Bachmann's Opponent Got Big Help Last Year -- But Too Late
You might recall that after Bachmann's now-infamous Hardball appearance on October 17, in which she said she was deeply concerned that Barack Obama might be anti-American and called for the media to investigate members of Congress for anti-Americanism, liberals around the country immediately clamored to send some money to her opponent. As a result, Tinklenberg took in $1.9 million in the home stretch.
Before this, Tinklenberg hadn't even had enough cash to run any TV ads -- he only ran his introductory spot on October 21. This shot in the arm, and the controversy surrounding her comments, allowed him to make it close in a heavily-Republican district where he hadn't had any chance before.
The problem though, was that this event happened only about two weeks away from Election Day -- Tinklenberg had more money than he could possibly spend. So while the liberal blogosphere truly discovered who this Michele Bachmann person was, and made a collective decision to seriously take her on, it was simply too late this time around.
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Maybe, but Occam's razor favors a simpler explanation: There are large numbers of people in her district that are just as crazy as she is.
April 21, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know how the Republicans operate in Minnesota, but here in Texas the candidates are chosen by the party leaders and presented to the voters. The Republican voters here then vote straight-ticket Republican as they have been trained to.
Since the Evangelicals took over the Republican Party over two decades ago, only those candidates who the evangelicals will support even make it onto the ballot. They of course, prefer no intra-party strife so as to leave more money to run against the Democrat. But one result of this is that the voters who are voting Republican generally have no idea who any new candidate is. They just know he/she is the anointed Republican candidate.
The party, of course, carefully vets the new candidates in advance and then supports them, both financially and with expert managers. That should explain the extremism that is apparent in so many Texas politicians when they get on the national stage. Bush was selected in such a pattern, for example. But he was also selected for his cross-over appeal to non-evangelicals.
If the Minnesota Republican Party operates anything like the Texas one does (and I strongly suspect that it does), then it would not be surprising if the Republican voters who voted for Bachman have been as surprised as the rest of us by her pathological outbursts.
I have no idea how powerful the evangelicals are in Minnesota politics, but that could probably be estimated by counting how many mega-churches there are in the state. The close central control and the strong financial support for new candidates would be very similar in any case. It's what the conservatives (religious and non-religious both) do, after all. How else would they elect so many extremists who have views that a majority of the voters do not approve of according to the polls?
The package is built around central selection, control and support of the candidates until they can finance themselves after being in office for a while. Once they are relatively safe incumbents, they are expected to kick back funds to support the less established candidates. This works in conjunction with messages demonizing the opponents (as Liberals, Socialists, Communists, and recently Fascists - all terms with strong negative emotional impact if relatively little real meaning) to discourage breakaway or independent Republican voters. Where are those voters going to go even if they somewhat disapprove of the current candidate? The worst they are likely to do is just not vote and not contribute. It's a package, and it's worked and grown for almost all of the last thirty years.
April 22, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not entirely clear on how the Republicans pick candidates, but it seems more democratic than how you describe Texas. It's hard to imagine their process not being more top-down than among Democrats. Tinklenberg had to win over the base that was willing to go to precinct caucuses, and this is not a group of people who can be dictated to about who they will endorse as their candidate.
This is the most conservative district in the state, but nonetheless, it is completely true the money came in during the last two weeks and what's more, it was completely unexpected. Tinklenberg not only had to spend the money in a short time, he had to come up with a whole different campaign strategy since he had assumed a shoestring budget right to the end.
April 22, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The thing is, here in Texas the precinct caucuses select the people who go to the county/senatorial district caucuses, and those caucuses select the representatives to the State Convention. There the party leaders are selected. The party leaders then effectively starve out potential candidates in the primaries for funds if they are going to oppose the identity politics that the party leaders are pushing.
The identity politics here are right-wing conservative (in the old John Birch Society mold) or evangelical right-wing.
The leaders of the evangelical mega-churches and the conservative southern baptists, along with other evangelicals packed those initial precinct caucuses and selected their own kind to go up to the state convention. It's not hard. No one else normally bothers to vote, then return at 7:15 pm to attend an hour long caucus that has little reason other than selecting the representatives to attend the caucus at the next higher level. The evangelical pastors have organized the foot soldiers to do that kind of thing, and the right-wing conservatives fund the process.
If you are at all familiar with the way the Soviet Communist Party used to manage the elections process in the USSR, this is the same thing. It will work in any set of "representative" bodies where the members of the lower level bodies select the representatives to the next higher level and an outside body wants to control the final outcome. A well-organized minority can easily take over the whole thing. That's how, as one government prof explained to us in the early 60's, the USSR had what on paper seemed to be the most democratic constitution possible, yet the USSR was a Communist Party dictatorship.
By the time the primaries occur, only selected party candidates have funding, and they generally face off against disorganized gadflys. The Republicans also have a rule that every individual running as a Republican candidate for any office must sign a pledge to support and work to further the (radical evangelical Christian) Republican State Platform or not be allowed to run. The funding often includes large amounts of corporate money, for which Tom Delay was a perfect example. His peccadilloes appeared on the national scene when the Travis County DA indicted him for violating the law against corporate donations and laundering the money through the National Republican Committee. So the primary elections appear quite democratic, but are not.
