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Hello. slash podcasts. Hello, I'm Linda Yu.

Welcome to the BBC World Service. The I'm an economist and journalist who's fascinated by American elections. I've been following the presidential races for as long as I can recall and one

thing has struck me the growing amounts of money being spent in political campaigns

with electioneering becoming an industry in itself.

To find out why, and it's a bonkers idea, I'm going to go through the grueling election

process. Yes, I'm going to try it myself. I'm going to run for Congress as an independent in the 5th District of the State of Virginia.

It's an open race in a swing district in a key swing state. It could just decide the House majority.

So join me on the campaign trail is I find out why it costs so much to run for office and how that's changing with the

internet.

This is Linda for Congress.

First, you know, one of the things that we would do in this exercise,

whether you were running or whether you were deciding to run,

is really do what we'd like to call a message box,

which is a process in which we game out a strategy of what would the dialogue be in a political

campaign.

First off, the awkward stuff.

Joe Fold of Campaign Workshop has worked with Democratic candidates.

I went to see him to find out what I should expect in my first political race.

He walked me through how to position my message on a whiteboard and how I'm going to have to put myself on the line.

So it would be as simple as what do we say about us, right?

...