VA: Fire the Consultants
by Patrick Ruffini :: November 7th, 2007 10:52 amLast night, the Democrats took the Virginia Senate on the back of the GOP’s collapsing brand in Northern Virginia, where I live.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on Virginia politics. My focus is national. So this post will largely be observational, as I did little more than watch the ads, which were ubiqituous on cable thanks to the more than half a dozen competitive races in the region.
First: It’s time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. So Ken Cuccinelli survived… by 90 votes… against a laughable opponent the Washington Post wouldn’t even endorse.
Second: Cutting and running from the GOP is even worse. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis’ anti-gun ad flopped, leading to the most lopsided unseating of the night. Didn’t 2006 teach us that there is no refuge for the Chafees and DeWines of the world when the GOP fails to advance an aggressive agenda?
Third: The days of Tom Davis giving us lectures about how to win elections in NoVa are over. See #2. (Yes, that was his wife.)
It’s time to say what needs to be said. Whether they were running to the right (Cuccinelli) or to the left (Devolites Davis), Republican Senate incumbents were running campaigns out of touch with the Northern Virginia electorate, whose bugaboos right now are traffic congestion and education.
The voters aren’t much interested in slash-and-burn attacks on illegal immigration or revisiting the wedge issues of ’80s and ’90s (the death penalty for Kilgore; guns for Davis).
Hitting hard on immigration might make sense in a place like MA-5 which doesn’t have a huge immigrant population, yet. But unfortunately, Republicans in Virginia are running on messages that are about a decade late. This isn’t your father’s Fairfax County anymore. The fact that there were a tangle of elderly Asian immigrants ahead of me in the voting line today requesting help filling out their English-only ballots is testament to it.
Now, don’t count me as a Tom Davis squish on this. Instead of applying blunt force on the immigration issue in a diverse community, you zero in on the illegal immigration-related quality of life concerns that 90% of the electorate can identify with, like the scourge of MS-13 gang violence in the region. Were I running in Northern Virginia, I wouldn’t mention the words “illegal immigration.” I would talk exclusively about MS-13, and about working with ICE to deport every violent criminal in the area illegally. This is the fatal mistake that ex-prosecutor Jerry Kilgore made in 2005 — and the GOP candidates this time around didn’t do much better.
Likewise, running a 1988-style campaign on “taxes” is too vague and diffuse. Zero in on the real source of taxpayer ire: rising property tax assessments. And tie it to competence. The housing boom was a veritable revenue bonanza for local governments, with double digit revenue growth year on year. At the state level, Mark Warner raised taxes. And even with state and local governments drowning in revenue, they still can’t build roads, they still can’t educate kids, they still can’t get things done. And now Tim Kaine and the Democrats want even more. Tim Kaine and the Democrats. Incompetent. Unaccountable. Arrogant.
Finally, traffic is the new wedge issue — on both sides. In the 2002 tax increase referendum, we used environmental concerns (or they used us) to wedge advocates of higher taxes from liberal inner suburbanites who ride Metro. In 2005, the Democrats used long commutes to pry away out outer suburbanites who would gladly pay more taxes for an extra half-hour with their families. We need to highlight the inherent fissures within the Democratic coalition again. And at a minimum, hold Democrats accountable for their promises on traffic and road-building. The RPV needs to launch a “Tim Kaine Commute-o-Meter” tallying the rise in the total commute for Northern Virginia drivers since Kaine took office. And our message could look something like this: Democrats like _____ are in the pocket of extreme, pro-regulatory special interests. They won’t build the roads we need to solve the traffic crisis.
Running on recycled political consultant wish lists failed. Running against the party failed. Why not try something different next time: offering principled conservative solutions to the things voters are actually concerned about?
Would any soon-to-be defenestrated Virginia Republican disagree?
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You also missed the most arrogant thing that the Republican controlled legislature did, the $1000 traffic ticket that only applied to resident of the state. It discredited the idea that Republicans were for getting the government off the backs of people.
If Virginia is in play for the Democrats in 2008, there is little chance that any Republican can win the presidential election. If Hillary Clinton is starting out with every electoral vote that Kerry had in 2008 and is now trying to get Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia, there is little chance for the Republicans.
