Let me pose a different sort of question for this Presidents Day: Tell us about some of your favorite campaigns from the past. These could include stunning upsets where unheralded Dems beat incumbent GOPers against all odds; races where beleaguered but worthy Dems held on against stiff challenges; situations where Team Blue utterly pounded highly-touted opposition; or even moral victories, like narrow losses which set the table for an early retirement or a later win. Bonus points for good stories about campaigns you actually worked on.
Anyhow, however you define it, tell us about some of your favorite campaigns from yester-year, and why these memories still stick with you.
. . . 2006 brought in a lot of stunning upsets. I just kept getting happier and happier as the night went along, when Carol Shea-Porter, John Yarmuth, and Chris Murphy all won– just three examples of Democratic candidates who weren’t even “supposed to” win.
The senate races were also especially invigorating. I was waiting on tenterhooks all night to hear the Montana results, and, when Tester was finally declared the winner, I was barely awake enough to rejoice!
The suspense of the campaign getting so close (thanks to Karl Rove) and Carter’s razor thin wins in a number of states made the election worth watching. I was 13 years old at the time.
Yeah its Presidential so it might get skipped over by us SSP readers who look down ballot, but it was a beautiful case of a candidate fighting hard, going and taking their case to the American people, and proving all the polls and pundits wrong. I also think it says a lot about if you show up and ask for people’s votes, particularly where people are not use to seeing candidates show up, people will listen and you can earn their vote.
TX 23 – Bonilla (R) was a heavy favorite in this race. Bonilla got 49% in the November 7th race. Rodriguez (D) was 2nd with about 20%. Because no one got 50% a run-off occurred between Bonilla and Rodriguez. In a stunner Rodriquez took the seat with 54% of the vote.
TX 22 – It was nice to see Tom DeLay’s district swing to the Democrats after his near unconstitutional redistricting occurred. Although there is nothing prohibiting states from redistricting, it should only occur ever ten years with the new census. Basically the party in power can redraw the lines in a state just because they lose the election.
Two favorite elections evicted grinches. Powerful people who wanted to take away joy. A third reaffirmed my faith in honest local officials.
In 2000, Slade Gorton went down to politician and computer exec Maria Cantwell. First, Slade Gorton just sounds like a villain. Second, Gorton’s hijinks involved, at least tangentially, his family’s business. Yes, Gorton’s of Gloucester. Gorton was a perennial thorn in the flesh to Washington state Indian tribes. He wanted to take away their “special” (e.g. treaty) fishing rights and he wanted it bad. Suddenly, after 300 years on the outs, casino gambling brought money to some Indian tribes. The casino tribes decided to invest in removing a powerful and hostile regulator on the Senate panel: Slade Gorton. They shot an arrow into the air and brought the meanie down. Trust the Gorton fisherman? I think not.
In 1998, it was the turn of a small minded villain named Lauch Faircloth. No, he was not the uber nasty Jesse Helms but merely a mean lieutenant. Faircloth saw his workers playing solitaire or one of those other standard games during their lunch hours and burned uncontrollably. He cajoled Mocrosoft into dropping games from business software so no employees could have fun on their lunch hours. And when November, 1998 rolled along, John Edwards sent Faircloth on a permanent lunch hour.
The other election was the governorship of Washington where a Republican Secretary of State made sure every vote was counted, honestly and scrupulously. Sam Reed was what we needed in Florida in 2000 but did not get. He sent Dino Rossi down and resurrected Christine Gregoire. Thanks Sam for holding the will of the voters ahead of the will of Rossi and Rove.
FDR crushing Hoover in 1932, followed by Truman’s stunning comeback in 1948, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Last year, a tie in the house between Joe Courtney defeating Rob Simmons who somehow managed to look moderate enough to Represent a strongly Democratic district while donating money to Scooter Libbey’s defense fund, and Ron Klein’s defeat of ultra conservative Clay Shaw, second ranking REpublican member on the Appropriations Committee, (though I most admit I was estatic for Ciro Rodriguez). The biggest upset in my mind over the past decade, John Hall in 2006, followed by Melissa Hart in 2004. My favorite Senate Race last year was Missouri, where Jim Talent lost. There wasn’t much to be excited about in 2004, and 2002 would have be Mark Pryor beating the incumbent Republican Senator, Tim Hutchinson in Arkansas, 54-45. My Favorite Governors race last year was Maryland, where O’Malley managed to rally at the end and cork Gov. Ehrlich’s momentum to squeak out a victory, it’s also a warning race. Just think if we’d had to have a vicious primary here, O’Malley would ahve had less money, and less support and would have lost. AS it was it was great to see an obstrucitionist Conservative Republican Governor get swept out the door in a Blue State, (I mean he vetoed minimum wage increases, stem cell research incentives, and a requirement for pharmicies to carry the morning after pill). I was happy to see Beebe win, and Ted Strickland’s win was satisfying too, it just wasn’t as exciting because it wasn’t even close. In 2004, it was Brad Schweiter, despite his ardent support of liquified coal over alternative energy solutions that don’t spew Carbon into the atmosphere. In 2002, give me Gray Davis, (just kidding), It’d be a tie between Jennifer Granholm and Phil Bresden, with Napolitano and Sebelius coming in strong at third. Freudenthal and Brad Henry both squander the ideas of the Democratic party too much, and neither has any guts, Freudenthal didn’t endorse Trauner last time until he saw it was a close race and wouldn’t hurt him politically, neither endorsed the 2004 Democratic Presidential ticket, (though that may have been wise as the B/C ticket won their states by a combined 74 point margin). Also, neither has been particularly effective at rebuilding and strengthing the state Democratic PArty Apparatus. Freudenthal just appears to try to keep his distance from the DP, in order to be nonpartisan in general, it’s paid off as he’s got about a 70% approval rating and won reelection 67-32, in Wyoming of all states. Democrats have made small gains in the state legislature, and Trauner revitalized the party statewide last time around. Henry just appears to be ineffective. In 2006 we should ended up about the same as we started in the State Senate and State house, instead we lost five senate seats, and now the Lieutenant Governor breaks the tie, and we only managed to gain one seat in the house, which we also lost under Henry’s tenure, losing a dozen house seats in 2002. This is despite his incredible popularity, which should strengthen us. His 66-33 coattails should’ve helped us in 2006, but it didn’t. He just doesn’t seem to have done a good job as the head figure of the OK-Democratic PArty.
