Candidates imitating Trump

that is among the biggest liberal buyers of digital advertising. “If you want to do the Trump tactic of stealing attention, you have to talk about those things.”

Ben Kalasho, a city councilman in El Cajon, California, outside San Diego, may be taking Trump’s act to its logical extreme.

Kalasho, 35, is a flashy businessman who oversees a local beauty pageant, lives in a mansion with his wife, a former model, and has been mired in legal trouble, including allegations of fraud and sexual harassment. He has denied those accusations.

Kalasho’s social- media feeds are a mixture of bare- knuckle politics, aspirational lifestyle content and outright trolling. One recent post read, “I am against fake news, fascists, and Marxists, in that order.”

Kalasho, who is running for re- election this November, credits social media with his ability to attract attention, calling it a “superpower.” He said he had been inspired by the way Trump used Twitter to shape the news cycle. And he admitted that the pressure to perform on social media had made him gravitate toward more polarizing topics.

“There’s a sense of shallowness to social media,” he said. “I can’t talk about policy, potholes or health care and be popular.”

Of course, you still have to get votes. Some candidates with large social- media followings have fared worse than expected in primary elections this year, including Cynthia Nixon, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for governor in New York, and Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for governor in Michigan who finished well behind Gretchen Whitmer in the primary.

“How many candidates have we seen who pick up wildfire online but it doesn’t translate to votes?” said Amanda Litman, a founder of Run for Something, a liberal organization. “It’s just one of many ways to measure a campaign’s effectiveness.”