Weenies of the Year

There are so many choices from this year, but we've decided to go with the two operatives most responsible for campaign debacles.  Ken Hutcheson, Campaign Manager for Jerry Kilgore, and Alan Moore, head of the Democratic Coordinated Campaign.

Going into 2005 it looked like Ken and Jerry were doing everything right.  Jerry picked "The Hutch" as his person early on, and from 2002-2004 Hutch was sent out as the Kilgore person to every major Republican effort around Virginia.  He of course, brought back contacts, and lists and had a structure in place that looked ready to run over Tim Kaine.

It's not fair to single out a campaign manager as the lone culprit in the collapse that followed.  Gubernatorial campaigns are really run by consultants, all of whom have their own agendas.  But the #1 job of a campaign manager in a campaign this large is to be the person who only has the candidate's best interest at heart.  Ken Hutcheson had that, but what he failed to have was any vision on what Jerry needed to do. Without a vision, he was completely ineffective against the consultants.  There would have been no difference on the vision issue with the Hutch then if the campaign manager position was vacant.

In the end, arrogance brought the Kilgore campaign down, not ideology.  George Fitch? Duck.  Russ Potts? Duck.  Tim Kaine? Ducked until the race was even and the momentum had turned. 

When a campaign manager lacks vision on where the campaign should go the candidate's issues also suffer.  For example... taxes.  Not open to new taxes(pissing off Senate Republicans), but no pledge against it (pissing off conservatives), against Warner's budget  (pissing off the legislators and majority of Virginians who supported it), but not willing to repeal (pissing off the conservatives again), and very eager to spend the money coming in from it, which was a double hit (conservatives pissed off, those who supported the budget thought it was hypocrisy).  Way to win votes there Hutch!

The campaign became a disaster, and Ken's "Weenie of the Year" award is well deserved.  But there's one other person from the other side of the aisle that Ken should share this award with.

Alan Moore, director of the Democratic Coordinated Campaign came back to Virginia this year after failing spectacularly as Executive Director of the State Party.  Alan's tenure included the election of Mark Warner (which everyone agrees Alan deserves no credit for) and Tim Kaine, narrowly on Warner's coattails.  Outside of that, Alan lead the collapse of the Democratic Party in the House of Delegates, in a year Democrats fell from 47 to 34 seats.  Redistricting had something to do with it, but the total lack of support from the party caused the number of lost seats to explode.  I ran the only Democratic House pickup of that year, and I can tell you first hand that Alan Moore's Democratic Party was a bigger obstacle to us then our opponent.

So this year, Alan somehow found his way back as head of the Coordinated Campaign.  The Coordinated Campaign is responsible for coordinating all the Democratic campaigns, and helping bring any coattails from the statewide ticket down to other Democrats.

After the Kaine victory (which was delivered by Weenie #1) what did Alan do with it? 

Loss for Lt. Governor. 

Loss for Attorney General. 

Won 3 open seats in Fairfax (Bulova, Marsden, Caputo) where Kaine was around 60% of the vote. 

Lost three of four races against GOP incumbents where Kaine was around or above a ten point victory in Northern Virginia (won Poisson, lost Porta, Barg and Werkheiser).

Lost every seriously contested House race outside of Northern Virginia.

What did Alan do to lose all these races?

1)  Alan's coordinated campaign didn't include other statewide candidates on  canvassing or phone calls.  No media was spent for the ticket.  Places like Roanoke City, where no candidate had a regional advantage saw Byrne and Deeds run about even, which there was 2,000 votes behind Kaine's margin.  With Creigh and Leslie even, it's obvious that the remaining voters simply had no idea who they were- the coordinated campaign's largest responsibility.

2)  Alan's coordinated campaign included dead people they claimed were ID'd by canvassing.  Some of these people included had been dead for well over a year, but Alan claimed they had been ID'd as supporters...

I won't even get into the issues of Alan not returning phone calls, not including local historical ID's to turnout, general lack of effort and other issues.  But what we should do is imagine a scenario where Alan pulls in a minimal job performance.

Under that scenario, Democrats should have won both down ticket races.  Tim Kaine would have a Democratic Attorney General, and the 24-16 GOP Senate would have a Democratic Lt. Governor breaking the ties.  A strong coordinated campaign should have been able to elect Greg Werkheiser and Hilda Barg with Tim Kaine's overwhelming victories in those districts.

