The Role of the Campaign Team as Brokers: The Case of the Minahasa Regent Election in 2018

The recruitment of a political machine to win elections is generally done by political parties and candidates, but in Indonesia, it has most often been done directly by candidates. However, a different scenario occurred in the Minahasa Regent election in 2018, where the Roring-Dondokambey campaign team was recruited and organized by a party. This study analyzes the campaign team’s capacity and its role in the election. The paper argues that the campaign team consisted of people with strong capacities and appropriate clientelist strategies play an important role to win the candidates. This article draws on Zarazaga’s theory of brokers’ capacity as a political machine and Nichter’s clientelist approach model, i.e., the campaign team recruited by the PDI-P had local knowledge, political reputations as elites, knowledge of the party’s reputation, and the ability to maintain voter loyalty. Team members used these capacities to buy votes and reward loyalists in order to win the election