Tag: DCCC

Longtime readers of the Swing State Project know that we have written extensively about the Debbie Wasserman Schultz controversy in the past (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), so I won’t spill a ton of ink on the subject again. However, FLA Politics shares this disgusting new video of GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart basking in the warm glow of his “bipartisan” support from Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (co-chair of the DCCC’s Red to Blue program) and Kendrick Meek:

It’s entirely predictable that Diaz-Balart, facing the fight of his political career against Democrat Joe Garcia and barely leading in the latest poll, would pull this pair of Democratic bunnies out of his hat. Note how clearly he is savoring the fact that Schultz and Meek “refuse to help” Garcia, and let that be a lesson to any weak-hearted Dems who give cover to their vulnerable GOP colleagues.

Because everyone loves to read about direct mail, here’s a round-up of the DCCC’s most recent expenditures in the past 24 hours:

• IL-11: $39,000 on a media buy, $21,000 on direct mail, and $2000 on phonebanking in support of Debbie Halvorson
• TX-22: $44,000 on a media buy in support of Nick Lampson (Update: Video here.)
• NJ-07: $13,000 on direct mail in support of Linda Stender

To tally all that up for you, the DCCC has so far spent $149K in IL-11, $39K in NJ-07, and $97K in TX-22.

On the Senate side of things, the SEIU has ponied up some serious dough in New Hampshire ($600K) and Oregon ($500K) for a pair of ads hitting John Sununu and Gordon Smith:

A few more expenditures tonight from the DCCC’s now-active independent expenditure arm:

• IL-11: $20,000 on direct mail in support of Debbie Halvorson
• NJ-07: $13,000 on direct mail in support of Linda Stender

The DCCC has now spent a total of $87,000 in IL-11 and $26,000 in NJ-07.

Earlier this week, the DCCC announced that it was hitting back against a recent Freedom’s Crotch radio ad buy against Democrats in ten districts with ads of their own. The DCCC has just filed their independent expenditure reports for the buys, which we’ve rounded up below:

• ID-01: $10,000 in support of Walt Minnick
• LA-06: $13,000 in support of Don Cazayoux
• MI-07: $38,000 in support of Mark Schauer
• MO-06: $24,500 in support of Kay Barnes
• NH-01: $17,000 in support of Carol Shea-Porter
• NM-01: $10,000 in support of Martin Heinrich
• NY-29: $6,500 in support of Eric Massa
• OH-15: $33,000 in support of Mary Jo Kilroy
• OH-16: $17,000 in support of John Boccieri
• PA-10: $7,000 in support of Chris Carney

Expect to see a lot more of this in the weeks and months to come.

Boyda wins… sort of. From the Topeka Capitol-Journal:

U.S. Rep. Nancy Bodya, D-Kan., said today the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee complied with her request to withdraw plans for $1.2 million in campaign commercials in her district.

She expressed concern recently the influx of independent advertising in her 2nd District campaign against Republican Lynn Jenkins might too heavily influence the outcome.

“This is terrific news for anyone who believes that Kansas voters should control Kansas campaigns,” Boyda said. “By canceling their ads, the DCCC has given Kansas the chance to run our election without Washington interference.”

Reid Wilson has more:

But the real winners could be State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins and national Republicans. Boyda represents one of the most Republican seats held by a Democrat, and Jenkins, who won the GOP primary on Tuesday, is seen as a moderate with a better chance of winning than her more conservative primary opponent. Now, Democrats are passing up the opportunity to use the advertising money to define Jenkins as she reloads from the costly primary.

The National Republican Congressional Committee deserves credit too, having stayed on Boyda over the past several weeks and making a big deal about her association with her party nationally, and GOP strategists gloated about Democrats’ decision to pull the money.

I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, some of the DC Dems that I’ve talked to are actually glad that Jim Ryun lost the GOP primary on Tuesday, as they considered him (and his name recognition) to be the more formidable opponent rather than the “moderate” Jenkins. Indeed, the lone poll we’ve seen of this race showed Boyda in better shape against Jenkins (although she’s probably received a primary bump by now). So the DCCC could be canceling its reservation at least in part because they feel that Boyda is less vulnerable.

