If this were a normal year, volunteers for Al Gross would have begun knocking on Alaskans’ doors over the summer, searching for voters open to his independent campaign challenging an incumbent Republican senator. Come fall, the campaign would work to turn get those voters to the polls. Gross’ campaign credits relational organizing with helping turn Alaska into a Senate battleground. But the pandemic has forced major changes to the traditional campaign playbook, and in the virus’s wake, Gross’ campaign adopted an increasingly popular method of reaching voters known as relational organizing.