Crossing the Teas

I'm back. And yes, a week later than I anticipated.

For the last six weeks (actually four, plus two weeks of decompression), I was buried in a three-way primary battle to try and take back an Ohio House seat that somehow, in a Democratic year, in a district that voted for Ted in 06 and Obama in 08, was fumbled away by the Democratic incumbent two years ago. Well, needless-to-say, May 4th didn't work out as I had hoped. I know there are a great many in Columbus who are miserable with the result too.

So, while ten months of hard work went down the drain, a nice, soap scum ring of knowledge is left in its place. Today, I'd like to share one little ring of what I learned during my absence. Particularly, I'd like to focus on voter identification and the potential difficulties Democrats in Ohio may have in Voter ID this fall.

Over her ten month campaign for the 16th Ohio House seat, my client, Rosemary Palmer (who is as deserving and smart a candidate as I've ever met), knocked on thousands and thousands and thousands of doors - as did dozens of our volunteers during that same period. Consistently, we were dealing with a recurring theme : "Voter X said he/she isn't a Democrat and would never vote for that (insert one: socialist, communist, terrorist, etc). Plus, they want to know how they got on our list and they want to be taken off."

Day after day, we'd be reaching a very small but very vocal group of voters who were classified in ODP's VoteBuilder as Democrats. The most interesting exchange occurred when the candidate was verbally assaulted, simply for identifying herself as a Democratic candidate. "Get the hell off my porch you socialist," shouted one female voter. When the candidate's husband took pen to clipboard to make a note to remove that house from our list, the woman pushed closer to both of them. "What the hell are you writing? Let me see that," she screamed. "I'm making a note to remove you from our list," he politely responded. "Good," she snorted. "Don't ever come back here again!"

Not to worry, madame. We won't.
And hopefully, other Dems won't either. But based on the way some Democratic campaigns have operated in the past (i.e. lazily ho-huming it until the final two weeks, then going all in on paid media), my concern becomes the amount of time and resources (volunteers and cash) we'll all be spending this fall having to deal with these angry crackpots. Because like it or not, they're out there and they're going to be getting in the way of talking to the voters we actually want to talk to.

Unfortunately, this is the delayed impact of Rush Limbaugh's absurd "Operation Chaos" nonsense in 2008. As you'll probably recall, during the Ohio Primary, Limbaugh encouraged his listeners (generally far right of center) to jump to the Democratic ballot in the Presidential primary and vote for Hillary Clinton. Clearly, based on the responses we had in this suburban Cleveland district, a number of people did just as Limbaugh ordered. Was it enough to give Hillary the victory in the 08 primary? Doubtful. Hillary won, but it's unlikely that this "chaos cult" was large enough a voting bloc to steer the outcome. What they did to themselves (without realizing it at the time), was leave a "D" next to their names. And that "D" is going to haunt them and us for the coming months.

Those voters, essentially "today's Tea Party voters," were the ones who took the bait and followed Rush's lead. Want to see it for yourself? Go canvass a few 50/50 precincts. Grab voters who voted in the 2008 primary and handpick a few other general election contests too. See if you don't have a similar response. You don't even need to knock. Just drive by some of the houses on the list and count the "Don't Tread on Me" flags or the homemade, misspelled anti-Obama yard signs. These folks are out there and they risk screwing with our coordinated efforts this fall. That is, unless we dispense of them early and often.

Whether you are running for State Rep or school board, do your party and yourself a favor this spring and summer. Get yourself and your volunteers out there knocking on doors TODAY. Identify NOW, those voters who are for us, those who are undecided, and those who are clearly against us. If you think waiting until late October (then mailing out a ton of bland postcards with all your party endorsements) is the way to win in 2010, you're wrong. No matter how good your name or how you've done it in the past, good data is the master key to unlock our victory. The better the data, the better the odds for Ted and the Democratic ticket in 2010, and Obama/Biden/Sherrod in 2012. Most of all, the better the odds for you.