That would make the House of Delegates margin 56 Republicans, 41 Democrats and 3 Independents.  With special elections now taking place for Preston Bryant and Ryan McDougle's House seats, Democrats would be going in with a chance to reduce the GOP in the House of Delegates to 54 seats.

Instead, the best Democratic opportunities to defeat incumbents Albo and Frederick are gone, and the party is still short of 40 seats in the House. 
That makes Alan Moore a "Weenie of the Year".

Congratulations to these two operatives whose efforts will go down as some of the greatest debacles in Virginia political history.

Comments

Interesting stuff, as usual.

One correction though:

In the 42nd district, the vote percentages at the top of the ticket were the following (I just added it up):

Kaine: 54.7%
Kilgore: 43.6%
Potts: 1.6%

I don't have my Fairfax County spreadsheets in front of me to check the rest of the races, but I'm pretty sure that Byrne got 53%, Deeds got 51%, and Werkheiser got 48%.

The coordinated campaign's field strategy focused heavily on "urban" dem heavy areas, so it's no surprise that districts like Albo's and Frederick's were ignored.

However, I think that their own strategy failed to take into account some of the democraphic changes that could have qualified many precincts in both of these districts as dem friendly GOTV districts. In the 42nd, Saratoga, Newington, Lorton, and Lorton Station should have been targetted heavily for GOTV by the coordinated...Kaine had over 65% in all of these precincts but they underperformed in turnout.

I guess that's just the way it goes though. They had a limited amount of resources. At the end of the day, I don't think Werkheiser or Barg could possibly blame the coordinated campaign.

[Not Larry Sabato]

That's exactly right. The coordinated focused on urban areas, where there were not competitive house races. Their job is to elect the entire ticket, so not pumping resources into areas where a couple hundred people could make a difference cost Democrats those elections.

NLS, I think you have a personal grudge against alan moore. The coordinated campaign did work in competitive house districts and for the last month of the campaign canvassed and called with every democrats name. It was up to the house campaigns to decide if they wanted to work with us or run their own program. Most chose to work with us, but some decided not to including werkheiser's campaign.

werkheisers was running against a well established incumbent and poorly spend a lot of his money. i think you are putting too much blame on alan and not enough on doug dodson.

There are quite a few more reasons that leslie and creigh lost that have nothing to do with alan's supposed mismanagement of the coordinated campaign. Most of all, the fact that they never were able to afford to go up on air in NoVA, while at least mcdonnell was able to. The lack of funds has nothing to do with alan and everything to do with the candidates fundraising ability.

I think that you are making too many claims about the coordinated campaign without every having step foot into the coordinated campaign office. why would alan not return your calls? because before this blog ben, no one cared a lick about what you think and most people still don't respect you.

Oh and for managing chap's race 2001, why don't you at least admit that a lot of that win came from chap knocking a lot of doors. Oh and that you're still bitter about him not hiring you for his lt. gov race.

so ben, why don't you get off your high horse and stick to thing you actually know something about and stop holding personal grudges against people.

[Not Larry Sabato]

I'm deleting the other comments that went off topic. The IP address of the 7:34 comment has been banned.

The comment I deleted had an IP address of 24.125.32.210

That same IP has been coming on here, making personal attacks on me that are not true. Any help if finding out more information from that IP would be appreciated.

[Not Larry Sabato]

And 7:17, I don't have any grudge against Alan, I just don't think his results were what they should have been. You're also wrong about me being "bitter" at Chap, in fact I'm going down to SW with him tomorrow.

NLS-
Why don't you do a full look back at the 42nd so that you can more thoroughly support your conclusions? It looks like your comments on this post were more general in nature, but they seem to have fired up the Werkheiser crowd. If you went into more detail, as you have with other legislative races in your "look back" series, it might be helpful. Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work and Happy New Year.

[ZB]

My post was one that was deleted---I apologize if part of it was off topic. The main thrust was to wish everyone a happy new year. That part bears repeating.

[Not Larry Sabato]

ZB, your fine, I deleted everything after the 7:34 anonymous, everything in your post was fine.

[ZB]

Gotcha--thanks.

Did you notice that Waldo is reporting that the Republican nominee for Preston Bryant's seat, though claiming to be a moderate, gave money to the lying SWIFT BOAT VETERANS? Del. Abbitt was right--this will be a Dem pickup.

