by Dick Morris
Republican Loser: Jacob Turk (44%)
State: CO
Democratic Winner: Ed Perlmutter (53%)
Republican Loser: Ryan Frazier (42%)
State: CT
Democratic Winner: Jim Himes (53%)
Republican Loser: Dan Debicella (47%)
State: HI
Democratic Winner: Colleen Hanabusa (53%)
Republican Loser: Charles Djou (47%)
State: MI
Democratic Winner: Dale Kildee (53%)
Republican Loser: John Kupiec (44%)
State: NJ
Democratic Winner: Rush Holt (53%)
Republican Loser: Scott Sipprelle (46%)
State: NC
Democratic Winner: Mike McIntyre (54%)
Republican Loser: Ilario Pantano (46%)
State: NC
Democratic Winner: Heath Shuler (54%)
Republican Loser: Jeff Miller (46%)
State: CT
Democratic Winner: Chris Murphy (54%)
Republican Loser: Sam Caligiuri (46%)
State: MA
Democratic Winner: Barney Frank (54%)
Republican Loser: Sean Bielat (43%)
State: NY
Democratic Winner: Carolyn McCarthy (54%)
Republican Loser: Francis Becker (46%)
State: OH
Democratic Winner: Timothy Ryan (54%)
Republican Loser: Jim Graham (30%)
State: OR
Democratic Winner: Peter DeFazio (54%)
Republican Loser: Art Robinson (45%)
State: OR
Democratic Winner: David Wu (55%)
Republican Loser: Rob Cornilles (42%)
State: MA
Democratic Winner: Niki Tsongas (55%)
Republican Loser: Jon Golnik (42%)
State: KY
Democratic Winner: John Yarmuth (55%)
Republican Loser: Todd Lally (44%)
State: MN
Democratic Winner: Mike Michaud (55%)
Republican Loser: Jason Levesque (45%)
State: MN
Democratic Winner: Collin Peterson (55%)
Republican Loser: Lee Byberg (38%)
State: OH
Democratic Winner: Betty Sutton (55%)
Republican Loser: Tom Ganley (45%)
State: NC
Democratic Winner: Brad Miller (55%)
Republican Loser: William Randall (45%)
State: NJ
Democratic Winner: Frank Pallone (55%)
Republican Loser: Anna Little (44%)
State: WV
Democratic Winner: Nick Rahall (55%)
Republican Loser: Elliott Maynard (45%)
* * *
A word about some special races. Dick worked with eight of the narrowly defeated candidates on this list. Each has a special place in our hearts, and we want to call your attention to the need to continue to battle in these districts.
CA Jerry McNerney (48%) David Harmer (47%)
In one of the closest races in the nation, David Harmer lost by one point to Democrat Jerry McNerney. Harmer is an extraordinary candidate and, with fairer district lines, he should win in 2012.
IA: Leonard Boswell (51%): Brad Zaun (47%)
Boswell, a thirteen-year incumbent, won with the dirtiest campaign we’ve seen in a long time. Brad Zaun, a hardworking conservative in Iowa, deserves another shot and a victory next time.
PA: Mark Critz (51%): Tim Burns (49%)
Burns lost by seven points in the special election early in 2010 to succeed the late John Murtha. He whittled Critz’s lead down to two in the 2010 election. Burns is a real comer and should win with better lines this time.
UT: Jim Matheson (51%): Morgan Philpot (46%)
Nobody gave Philpot a chance. Nobody gave him money. No independent expenditures were waged on his behalf. Yet he almost defeated Utah’s lone Democratic congressman. Now that Philpot has shown his credibility, he should be able to win. With Utah gaining a seat in the House, he should have better lines this time.
CO: Ed Perlmutter (53%): Ryan Frazier (42%)
Ryan Frazier is the Republican, conservative answer to Obama. A brilliant, articulate African-American, he has a great future!
