Vector Political

Press

For Immediate Release — July 14, 2026

Vector Political Launches the First AI That Deep-Canvasses Voters and Donors at National Scale

The firm’s engine has already held 30,000 one-on-one text conversations, 2.5 million messages, with sessions running an hour or more. Its founders say the era of the one-way blast text is over.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — Vector Political, the political technology firm whose AI deep-canvassing engine was featured in NPR’s reporting Sunday on AI-generated political texting, today announced its formal launch. The firm works with Democratic campaigns, committees, and progressive organizations.

Vector’s engine has held more than 30,000 one-on-one text conversations with voters and donors — more than 2.5 million individual messages this year — with conversational sessions that run an hour or more, in some cases for hours, and many conversations running past ten exchanges. A typical political text program sends one message and gets a delete; Vector’s conversations are two-way, and recipients keep talking because they are actually being listened to.

Deep canvassing — long-form, nonjudgmental persuasion conversation — is widely regarded as the most effective voter-persuasion method political science has tested. It has also been the least scalable: it traditionally requires trained volunteers holding ten-minute-plus conversations one door at a time. Vector’s founding premise is that AI removes the scale constraint without removing the listening.

The firm’s engine conducts the conversations by text, then turns what people say into what Vector calls conversational intelligence: a structured read of why people care, give, vote, and act — in their own words, at any scale. That intelligence drives targeting, messaging, and creative decisions that get sharper with every conversation.

“Political texting has spent a decade as a megaphone. We built a listening device. Deep canvassing is the most effective persuasion method in politics — and the least scalable. That trade-off is over. For the first time, a campaign has the opportunity to have a real conversation with everyone on its list and learn why people care, give, vote, and act, in their own words.”

Marty Santalucia, Partner

The engine does not pose as a human — it never claims a person is typing — and a recipient can end the conversation at any time with a single word. Most don’t: these conversations run an hour or more, in some cases for hours, under human strategic direction and review.

“People assume you have to fool someone to keep them talking to a machine. It’s the opposite. They stay because we’ve found a way to actually listen — centering their concerns and life experiences. You cannot fake an hour-long conversation.”

Joe Bachman, Partner

The firm’s current programs include national small-dollar donor programs and issue-advocacy campaigns. Vector offers two core applications: a donor acquisition-and-retention program that begins a conversation with every new donor within days of their first gift, and a voter intelligence program that brings the same conversational depth to persuasion, targeting, and paid media.

Tyger Roch, another partner at Vector, explained the opportunities that Vector has created in the small-dollar fundraising space:

“I came into this technology as a skeptic, but with texting at the scale that is common in the digital fundraising industry — sometimes millions of messages per day — there can be tens of thousands of replies to our texts and there is no way to handle all of the replies. Often, these replies are as simple as ‘Where can we send a check?’ Vector solves 100% of this problem, replying to every person. This has increased how many people give, and increased the speed that existing donors give again. It also gives us the opportunity to understand these people and what they really care about.”

Tyger Roch, Partner

The firm’s four partners are Joe Bachman, Ed Harkins, Tyger Roch, and Marty Santalucia, whose backgrounds span Democratic campaign strategy and media, small-dollar and digital fundraising, labor and coalition organizing, and applied political AI.

About Vector Political

Vector Political is a political technology firm that brings deep canvassing — long-form, genuinely two-way conversation — to a national scale using AI. The firm turns what your audience tells you into conversational intelligence about why people care, give, vote, and act — in their own words, at any scale — and puts it to work in targeting, messaging, and creative. Vector works with Democratic campaigns, committees, and progressive organizations. Learn more at vectorpolitical.com.

The Partners

Joe Bachman

Partner

Joe Bachman is a partner at Vector Political and the founder of Polaris Strategy Group, with 17 years as a campaign operative and political consultant. He works with candidates, campaigns, and organizations of every size to craft compelling narratives and deploy them to achieve measurable results. Joe is an experienced coalition-builder — helping statewide campaigns and legislative caucuses navigate competitive environments by aligning stakeholders at every level. A seasoned media buyer, Joe has led communications and media-buying strategy for major federal and statewide campaigns, statewide caucuses, single- and multi-candidate independent expenditures, county and state Democratic parties, interest groups, and labor unions. As a partner and managing consultant at Indigo Strategies, he served as lead digital strategist and project lead for the most award-winning creative production team in Democratic politics. Joe is also a co-founder and lead strategist of Defend Our Courts, a super PAC focused on electing pro-democracy candidates to state supreme courts and advancing reform of the U.S. Supreme Court, and serves on the board of the United Leadership Action Fund.

Ed Harkins

Partner

Ed Harkins is a partner at Vector Political who brings deep roots in the labor movement, from a family of labor leaders and activists whose work in the Building Trades spans more than a century. Over a 33-year career in the trades — as a graduated apprentice, journeyman, foreman, general foreman, field steward, and instructor — Ed is a former member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and is a member of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. For 12 years he served on the Boilermakers’ Legislative Education Action Program (LEAP) committee and Pennsylvania Political Action Committee, rising to Political and Legislative Director and PAC Chair for Boilermakers Local 13, where he lobbied on labor, construction, and energy policy at the local, state, and federal levels and vetted candidates seeking union endorsement. A co-founder of the super PAC Defend Our Courts, Ed has been active in the Democratic Party for 20 years — a Philadelphia precinct committee person and the Treasurer of the 55th Ward Democratic Committee, and involved with the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee. Over the past five years, Ed has been a general consultant in the political campaign sphere, and still works with labor unions and corporate clients.

Tyger Roch

Partner

Tyger Roch is a partner at Vector Political and principal of Bleed Blue Digital. His fundraising career began in the DCCC’s member services room as a college student in Washington; in the 2020 cycle he served on the finance team of a major progressive Senate campaign and as finance director for a Democratic candidate in a deep-red Colorado congressional district. Across the 2022 and 2024 cycles, his firm managed finance and digital programs in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Kentucky, raising a collective $10 million. In the 2026 cycle so far, his firm’s efforts have raised over $40 million.

Marty Santalucia

Partner

Marty Santalucia is a partner at Vector Political and chief executive officer of MFStrategies, a national consulting firm helping Democratic candidates and causes win by combining deep political expertise with data-driven strategy. Over a two-decade career he served as field director and senior staff on Governor Tom Wolf’s winning campaign and transition team, has raised tens of millions of dollars for progressive candidates nationwide, and was chief political and financial advisor to Joanna McClinton through her rise to become the first woman — and first Black Pennsylvanian in more than three decades — to serve as Speaker of the Pennsylvania House. He currently serves on Penn State’s AI curriculum advisory committee for its public policy program.

Notes to Editors

Media Contact

Marty Santalucia, Partner
All four partners are available for interviews.