So here we are at the end of the 2010 race (well, almost at the end – there are still a couple of uncalled races). These are my picks for best and worst campaigns of this cycle. What are yours? And tell me if you agree or disagree with any of these
BEST CAMPAIGNS
Harry Reid – NV-SENATE This was a masterpiece, one of those campaigns that will be studied for decades as an example of how to win in a negative environment. Reid’s ads were brilliant, his strategy was forward thinking (i.e. he started knocking out potential opponenents in 2008) and he did a great job with GOTV and the other essentials. Yes, he got lucky in his opponent (and very unlucky in the cycle he was running), but given how at one point it looked like the Republicans could run a ferret against Harry Reid (oh wait, I guess they did) and still win, this still was an amazing comeback story.
Ron Johnson – WI-SENATE Yes, Feingold had underperformed in the past, but he had also survived a Republican year in 2004, and his outsider cred had beaten Republicans three times before. But Johnson ran a canny campaign that turned Feingold into a Washington insider, and managed to pull the biggest upset of an incumbent Senator of the cycle.
Rick Scott – FL-GOVERNOR This one pains me, because I think Scott is a loathsome individual. But the fact of the matter is, to get such a loathsome individual across the finish line against an incumbent Attorney General and the respected CFO of the state, you have to have a pretty good campaign. Best move: tarring Sink with the same corruption brush that had been used against Scott, even though the cases weren’t even close to similar.
National Republican Campaign Committee The NRCC and Pete Sessions got ridiculed a fair amount on this site and others for their poor fundraising compared to the DCCC, but it turns out they were probably the smartest of any of the big campaign committees, opening up new opportunities throughout September and October. They certainly outperformed the more respected RGA.
Barbara Boxer – CA-SENATE Boxer is thought to be in trouble every campaign cycle, and everytime she outperforms expectations. Give the woman some respect.
John Kasich – OH-GOVERNOR Yeah, Portman blew his opponent away, whereas Kasich race was much closer, and yes Ohio’s economy is in the crapper, but he still had a tough job in beating Ted Stickland, who’s unpopularity never reached the level of some other Midwestern governors. Along with Scott’s win, the biggest victory (in terms of influence) for the Republicans on election night.
Marco Rubio – FL-SENATE Rubio showed some mad (and for us Dems, potentially scary) political skills in first driving Crist out of the Republican party, and secondly, beating both his opponents with just under 50 percent of the vote.
Bob Dold – IL-10 It’s hard to single out one House campaign as being better than the others in a wave year, but Dold won a seat almost none of the pundits thought he could win, and (with Costa apparently holding on) pulled off the most Democratic seat of the cycle. Gotta give the guy props for that.
Lisa Murkowski – AK-SENATE (write in campaign only). Murkowski ran one of the worst campaigns up until the primary, but the fact she seems about to win as the first write in candidate for Senate since the 1950’s is pretty amazing, and deserves some credit.
Ben Chandler One of the few Dems to survive Tuesday’s apocalypse. In a R+9 district, no small feat.
WORST CAMPAIGNS
Meg Whitman, CA-GOVERNOR How could you spend so much money, and lose so badly?
Lee Fisher, OH-SENATE Fisher’s campaign was basically all downhill after he won the primary.
DCCC We all loved Chris Van Hollen after the 2008 cycle, but I think he made a huge strategic error in not cutting more Democrats loose when he realized how bad the wave was going to be.
Alan Grayson, FL-08 One last thing to say about Grayson – when is the last time a Democrat was responsible for the most sleazy, misleading ad of the campaign?
Jim Oberstar, MN-08 Of all the committee chairs to lose this cycle, Oberstar was the only one to lose in a Democratic district (according to PVI). He should have seen this one coming.
Good list and a good idea. Some additions:
Good campaigns:
1. Either joe walsh belongs here or Melissa bean belongs in the bad category.
2. Renee elmers–got the national attention and money before local voters were tuned in, then ran a mainstream campaign.
3. Pat toomey, ran to the center and avoided being typecast. Close because Joe sestak also ran a strong campaign
4. Buerkle in ny-25. Same as walsh in il8.
5. Ayotte and the NH GOP: they were going to win, but… Wow.
6. Bob portman
7. Not just a winners’ column: sink, sestak, perriello, and bielat beat the point spread.
Bad campaigns:
1. Ken buck–loses a gimme.
2. I would put Rick Scott here. Cost a fortune to barely win. A democrat was not going to win in this climate and mccollum would have won by 10 spending nothing.
3. Carl paladino–although his issues may go beyond message discipline…
4. DCCC–just wish they’d poured a few million more into nye, kratovil, perriello, Patrick Murphy, etc.
5. Obama/white house–the tax thing, the mosque thing, then whining about being outspent and running against the spectre of speaker boehner.
3.
2.
She seemed to completely ignore the potential threat of Joe Miller before losing the primary, but I think she ran a brilliant campaign to (seemingly) win the write-in. She had some of the best ads out there that really portrayed Miller not just as a mad bomber, but as the tool of outside groups while she was defending Alaska.
Best campaign ever.
His polling was miserable a year ago, but he rallied his supporters and crafted a message that appealed to swing voters as well, allowing him to pick up the bulk of Cahill’s support after the RGA nuked him and coasted to victory.
Put ’em in the “bad” pile.
