About The Grunt Work

The Grunt Work was created in the wake of Bernie Sanders' 2020 Presidential campaign by Ray Jarosz.

Ray is a lifetime entrepreneur who grew up in Slate Hill, New York, and graduated in 2007 from the University of Notre Dame. He is a workers rights activist living in downtown Las Vegas, who loves to play basketball and sand volleyball. Ray co-created the Sabila Aloe Vera Drink brand in 2009, and then divested his equity in 2015, at which time he moved West. He then opened and operated speciallty kiosks at malls in New York and California, and became seriously involved in politics while suporting Bernie Sanders in 2016.

When Ray began working in the world of paid political field work, he loved the concept of the work, but he soon began to feel that the main companies running the industry were maintaining a monopoly. Ironically, he also realized that this monopoly was often gutting the very movement that their clients were hiring them to help create.

Paid canvass is a very hard business, and Ray always felt that Nevada needed a local, high quality vendor to supplant the remote operators in the state. For years, Ray endured poor working conditions until the time came where he felt that he had fully acquired the expertise necessary to start his own company, and to begin reforming the industry and creating a movement.

Fast forward to 2020, when Ray Jarosz and Herrick Sullivan worked together on the Bernie Sanders' statewide paid-canvass program. When Ray met Herrick, Herrick was running the paid canvass program for the entire state of Nevada, and Ray felt that Herrick was the most worthy colleague he had ever encountered. From that point on, Ray and Herrick have worked together to create some of the largest and most effective paid canvass programs in modern politics.

Looking Back at Bernie 2020

As long-time veterans of the paid canvass industry, we felt that, up to that point, the Bernie campaign was the best version of a paid canvass that we had ever worked on. There were many reasons for this, but notably- all the canvassers were unionized, and the paid canvass was conducted as an offical arm of Bernie's presidential campaign, not as an outsourced, separate entity. These were significant differences.

Additionally, The Bernie 2020 program was also an extension of the Bernie campaign's larger organizing efforts, which was incredibly effective, and a departure from the industry norm. Marrying the organizing and paid canvass programs created a potent force for the Bernie 2020 campaign, and the campaign resoundingly won the state. In a state where most Democratic paid canvasses are low quality, or outright fake, the Bernie campaign's paid canvass effort was the opposite.

Since that time, it has been the mission of The Grunt Work to recreate that program, and to build upon that experience for a client or partner organization here in Nevada. It was painfully obvious that hiring smart people and treating them with dignity was a much better strategy than the callous and cynical employment strategy than the approach that all out-of-state, remote field vendors always take.

The Situation in Nevada

Nevada is a sparsely populated state where everyone is essentially doing the same things when it comes to voter outreach and campaign strategy. Unfortunately, this often includes hiring remotely-managed, out-of-state, paid canvass vendors.

From our perspective here at The Grunt Work, we feel that out-of-state companies have made a huge fortune in Nevada by charging local organizations for their voter outreach services, and these companies benefit from a severe lack of competition within this space. We want to change this.

In our opinion, what often happens in Nevada is that instead of identifying and developing promising young canvassers and developing them into career-oriented operatives, Nevadan organizations outsource this work to out-of-state companies, and then have no idea what type of experience the staff at the outsourced company is having. These outsourced vendors often hire and fire people with reckless disregard- a practice that we at The Grunt Work believe undermines the strategic mission of the organizations that these companies are hired to represent.

At The Grunt Work, we believe these "Nevada canvasser mills" often create a negative backlash or have no impact on election results.

We believe that swing states need many smaller, boutique operators that compete with one another and that are capable of delivering these paid-canvass services to in-state organizations. Furthermore, organizations should use the opportunity of creating paid canvass programs as a way to identify, retain, and develop their next generation of leaders. By not completely outsourcing their voter contact services, Nevada organizations can build a more authentic community movement at a lower cost, while also building a legitimate talent pipeline.

Nevada candidates and organizations can do better for themselves and their communities, and we at The Grunt Work are here to lead by example.

Hire us if you are serious about winning, and want to create the best paid canvass program in the state. of Nevada!