On the other hand, Republicans in Kansas have made the DCCC’s assistance an issue only because Boyda clearly chafes at the idea of DC operatives getting involved in her campaign. But Boyda’s distaste for the DCCC’s money didn’t stop the committee from spending heavily on last-minute ads for this race in 2006, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled a similar move (if they felt it necessary) this year. The DCCC could be canceling its planned buy for now only to clear a “distraction” for Boyda off the table, but are likely monitoring the situation closely in case they have to intervene later. But that’s all just speculation on my part.

On Saturday a fundraising solicitation arrived in the mail from Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. It asked me to confirm delivery of the enclosed “supporter card” within ten days, and also to “help keep my 2008 re-election campaign on the road to victory” with a special contribution.

Funny, I wasn’t aware that Harkin needed any extra help. Everyone in the election forecasting business has labeled this seat safe for him. The available polling shows Harkin with a comfortable lead.

According to Open Secrets, Harkin had $4.1 million cash on hand at the end of the second quarter. His little-known Republican opponent, Christopher Reed, has raised a total of $11,765 for his Senate campaign and had $292 (two hundred and ninety-two dollars) on hand as of June 30.

Harkin’s letter got me thinking that we need a “Use It Or Lose It” campaign for 2008.

In 2006, MyDD and MoveOn.org launched a “Use It Or Lose It” campaign to contact “ultra-safe Democratic House Representatives and ask them to help fully fund all of our competitive challengers this cycle.” The project spurred at least $2.3 million in additional major donations from House incumbents (click the link to read details).

A similar project targeted at safe incumbents in the House and Senate has the potential to raise even more money this year.

The Democratic House and Senate campaign committees have been crushing their Republican counterparts in fundraising. At the end of the second quarter, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had about $46.2 million cash on hand, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had $54.7 million cash on hand. As of June 30, the DSCC had about twice the cash on hand as the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the DCCC had six times the cash on hand as the National Republican Congressional Committee.

But we should be able to outspend the Republicans even more if our Democrats in safe seats donate more to the relevant committees.

Everyone agrees that the Democrats have an unusually large number of solid pickup opportunities. Here’s the Swing State Project list of competitive Senate races. All them are Republican-held but one (Louisiana), and that one is “lean Democratic.” Only one Democratic-held seat (New Jersey) is even on the “races to watch” list.

Look at the most recent Senate forecast by Chris Bowers. He’s projecting a pickup of six seats. He also lists ten “Democratic held, uncompetitive locks”:

Arkansas (Pryor), Delaware (Biden), Illinois (Durbin), Iowa (Harkin), Massachusetts (Kerry), Michigan (Levin), Montana (Baucus), Rhode Island (Reed), South Dakota (Johnson), West Virginia (Rockefeller)

I haven’t added up the cash on hand numbers for all those incumbents from the latest FEC filings, but it must total many millions of dollars.

In the past six weeks, the DSCC has sent out many fundraising e-mails touting “11 battleground states” (Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia).

How many more Senate races could become more competitive if the DSCC were able to put significant resources behind our candidates? Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Georgia immediately come to mind.

The netroots are already working hard to promote Democratic challengers for Republican-held seats. Daily Kos has featured 10 House and four Senate candidates in its “Orange to Blue” ActBlue page. MyDD is raising money for five Senate candidates on its “Road to 60” ActBlue page. SenateGuru even went “on strike” until readers donated enough to three of eleven candidates on SenateGuru’s ActBlue page.

But it’s likely that Tom Harkin alone could donate more to the DSCC than all of the donors to all of those ActBlue pages combined.

Not only that, but safe Democratic incumbents sitting on huge war chests could do a lot for legislative candidates in their home states. A few thousand dollars can go very far in a statehouse race.

I don’t mean to pick on Harkin. (After all, he was the only senator to have the guts to vote against confirming Gen. David Petraeus as the new chief of U.S. Central Command last month.)