You should also mention that the incomptence of the Bush Administration contributed to the Republican loses. How can Republicans run as hard on illegal immigrants or as fiscal conservatives with the pro-amnesty, biggest budget deficit ever, big spending Republican in the White House?
I would argue that some of the largest issues facing Virginia Republicans is organization and coordination. Message is not a problem, it’s that there was no message until four weeks before election day. The Republican Party has no single avenue of leadership: each campaign keeps its own workings close, but then you have three organizations and their various splits all trying to do their own operations, never mind local committees and the like. Dems have a better top down organization right now and whether this will serve as a wake-up call that the Republicans need to get their act together or just allow them to continue business as usual is something they’re going to have to decide very quick.
How much was it that in metro DC the GOP is strongly identified with Bush, causing a large number of voters to reject the candidate out of hand, while elsewhere in the country candidates had a better time getting their message out to the electorate
You are dead on Patrick. We got what we deserved in Virginia.
The RPV is completely broken. I’m all for new media outreach, but the communications priorities they’ve come up with having put a blogger in charge is absurd. I went to their website a few days before the primary to find out who was running in my district. Nothing. No list of candidates, no links to their local website, hardly even a mention (without looking hard) that there was an election coming up. Yet, they had instructions on how to podcast and how to video-blog.
New media outreach is important, but not to the detriment of politics 101. People need to know who is running for office, how to register to voter, and where to vote long before they should get into podcast. I think the RPV got exactly what they should have expected.
Eugenio,
Thanks for giving us the view from a certain Republican Presidential campaign (we can see your IP address, you know).
I don’t see anything about instructions about how to video-blog and podcast on the RPV website. What I do see is the following election related items:
* The less you know about Janet O…
* Chap the taxman
* Which H.B. 2797, Janet?
* Chuck Colgan bats 0 for 32 on illegal immigration
* Cuccinelli vs. Oleszek
(It looks like the RPV spent a lot of their time beating up on Janet Oleszek — and she lost.)
And also:
* Absentee ballot form
* Programs / Training
* Events
* Donate
Unfortunately, you seem to represent the view of many offline political operatives who believe that *anything* a campaign does online comes at the expense of getting out the vote. I’ve seen this tactic many times before. Hype the supposedly risky and exotic undertakings of the new media team and downplay the powerful ways in which they’re getting out the message so as to protect your own power in the organization.
If you actually talked to Shaun Kenney about this, you would see that he is very level-headed about this and rejects doing the wiz-bang stuff for its own sake. And in my experience, most bloggers aren’t interested in the technology, but the message. Beyond getting a basic Blogger page up, they don’t care much about the technology. The technology is just a means for getting their message out. And as actual practitioners of message distribution, who better than to have as your communications director?
You work (or volunteer) in a campaign that has embraced the power of the Web, so it’s sad to still see someone within the organization still undermining those efforts.
One of the little known facts about the traffic problem in N VA is that the Democrats’ solution is “smart growth” which means high density development in already built up neighborhoods (Vienna, Fairfax, Merrifield) around I-66 and the Metro.
This has led to impossible traffic build ups in areas that were already too congested. The Democrats want to turn what used to be a suburban county (Fairfax) into an urban Arlington - Alexandria style area which will vote one party Democrat all the time.
The fact that we have a County Chairman who works for a developer who has orchestrated this mess has been mostly ignored by the mass media. Innovative solutions like synchronization of traffic lights or light rail seemed to be ignored by the present increasingly one-party regime. Also, most everyone in Fairfax wants to live in a cul-de-sac neighborhood with few short cuts that will allow traffic to be diverted from major roads.
Our county party also needs to work on building a far better grassroots organization with reliable lists of who are Republicans (which could easily be gathered from past campaign lists and primary voting). The lists I used to help turn out voters were riddled with staunch Democrats and voters who had not lived there in years. A check off list of who voted should also be utilized. In a low turnout election like the one we had, we could have won if we had turned out our vote. Of course, internet technology could be effectively utilized to do this in the future.
I basically agree. The mail and tv from both sides of the aisle was terrible, contrived and in the case of the mail - mass produced. However, that’s a problem in every state.
The four GOP state senate seats that flipped were each unique. Congressman Davis’ wife was outflanked on the right on both illegals and taxes. She ran as a self-proclaimed Republican In Name Only and got clobbered. It was like she had a death wish.
