I had lunch with a politically-minded friend of mine earlier
this year and got an earful of his experiences driving to Cleveland and
doorbelling for the Obama re-election in October of 2012.
So, after lunch, I resolved to do some reading about the
Obama ground game of 2012 and finally got around to it a couple of weeks ago,
reading many of the contemporary descriptions of the campaign, some later
analysis and a couple of academic studies.
I also listened to several hours of the Kennedy School’s Institute of
Politics review of the campaign by the leadership of both major campaigns. If you have a long car trip, this dialogue
rivals Fresh Air in spots. It’s attached.
Pushing away the commentary of some political consultants
who claim they never see anything new, I think it is clear that the Obama
ground game at least raised the bar and probably more. It clearly beat the republicans at a game they
had owned for as long as I can remember.
At an after
election discussion at the Bob Dole Institute, Romney Campaign Political Director
Rich Beeson gave full credit to the Obama effort:
“They did alter the electorate,” he said. “The dream of any
campaign is to get to a one-on-one ratio of campaign worker contact to
individual voter. They got closer to
that than any presidential campaign in history.”
What Beeson means by “altering the electorate” is that the
campaign helped bring his 2008 voters back home despite the economy, drew new
voters to their candidate through registration and through the actions and
words that identified their candidate with Hispanic, young, first time and
minority voters. They then found those
voters and helped them turn out and vote for their guy. For example, Obama’s ground game was
responsible for his being the first modern era democratic presidential
candidate to win the absentee vote in Florida, in large part because of his
strong lead among Hispanic voters there, 61-39. While the campaign lost North Carolina,
Obama increased his black vote there from 95% to 96%. Overall, the black share of the electorate
increased from 11% in 2008 to 15% in 2012.
Obama also appealed to more women than other recent, democratic
candidates.
There is some criticism of the Obama ground game. Two Harvard academics came up with a
formulation that compared the turnout in swing states with the turnout in non-swing
states that shared the same media market.
That way, they argue, the only variable measurement of voter behavior
would be the ground game. They say that the
Obama campaign turned out 15.4% more voters in swing states than in safe
states, but point out that the Romney effort was effective as well, running up
the count in swing states by 13.8%. They
conclude that the Obama ground game beat the Republican ground game by a paltry
1.6%. That doesn’t seem paltry to
me. That translates to nearly 100,000 Obama
voters in Ohio, a state Obama won by just 160,000 votes. Also, their analysis fails to take into
account whether the republicans turned out new voters or just those the
campaign knew would vote for their candidate anyway. Nor do they measure individuals who didn’t
get turned out. At the Institute of
Politics session, the Romney people were scratching their heads about 250,000
men who didn’t cast a ballot in Ohio, a blow to their campaign because Ohio men
were far more likely to vote for a republican.
This
reading, thinking and listening also took me back to my brother’s election, in
1977, when he was a candidate in a crowded field for Mayor of Seattle. Then it was our fantastic ground game overcoming
the considerable financial advantages of our opponents. In the primary, we were outspent four to one
by the candidate who finished third and two to one by the others. But our lead in volunteers who identified and
turned out Royer supporters was so substantial that we carried the day in the
primary and the general with fairly large margins. Today, that experience makes me wonder, in
the face of Obama’s recent on-the-ground successes and ours long ago, why the flesh
and blood ground game in our municipal politics is now largely abandoned and
given over to the electron and the post office. It makes me wonder what today’s campaign would
want more – lots of emails and tweets on a voter’s touch screen and a big,
dollar a copy super card in the mail or face-to-face encounters with eager and
properly trained volunteers?
There are plenty of reasons why the ground game in municipal
elections has all but disappeared. First,
in 1977, nearly everyone went somewhere to vote. Only a small percentage voted at home in the
form of absentee ballots. Election Day
was just that – a single day where nearly everyone voted. In the 1977 Seattle primary and general elections,
just 5% of the votes were cast by absentee voters. Today, a significant and growing percentage
of the vote occurs well-before Election Day.
Florida, Nevada and North Carolina all had a majority of votes cast
before Election Day. In Colorado, just
22% of votes were cast on Election Day! In
2012, 33% of voters in the United States voted before Election Day, compared to
15% in 2000.
There is a terrific opportunity when a bunch of people are
doing one thing on one day. You can
decide when to contact them and how. If
they need a ride, you have one. Day
care? Natch. Hungry?
Today’s more complicated voting causes more complicated logistics. Large volunteer teams, in place for a couple
of long weekends in our day now need to be in place for many days and their
care and feeding is no small matter.
