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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

NH-02: History Lesson, Part Two

Posted by DavidNYC

Sean Carberry, Paul Hodes' campaign manager in 2004, showed up in the comments to my last post and offered a very forthright assessment of what happened to the Hodes campaign last time. I think it's worth front-paging, so here it is:

Here's some more perspective from '04 that bodes well for Hodes in '06. I managed Hodes' '04 campaign, and I can tell you our mission was to help John Kerry win NH, not to win the seat. We got in late, Paul had no name recognition, we had no support from the party, we technically had a primary, and that also constrained donors until the last 8 weeks--not that donors ever stepped up in any significant manner. We were not targeted, and therefore could not raise money. Plus, NH had a brutal governors race that also took attention and resources from our effort. We barely had the money to make it to TV and could not run the campaign we wanted to run.

This time, Paul has been running and fundraising for over a year already, has been able to hire more experienced staff (we won't discuss some of the people I was relegated to hiring in order to fill positions last time, and I wasn't exactly a ringer either), and has a strong base to run from. Plus, DCCC is targeting the race, and that will make a dramatic difference in fundraising.

In other words, the '04 margin is meaningless. The important thing to look at is the UNH poll that has Bass at 42-35 over Hodes right now. Bass has never polled that low, and Hodes hasn't even begun a media campaign yet.

This year is different. People are ready for a change, and Hodes is perfectly poised to take this seat. What will make the difference is people getting on board now and contributing rather than sitting on the sidelines reading the tea leaves. It's going to take a lot of effort and money in the home stretch, and it all has to build now, so give him a boost!

One detail to add: That brutal governor's race paid huge dividends for us. Democrat John Lynch is one of the most popular governors in the country right now and faces only token opposition this fall. That puts him in a great position to help out in both congressional races. (In case you're wondering, New Hampshire is one of only two states in the nation where the governor serves just a two year term. Next-door neighbor Vermont is the other.)

Posted at 11:56 AM in 2006 Elections - House, New Hampshire | Technorati

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Comments

Heh. I decide to move to a district (ok, out of all the jobs I applied for the one I get is in a district) and one of the first things I do when I know I'm moving there is look to see if there's a competitive race, and it looks semi-credible but not SO hot. And then? Wall-to-wall SSP posts explaining to me how very hot it is.

Sorry. I don't usually comment here because of not being able to keep up with the wonkishness, but what with all the giggling inside, I couldn't help myself.

Posted by: MissLaura at May 16, 2006 01:31 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

David's making it the Hodes Race Project. ;-)

Posted by: staffathodesforcongress at May 16, 2006 03:01 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Oh, I should add that the discussion about suburban Philly on the previous thread may have some relevance to this district. NH-2 has been trending strongly Democratic for several years. In 1988 NH gave GHW Bush his second highest percentage after only Utah, a whopping 62%. But by 1992 Buchanan had a surge in the NH primary, and Clinton went on to win the state both times. Gore barely lost it, with the difference much smaller than the Nader vote total. And it's the only state lost by Gore but won by Kerry. Toss in that Democrats have won 3 of the last 4 (or 4 of the last 5?) Governor's races, and like the Philly suburbs and lots of other upscale places in the Northeast, it's moving from solidly Republican in the late 1980's to quite possibly solidly Democratic by 2010 or so.

Posted by: staffathodesforcongress at May 16, 2006 03:10 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Hope NH-2 is recovering from the rains/flooding.

I noticed in my copy of AAP 2006 that in 2004 there was also a Congressional Candidate who took 4% of the vote. Per the State Board of Elections site this candidate was named "Kahn". I note that "Kahn" is not running this year and wondered what Independent political party/philosphy (he) had represented.
BTW here's a link to CD-2 results in 2004 which lists all the jurisdictions:
http://www.sos.nh.gov/general%202004/congress2%202004.htm
Other, AAP reports that Bass spent $717,749 and Hodes $625,062 in 2004. I see Bass has taken in $356,000 to Hodes $334,000 per CQ Politics article dated 5/11/06.

Posted by: Predictor at May 16, 2006 09:04 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

It's also worth reminding people that NH is the only state that voted for W in 2000 that switched to Kerry in 2004.

I entered the race for State Rep in 2004 and was in exactly the same situation -- no name recognition, divided focus between myself and Lynch and Kerry. I think there's a good chance we'll do better on the lower races this year.

Posted by: ThatTallGuy at May 17, 2006 02:20 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Predictor:

Kahn was a Libertarian. He appears to now be running for governor and to have a younger family member (son, I assume) running for state rep. See here: http://hometown.aol.com/nv1z/RichKahn.html

Posted by: MissLaura at May 17, 2006 02:27 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I don't know where the $625k number came from. We wanted to spend $1.5 mil, but ended up only having $475k spend. That makes a big difference in your campaign plan... I'm really curious how AAP came up with the number they have, but it certainly doesn't reflect the checks we wrote during the campaign. Had we spent $625k I'm confident we would have been over 40%.

And yes, Kahn was the libertarian candidate.

Posted by: carpedonut at May 17, 2006 03:02 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I don't know where the $625k number came from. We wanted to spend $1.5 mil, but ended up only having $475k spend. That makes a big difference in your campaign plan... I'm really curious how AAP came up with the number they have, but it certainly doesn't reflect the checks we wrote during the campaign. Had we spent $625k I'm confident we would have been over 40%.

And yes, Kahn was the libertarian candidate.

Posted by: carpedonut at May 17, 2006 03:07 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

MissLaura & carpedonut: Thanks for those confirmations regarding my questions. Given that AAP did not even note Kahn as the Libertarian candidate and just reported his vote as "Other", am not surprised they could have made an error in the expenditure section.

Posted by: Predictor at May 17, 2006 12:22 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Bass is ranked rather low power-wise. 206 of 232 in the GOP. Despite being in office since 1995.

Random list of the lowest ranked GOP House members by year, going back to 1992:

elected in 2004: Jeff Fortenberry (329 overall/226 GOP)
elected in 2002: Rob Bishop (368 overall/230 GOP)
elected in 2000: Shelly Moore Capito (352/229)
elected in 1998: Lee Terry (311/223)
elected in 1996: Chip Pickering (301/221)
elected in 1994: Sue Myrick (280/212)
elected in 1992: Lincoln Diaz-Balart (240/192)

Clearly, it's hard to remain as "furniture" after a decade or so. Especially since you'll get big assignments for just being around (Unless you're disliked by the leadership).

The Democratic top 5: Pelosi, Obey, Murtha, Hoyer, and Mollohan. Of course, the minority party isn't given shiny things, so basically they'll rank low on the power list.

And so you know, the lowest ranking Republican is Campbell, who was elected 6 months ago.

Ok, that was pretty stream of consciousness. But then again, random stats could be useful for display (or twisting) in campaigns.

Posted by: RBH at May 17, 2006 05:12 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

That's pretty weird. AAP does say that Hodes spent $625K, but Open Secrets confirms carpedonut's number of $465K.

Posted by: DavidNYC at May 17, 2006 05:19 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment