Tag: NRCC

The NRCC just put out a memo that allegedly details its top two dozen Dem targets (sub. only):

There are a lot of names that are NOT on here – names which the GOP has talked a lot of smack about in the past, like John Hall up in NY-19, or Zack Space in OH-18. Even some of the targets that are on here are no longer looking so great. For instance, Republican moneybags “Quico” Canseco just got his ass whooped in the TX-23 GOP primary. And in OR-05, you’ve got a primary showdown between corrupt loser Kevin Mannix and Mike Erickson, who I’m told is an even bigger freakshow.

Plus, you’ve got the FBI investigating the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NRCC. It’s never been a better time to be a Republican.

Back in September, the NRCC was talking some big talk:

The committee is expecting recruits to emerge soon against Reps. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.), John Barrow (D-Ga.), Baron Hill (D-Ind.), David Loebsack (D-Iowa) and Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), who are all without major committee-recruited GOP challengers. All but Barrow are freshmen.

The NRCC is meeting with potential candidates against Murphy and Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), another freshman without a major opponent.

Meanwhile, Indiana Republicans have been anxiously awaiting word from former Rep. Mike Sodrel (R), who is rumored to be in for a fourth straight match-up with Hill. And Iraq veteran Wayne Mosley, an orthopedic surgeon, has been mentioned as a potential challenger to Barrow.

How did Tom Cole and his merry crew fare with recruitment? Tell us in comments.

“We have been very fortunate in our recruiting efforts.  There will be a number of credible Republican challengers running for Congress next year that happen to have access to personal financial resources. They are in position to run strong, well-financed grass-roots campaigns next year in some of our top targeted districts.”

–Ken Spain, National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman

When the polls don’t look so hot and when the money runs out, who do you turn to in order to rebuild?  Why, the grassroots, of course.

Facing a potentially crippling financial disadvantage against their Democratic counterparts, the NRCC is turning to their “base” — of insanely wealthy people — in order to kill two birds with one stone: plug some crucial recruiting holes where more established candidates have taken a pass, and help lessen the committee’s load by opening up their own bank accounts in a gambit to make these seats competitive.

Let’s take a look at some of these brave rank-and-file Republicans, who put down their ruby-studded walking sticks and answered the NRCC’s call to wage caviar-powered grassroots campaigns against Democrats this next year.

So who is the NRCC looking to tap here?  Look no further than the defense industry, a key “grassroots” constituency in the Republican Party.  Their ranks have produced Christopher Myers, a vice president at Lockheed Martin and “a real man’s man“.  Allen may have had the moderate creds and a proven ability at winning blue areas in a district that Al Gore won by 11 points in 2000, but Myers has the fat stacks of war booty that he can put to good use.  A no-brainer.

• CT-05: Put yourselves in the NRCC’s shoes here.  Let’s say you’ve already recruited a fresh-faced state Senator, David Cappiello, considered a up and comer in local circles, to take on freshman Democratic Chris Murphy.  He’s raised some respectable cash and seems presentable.  The only snag?  

The DCCC and the NRCC have filed their monthly financial reports with the FEC, and the news is still bleak for House Republicans. The GOP must like their favorite color quite a bit, because their House committee is still stuck in the red:

Jon Singer over at MyDD has more numbers, including the 2-to-1 cash-on-hand edge that the DSCC is enjoying over the NRSC.

(Bumped – promoted by James L.)

If you ever had the misfortune of being on being on the receiving end of an National Republican Congressional Committee media alert last cycle, you’ll know that they took special delight in mocking DCCC Chair Rahm Emmanuel for his supposed recruiting failures in key House races.  These press releases always were marked by the title “DCCC Delusions”.  Since the NRCC has had some notable difficulties in recruiting top-shelf challengers in a number of districts (OH-15, anyone?) this year, why don’t we tally up all the candidates who took a pass on efforts by the national and state Republican parties to recruit them into House races.

I’ve got a few so far, but I have a feeling that I’m just scratching the surface.  Post any additional recruitment failures in the comments section below, if you know of any.