Jay O’Brien, who I know quite well and and live in his district, was a big supporter of the new regional taxing authority and the abusive driver fees. His opponent attacked him unmercifully on these issues. Jay was terrible with constituent service and had literally no campaign organization outside of high school kids.
The seats that flipped down south had their own issues. The one GOP incumbent was notorious for not being able to raise any money and he got crushed by a moderate former Naval officer who specifically campaigned against taxes. The open seat that went blue did so in a very close race because the incumbent Republican got tossed in a primary over the tax issue. The Republican nominee then held a press conference with the tax-hiking Republican leadership just before the election. Her own supporters went nuts and started attacking her in public.
The Republican brand is indeed in tatters. No one tusts Republicans. As the saying goes, in politics you have your word and your friends, go back on either and you are dead.
Spot on post mortem, Patrick.
I saw many of the same things here in Southeastern Virginia (Hampton Roads) that you mention - taxes and illegal immigration seemed to be the only two buttons that the losing Republican Senatorial candidate knew how to hit - the one that won, Patricia Stall, she mentioned fixing traffic. Although some of her ideas on how to do that aren’t too swift - but still, she was the only candidate in this area to even mention it.
Tip O’niell was exactly right that all politics are local, and it doesn’t get much more local in the larger Va metro areas (north and south) than crappy, crappy traffic, and incompetence, lethargy, and buffoonery by the VDOT/Legislative combo.
Taxes aren’t such an issue - and probably can’t be - unless they’re linked to the absolute failure by the Va state government to manage the tax windfalls they’ve been receiving. But, then again, that’s somewhat a self smearing message, as the Repubs will have a hard time pinning the failure completely on the Dems, although the prospect for doing that has recently improved.
No, unfortunately, the Va Repubs, aside from running lackluster, uninspiring campaigns, weren’t helped at all that their colleague from northern Va that introduced, and then they helped pass, one of the most inflamatory, punative, and horrendous ‘traffic fee’ laws one could possibly devise. While we can only hope it gets canned as being unconstitutional, so far, it was THE one thing that brought the terms “traffic” and “Republicans” to mind at the same time - unfortunately, along with the term “1000 dollar traffic tickets (that folks from Jersey, New York, PA, Maryland, Delaware, Mass - hell ANYWHERE else don’t have to pay )
Consequently, yes, the Repubs DESERVED to lose this one. The Dems don’t seserve dredit for the win, and we’re all screwed because there’s no other alternative.
Let me do a glass half empty thing
In a weak GOP year the Davis seat and the Norfolk seat were probably not salvagable. Certaintly both are among the “best 20″ Dem seats in VA and perhaps the funds used there should have been reallocated to the Hampton seat and O’Brien, which could have been saved.
As for the issue matrix, certaintly it was suboptimal in Fairfax. It might have been what was needed in exurbia though and the party almost lost the open seats in Winchester and Fredericksburg. Had they flipped, the GOP would face a long road back, instead of trying to flip two seats in ‘11 they’d have needed four post re-apportionment and it’s hard to see the Dems leaving that many folks at risk
In Prince William it was remarkable how similar all of the campaigns were. Every candidate was anti-illegal immigration, anti-tax, anti-sprawl, anti-traffic ticket, and promising more money for transportation. It was very hard to tell who was the Republican and who was the Democrat. The democrats seemed to have more money, but in every race where the republicans had a better candidate, they won.
I think Virginia is a victim of its own success. The boom is NoVa has attracted newcomers from more liberal places and the demographic balance is starting to shift.
All good points.
I think, at the end of the day, the big issue was organization. The RPV is not doing its job. The organization and enthusiam of the Democrats in NOVA was much more evident.
The RPV needs leadership and organization. Some years we will lose elections because of the issues and climate of the day. It is a shame, however, when we lose winnable seats because we don’t the organization to have volunteers for phone banks or sample ballot handouts.
Yes, Virginia’s demographics have changed somewhat. But Virginia is still a Republican state. We have lost the last few elections because we have no message and even worse organization.
