The first 90 days of a Democratic campaign should produce five things: a legal campaign entity, a written budget tied to a win number, a launch-ready fundraising operation, a public announcement that lands, and the data foundation your field program will run on. Everything else — endorsements, events, social media — is downstream of those five.
Most campaigns get the order wrong. They announce first, then scramble to build the machine while the clock runs. This plan runs the sequence the way winning campaigns actually run it, week by week. It's written for Texas candidates — legislative, county, or municipal — but the architecture travels.
One Texas-specific note before the clock starts: in Texas, you must have a campaign treasurer appointment on file before you accept a single contribution or spend a single dollar, including your own money. That form costs nothing and takes minutes. It's Week 1 business for a reason.
Days 1–14: Build the legal and decision foundation
Week 1 — Make it legal, quietly.
- File your campaign treasurer appointment (Form CTA with the Texas Ethics Commission for state-level offices; with your county or city clerk for local ones). Until it's filed, you can't raise or spend — at all.
- Open the campaign bank account. Separate from day one; commingling is how good people end up with TEC complaint letters.
- Pick your compliance setup: who files your reports, who reconciles the account monthly. A treasurer who actually knows the reporting calendar is worth more than a famous name who doesn't.
- Start the opposition research file — on yourself. Every vote, post, lawsuit, lien, and awkward photo. Your opponents will compile it; you need it first.
Week 2 — Decide what winning requires.
- Pull the last two cycles of results for your district: turnout, margins, straight-ticket patterns, primary electorate size. Confirm what the seat actually is — safe, lean, or battleground.
- Set your win number: expected turnout × 50% + 1, with a 3–5% cushion.
- Draft the campaign calendar backward from Election Day: early vote start, mail drop dates, TEC report deadlines (January 15, July 15, 30-day, 8-day), filing deadline, primary date.
- Decide your ballot question now: why you, why this seat, why now — in three sentences a neighbor would actually repeat.
Days 15–30: Money architecture before money
Week 3 — Build the budget.
Write the real budget — what your race costs at your district's competitiveness level, line-itemed across voter contact, staff, compliance, fundraising, and polling. Then build the fundraising plan that pays for it: monthly targets, donor tiers, and the events calendar. The budget is a hypothesis; the next 60 days test whether you can fund it.
Week 4 — Build the donor universe.
- Export every contact you have: phone, email, holiday card list, college roommates, professional network, faith community. Tier them by capacity and warmth.
- In Texas there are no contribution limits in non-judicial races, so identify your potential major donors early — the ten people who could each fund 2–5% of your budget.
- Set up your fundraising stack: a CRM or call time tool, a payment processor, pledge tracking. Decide now whether this race justifies a fundraising consultant — the threshold question is whether you're targeting more than $100,000.
Days 31–60: The quiet raise
Weeks 5–6 — Call time begins.
This is the make-or-break stretch, and it happens before anyone knows you're running. Ten to fifteen hours of call time a week, starting with your warmest tier. The goals: bank a launch number that signals viability, and learn your network's real capacity before you've committed publicly.
Generally speaking, a candidate who can't book 10 hours of weekly call time in the quiet period won't magically find 20 in October. This is also your personal stress test. Better to learn it now.
Weeks 7–8 — Pressure-test and staff up.
- Measure the first month: dollars per call hour, pledge conversion, average gift. If the trajectory says your budget is unfundable, resize the budget — not the honesty of the math.
- Make your first hires or lock your consultant team: campaign management, finance support, and a plan for field leadership by spring.
- Brief the people who matter locally: county party chairs, Democratic clubs, labor councils, community leaders whose surprise would be expensive. Quiet courtesy now buys public goodwill later.
Days 61–90: Launch loud, then prove it
Weeks 9–10 — Build the launch.
- Announcement plan: launch video or event, press list, social accounts, website with a working donate page tested under load.
- Earned media groundwork: introductions to the reporters who cover your area. Local press still decides what half your district hears about your race.
- Draft your launch-week fundraising push — the email, the match, the major-donor calls timed to convert announcement attention into your first public proof point.
Weeks 11–12 — Announce.
Launch when three things are true: the money proof point is banked, the message is tested on real humans, and the calendar gives you a clean week of attention. A launch is a claim of viability; the next TEC report is the evidence. Plan them together.
Week 13 — Convert attention into structure.
- Every launch-week contact gets a follow-up within 72 hours: donors get asks, volunteers get shifts, press gets your next story.
- Stand up the volunteer pipeline — even at house-party scale. The volunteers who find you in week 13 are your precinct captains next fall.
- Hold the after-action review: what the launch earned (dollars, sign-ups, coverage), what it cost, what the next 90 days must produce.
What this plan refuses to do
Notice what's missing. No endorsements chase in month one — endorsements follow viability; they rarely create it. No paid media — money spent on ads before you have a budget and message test is money burned. No reactive politics — you don't have the standing yet, and the discipline you practice now is the discipline your campaign inherits.
You don't want to discover in October that your campaign's foundation was a launch video and a logo. The campaigns that crack under fall pressure are almost always the ones that skipped weeks 1 through 8 — the unglamorous architecture — and went straight to the public part.
The bottom line
Ninety days, five deliverables: legal entity, real budget, working fundraising operation, a launch that lands, and the data spine for field. Run the sequence in order. If you're eyeing the 2028 cycle in Texas, candidate filing is expected to run mid-November to mid-December 2027 — which means a first-90-days clock that starts no later than early 2027 for a serious race.
Iceberg builds launch plans, budgets, and full campaign infrastructure for Democratic candidates in Texas. Book your free consultation before your clock starts — the cheapest mistakes to fix are the ones you haven't made yet.
Frequently asked questions
What should a candidate do first when starting a campaign?
In Texas: file your campaign treasurer appointment before you raise or spend anything — including your own money. It's required by the Texas Election Code, costs nothing, and takes minutes. Then open a dedicated campaign bank account and set up compliance. Everything public — announcement, website, social — comes weeks later, after the budget and fundraising architecture exist.
How long before the election should I start my campaign?
Work backward from your race's cost. A battleground Texas legislative race needs 12–18 months of runway; a county or municipal race needs 6–12. The constraint is fundraising arithmetic: if your race costs $750,000 and a strong candidate raises $40,000–$80,000 a month with disciplined call time, the calendar writes itself. Starting late doesn't change the math — it just compresses it past feasibility.
When should a campaign announce publicly?
When three things are true: you've banked a fundraising proof point in the quiet period, your core message has been tested on real people outside your kitchen cabinet, and the calendar gives you a clean week of attention. Announcing before the machine exists wastes your single largest earned-media moment on an organization that can't convert it.
How much money should I raise before announcing?
A working benchmark: 10% of your total budget banked or hard-pledged before launch, mostly from your personal network. For a $400,000 race, that's $40,000. Institutional Democratic donors and committees read your first public report as the viability test — a launch backed by a strong number compounds; a launch backed by hope doesn't.
Do I need a campaign manager in the first 90 days?
Not necessarily on payroll, but you need management. For legislative and larger races, a manager or general consultant should be in place by the public launch. For smaller races, a disciplined candidate with a strong volunteer deputy and a good treasurer can run the first 90 days. What you cannot skip is someone — titled or not — who owns the calendar and holds you to call time.
Iceberg Public Affairs builds disciplined, professional campaigns for Democratic candidates in Texas. Book your free consultation.