CT: Jim Himes (53%): Dan Debicella (47%)
A few thousand paper ballots suddenly showed up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and defeated Debicella. Himes, lately of Goldman Sachs, deserves defeat and this time, with an honest election, he may meet it.
CT: Chris Murphy (54%): am Caligiuri (46%)
A last-minute surge by Murphy won this seat, although the polls had Caligiuri leading. He should win this seat next time.
AR: Mike Ross (58%): Beth Anne Rankin (40%)
Some of the defeated Republican challengers in these districts are licking their wounds in the aftermath of their losses. A few of the defeated Republican challengers are still hurt and bitter. They frequently bemoan the lack of party support and feel thoroughly battered by their opponents’ negative ads. Many need to go back to making a living and feel they have neglected their jobs and their families long enough.
But they need to get back in the game! Their investment of time, talent, energy, and money is too extensive for them to quit now. A tough district often takes two or even three shots before being won. Defeating an incumbent congressman is often not a one-shot battle. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, for example, loves to regale people with the story of how he lost twice to Democratic incumbent Georgia congressman Jack Flynt before he finally won the seat on his third try!
Flynt had been in Congress since 1955. Newt first took him on in 1974 and lost (it was the Watergate year and no Republican won). He tried again without success in 1976 (Georgia governor Jimmy Carter was getting elected and the state went solidly Democratic). By 1978, Flynt had gotten tired of defending his seat and chose to retire. Too much money. Too much work. Too much hassle. Newt walked into the seat winning by nine points!
In some cases, the 2010 Democrats, facing tough challenges in 2012, may follow Flynt’s example and opt to pull out and not go through the wringer again. The 2010 campaign was exhausting, even for the winners, and required Herculean outpourings of effort, time, and money. It is the rare incumbent who doesn’t mind going through it all again two years later.
Many Democrats, reading the handwriting on the wall after narrowly turning back challenges in 2010, will simply call it quits, and some will seek higher office. After all, the Democrats are now in the minority in the House and are likely to remain so after the 2012 election. Being in the House minority is a little like being a well-dressed hostage. The smaller party in the Senate has great power due to the possibility of a filibuster. But House minority party members have no such consolation. Retirement beckons.
If their Republican challengers make it clear that they are coming again—this time with more money, more experience, more name recognition, and (maybe) more favorably reapportioned district lines—many Democrats will find better things to do than to seek another term. Our persistence can cause their retirements!
The novelist Jack London said it best in The Call of the Wild: “The patience of creatures preyed upon is a lesser patience than that of the creatures doing the preying.”
The defeated Republicans of 2010 have lots of work to do to remain viable. They enter the races of 2012 with more advantages than just better districts. They already have their donor base secured. Most have raised up to or more than $1 million. They have the names, addresses, e-addresses, and phone numbers of their past donors.
Use them! Stay in touch with your base! Send them regular updates, keep them current on the misguided votes your Democratic opponent is casting. Keep them up on your views on the issues. And with each mailing, each phone call, each e-mail, you will send an unmistakable message: “I will be back!”
The hardest thing for an insurgent candidate to achieve is credibility. The incumbent seems far too formidable to defeat and the challenger too puny
, too new, to be up to the task. It is a long, hard haul to get the funding, the standing in the polls, and the presence in the district to be considered viable. But the 2010 insurgents who lost, but then choose to run again in 2012, start off their new races with instant credibility. Their narrow margins of defeat in 2010 and their success in mobilizing, funding, and generating a campaign speak volumes to potential new donors and oddsmakers. They don’t have to prove themselves. They’ve already done the hard homework.
In the 2012 cycle, the Republican Party leadership and other independent expenditure groups don’t have to spread themselves thin over scores of House races. Assuming Obama is on the ropes, we can concentrate on the districts we narrowly lost in 2010. Now that these Republican candidates have shown their mettle and demonstrated their political abilities, they deserve full support and funding from the party and its allies. And they likely will get it!
