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August 03, 2005
Ohio 2 recap
It is important to remember that the campaign for Congress in the second district of Ohio was not a revolutionary campaign where new tactics were on hand to turn a previously unwinnable district into a competitive one. That was the initial goal of a lot of the blogosphere and the candidate's campaign. However, once the money started pouring in, they pretty much junked anything innovative and stuck with the time tested method for winning a Congressional race -- a well run field organization and massive television advertising.
An appealing candidate in Paul Hackett, combined with an unappealing opponent in Jean Schmidt, combined with a unique ability to raise money (no other federal races for months) make this a very unique situation. It's true that even with running a real campaign, the race probably shouldn't have been as close as it was, and hopefully that spells general trouble for the Republican Party's prospects in next year's Congressional campaigns.
However, the reason that Paul Hackett came closer than any other candidate since 1974 to winning that district is that unlike previous Democratic candidates he was able to fully inform (through television advertising) the electorate of his side of the story AND in a heavily Republican area, because he was not running the same day as a John Kerry, Bill Clinton or any other prominent national Democrat, it was harder for his opponent to benefit from the type of atmosphere in a district like Ohio 2 (imagine Lynn Westmoreland or Charlie Norwood's districts) that reinforces to those voters what they don't like about Democrats.
So by all means, lets get opponents with decent bios to run against the Lynn Westmorelands and John Linders of the world. Let's just not expect them to each be able to raise $500,000+ and run counter to the image of the national Democratic Party when candidates in competitive districts are competing for the available money. In other words, there were about 200 Congressional districts that were not targetted by the DCCC and national Democrats in 2004. Is the "netroots" willing or even able to raise an additional $100 million (at least, some of these races would cost millions of dollars each to make competitive) for these candidates this time?
Posted by Chris at August 3, 2005 09:46 AM
Comments
I think the blogosphere could raise the money. The harder part is 1. recruiting decent candidates to run 2. making sure they have the internal resources to use the $ wisely. Imagine what a decent candidate with adequate funds could do in an area like Kingston's district in South Georgia or Gingrey's district in NW Georgia. Lord know they've got enough dirt on their faces with CAFTA and the Patriot Act to haunt them down. Having a strong top of ticket presence in 2006 and 2008 will help. Hopefully a southern or rural-state pol will have the top of the ticket in 2008.
Posted by: Tim ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.chrisishardcore.com//nav-commenters.gif)
at August 3, 2005 01:53 PM
Hackett was able to raise enough money to go on TV, which is what made him competitive. If the NRCC hadn't stepped in and purchased airtime for Schmidt, Hackett probably would have won (he'd be the only one the voters had heard of).
In Gingrey's district, you're talking about a district that with the possible exception of Chattooga county is entirely in the metro Atlanta market -- which would require like $3 million in money raised. In Kingston's district, you have to do Savannah and maybe Albany and Macon TV and definitely Jacksonville TV (also possible Thomasville-Tallahassee). Granted, these markets are much cheaper than Atlanta, so you could do all of these markets for less, but you're still looking at raising $1.5 million. In some of these districts, like in California, New Jersey, places like that, you're looking at $5 million or more to knock off an incumbent.
Kingston's district is theoretically competitive. It has a Democratic performance of maybe 45% as of 2001. That's certainly better than the Hackett district, but then again Kingston is a much stronger candidate (emphasis on much) than Jean Schmidt was. Gingrey's district is maybe a 40% Democratic performance district as of 2001 (though keep in mind, Bush did much better than Democratic performance in both districts and also better than he did in the Hackett district).
Even if 1 million progressives read blogs, they'd each have to give more than $100 to second tier candidates to fully fund them all. Really, probably closer to $500.
On the other hand, it might make sense for the blogs to broaden the field by 20 races or so that the DCCC can't be involved in. The last cycle, this would have included campaigns like the Rick Crawford campaign. I saw DCCC polls that showed a generic Democrat leading Gingrey and from what I understand Gingrey had a poll within a month of the election showing the race within two points. The problem is, Crawford had no money and wasn't able to define himself to the voters of the district. And the blogosphere wasn't anywhere to be found, instead throwing money into a lot of races on the Kos Dozen that were total longshots and into sweetheart candidates that were in bad districts.
And that's what it ultimately gets down to, nobody wants to waste their money on a lot of candidates that aren't going to win. But with some direction, the netroots or whatever you want to call it *could* make a difference. They just have to stop pretending that the rules don't apply once they become involved and start spending their time and money wisely, just like the DCCC does (even if you disagree with them for not funding Ga 11, which I do, they at least are making decisions about where to spend their money to get the biggest bang for their buck).
Posted by: chris at August 4, 2005 12:02 AM
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