I’d have Sen. Feingold and Sharron Angle there, too, but you’re right that Sen.-elect Johnson and Sen. Reid really ran campaigns worthy of recognition. I’m impressed with Sen.-elect Rubio’s political acumen; if he’s smart enough to see where the country is moving on issues like LGBT rights and he’s canny enough to break with his mentor, Rep. Ros-Lehtinen, on U.S.-Cuba relations, I can see him in the Oval Office within the decade. I’m not thrilled at the prospect, because I agree with him on next to nothing, but there’s no question he’s very, very talented and charismatic.
about Rubio’s win? Sure, he won a fairly decisive victory, but it was a Republican wave, and he still didn’t crack 50 percent.
I don’t know much about this guy, but before everyone slobbers over him and makes him into the Obama 2.0, I’d love to hear what makes him so incredible.
Here you had Alan Grayson, a firebrand liberal and Dan Webster, a staunch conservative. Here’s two guys who represented to the core their ideological bases, and they could just have had a clash of ideas in this district and really give people a choice. Instead, Grayson stooped to Lee Atwater-like tactics and ended up getting crushed by 18 points. What could have been a fascinating race turned into another sorry example of crap politics.
With a few exceptions, I didn’t think the DCCC ads were very well-done, which means a lot of money was wasted. In IA-02 in particular I am skeptical that DCCC spending helped Loebsack.
You have to give credit to Leonard Boswell in IA-03. I didn’t like his ads, some of which focused on Brad Zaun’s personal financial problems. He also got a bit lucky in that the NRCC and big Iowa donors didn’t put money behind Zaun. But he did survive a massive wave despite trailing in Republican internal polling in the summer.
He started with the buh buh Bush, went to Speaker Boehner, then went back to buh buh Bush, then went to car in a ditch, then went to ‘nebulous special interests’.
George W. did comparatively better in 2006.
DID see it coming. He still lost. That should tell you something.
It’s easily the biggest upset of the cycle. Maybe not the most surprising, but Oberstar is the Iron Range.
The Best: (7R, 3D)
1. Ron Johnson
2. Rob Portman
3. Harry Reid
4. Barbara Boxer
5. Rick Snyder
6. Marco Rubio
7. Rick Perry
8. Lisa Murkowski
9. Pat Toomey
10. Jerry Brown
The Worst: (2D, 2R, 1I)
1. Carl Paladino
2. Frank Caprio
3. Libby Mitchell
4. Charlie Crist
5. Dan Maes
Not only did he come in third place in what’s maybe the most systemically Democratic state in the country, he doesn’t even have the luxury of other general-election failures of having run a half-way decent primary campaign, since the state Democratic party cleared the field for him. His “shove it” comment, besides being completely disrespectful and classless, has to go down as one of the dumbest single things anyone candidate has done just for the fact that it was done right around the time news about him meeting with the with state Republicans broke and the president visiting the state.
And if this list can include candidates in primaries, Rick Lazio has to be on the top of the list, period, for worst campaign of the entire cycle.
MI-06 (home), MI-02 (College)
and performed far better on election night than he had any right to, given the environment.
how has this guy not made anybody’s best list yet?
Lee Fischer and Jennifer Brunner have to be on here.
Fischer due to the fact that he was ahead or tied in polls with Portman for a long time and still didn’t raise money or do sqaut.
Brunner for failing to beat Fischer who is apparently very beatable.
This is a good thread Mark. Here are my abbreviated lists:
The good:
1. Harry Reid – He knew he was going to be targeted years ago and wasn’t caught napping. Yes he benefitted from Angle but he also cleared 50% and had the kitchen sink thrown at him. Remarkable that he won.
2. Ron Johnson – the single biggest beneficiary of this political cycle by far. His outsider ads with the white board were great and showing him as a unique fit for the Senate and showing Feingold as “one of many” was solid.
3. Pat Toomey – despite his narrow win and the vast amount of third party expenditures that were dumped on his behalf one can’t discount his win. His voting record in Congress was extremely conservative and he is running in a left-center state. His job at Club for Growth was purging the Republican party of moderates. Overall a great campaign by Toomey based on his win.
4. Michael Bennet – even with Ken Buck’s flaws and his narrow win Bennet had never run a campaign in his life. He managed to win the Primary over a relatively well-known challenger in Andrew Romanoff and did a fantastic job in casting Ken Buck as “extreme”. In the end it worked.
5.Rick Scott – the fact that with all of his baggage that he was able to win a purple state in Florida is simply amazing. He managed to turn the tables on Sink. Flat out amazing that he won. His Lt. Governor pick was a slam dunk as it softened his image a lot to unsure voters.
The bad:
1. Sharron Angle – had she shut up she would have won. She continued to run her mouth and shoot herself in the foot over and over. Her hubris costed her a win big time. Her Latinos and Asians comment looks like it cemented the Latino voting surge.
2. Lee Fischer – I know it was a bad environment but the fact that Portman was an economic advisor to Bush couldn’t you have held him to 55% of the vote?
3. Meg Whitman – lots of cash was burned here. Lots of TV ads but no ground game or infrastructure it appears.
4. Alan Grayson – being put in the same category as Andrew Breitbart is not a good thing.
5. Joe Miller – I don’t even know where to start here but his mouth costed him a Senate seat. See #1 here.
I was expecting more from this guy.
I was expecting him to go down fighting and be a very formidable opponent, if he did go down.
Well, that didn’t happen.
winner for shear entertainment value.
We need a crackpot winners and losers list.