| Was the Third District winnable?
I believed on November 4th and continue to believe today that yes, the 2008 Third District race was winnable. Lots of numbers back that up -- best PVI, best DPI, best DFL record at the state level, the list goes on.
That's a bigger assumption than it sounds like -- if it's understood that this race was winnable, that means that there was something that should have been done differently, or something that, had it happened differently, would have resulted in a win for Madia.
Moving on...
Was Ash Madia the best candidate?
Let's take this issue on right from the get-go. I endorsed Ash Madia before the CD3 DFL convention, so my biases on the topic are clear. In my personal opinion, he was the hardest-working candidate and deserved to be the DFL's nominee.
But let's at least take a look at the real question: Would Terri Bonoff have won?
My best answer: I don't know. Hindsight is always 20/20, so it's easy to look back at a loss and say "see! We should have endorsed the other candidate!" without any trace of critical thought. I also don't want to get into an argument over why she lost the endorsement fight -- we've been over that before, it's water under the bridge, and if public appearances are any indications, Sen. Bonoff is over it too.
What we do know is that Erik Paulsen's most successful attacks had nothing to do with Ash Madia's experience in politics, but rather contained thinly-veiled and not-so-thinly-veiled attacks on his tax and economic platform. More on that below, but the point is this -- Bonoff's strongest argument in her own favor was that of local political experience, but that weakness was not used to large effect against Madia in the general election.
Now that those points are out of the way (and I'm sure they'll generate at least one or three comments), what actually went wrong? In retrospect, I think these need to be divided into three categories -- things that went wrong for Madia, things that went right for Paulsen, and structural issues the DFL needs to resolve.
Things that went wrong for Madia
Ash Madia had a pretty sizeable stumble out of the party convention gate: he hired the wrong campaign manager. It took time to transition between a convention strategy/staff and a successful general election setup, and that was valuable time lost.
Once that was resolved, Madia raised a boatload of money for this race. He had the resources at hand to get his face, his voice, and his positions in front of lots of voters during the general election.
But when the inevitable attacks arrived two weeks before the election, using the same old tired "tax and spend liberal ZOMGZ" voiceover and grainy, scary-looking images of the Marine vet, where was the canned response? Closed circuit to all Democratic candidates and campaigns everywhere: your Republican opponent is going to accuse you of being a tax-and-spend liberal. Planning to run in 2014? Come up with a response now. Can it, and make sure it's ready to go when it happens. Plan for it in your budget.
The Madia campaign failed to do this. When the attacks came, they showed up in huge numbers (more on that below) and Madia's positive message virtually disappeared.
Madia's campaign also failed to roll with the punches of the economy. To a certain degree it wasn't the candidate's fault, but his strongest appeal was as a veteran and critic of the Bush Administration's Iraq adventure. When the economic recession became Issue #1, it didn't seem like the campaign was prepared to offer a detailed, succinct platform position in new TV ads.
What went right for the Paulsen campaign
Erik Paulsen had a major, major advantage heading into this race -- Retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad. Although Paulsen is a good deal more conservative on the issues than Ramstad, personal loyalty meant Ramstad was in Paulsen's corner from square one.
But press conferences and a personal endorsement only went so far. Ramstad had more to offer his former protege than just PR.
In the final weeks of the campaign, a sudden influx of advertising spending appeared out of nowhere from the Republican Party of Minnesota. Where did it come from? More to the point, where did the money to pay for the ad buy come from? The answer may lie in Ramstad's final FEC report, due next month. As with toys when you die, you can't really take your campaign warchest with you when you go. There's a very good chance that Ramstad dumped a very large portion of his considerable warchest into the RPM's coffers for the purpose of just such a last-minute ad blitz on Paulsen's behalf. The timing works; when the report is filed we'll know for sure.
When that final ad blitz hit, it worked -- in conjunction with attacks from outside groups, Paulsen and his allies successfully drowned out Madia's ads, and internal polling showing a 1-5 point advantage turned into an 8-point defeat on November 4th.
Structural issues
Is the DFL's situation in the West Metro better than it was four years ago? Light years better. That fact, in and of itself, does not tell us a whole lot. The district-wide field operation still has a long way to go. Maple Grove, Plymouth, the areas around Lake Minnetonka -- these are still very, very tough areas for the DFL.
In addition, the outside organizations had a significant impact on this race. There may not have been any direct coordination between Paulsen and his allies, but they all knew going in what the message was: Attack the Democrat on taxes, say he'll raise them and hurt your families. Include some scary-looking images of the brown guy for effect. For Madia and other Democrats, the only large-scale independent expenditure comes from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which in the case of the Third district, produced some really sucky ads. No, forget "sucky," these ads were downright insulting to the intelligence of the average voter. There was no uniform message between the Democratic party organs, the campaign, and their allied IE groups -- and their IE groups didn't have the budget to spend large sums on ads anyway.
In short, there's a gap between the size of the loudspeakers Democrats and Republicans get to use in the Third, and without a vastly superior field organization, that gap matters.
------------------
Discuss at will -- I want to hear what you're thinking. |