Finishing the unfinished business of 2010—winning those districts that were within reach, but where Republicans fell just short—deserves a high priority in the elections of 2012!
Republicans who would run in 2012 need to get busy right now!
Use each fight in Congress to rally and expand your base. When state bailouts or the federal debt limit or the budget come up for votes, hold rallies throughout the district to battle against taxes, cap and trade, card checks, and ObamaCare. Work closely with Tea Party groups and with organizations like Americans for Prosperity and 60 Plus to galvanize your base to a fever pitch! Keep touring the district. Keep meeting with voters.
Don’t stop campaigning. Wage a permanent campaign. Nonstop. Your defeat in 2010 was an episode in your political ascent, not the end of the road. It was a midterm, not the final exam!
But as we enter the elections of 2012, let’s learn what lessons we can from 2010. We don’t want to make the same mistakes twice.
LESSONS LEARNED
A lot went right with the Republican campaigns of 2010, but a lot went wrong too. We lost some House seats we should have won and, obviously, fell short of a Senate majority. It’s important to recount where we fell short and do better next time.
Always, Always, Always Answer Negatives
The Democratic Congressional campaigns of 2010 were particularly vicious. In politics, one gets used to negative ads, but theirs was the first campaign to consist exclusively of negative ads. Never a positive. Not even a biographical spot. Just wall-to-wall negatives.
The key Democratic consultants were not the pollsters or the media creators or the strategists, but the private detectives, the negative researchers who pried open the lids of their opponents’ private, personal, and business lives to find anything they could use or distort to fling at them in the closing days of the campaign.
Everything was fair game.
Jim Renacci, running in Ohio against freshman Democrat John Boccieri, had appealed an IRS ruling, which made his business pay more taxes than he thought were due. He lost the appeal and promptly paid up. The Democrat branded him a tax cheat in a vicious negative ad. Renacci won nonetheless.
Tom Ganley, also of Ohio, wasn’t so lucky. He was well on his way to defeating Democratic freshman Betty Sutton when a woman accused him of rape. Later she said it was really just groping. Then she dropped the charges. But it cost Ganley the election.
Brad Zaun, who ran against Leonard Boswell, a fourteen-year Democratic incumbent from Iowa, had a fight with his girlfriend twenty years before. The cops came. No charges. No indication of abuse. And the former girlfriend was backing Brad for Congress. But the Democratic negative ad made him look like a serial wife beater and he lost a race he would otherwise have won.
Tom Marino, opposing freshman Democrat Chris Carney of Pennsylvania, had recommended his employer for a casino license. The Democrats found out that his boss had been arrested and convicted of a misdemeanor forty years before. Since then, no record—and he was a major donor to the area’s charitable enterprises. With a clean record after the earlier misstep, he got his casino license. But since both Marino and his former boss were Italian, the entire campaign was filled with unjustified innuendo implying a mob connection. Marino won when he effectively answered the ad.
Morgan Griffith’s sin was that he lived a foot—literally twelve inches—outside the Congressional district represented by twenty-eight-year Democratic incumbent Rick Boucher of Virginia. Boucher made it seem like Griffith was from another planet and said he did not share “southwest Virginia values.” Griffith ran a rebuttal with a tape measure showing how far outside the district he really was and won.
Steve Palazzo, who defeated twenty-two-year Democratic incumbent Gene Taylor in Mississippi, was accused of favoring big developers who were trying to take an old lady’s home. The facts? Palazzo supported a ban on the use of eminent domain for private purposes, but voted against a watered-down version of the ban backed by the industry and Taylor was trying to use his vote against the weaker bill against him. Steve answered, revealing the facts, and won.
There’s a lesson here. The candidates who answered the Democratic negatives won. The nominees who let the attacks go without a rebuttal lost. You can’t just sit there and let the Democrat hit you. It’s not enough to just hit him back. You’ve got to explain away the attacks one by one.
