The Biggest Unknowns for GOP Consultants in 2026

The campaign industry is at a crossroads. 

Artificial intelligence is making its way into nearly every aspect of Americans’ work and personal lives, the economy is wrought with uncertainty and the coming years are almost guaranteed to bring huge changes to the political landscape.

A panel of Republican consultants weighed in on the big unknowns and challenges in their professions this week at the Reed Awards in Charleston, S.C. Here’s what they had to say:

Maggie Paulin, Push/Campaign Solutions:

“Is fundraising going to turn around? Is the economy going to turn around? I know it’s pretty broad, but we did a day-by-day analysis of one of our Senate races and there’s a direct correlation of where the stock market is with what we’re raising per day. So every day the stock market took a dip, guess what? Our fundraising for the day took a dip. 

“I know a lot of our donors aren’t watching the stock market day by day, but there is a direct impact there.”

Mike Hahn, Frontline Strategies:

“The biggest unknown is what the digital industry looks like after Trump. 

“It’s not that we’re worried about it, I just think that we definitely built our entire industry while he has been a presence and we haven’t had a Biden or a Kamala Harris or a Hillary Clinton for that matter to basically see if it survives the test of time. I think it will, but it will definitely be a lot different when you don’t have a president making as much news as he does.”

Austin Boedigheimer, Red Spark Strategy

“We’ve talked a lot about content and some of the issues there. I think part of the issue is that most of the content does resemble what Trump does or it’s directly almost making it look like a donation goes to Trump, and people have had a lot of success with that. So once that falls, how are these small candidates actually going to be able to raise money?

“Ideally, it’s having good candidates that people are actually interested in their story. And they can tell their own story and raise money that way. But I think we also need some out-of-the-box candidates to really bring in some new donors.”

John Hall, John Hall Strategies

“My view on the way marketing is going is: AI can create all this content. AI can also determine what you see. It can be the filter and it’s not big tech making the filter, it’s your decisions every single day.

“If you login to Instagram today, what you see today on Instagram looks vastly different than what it’s going to look like in six months, looks vastly different than what it looked like three years ago. It’s not so much that the content that’s being posted changes, it’s that the algorithm determines what you’re going to see. Your behavior determines that.

“It doesn’t worry me, but the thing that I think a lot about is: how do we create more customized marketing journeys for each of the people on our list? And I think whoever solves that – if you can solve the one-to-one conversation…if you’re able to actually solve that, it’s going to be golden for whoever does it. 

“But that’s actually what worries me. If you don’t solve it, all of your stuff goes to spam. Don’t worry about Apple blocking your spam or your texts or Google blocking your emails. It’s your phone. Everybody’s phone is blocking it.

“I think how technology – how the marketing technology evolves over time is going to have a huge impact on where our market goes and how efficient we are and how good we are at our jobs. And whoever solves it is going to make a billion dollars and everybody else is going to go out of business.”