More to the point, I know Harkin is already helping other Democrats. He has reportedly donated to the Iowa Democratic Party’s GOTV efforts. Over the weekend he held a joint event with Becky Greenwald, the Democratic candidate in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. He’s holding a fundraiser with Rob Hubler, candidate in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district, this Thursday. Earlier this summer, he gave $2,000 each to five Iowa House and five Iowa Senate candidates, plus an extra $5,000 to two candidates who received the most votes from constituents in Harkin’s “Building Blue” contest. I hear rumors that Harkin will hold fundraisers for other Democratic candidates in key Iowa statehouse races, or perhaps donate substantial amounts to the Iowa House and Senate Democratic leadership funds.

For all I know Harkin has already donated a substantial amount to the DSCC as well. I couldn’t find a list of Senate incumbents who have given to that fund.

But still–Harkin had more than $4.1 million in the bank at the end of June, which is more than 14,000 times the amount his Republican challenger had in the bank. Couldn’t Harkin dig a little deeper to help the DSCC get behind Scott Kleeb, Jim Slattery, Andrew Rice and other good Democrats?

While I’ve talked primarily about Senate races in this diary, of course a potential “Use It Or Lose It” 2008 campaign should also focus on some House incumbents. The DCCC has reserved ad time in 51 districts so far, and only 17 of those are Democratic-held. (Click here for the first wave of DCCC ad buys and here to see the 20 districts targeted in the second wave.) I take that to mean that the DCCC feels confident about holding more than 200 of our House seats.

There have to be at least 150 House Democrats who meet the “ultra safe” standard and should be putting more of their campaign funds into the DCCC pot.

Look at Swing State Project’s list of competitive House races. Four Republican-held seats are in the “lean Democrat” category, another 11 are “tossups”, another 17 are “lean Republican,” and at least two dozen more could become competitive with more money for Democratic challengers to spend. Meanwhile, no Democratic-held seats are in the “lean R” category, and only two are even rated tossups.

How many of those Lean R or Likely R races can we break open with more money for challengers to spend? How many races not even on Swing State Project’s list right now could become surprise wins for us, along the lines of NH-01 in 2006?

For instance, Swing State Project’s list does not currently include the two Republican-held seats in Iowa, but in my opinion both Becky Greenwald in IA-04 and Rob Hubler in IA-05 have a chance to win in a strong Democratic year. (I explain why here and here.)

I look forward to reading your thoughts and comments on a possible Use It Or Lose It campaign. Bob Brigham had some great suggestions earlier today at MyDD:

1. The earlier the better. Getting the money moving now helps a great deal with budgeting. Money spent just after Labor Day is worth far more than a last minute spree just before the election.

2. When it comes to lose it for senators, I wouldn’t just focus on those with a safe race this year, but those who left 2006 with big warchests.

3. I think after they pay up, they should be made a secondary ask to their supporters to get involved in local federal races. This is easy to do. Yet since most out of state money comes from blue, urban areas, this segment could be asked to Adopt-A-Race.

MyDD user Ramo already thought of a reasonable proposal for the senators:

If you’re Landrieu, Lautenburg, or Obama, we’re not asking for anything.  If you’re vulnerable in 2010 (Boxer, Salazar, Dorgan, Reid, and Feingold), we’re asking for 3% of your CoH.  If you’re vulnerable in 2012, we’re asking for 7% (McCaskill, Tester, Conrad, Menendez, Brown, and Webb).  Otherwise, 10%.

That would net us $9.693 million.

Here’s the list:

LA-07: Don Cravins

NV-02: Jill Derby

OH-02: Vic Wulsin

PA-03: Kathy Dahlkemper

VA-05: Tom Periello

VA-10: Judy Feder

MO-09: Winner of the August 5th primary

By and large, the DCCC is pressing into some very red turf with this round, showing even more aggressiveness. The full Red to Blue list to date can be found here.

Your thoughts?

Crossposted at DK, TPM, MyDD, and Prairie State Blue

Last Monday July 21st Sarah Topy and her staff at the Scott Harper campaign were looking forward to a week of data processing, fundraising and preparing for a big push in August after the immensely successful event they organized called “13 for the 13th” on July 13th, the single biggest Dem canvass ever held in IL-13.

