AOC’s Organizing App Is Spreading to Democratic Socialist Campaigns
Initially hacked together before the primary, the Reach app offers a new way for campaigns to canvass supporters.
Reach co-founders Jake DeGroot and Leo Sussan (standing, from left), with their teammates Megan Taylor, Alice Houel, and Jean-Bertrand Uwilingiyimana.
Photographer: Adrienne Grunwald for Bloomberg Businessweek
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her upset victory in New York’s 14th Congressional District last year by blindsiding the incumbent Democrat, Representative Joe Crowley, a party fixture who never imagined thousands of new voters turning up, seemingly out of nowhere, to support a Democratic Socialist. On primary night, as the returns rolled in, Crowley could do little but grab an electric guitar and serenade the Left’s new phenom with a rendition of Born to Run.
Ocasio-Cortez’s political talent is undeniable. But her campaign was also a marvel of grassroots organizing, boosted, in the weeks leading up to the primary, by a mobile app called Reach that was cobbled together by a pair of volunteers, Jake DeGroot, 32, and Leo Sussan, 29. Both newcomers to politics, DeGroot, a theatrical-lighting designer, and Sussan, a digital marketing specialist, were frustrated by what struck them as the outdated methods for canvassing supporters: get a list of registered voters and knock on doors, hoping to catch them at home. The whole nature of the enterprise seemed off.