Republican consultants and political leaders generally don’t get it. They never answer. They never rebut. They just throw their own negatives. They feel that answering is going over to the defense. But it’s not. It is just giving the voters the accurate facts with which to make a decision.
Where Democrats couldn’t find any personal garbage to bring up, the Democrats ran “issue-oriented” negative ads. Two were most prominent:
Since most Republicans signed the tax pledge promoted by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) not to vote for a tax increase, the Democrats charged that this meant that they would not vote to terminate tax benefits for firms that move offshore. This flimsy charge—used in dozens of campaigns—laid the basis for claiming that the Republican would ship jobs overseas!
Many Republicans had signed onto Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “roadmap” of fiscal and economic reforms. These included letting those under 55 divert a portion of their Social Security tax payments to their own individual retirement accounts. There, they could invest the funds in one of a number of investment vehicles approved by the government. Agreeing with Ryan subjected scores of Republican candidates to the charge that they favored privatizing Social Security, aired in ads featuring outraged old people pleading for us not to cut their Social Security.
These negative ads were fanciful to be sure, but they had to be answered. Unless you explain the facts to the voters, they have no way of knowing them. It’s not just good politics to answer, it’s your duty.
Adjust Your Strategy When Your Opponent Does
We lost two Senate seats because our candidates’ campaign operatives wouldn’t change course when they needed to adjust to effective Democratic campaigns. In both cases—Dino Rossi, who was defeated by Senator Patty Murray of Washington State and John Raese, who lost to Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia—the Republican candidate was persuaded by his consultants to stay the course when a strategic adjustment could have saved the day.
In Washington State, Rossi opened with a strong campaign against Murray powered by a great message—that she was no longer the “little lady in tennis sneakers” she ran as when she was first elected eighteen years ago, but that now she was more into Washington, D.C., than Washington State. Smart opening.
Amazingly, Rossi took the lead in a race few thought would be in play. But then Murray came back with two devastating negative ads—one accused Rossi of being a corrupt banker who made fraudulent loans and the other used his opposition to abortion to paint him as anti-women.
Both charges were ridiculous, but Rossi never told his side of the story.
Patty Murray’s negative ad made these accusations:163
Rossi “hid a personal loan given by a bu
sinessman now under federal investigation.”
FACT: he got the loan in 1997 and did not disclose it until 2001. He says it was an oversight. But he admitted it ten years ago. Hardly a timely accusation. Now, thirteen years later the businessman who lent the money is under investigation for things that have nothing to do with Rossi. So what? How was Rossi to anticipate that thirteen years ago?
Rossi “co-founded a bank together with business lobbyists. That bank is now under federal investigation.”
FACT: Rossi was one of 37 founders who invested $10,000 each. Two of them were lobbyists.
“Auditors found Rossi’s bank made unsafe and unsound loans and lost millions of dollars.”
FACT: Rossi was neither a director nor an officer of the bank and had no decision-making power there.
“No wonder Dino Rossi wants to repeal tougher regulations on Wall Street.”
FACT: Rossi objected to the supervision of small banks, not of Wall Street.
Rossi could have answered the charges and destroyed the whole basis of Murray’s negative campaign. But he never did.
And Murray ran a second ad, just as inaccurate, criticizing Rossi over women’s issues.
Murray’s ad said: “Rossi voted to allow insurance companies to refuse to pay for contraception.”164
FACT: Rossi opposed making everyone pay for policies that covered birth control. If you had a vasectomy or a hysterectomy why should you have to pay for the added coverage? Those who wanted coverage for birth control could get it without those who didn’t need it or want it subsidizing them.
“Rossi opposes a woman’s right to choose.”
She’s right on that one.
“Rossi voted to deny unemployment benefits to domestic abuse victims who flee their homes and jobs for safety.”
FACT: Rossi backed the benefits. He just wanted the state to pay for it, not the small business owners.
Again, Rossi could have answered the ad (not the choice issue, but the other two charges). He could have survived being pro-life, but letting the contraception and abuse charges stand killed his chances.