There was a lot of file updating yet to do and wouldn’t you know Monday was the day the state guys finally had the new voter file ready to download. The new VAN basically updated and transformed all our files to new software and it was an all day procedure installing it. The files were still offline Monday night when I showed up at campaign HQ to make some calls. Rich Caparrell the field director was in Maryland for a much deserved long weekend off. We had another canvass scheduled for Saturday but volunteer turnout was expected to be light in the middle of vacation season and especially so soon after the big effort on July 13th. It wasn’t downtime but it’s as close as they’ll get in the next few months on Harper’s campaign.

Well that was the plan anyway, but it wasn’t to be. Read on for how those best laid plans went out the window in an instant and what happened next.

So just when they figured they’d be able catch up on some data entry the DCCC picked that Monday morning to announce the Mobilize for Change, 100 Days to Victory Contest which gave all Dem House challengers across the country just five days to see who could organize the most volunteers to pitch in on Saturday. The DCCC runs these contests periodically but I’ve never seen one so early in the cycle before. Running one this soon was a smart idea, competition gets the juices flowing just like the primaries particularly when House campaigns need some excitement in the dog days of summer. The reward for the winner is an email shout out to all three million contributors on DCCC chair Van Hollen’s email list that will bring in a significant chunk of cash and priceless name recognition and respect that’s sorely lacking for a lot of our House challengers.

So with the field director a thousand miles away and the computer files out of action til Tuesday they got to work. They called everybody on their own phone contact lists and emailed any and everybody in their personal address books who they thought might be willing to canvass all afternoon or make phonecalls for as little as half an hour on Saturday.

By Tuesday morning the voter file was up and running again. By Wednesday morning Rich was back in the office and the place was rockin’.

Here’s what they accomplished by Saturday:

635 volunteers made phone calls.

Hundreds attended phone bank sites or phone bank house parties and hundreds more took advantage of our call from home program. We had phonebank parties set up as far away as Seattle where one of Scott’s old classmates organized a party, to Denver where members of his family had 20 people making calls to NE Pennsylvania where Rich’s family pulled together in Hazleton with their cell phones.

64 volunteers went door-to-door.

Canvassers carried literature about Scott Harper and local Democratic candidates. I picked up a couple of DFA activists at the Fairview train station in Downers Grove and gave them their walk packets and lit. One guy, Greg Hodgson left his house in Indiana at 7:30 am and didn’t expect to get home until 7:30 Saturday night. The other guy William Maggos grew up in the district in Woodridge and came out from the south side of Chicago. You just gotta love dedication like that. It’s the kind of selfless sacrifice that wins elections.

59 volunteers wrote letters and delivered yard signs from our Naperville headquarters.

In all 758 Volunteers Mobilized Throughout the District and Across the Country to help Scott Harper in Just One Day!

When you consider they put all that together starting from behind with four days on the computer to work with instead of five like everybody else and the field director out of town until Wednesday that’s just incredible.

Scott’s broad base of support, not just among activists but among Democratic candidates and party leaders was a real key to our success. With the vast majority of candidates for State Representative, State Senate, and local office and all of our elected officials helping out by making calls or hosting sites for us, this whole event was a truly coordinated effort.

I can’t emphasize this enough, if your House candidate isn’t running a coordinated campaign up and down the ballot with other Dems in the area please contact them and let them know how effective it is. We had too many co-sponsors for this event to list them all but here are just a few who brought many of their own volunteers out and organized canvass staging sites and phonebanks through out the district.

A Big Thank You Goes Out to All the Co-Sponsors especially:

Candidates

Dianne McGuire for State Representative

Joe Heneghan for State Representative

Audrey Manley for State Senate

Will County Board Candidates Karen Gonzalez and Jackie Traynere

DuPage County Board candidates Karol Sole and Bob Brandt

Elected Officials

State Senator A.J. Wilhelmi

State Senator Linda Holmes

State Senator Dan Kotowski

Will County Executive Larry Walsh

Judge Sarah Jones

Without these folks and many others and their organizations the Harper campaign wouldn’t have been able to mount this great team effort on such short notice. I don’t know as of yet who won the Mobilize for Change 100 Days to Victory Contest, I guess the DCCC is still tabulating the results. But I can tell you this is a tremendous success for the Scott Harper campaign and all our other candidates. With all of us pulling together like this we will win in November. And that’s just the beginning.