Anon 7:17: "It was up to the house campaigns to decide if they wanted to work with us or run their own program. Most chose to work with us, but some decided not to including werkheiser's campaign."

That's complete bullshit. Werkheiser's campaign worked closely (on nearly a daily basis) with the few fine coordinated people that helped in the 42nd. They only sent 2 people though...their strategy was aimed towards urban areas and it didn't pay much attention to House of Delegate races.

NLS is right.

[Nicole]

ZB-

I wonder where you learned that the GOP nominee in the 23rd gave to Swift Boats? I just did a search and did not see that. Do you have a link?

[not corey stewart]

why not jerry kilgore for weenie of the year? I think you are giving the staff - on both sides - too much importance. Kilgore has the responsibility to have a focused campaign and Byrne/Deeds to get their message out. It seems to be a reoccuring ego thing among staffers to think that they win or lose races more than candidates do.

[Jay Hughes]

Not Holding A Grudge:

How can you be hired only once yet fired multiple times by someone? Your post makes no sense. Also, if Ben is such a poor employee then why would Chap hire him, then fire him, hire him, then fire him multiple times as you claim? If Ben is so bad then it looks like Chap's the one with the poor judgment to keep hiring him.

Let’s keep the conversation on the topic of this thread and not on Ben Tribbett’s work history.

[mr_jms]

It is always fun over here.

[A Voter]

I think that Hutcheson is a great guy, personally, but you bring attention to a couple big flaws in the Kilgore campaign strategy.

[ZB]

A Voter---you might want to avoid using that handle. It's kinda been "retired" like the Red Sox did with Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk and ought to be left for the most bombastic, nasty, and inaccurate poster in the short history of this board... a person who was absolutely convinced that Chris Craddock was Mother Teresa and that he would win a landslide even bigger than Michael Golden's.

[A Voter]

I never said he'd win in a landslide, but I'm certainly supportive of him.

[A Voter]

And nothing I ever said was wrong... I just disagree with your radical left-ist ideology which desires nothing less than the total destruction of this great country.

[ZB]

Ah--so you HAVE returned.

Welcome back, Mr. Craddock.

[Franken O'Reilly]

The coordinated campaign was all over Loudon and Prince William since March. Having seen these guibernatorials first-hand since Allen-Terry, I can tell you this was the best one yet.

The Delegate races were lost by the Delegate candidates. In those cases, many split their votes to vote for the incumbent which is why lower-ticket races ran behind Kaine.

Bolling and especially McDonnell won in large part by receieving several hundred thousand dollars more than their counterparts at the end of the race. I think most people believe if Deeds and Byrne had as much money as Bolling and McDonnell, they would have won.

[A Voter]

Chris Craddock is a great guy, and I respect him a lot... but I'm not him.

[SE VA MWC Alum]

I assume Ben does not include the 75th district as a highly contested race

Not Larry Sabato's "analysis" of the coordinated campaign and Alan Moore is completely factually inaccurate. The Democratic coordinated campaign in Virginia did more this year than any previous coordinated campaign in the Commonwealth -- more ID's, more doors knocked, more calls made (for candidates up and down the ballot), and it operated in counties in which Democratic field campaigns had never operated. (The results in Prince William and Loudoun weren't happy accidents.)

Alan was a big reason Tim Kaine won and why Leslie and Creigh finished as close as they did, despite being outspent 2-1 -- a deadly statistic for down ballot candidates in a Republican-leaning state. Alan did a superb job, and no one worked harder than he did.

The facts are that the coordinated strongly supported Democratic candidates, gubernatorial to House, and anyone with first-hand knowledge of the effort knows this to be true.

Not Larry Sabato doesn't have first-hand knowledge of the coordinated effort, and for some reason he's chosen to swallow a line of BS being peddled by disgruntled candidates and party activists. If he would only contact members of the coordinated, he might get some actual facts. Dan Bowling's campaign manager, for one, is someone who would know. She was one of Alan's top aides. Not Larry Sabato spent the day with her during the special election Tuesday. Presumably, he had the guts to ask her about his post, a post that might kindly be described as character assassination.

Alan Moore is a good man, and any campaign would be lucky to have him.

To people who actually know this business and were involved with the campaign, Not Larry Sabato continually exposes himself as someone who is dangerously misinformed, a real joke.