AZ-01: Ex-state Sen. President Ken Bennett
CT-02: Former US Rep. Rob Simmons
FL-16: Former state Rep. and ’06 candidate Joe Negron
FL-22: Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams
FL-22: State Rep. Adam Hasner
FL-22: State Sen. Jeff Atwater
FL-22: State Rep. Adam Hasner
FL-22: State Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff
FL-22: Palm Beach Co Commis. Mary McCarty
IL-11: State Sen. Christine Radogno
ME-01: State Sen. Jon Courtney
MN-01: Former US Rep. Gil Gutknecht
NC-11: State Sen. Tom Apodaca
NH-02: Former US Rep. Charlie Bass
NY-19: Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer
OH-15: Former state AG Jim Petro
OH-15: Former Columbus Mayor Greg Lashutka
OH-15: Former WBNS-TV anchor Dave Kaylor
OH-15: State Rep. Jon Husted
OH-15: State Rep. Jim Hughes
OH-15: State Sen. Steve Stivers
OH-15: Former Franklin County Commissioner Dewey Stokes
PA-04: Former Pittsburgh Steeler and ’06 Gov Nominee Lynn Swann
PA-10: Former Deputy state AG Joe Peters
PA-10: U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Marino
TX-22: Sugarland Mayor David Wallace
TX-22: Harris County Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt
TX-22: State Rep. John Zerwas

With a barrage of scandals, retirements, and recruitment woes, it’s no shock that the National Republican Congressional Committee is not a fun place to work this cycle, but could it really be this bad?  The Politico’s John Bresnahan and Patrick O’Connor report that things are getting nasty both within the NRCC and between the committee and House Republicans.  Apparently, House Minority Leader John “Small Price” Boehner is upset with NRCC Chair Tom Cole’s stewardship of the organization, and is heavily pressuring Cole to make some significant personnel changes.  Cole has said privately that he would rather resign than bow to such demands.  From the article:

Neither Boehner nor Cole’s offices would comment on the meeting or struggle, but Boehner spokesman Brian Kennedy did say the two leaders have “very frank and candid conversations” about regaining a Republican majority.

The Boehner-Cole fight came to a head during a Sept. 10 meeting, which included “a lot of yelling back-and-forth” between the two over the campaign committee’s operations and effectiveness. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) also attended but “they didn’t say much,” said a GOP strategist familiar with the session.

Following the meeting, an angry Cole called together the NRCC staff and told them that if they were not happy working at the committee, they might want to consider leaving immediately, said several GOP insiders. That Cole outburst occurred last Monday, said the sources.

But wait, there’s more!

Inside-the-Beltway Republicans have grown frustrated with the NRCC for its unrealistically rosy assessments of an ever-eroding landscape for congressional Republicans.

Lawmakers are frustrated with Cole and his top aides for casting their net too wide by targeting Democratic-controlled seats that Republicans have little chance of picking up next year.

Some also gripe that Cole fails to manage expectations on the Hill when he refuses to acknowledge that the GOP’s chances for regaining the majority fade with every retirement or negative news story about President Bush or other scandal-plagued Republican lawmaker.

The most interesting revelation here is that some House Republicans believe that the Cole and the NRCC are “casting their net too wide”.  I’d be curious to know which recruitment efforts House Republicans consider to be lost causes.  State Sen. Nick Jordan, who is running against Kansas Democrat Dennis Moore, perhaps?  Or state Sen. David Cappiello, who is challenging Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) after his stunning victory over incumbent Nancy Johnson last year?  One can only guess.

(H/T: TPM EC)

Here’s what the House committees will report in their first quarter fundraising filings, according to this Roll Call article (2003 1Q numbers in parens for comparison):

Lookout, Republicans. With less cash-on-hand, more debt, and fundraising down 31% over the same period four years ago, the GOP’s long-vaunted fundraising dominance is coming to an end. Without the ability to swamp their Democratic opponents with huge media buys like in years past, House Republicans could be seriously imperiled, yet again.

On Tuesday, we looked at the biggest non-party independent expenditures of 2006 in House races, and yesterday, we looked at expenditures of all kinds in 22 of the 23 races where Democratic challengers beat House Republican incumbents. Let’s pick up where we left off and take a look at the heartbreakers of 2006–34 competitive races where the Democratic candidate fell short of toppling an incumbent.

How do we define “competitive”? Well, in this study, I used a compromise of a number of metrics: races where either party committee made significant expenditures, races where the incumbent had a margin of victory under 15%, races with significant (usually $1M+) challenger expenditures, and races with significant independent expenditures. In most of these cases, there is significant overlap between those guidelines of “competitiveness”.

As usual, the “Spent” column indicates candidate expenditures, and “Other IEs” includes all independent expenditures made by PACs who filed with the FEC, but not 527 activity. I have also added a column on the far right indicating the incumbents’ margin of victory. In most cases I used Secretary of State numbers, but in a few races I relied upon CNN. All numbers were subject to rounding.

Notes: *This expenditure was made by the RNC, not the NRCC.

