7 Research Priorities for Mayoral, County, and School Board Races

Mayor, county, and school board research is still a sourced file. The office changes which document you open first. The OppIntell homepage splits that work across two cards: Mayors, subtitled Citywide, and Local, subtitled County, city, school. This list is seven priorities for those offices. The wider map of all nine race families is /blog/9-types-of-race-specific-research-campaign-teams-need. The field manual is The Complete Guide to Evidence-Backed Opposition Research for Campaigns at /blog/the-complete-guide-to-evidence-backed-opposition-research-for-campaigns.

The build order for any of these files is /blog/how-to-build-a-citation-backed-candidate-research-dossier. The check before a memo is /blog/how-to-verify-political-claims-before-they-reach-a-campaign-memo. The container, sheet or platform, is /blog/campaign-research-platform-vs-spreadsheets-which-workflow-holds-up.

The opposition-research page's working file still applies: identity and office, votes where a voting record exists, public statements, finance filings, financial disclosures, donor lines from those filings, and court records that match the person. Every claim the campaign intends to repeat carries a source. The methodology page deduplicates on legal name, jurisdiction, office, and filing identifiers, with a reliability score when two sources disagree. The dossier should show which identifier won.

Separate the mayor from the rest of the local field

The Mayors card describes mayor candidate research across citywide campaigns and municipal fields. The Local card describes county, municipal, and school board candidate coverage. A council member, a county row office, or a school board seat stays on Local unless the record is actually a mayor. Write the office title from the filing on the first page so a citywide memo and a school board memo do not share a profile by surname.

Product paths are /mayor for the citywide card and /local for the county, municipal, and school board card. The races index sends each category to a live state hub chosen from current counts. A path shaped like /races/california/mayor is the public example of a field list. Opening one name starts the file. It does not finish it.

Start from the disclosure that matches the office

The opposition-research page says a mayor's filing is often at the city or county. A state or local candidate may never appear in an FEC report. The finance section for these races is the municipal, county, or school-district disclosure that names this committee. An FEC total from a different race the same person once ran is a different document. Keep it out of the local total unless the sentence is about that other race and cites that report.

Personal financial disclosures, where the office requires them, list income, assets, and liabilities in ranges set by the filing rules. They are not the committee's finance report. Donor lines inside the disclosure document a reported gift. They do not, by themselves, document why the donor gave or what was promised in private. That sentence needs its own public source. Amended local reports replace earlier totals the same way the opposition-research page says amended finance reports replace earlier totals. Cite the report that is current.

Treat county coverage as the adapters in production

The methodology page says county-level candidate registrations come from the four county adapters in production, beside Secretary of State candidate filings from 47 states. That is the published intake. It is not a claim that every county in the country is in the file. When a county is outside those adapters, the section says so. A blank is more useful than a line copied from a neighboring county or from a national template.

Ingestion runs on a schedule because filings change and committees terminate. The methodology page says blog briefings regenerate hourly and candidate research records refresh daily. A city report copied once and left in the file will not show a later amendment. Name the report period in the finance line.

Use a school board record only when it names the person

School board candidates often have no congressional roll-call record. Some bodies publish minutes or a board vote. Those pages belong when the document names this person and this question. They do not belong because the office sounds local. A newspaper account of a meeting is someone else's description unless the file also stores the words from the minutes.

Named source types on a published claim include an FEC filing, a Secretary of State portal, a court record, an official campaign site, and a government press release. A board minute can be one of those public documents when it is the record you cite. An unsourced social post can start a question. The opposition-research page says it becomes a claim when a public record answers it. The methodology page says anonymous tips stay outside the pipeline.

Disambiguate names inside one county

Common names repeat inside one city or county. The opposition-research page puts legal name, office, jurisdiction, cycle, and a middle name, city, or filing identifier on the first page when someone else shares the surname. A court record belongs when it matches that block. A shared surname is not a match. The same rule applies to a donor line and to a board vote.

Leave the vote section empty unless a record exists

A legislator's vote record exists only if they have served. A first-time school board candidate, a first-time mayor, and a first-time county candidate do not inherit a legislative roll call. If a board publishes a vote for this person and this question, cite that document in its own line. If it does not, the vote section stays blank. That blank is the result.

Where the minutes support a direct fact, state it and cite them. Where they only open a question, the methodology page's posture language applies: may, could, would examine, and appears consistent with. A communications writer should be able to see which local sentences are closed and which are still threads.

Put a source on every line that leaves the desk

On a published OppIntell briefing, each claim carries a source URL, a source type, and a citation validation status. The status records whether the document still exists at that URL and still contains the cited language. A claim that fails stays out until the source is re-resolved. A local mail piece can use the same gate. The opposition-research page also asks for the mirror file: the same pass on your own candidate, from the same public records. The homepage review step names analyst, senior, legal, and communications. Identity stays fixed while that review happens.

Public hubs for a field list include /races and /states. The nine cards are a browsing layout. This list does not add their live counts together. The canonical coverage sentence dated 2026-10-03 is 24,000 profiles in the public candidate-research index. The homepage counter on 2026-10-05 read 24,130. Neither figure is a ranking of mayor, county, or school board races. The opposition-research page says this description is legal advice for no one.