So thanks again to everybody who took time out on a beautiful summer Saturday to make this happen. Whether we win, lose or draw the DCCC contest we’ve taken another big step toward victory this fall. It’s change we can believe in because we are mobilizing that change ourselves.  

 

The DCCC has reserved another $18 million worth of ad time in 20 House races, bringing their total early ad reservation to $53 million and 55 districts. The first round is available here. Here’s the latest batch:

AL-02 (Open): $598K

AL-05 (Open): $678K

AZ-08 (Giffords): $705K

CA-04 (Open) & CA-11 (McNerney): $2.03M

FL-18 (Ros-Lehtinen), FL-21 (L. Diaz-Balart) and FL-25 (M. Diaz Balart): $1.4M

ID-01 (Sali): $349K

IL-10 (Kirk): $1.4M

IL-11 (Weller): $1.6M

IL-14 (Foster): $1.02M

LA-04 (Open): $714K

MO-06 (Graves): $798K

MS-01 (Childers): $1.06M

NJ-03 (Open): $1.7M

NY-25 (Open), NY-26 (Open), NY-29 (Kuhl): $2.7M

WA-08 (Reichert): $949,000

Remember: Just because the DCCC reserved time here, it doesn’t mean that they’ll use it. Reserving time early allows the DCCC to secure a lower price before advertising becomes costlier as more time is bought by campaigns in the fall.

Not much is especially surprising here, although it’s worth noting that the DCCC is angling to drop dollars in two races that they did not allocate independent expenditures for in 2006, but were nonetheless extremely competitive: CA-04 and ID-01.

(H/T: Chad)

How timely. Just as we were discussing the cost of media buys for all of our House targets this year, the Associated Press has got its hands on a list of 31 races where the DCCC has reserved $35 million worth of advertising time set to begin airing in September and October. Let’s comb through the report and try to identify all the targets:

AK-AL (Young): $586K

AZ-01 (OPEN): $1.7M

AZ-05 (Mitchell): $1.7M

CO-04 (Musgrave): $667K

CT-04 (Shays): $697K

FL-16 (Mahoney): $1.5M

FL-24 (Feeney): $1M

IN-09 (Hill): $1.6M

KS-02 (Boyda): $1.2M

KY-03 (Yarmuth): $659K

LA-06 (Cazayoux): $723K

MI-07 (Walberg): $1.5M

MI-09 (Knollenberg): $1.1M

MN-03 (OPEN): $1.4M

MO-09 (OPEN): $941K

NC-08 (Hayes): $1.6M

NH-01 (Shea-Porter) $564K

NJ-07 (OPEN): $1.8M

NM-01 (OPEN): $1.3M

NM-02 (OPEN): $1.2M

NV-03 (Porter): $916K

NY-13 (OPEN): $1.3M

OH-01 (Chabot): $928K

OH-15 (OPEN): $1.2M

OH-16 (OPEN): $1.3M

OR-05 (OPEN): $1.2M

PA-04 (Altmire): $554K

TX-22 (Lampson): $1.1M

TX-23 (Rodriguez): $707K

VA-11 (OPEN): $1.3M

WI-08 (Kagen): $475K

If you do the math, though, that’s only 29 races. The report also mentions the DCCC booking time for open seat contests in New Jersey and New York, but since there are five of those contests between these two states (NJ-03, NJ-07, NY-13, NY-25, NY-26), we can’t pinpoint the races conclusively. However, since an earlier report identified NY-13 as one of four districts where the DCCC has reserved air time, it’s probably safe to assume that this district is among the 31.

A few caveats: The DCCC is reserving this time well in advance in order to get discounts on ad time, but just because they’ve booked the time, it doesn’t mean that they’ll use it. The committee is free to revise its plans before September.

UPDATE: Reid Wilson has the full list (which includes NJ-07 and NY-13 as the missing links), as well has the size of the buys for each district. I’ve updated our list above accordingly. He also notes that the time booked for the DCCC in NJ-07 and NY-13 are targeted mostly toward cable television.