Comparisons of the 1977 Seattle electorate with today’s electorate
offer other reasons why the ground game is out of favor in Seattle’s municipal
elections. The growing polarity of our
political life makes the electorate more easily identified today and makes the
outcomes more predictable. Americans in
the seventies were far more prone to be ticket splitters – 31% of Americans
then were willing to vote for a broader range of political views. Today, just 19% are willing to offer their
vote to someone from another party. In
fact, I would argue that in Seattle, a very large number of voters were up for
grabs. Republicans in that decade were
winning not only state elections, but local ones as well – even in dark blue
Seattle. While municipal elections in
Seattle are non-partisan, known republicans held a majority of the city council
for parts of the decade of the seventies.
The electoral pickings at the door in 1977 were much greater than they
are today.
Money, as ever, is a defining factor. Most Seattle political consultants today make
their money by having several clients at all levels of the electoral food chain
and by directing campaign funds to mailings.
They say this is necessary because they want to get mail to voters at
the same time the voters receive their ballots in the mail and that there is
research showing people tend to vote relatively soon after they get their
ballot. Far more important, however, is that consultants make their money from
the mailings, taking home a percentage of the mailing and other paid advertising. And today’s consultants can be very busy,
like the Seattle firm in 2012 that had 39 campaigns signed up. So, busy with many candidates and many
mailings, consultants have no time or patience for the hard slog of
face-to-face contact and the large numbers of volunteers who make it possible.
To be in a campaign is to be a member of a tribe. You are
part of a culture where each member has made a significant personal investment
in the candidate or the idea and, while there is a clear hierarchy in the
campaign, this personal investment confers full tribal status. This allows you and committed colleagues to
share fully the considerable highs and lows rising from the campaign’s failures
and triumphs. It means a rich campaign
social life built around events and after-doorbelling beers and pizzas. As the calendar drives you toward a fixed
date with an unpredictable result, you and your tribal brothers and sisters
live with a blissful anxiety that is a lot like falling in love.
I am channeling that falling in love feeling because I have
so much anxiety about my city’s leadership.
Our police department does not work as well as I remember it working and
I get the idea that Mayor McGinn is not standing up to his city charter
obligation to be the chief law enforcement officer of the city. Maybe I hang out with too many people who are
involved in planning and development, but from those friends I get the feeling
that many feel McGinn should not be the next mayor largely because he has
demonstrated he won’t be a problem and won’t challenge a whole lot -- or, even if
he does, not for long.
While many wonderful things are happening in Seattle – the possibilities
of the waterfront, the reality of South Lake Union, the population growth of
the Seattle Schools and the high tech density in my neighborhood, Belltown - I
can’t seem to take my eyes off the drug dealers and popcorn pimps on First and
Third Avenues, Pioneer Square, the county courthouse and at Westlake. And I worry about what seems to be more
violence toward citizens by my police force and whether the good cops are
holding back on aggressive policing because of the criticism of the bad ones.
The polling results made public so far show Mayor McGinn down in the low 20% nether regions Mayor Greg Nickels inhabited in the weeks before he failed to advance out of the primary four years ago, resulting in the weakest final candidates in memory. Nickels is the second mayor in a row to have failed in a primary election, Mayor Schell stumbling before him in 2001.
The list of alternatives today has so far failed to inspire
me. And I'm left with the question of why some of our most accomplished women aren't part of the show.
Despite the city council’s contempt of the mayor, the number of council candidates has now dwindled to one, Bruce Harrell, a former Washington Husky football player and lawyer and an afro-asian American. While being a council member is no guarantee of success – 14 council members have tried and failed to become mayor since 1969 and only one has become mayor -- and that one on a second try. There was a second candidate from the council, Tim Burgess, but he dropped out just four hours before the filing deadline. A thoughtful and mature guy, he somehow became convinced that his candidacy would not be successful and would lead to McGinn’s re-election. He was the fundraising leader – the Royer family purse is far lighter today as a result of his candidacy – but he suffered a Hamlet moment when it came time to actually sign up. Better Hamlet at the filing deadline, I guess, than at some future crunch time in the mayor’s office with a lot on the line.
Despite the city council’s contempt of the mayor, the number of council candidates has now dwindled to one, Bruce Harrell, a former Washington Husky football player and lawyer and an afro-asian American. While being a council member is no guarantee of success – 14 council members have tried and failed to become mayor since 1969 and only one has become mayor -- and that one on a second try. There was a second candidate from the council, Tim Burgess, but he dropped out just four hours before the filing deadline. A thoughtful and mature guy, he somehow became convinced that his candidacy would not be successful and would lead to McGinn’s re-election. He was the fundraising leader – the Royer family purse is far lighter today as a result of his candidacy – but he suffered a Hamlet moment when it came time to actually sign up. Better Hamlet at the filing deadline, I guess, than at some future crunch time in the mayor’s office with a lot on the line.
