Phil Arballo lost to Devin Nunes and turned it into a career. Now he’s running again
Running against Rep. Devin Nunes can launch a career in politics — even if you lose.
The past two Democrats who challenged Nunes in a general election — both of whom were first-time candidates — have built huge online followings that they turned into political and fundraising megaphones.
Andrew Janz, a local prosecutor who ran against Nunes in 2018, founded a political fundraising committee called Voter Protection Project. It promoted Democratic candidates and raised more than $8 million in the 2020 cycle.
Phil Arballo, who ran against Nunes in 2020 and has filed to run against him again in 2022, now is working for Janz’s Voter Protection Project as its director of candidate recruitment. He earned $3,644 in December, according to campaign finance records. Arballo also received a salary of about $37,000 from his political campaign last year.
The Voter Protection Project promotes Democratic candidates across the country, including the two Georgia Democrats who recently won U.S. Senate seats in their state’s runoff election.
Arballo was one of three employees who received wages from the Voter Protection Project in the final months of 2020.
His campaign said he will continue working for the PAC in 2021. The campaign said the wages are important in allowing a working-class person like Arballo to participate in politics.
“We deserve better than millionaires and billionaires buying their way to Congress. While Phil Arballo doesn’t come from money, he is committed to protecting our Democracy and uplifting working families,” Arballo’s campaign said in a statement. “He is running a grassroots effort to defeat Devin Nunes. Phil is following the rules to be able support his family and defeat Devin Nunes in this run for Congress.”
Prior to running for office, Arballo operated a financial advising business. It went under in 2020, according to an interview Arballo gave to the Valley Voice newspaper. His wife also lost her job during the pandemic, which Arballo talked about on the campaign trail.
His campaign said she started a new job recently as a lecturer at Fresno State. Arballo told Valley Voice that the two of them are now planning to start a translation services business.
“We know how difficult it is at this time and how difficult it is for small business owners,” Arballo said. “We’re just two parents at home with two kids. There is no outside help because of COVID.”
Candidate salaries
It is legal for political candidates to pay themselves a salary from campaign funds. The rule is intended to allow moderate-income people, who are less likely to be able to take a break of a year or more from their jobs, to run for office, according to Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform for the Campaign Legal Center.
“Not everybody can afford to devote themselves full time to campaigning for office and rely on a savings account or a trust fund to feed themselves,” Fischer said. “Some are reluctant to do so because voters might judge them harshly, but some are able to make the case that they’re working class and need to use campaign funds as a salary.”
Candidates cannot pay themselves more than they earned in the previous year before they ran for office. Arballo’s campaign provided financial documents to McClatchy that show he followed those restrictions.
It’s also common for losing candidates to continue getting involved with politics, especially in fundraising. Arballo might be in a better position to run now since he has more name recognition, argued Lisa Bryant, a political science professor at Fresno State.
“That said, the data shows that people who run against incumbents a second time are generally no more successful than when they run the first time, so moving into other positions in the political arena is an attractive option if one wants to stay actively engaged in politics,” Bryant said.
Thomas Holyoke, another professor of political science at Fresno State, said the staying power of Janz and Arballo is somewhat unique to the Nunes race, since it attracts so much attention. But it’s not unheard of, he added, citing the example of Stacey Abrams losing her bid for Georgia governor but becoming a “political star.”
“Arballo may not be in Stacey’s league, but it does seem that he is trying to stay in politics, and stay in the news, though much of this is also because he wants another shot at Nunes,” Holyoke said.
Twitter campaigns
Janz built a huge online support system when he ran against Nunes, R-Tulare, in 2018. Nunes had become a lightning rod for controversy when he aligned himself with former President Donald Trump, and used his position as then-head of the House Intelligence Committee to go after intelligence officials who he felt had unfairly targeted Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Janz raised $9 million in his personal campaign fund to unseat Nunes, though Nunes still outraised him with a $12 million warchest.
Janz lost to Nunes by five points, which was Nunes’ narrowest election victory since he was first elected to Congress in 2002. He typically won his district by around 30 points. Janz turned that attention into fuel to start the Voter Protection Project, which now has about 116,000 Twitter followers.
Then, Nunes sued Twitter, anonymous social media users who mocked him online, journalists and others in a series of defamation lawsuits in 2019 and 2020. Those lawsuits kept Nunes in national news.
Arballo came in to the race in 2019 and tweeted every time Nunes made headlines, encouraging people to donate to his campaign. He was also supported by one Twitter account Nunes is suing, known as Devin Nunes’ Cow. Arballo lost by eight points, but still raised $5 million in the 2020 cycle and now has about 284,000 Twitter followers.
And now Arballo is running again, in addition to working for the Voter Protection Project. His campaign did not respond to a question on whether he would start taking a campaign salary again in 2022. If he did, then it would have to be after the California primary ballot deadline in late 2021.
Eric Garcia, a Marine veteran who lost in the 2020 primary, has also filed to run against Nunes in 2022. He announced his run against Nunes on Twitter in January and got some supportive retweets from the Devin Nunes’ Cow account.
He already has 130,000 followers.
This story was originally published February 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: The original story incorrectly reported that Eric Garcia had never run for office. He ran in the 2020 congressional primary as no party preference.
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