Comments: Ohio 2 recap
I think the blogosphere could raise the money. The harder part is 1. recruiting decent candidates to run 2. making sure they have the internal resources to use the $ wisely. Imagine what a decent candidate with adequate funds could do in an area like Kingston's district in South Georgia or Gingrey's district in NW Georgia. Lord know they've got enough dirt on their faces with CAFTA and the Patriot Act to haunt them down. Having a strong top of ticket presence in 2006 and 2008 will help. Hopefully a southern or rural-state pol will have the top of the ticket in 2008.
Posted by Tim at August 3, 2005 01:53 PM
Hackett was able to raise enough money to go on TV, which is what made him competitive. If the NRCC hadn't stepped in and purchased airtime for Schmidt, Hackett probably would have won (he'd be the only one the voters had heard of).
In Gingrey's district, you're talking about a district that with the possible exception of Chattooga county is entirely in the metro Atlanta market -- which would require like $3 million in money raised. In Kingston's district, you have to do Savannah and maybe Albany and Macon TV and definitely Jacksonville TV (also possible Thomasville-Tallahassee). Granted, these markets are much cheaper than Atlanta, so you could do all of these markets for less, but you're still looking at raising $1.5 million. In some of these districts, like in California, New Jersey, places like that, you're looking at $5 million or more to knock off an incumbent.
Kingston's district is theoretically competitive. It has a Democratic performance of maybe 45% as of 2001. That's certainly better than the Hackett district, but then again Kingston is a much stronger candidate (emphasis on much) than Jean Schmidt was. Gingrey's district is maybe a 40% Democratic performance district as of 2001 (though keep in mind, Bush did much better than Democratic performance in both districts and also better than he did in the Hackett district).
Even if 1 million progressives read blogs, they'd each have to give more than $100 to second tier candidates to fully fund them all. Really, probably closer to $500.
On the other hand, it might make sense for the blogs to broaden the field by 20 races or so that the DCCC can't be involved in. The last cycle, this would have included campaigns like the Rick Crawford campaign. I saw DCCC polls that showed a generic Democrat leading Gingrey and from what I understand Gingrey had a poll within a month of the election showing the race within two points. The problem is, Crawford had no money and wasn't able to define himself to the voters of the district. And the blogosphere wasn't anywhere to be found, instead throwing money into a lot of races on the Kos Dozen that were total longshots and into sweetheart candidates that were in bad districts.
And that's what it ultimately gets down to, nobody wants to waste their money on a lot of candidates that aren't going to win. But with some direction, the netroots or whatever you want to call it *could* make a difference. They just have to stop pretending that the rules don't apply once they become involved and start spending their time and money wisely, just like the DCCC does (even if you disagree with them for not funding Ga 11, which I do, they at least are making decisions about where to spend their money to get the biggest bang for their buck).
Posted by chris at August 4, 2005 12:02 AM
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