**Due to the labyrinthian backstory of Jean Schmidt’s travails in OH-02 from 2005-06, it’s difficult to sort out which expenditures apply to which period of her career: the special election of 2005, the primary battle last spring, and the 2006 general. I did my best to sort it out, but the picture isn’t entirely clear. For that reason, take these figures with a grain of salt.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans enjoyed more of a financial edge in these races; combining all expenditures, there was a nearly $30 million gap between Republican and Democratic expenditures in these 34 districts. The NRCC did not swamp out the DCCC in these districts by a large margin. NRCC/RNC buys amounted to 55% of the party committee expenditures, while the DCCC was responsible for the remainder. This is very close to the 56-44 NRCC ratio in the seats that the Democrats did pick up from incumbents.

Obviously, this list will bring up some woulda-coulda-shouldas: imagine what Larry Kissell or Eric Massa or Linda Stender could have accomplished with more DCCC IEs, for instance. But it should also highlight some badly underperforming incumbents for next time: Knollenberg in MI-09, Terry in NE-02, and Dent in PA-15, for instance, all posted very underwhelming returns given the financial uncompetitiveness of each of their races.

Oh, and speaking of Linda Stender, here’s one maddening note from last November’s results: if the 3176 votes that the “Withdraw Troops Now Party” candidate won in NJ-07 had been cast for Stender instead, she would have won by about 250 votes. Sigh.

On the weekend, I’ll conclude this series with expenditure round-ups for competitive open seats and the select districts where Democratic incumbents were on the defensive.

Continuing our analysis of House race expenditures of the 05/06 elections cycle (we looked at the top ten non-party committee expenditures of the cycle on Tuesday), today I’ll be posting total expenditures from the 22 races where a Democratic challenger beat a Republican incumbent (with the exception of TX-23, where I haven’t been able to accumulate all the relevant data yet). And by total, I mean everything except expenditures from the shadowy 527s: candidate expenditures (listed under the “Spent” column), party committee expenditures, and independent expenditures from all sources.

Here’s what I’ve tallied up:

Now, obviously, these numbers don’t tell anything close to the full story–they don’t discern between positive and negative expenditures, the nature of the expenditures, and the time frame of the expenditures. But the basic framework makes it a decent starting point for our discussion. Note that total expenditures from all sources gave the Republicans a nearly $20 million edge ($89M to $69M) in these 21 districts. Also note how the mediocre fundraising of former New Hampshire Reps. Bass ($1.2M) and Bradley ($0.86M) foreshadowed their surprise defeats last November. Another interesting fact: in this top tier of House races, Republican-allied PACs were almost nowhere to be found–in fact, if it weren’t for the $1 million spent by the National Association of Realtors PAC in support of Anne Northup (KY-03), Democrats would’ve enjoyed a 7-to-1 non-party IE advantage in these districts. Instead, they settled for 7-to-2.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting part two of this discussion, featuring expenditures from open seats, competitive races where Democratic challengers fell short, and the few races where Republican House challengers put Democratic incumbents on the defensive.

(And so it begins. This is just a taste of what will be in store for many of our freshman class over the next two years. We need to be prepared to weather this storm and push back aggressively. On another note, it’s pretty interesting that the NRCC would hone their attack on the subject of immigration, considering that it’s next to impossible to find a race where that “hot button” issue gave the Republicans a decisive assist–with the exception of the CA-50 run-off, perhaps.



Update: It’s also possible this this mailer was a holdover from November that somehow got “stuck” in the mail. Stranger things have happened. I’d keep your eyes peeled on the FEC’s independent expenditure page to see if the NRCC reports spending any money in this district. – promoted by James L.)

Cross posted at Say No To Pombo

UPDATE:  This story has now been picked up by the largest newspaper in CA-11, the Contra Costa Times.

Last Thursday, Jerry McNerney took the oath of office as a member of the 110th Congress. A scant five days later, with what must surely be unprecedented speed, the NRCC has sent out its first anti-McNerney campaign mailers of the 2008 election to voters in CA-11. 

It’s worth noting that in the run-up to the 2006 elections, the NRCC spent over $1.3 million to prop up threatened incumbent Rep. Richard Pombo, all to no avail. In the days leading up to November 7, the NRCC sent out no less than 20 anti-McNerney mailers (strikingly, they couldn’t think of one single pro-Pombo message). Looks like old habits die hard.

So if anyone out there thinks that McNerney’s 2008 re-election will be easy simply because he won in 2006 by a 6% margin — er, not so much. Expect a steady drumbeat of anti-McNerney disinformation over the next two years. The only real question is, what are we going to do about it?