It’s nice to be posting again. It’s been awhile, but they basically let you post nothing political in the Senate Page Program. It feels good to be back, I only managed to sneak a few comments here and their from Public library computers on the weekends.
Not only the great landslides of Johnson/Humphrey over Goldwater/Miller (Stephanie’s Dad) but the true coattail down ticket effect of that race. I was a young child political junkie in Oceanside LI NY that year. Robert Kennedy challenged the very respected and popular incumbent Sen. Kenneth Keating. The race did not look real good for Bobby who at the time was actually a nervous public speaker. He pulled it off. Than there was our local congressional race in deep red Nassau County. Democrat Herbert Tenzer won his race. The night went on and Democrats were winning and winning. County Executive Eugene Knickerson, County Clerk Franklyn Orenstein and the most huge upset of all as my Long Beach area and State Assembly Speaker Joe Carlino was defeated by Democrat Car Dealer Jerome McDougal! The same was happening all over the country all night long as I recall watching CBS coverage with Walter Cronkite. I recall Cronkite pronouncing the state closures and than stating as more and more states polls close “Republican incumbents are falling like Domino’s”! WOW, I still get chills running down my spine thinking about how spectacular those words sounded! In CT, long term incumbent Sen. Prescott Bush has been defeated by former Gov. and Commerce Secretary Abraham Ribicoff and the news went on and on, Democratic Senators now growing to 67, Democratic House now 295 seats, Nearly 40 state houses and Governorships. Finally Cronkite’s pronouncement that on this night the Republican Party has been decimated! It was a dream like night that left any partisan Democratic junkie like me pinching himself for nearly 44 years now to make sure it really happened! Oh Baby, What a night!
I know, the outcome was a horror but it was the first close Presidential election of my lifetime and elevated my interest in politics to a higher level.
Yes, I know Jim Moran has since proven himself to be an ass, and I have lost just about all the respect I once had for him. But still, I will always cherish my memories of volunteering for his first campaign, when I was in high school in his old district. While moderate, he ran unabashedly to the left of an entrenched six-term incumbent who hadn’t had a tough race in eight years, in a district that had voted 60-39 for Bush I just two years before. That was no minor decision on his part: liberal-bashing was still as potent as it had been throughout the 80s, and Fairfax was still Republican territory (even Clinton never carried it; Kerry did, but he was the first Dem to do so in decades). But Moran made no apologies for who and what he was, he fought back against the attacks from the right wing s**t machine, and it worked.
I’ll never forget election day, standing outside my high school (which was a polling place) for hours with those flyers, going off to do some last-minute canvassing in the afternoon, then getting swimming practice and dinner out of the way in time to watch the election returns. Moran was one of only fifteen House challengers to beat incumbents that night. I guess it gave me a distorted idea of how difficult it is to oust an incumbent, but so what?
Things like this make me realize I’m not in my 20s anymore, but I have a good one! In the fall of 1990 I was a junior at the University of Minnesota, moderately volunteering for and avidly following upstart leftist college professor Paul Wellstone’s campaign for the U.S. Senate. He was very well known in liberal DFL circles at the time, for his various advocacy efforts, and chairing Jesse Jackson’s Presidential runs in Minnesota. But beyond that, he was an unknown with very little money — but he had an ability to move people, a fresh approach to politics, and an old green bus — and the effect was electric.
I’ve never seen a campaign peak at such the perfect time, before or since. I still vividly remember that cold, crisp October, where every day you saw more Wellstone! yard signs and bumper stickers, heard more people talking about him, and every day we all were increasingly saying “Maybe we really can pull this off.” He had one of the best campaign commercials I’ve ever seen, a spoof on Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me,” with Wellstone looking for Senator Rudy Boschwitz to debate. Add to the mix a Governor’s race that was thrown into complete chaos at the last minute when the Republican candidate withdrew after charges of sexual dilly-dallying with a friend of his daughter’s. In the end, Wellstone won by 2 points.
Two years later I moved to Indiana, and have had to learn to adapt to much more conservative state level candidates, but I’ll never forget that fall of 1990.
2006 was a great year all around, but the Lamont-Lieberman primary in August was perhaps the most exciting election I’ve ever participated in. I remember reading about Lamont early in the year, and watched his support grow and grow until he gained national attention, and then won the primary. Chris Matthews even came up to New Haven and covered primary night. Even though Joementum ended up winning in the end, everything about that race- the “Kiss” buttons, the “Kiss” float, the Lieberman-morphing-into-Bush commercial, and the fact that normal people actually kicked a corrupt and lifelong politician off his pedestal- was the most important race I’ve ever experienced thus far.
Watching Murphy and Courtney win, the Dems sweep CT state offices (other than governor), and Dems winning a supermajority in the CT legislature was good conselation at least.