Peter Steinbrueck is a former city council president and son
of a prominent Seattle preservationist, Victor Steinbrueck. Though not much of a fundraiser, his family
name is useful and is connected with saving the Pike Place Market from a ridiculous
development plan rolled out in the late sixties. Peter is much like his father, sometimes
abrupt, loud and argumentative and a moment later absolutely charming. Steinbrueck is feared by many in the
development community who see his vision for the city is too small scale. That was his Dad too. But Peter knows the campaigner’s job. At a recent forum with all the candidates
present, he was shaking hands with the audience while the rest of the
candidates sat with the moderator and studied their notes. Peter was last to leave the crowd for the stage
and first off it.
Ed Murray is a state senator whose most recent
accomplishment is the successful ballot measure that allowed gay marriage in
Washington state. Few measures have had
the success of this referendum. It
passed overwhelmingly in the city and passed by ten votes to one in the
district Murray represents, the 43rd. And, it may be the moment for a gay mayor. Nearly 13% of the city’s population is
LGBT. It’s hard not to see Murray as one
of the finalists with his strong and recent marriage constituency.
But Murray is stuck in Olympia in another endless session and it’s
against the law for legislators to raise money while the body is still in
session. It might be mid-July before the
legislators leave Olympia, leaving just one month for Murray to raise the money
needed to run a quality primary campaign.
Legislators, like council members, seem to have a tough time becoming
mayor. The last was Wes Uhlman in 1969.
A 70 year old real estate manager, Charlie Staadecker, is
the last major candidate challenging the mayor, and has raised considerable money while being charming and fresh.
So far, however, he has not broken out.
Bruce Hilyer, who later became a fine Superior Court Judge
here, ran the Royer campaign’s grass roots effort in 1977. He had grown up partly in southern Illinois where
his uncle was a state senator. Getting
out your supporters and those you’ve convinced to become your supporter is a
way of life in Illinois and Hilyer brought a little bit of Illinois vote
collection culture to Seattle.
As the campaign progressed, a growing number of Hilyer trained volunteers were identifying Royer voters by phone and by foot in the 1000 plus Seattle precincts. Each voter was given a number-- one, two or three. We called the ones Saints, supporters of our candidate and ready to go somewhere and vote for him. Our doorbellers gave the number two to those who were not quite ready to say they wanted to vote for our guy. We called them Savables. The ones who identified at the door or on the phone that they thought our candidate was akin to a bucket of warm spit, we called Sinners. We made sure to turn out the Saints, we bombarded the Savables with literature, more doorbellers and phone calls and ignored the Sinners.
As the campaign progressed, a growing number of Hilyer trained volunteers were identifying Royer voters by phone and by foot in the 1000 plus Seattle precincts. Each voter was given a number-- one, two or three. We called the ones Saints, supporters of our candidate and ready to go somewhere and vote for him. Our doorbellers gave the number two to those who were not quite ready to say they wanted to vote for our guy. We called them Savables. The ones who identified at the door or on the phone that they thought our candidate was akin to a bucket of warm spit, we called Sinners. We made sure to turn out the Saints, we bombarded the Savables with literature, more doorbellers and phone calls and ignored the Sinners.
The volunteers would bring back a little poll each
night based on conversations with voters that proved remarkably accurate. We
could see that we were winning every day which gave us the confidence to do
things differently, like mailing a fundraising appeal a day before the primary
election so it would arrive with the news that we were winning. It was a marvelously successful mailing.
By primary election night we had highly trained coordinators
and backups in each of the nine legislative districts making up the city and 98
sub-district coordinators supporting another 1500 volunteers working our
campaign’s priority precincts and even had enough people to send to precincts way
down the priority list. It was an
amazing day.
None of today’s campaigns has anything like the grass roots
ground game candidate Royer fielded, but I’m beginning to believe that while there
are challenges to fielding a strategy like it today, there could are also
substantial rewards.
In fact, Mayor McGinn was successful four years ago because
he was able to deploy a pretty good ground game staffed by young, environmental
activists. Nobody else in that campaign had
much on the ground. Nobody seemed to
notice it but it was big enough to overcome the advantages of better funded and
better known candidates.
One day, someone will take Obama’s voter ID technologies and
have an inspirational candidate who can attract large numbers of volunteers and
blow by the competition and the cookie cutter campaigns of the
consultants. This will be true because
personal contact is the most effective way to appeal to the growing number of
Seattle ethnic voters, increasingly where the electoral action is in a city that 50 years ago was 93% white. The three large
ethnic groups, led by Asians, then Blacks and then Hispanics now total 30% of the vote Alone, that’s enough to
make it to the finals in a crowded primary. When combined with the wave of
young voters finding their way to Seattle and the smorgasboard of specially interested
voters – gays, techies, bikies and the like, a new majority is ready for a
candidate in Seattle. All the candidate
must do is find a way to their door before the other guy.
Presidential Election Discussions (Scroll down to bottom of page for the general election)
Cool New Yorker Piece on the Obama Ground Game
Presidential Election Discussions (Scroll down to bottom of page for the general election)
Cool New Yorker Piece on the Obama Ground Game