Campaigning from power: What does change mean when you’re in charge?

In 2021, progressive movement Možemo! won the local elections in Zagreb, Croatia, by promising a break with the past. In 2025, mayor Tomislav Tomašević and his team faced a very different task: campaigning as incumbents without sounding like part of the establishment. Marijana Rimanić was part of the coordination and communications team of Možemo! She looks at the strategies used to emphasize a strong track record alongside a continued commitment to change that allowed the party to sustain momentum and mobilize voters.

In May 2021, Tomislav Tomašević, running for Možemo!, won the local elections in Zagreb to become mayor. Back then, Možemo! was a young political force: barely two years old, with a small parliamentary presence and national support hovering around eight percent. The party's legitimacy did not come from long-standing “statesmanship,” but from something far more combustible: years of civic struggle around common goods, urban space, and public services. Many of its most visible members had been out in the streets protesting against corruption in the city for years before entering politics.

The storyline of the 2021 campaign was not “we can manage better,” but “we, the people, will take the city back.” It named corruption and clientelism as the main ills in a city captured by private interests. This was a classic challenger’s posture: an underdog movement, armed with the legacy of struggle for the public good, running against a decaying system. When the votes were counted, Tomašević’s and Možemo’s win came as a genuine surprise, and it immediately signaled a shift that reshaped how local campaigns are run for years to come.

Fast-forward to 2025. Tomašević is no longer the insurgent. He is the incumbent, which brings a paradox: the very power that allows you to deliver change can also make you sound like the machine you once fought. The notion of “fighting the common enemy” still energizes many voters, but repeating it unchanged risks looking like a refusal to take responsibility. So how do you preserve the mobilizing spirit of a fighter against entrenched interests while campaigning from the position of power?

The perks and traps of campaigning from office

As an incumbent, you can point to results. You have projects, budgets, reforms, concrete “before and after.” In theory, that’s an advantage but in practice, much of what good government does is designed to be invisible. Voters rarely celebrate a bus that arrives on time, streets that are clean, or administrative services that simply work. Competence is expected, not applauded.

This is the incumbent’s trap: you may genuinely improve the city, yet struggle to spark political emotion. You cannot only list achievements,  you must narrate and contextualize them. So it was crucial to craft an overarching narrative that highlighted the first term’s achievements as well as the conditions under which those changes were made: a city that, four years earlier, was on the brink of bankruptcy, and riddled with corruption.

The message that resonated most with voters was a slogan we introduced at the very start of the campaign: “When you don’t steal, there is money for everything”. This conveyed competence, implied fiscal responsibility; and reintroduced the core antagonism of 2021 without rehearsing old scandals in detail. It told a story in one sentence: resources exist, and corruption and leakage will no longer decide who gets them. The slogan lived across channels: social media, billboards throughout the city, and was repeated by supporters in the comment sections of news portals.

In parallel, the campaign built a dedicated website that summarized the first term’s results. This mattered because people often said: “You’re doing big things, but we don’t hear about them.” So the campaign made systematic communication of results and next-term strategic projects.

A great asset was the arrival of new trams on Zagreb’s streets during the campaign. They were tangible proof that the city government really delivers, they became a recurring visual motif in campaign content, and even fed into merchandise, especially T-shirts distributed to volunteers and highly engaged supporters.

Opposition, attacks, and the discipline of not feeding the circus

Incumbency brings attention, and attention attracts predators. Rival mayoral candidates largely tried to portray Tomašević as incompetent, ideologically “woke,” and a producer of chaos. The opposition narrative was not coordinated, but it shared an aim: delegitimize the administration’s governing capacity and paint reforms as cultural warfare.

One of the campaign’s tactical choices was strategic non-engagement. The media space, particularly debate formats, was largely left to opponents to fight among themselves, while Tomašević’s campaign focused on proactive communication of accomplishments and second-term priorities, which was mainly built around large infrastructural projects for the second mandate, and mainly communicated via the campaign website (zagreb.mozemo.hr) and social media.

This approach is high-risk, high-reward. It can look confident and statesmanlike, but it must be carefully balanced to avoid appearing evasive, fearful, or arrogant. There was more debate participation after the second round, when the field had narrowed and they became a more controlled environment for articulating policies and priorities.

Some attacks were more theatrical than discursive. Across the city, graffiti appeared with messages like “Tomašević, leave” or “Tomašević loser.” The graffiti was stylistically uniform, suggesting coordination rather than spontaneous grassroots anger. Instead of centering a reactive “clean-up” spectacle, the campaign built a counter-image: high-volume social content showing Tomašević moving through neighborhoods and public events, surrounded by residents  — real people in real streets, showing genuine support.

“Doing what we do the best”: Proximity, ground game, and a little political humor

Incumbency can make a party look managerial, and the antidote is not theatrical radicalism; it’s proximity. The campaign deliberately reintroduced the practices that Možemo! had always done well: street canvassing, signature collection for candidacy (5,000 signatures are required in Zagreb for the candidacy to be official), and leaflet distribution. Crucially, this was not outsourced. 

Tomašević, along with his deputies Danijela Dolenec and Luka Korlaet and other recognizable party figures were highly visible. But the real engine was the volunteer team.. Možemo! in Zagreb has been building a volunteer base since 2017, and this campaign once again functioned both as mobilization and recruitment. Meeting the mayoral candidate in the street has a simple effect: it turns politics back into a human relationship, which is still the strongest form of persuasion.

Social media also played a central role, and the campaign ran during a period when Google and Meta still allowed political advertising. Alongside the usual policy and results content, certain formats were designed to show Tomašević outside rigid political staging.

The most distinctive example was “Burek with Mustard” (Burek sa Senfom). People could apply to meet Tomašević in a public setting and talk with him over a burek (savory pastry). The title referenced his nickname “Senf” (mustard), but also leaned into the absurdity: almost nobody in Zagreb would actually pair burek with mustard, and many would find the combination disgusting. That was precisely the point. The format smuggled political communication through humor and informal conversation, it emphasized humanity, ease, and a kind of working-class everydayness, while still addressing municipal topics through dialogue with “ordinary people”.

“Baby, it ain’t over till it’s over”: The outcome and the second-term pivot

Even if nearly every survey predicted Tomašević’s victory, the only numbers that matter are the ballots actually cast. Late in the campaign, the messaging shifted toward urgency, and the closing-week slogan was simple: “No relaxing.” The goal was psychological: prevent the comfortable illusion that history will happen on its own.

In the first round, Možemo! and its partner, the Social Democratic Party secured a stable majority in the City Assembly, creating the governing foundation for major decisions. The run-off delivered 57.5% of the vote for Tomašević, granting him a second term.

If the first term was framed as recovery and clean-up, the second-term narrative could now shift toward development: new infrastructure, expanded social programs, and deeper institutional change. The incumbency question remains, but the answer becomes sharper: deliver, narrate, confront obstruction, and never lose proximity.