I’m in Fairfax County, and I noticed the same thing Sourcreamus noticed in PW. I’m well-informed on national politics but not as much on local, so the ads left me completely confused, because no one gave their party identification. I remember being annoyed at the cheap shot adds the Democrat Devolites was taking at the Republican Chap Peterson on the gun issue - It wasn’t until election day that I realized Devolites was the Republican. Other than that, all the ads seemed to be anti-tax, anti-traffic, anti-illegal immigration,anti-drivers fees, and completely uninformative.
I think the Republicans, however, have a more fundamental problem in NOVA, and that is that many NOVA voters have ridiculous expectations. We can’t pave over the entire northern third of the state to save people time on their morning commute. Jay diagnoses other key aspects of the problem - cul-de sac neighborhoods, no traffic light synchronization, and generally god-awful civil engineering. The problem is that its not clear which party, if any, is to blame for the fact that the people who designed NOVA’s road system are morons.
The other traffic problem is that no matter what you do in NOVA, for people going to DC, there will always be awful traffic, because there’s this little thing called “a river” that gets in the way, and there are a limited number of bridges over the river. An honest candidate would tell NOVA voters that as long as everyone insists on packing into the same area and then trying to work in DC, there is going to be traffic, and its just part of the price you pay. A reasonable voter would understand that, but most NOVA voters seem to think there is no problem that can’t be solved if you throw enough bureaucracy and bond funding at it.
Same basic story on education - NOVA voters are just unrealistic. Fairfax County (a) has very good schools, and (b) spends a ridiculously high amount of money on education. At a certain point, pumping more money into the system gets you diminishing returns, but NOVA voters seem quite willing to continue jacking up spending on education, even if it means higher property taxes, etc.
“The problem is that its not clear which party, if any, is to blame for the fact that the people who designed NOVA’s road system are morons.”
Having lived in NOVA in the 80’s I was astounded that at the same time they planned the Metro they decided the central locus of commerce, shopping and office space for the entire region (Tysons Corner) wasn’t on the route
Patrick — speaking as a liberal, seeing a post-mortem like this brings back bad memories of 2003 and 2004 to me… thanks…. however I just want to bring up one point of factual dispute — MA-5 as a district that has not seen a lot of immigration.
I grew up in Lowell, and spent a lot of time in Dracut (the hometown of the GOP nominee)and went to high school in Lawrence. Lowell and Lawrence are most definately heavily immigrant cities with massive Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotion populations in Lowell, and Dominican populations in Lawrence. As you move away from the Merrimack Valley and into the 495 Belt around Boston, the immigration composition moves to more of the H-1B groups instead of the lower wage.
If you meant to say recent non-Caribbean but Hispanic immigration into MA-5, I could buy that statement but I don’t think the statement “MA-5 which doesn’t have a huge immigrant population, yet” is a justified statement without any serious caveats.
Patrick, your comments here are great. I’m thinking about your support of Eric Cantor and was wondering if you could promote an online petition some local bloggers started today to try and get Eric Cantor to run
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/cantorforsenate/signatures.html
Every Tax Paying citizen of Vienna, VA should join this group and help protect the town.
[…] Fellow Northern Virginia resident Patrick Ruffini is even angrier than me about what transpired on Tuesday: First: It’s time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. So Ken Cuccinelli survived… by 90 votes… against a laughable opponent the Washington Post wouldn’t even endorse. […]
[…] Patrick Ruffini and Justin Hart share their thoughts on Tuesday’s elections in Virginia and what it says about the Virginia GOP. […]
[…] The post David linked to by Simon Rosenberg pretty comprehensively explains how the GOP’s focus on immigration as a wedge issue has blown up in the party’s own face. It failed in Virginia, it failed here in New York — ground zero of the “giving licenses to illegals” controvery — and there’s no reason to expect it will do anything but fail next year. […]
[…] >> Want to know how to save the Virginia GOP? Start by listening to Patrick Ruffini. “First: It’s time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. So Ken Cuccinelli survived… by 90 votes… against a laughable opponent the Washington Post wouldn’t even endorse.” It gets better (or worse, depending on how you see it). share: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
[…] Patrick Ruffini wrote a fairly good postmortem on last week’s Virginia elections and the lessons the Virginia GOP should draw from the results: First: It’s time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. So Ken Cuccinelli survived… by 90 votes… against a laughable opponent the Washington Post wouldn’t even endorse. […]
Online Journals Guide…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…