis, Google, Roll Call Votes, etc
Social Media Intelligence Report - Social Media Sites, etc
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