The result is often stealth candidate who have an extremist agenda, and their behavior discourages more moderate candidates for even considering running. Add to that the straight ticket vote with voters usually only aware of the top two or three candidates on a ballot with 30 to 40 races, and the establishment-selected candidates have a real edge. It's why almost all Texas state judges currently are Republican and all Texas state-wide elected officials are Republican. Bush was elected governor in 1994 when the Republican system first fully took control of the state.
I think this works for Republicans because they have the evangelicals as foot soldiers at the precinct level, and they are organized by the religious denominations. The Democrats here have no similar mass organizations. The Right-to-Work law prevents unions from becoming either politically effective or even becoming very numerous. With more unions the Democrats could do a better job of being organized, but this was a one-party Democratic party dominated state for so long such innovations just never seemed necessary. Then when the Republicans started to make it work, the conservative and the anti-Civil Rights Democrats just switched to the newly useful Republican party.
I suspect that the conservative Republicans have been teaching similar tactics all over the U.S. and that this is the core political basis of the alliance between market conservatives and the evangelical conservatives. Each multiplies the power possible for the other. That's why I consider it likely that a similar dynamic has been happening in Minnesota. It's also what currently gives the conservatives a lock on the Old South.
April 22, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, if you add together the "ringer" Bob Anderson who ran for and won the Independence Party line on the ballot -- after the Independence Party had voted not to endorse, but to support Tinklenberg (Independence Party founded by Jesse Ventura, Ventura endorsed Tinklenberg who was his Transportation Commissioner) -- and the DFL support Tinklenberg received, it was more than Bachmann received.
Many say Anderson ran at the behest of Bachmann so as to split the vote -- but one Eastern part of that district is so die-hard Swede, that the will vote for any Anderson, Swenson, Olson, Neilson, or other "...son" Nonetheless, Anderson who spent no money, and had little support, got nearly 10% of the vote.
The district is potentially winable by a DFL endorsed candidate who "matches" the district. It was represented by a DFL'er in the 1980's up till 1994, and the last DFL'er in the district lost in part because he was a world champion account overdrafter during the House Bank Scandal.
The DCCC got fingers burned in the district in 2006, investing heavily in Patty Wetterling. Lots of reasons why she lost, including a bad match for the district. But the upshot was DCCC did not invest heavily in 2008. What needs to happen is to bring together the State Parties, District Party activists and organization with the DCCC and our new net based funding resources to build coherent strategies based on knowledge of specific districts that goes beyond polling -- but gets at how to develop a strategy for specific districts, and then raise the early money that allows for execution of agreed strategy. The 6th District won't have an endorsed candidate for 2010 until June of next year -- but in the meantime the State and District party orgs ought to have funds to execute an "alienation from Michelle Bachmann" strategy that would benefit whoever runs next year.
And yes, it probably helped Bachmann that McCain did a number of events in her district (including the one that got ugly and was on TV), and most of those events were in Bachmann's MegaChurches.
April 21, 2009 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you Sara for using history and reason to explain elections instead of ad hominem attacks on Minnesota voters.
April 21, 2009 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but they deserve it. Not only do we get Cruella Deville mouthing off crazy talk all the time, but we get Stormin Norm -- got how many votes??? -- stalling for time as pleasant MN folk sit on their fucking hands for a half year. 0 for 2.
April 21, 2009 9:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
No. As an across-the-border observer of the district, I've got to say that Sara's got it right.
April 21, 2009 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unnecessary. Why attack the people who vote for these deceivers. Being a victim of deception or ignorant on policy is not criminal and learning is always a possibility. But if we the informed do nothing but attack these folks, who will they look to for the alternatives?
April 21, 2009 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly right. As I pointed out in my post above, the demonization of their opponents is a method of keeping the rank and file Republican voters in line. We just help the conservative leaders in their system by attacking and insulting the conservative Republican voters.
What those voters really need is a comfortable, welcoming place to go to.
April 22, 2009 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Richardxx, you are a gentleman and a scholar.
April 22, 2009 12:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please, AnswerFrog, tell me what I, as a Minnesota voter who doesn't live in her district, should do about Bachmann. I mean in specifics. Explain how I'm responsible for her being there. Also, please educate us pleasant Minnesota folk what exactly we should be doing instead of allowing legal court proceedings to take place in Coleman vs. Franken. Because, the last thing anyone in Minnesota wants is for you, AnswerFrog, to have to hear things ythat upset you from the mouth of a crazed right-winger.
It's always so much easier to throw blame around when you have no fucking idea what you'd do differently. I'm no more responsible for Bachmann and Coleman being around, just because I live in the same state, than you are for living in the same country.
By the way, thanks for letting Bush get elected. Twice. Way to go.
April 22, 2009 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Would it be reasonable to assume that the DCCC used the rather simplistic method of ranking districts for winability of simply comparing the margin of victory/loss in the previous election and ranking all districts nationwide, then went no deeper into the characteristics of the district itself? That would seem to be a reasonable (quick and dirty) fund allocation technique for an organization like DCCC trying to see which of the nation-wide districts were worth spending more on, but it would also explain why it was a bad choice in Bachman's district in 2008.
I suspect that the district will look very different for winability in 2010 because of Bachman.
April 22, 2009 1:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The DCCC got fingers burned in the district in 2006, investing heavily in Patty Wetterling. Lots of reasons why she lost, including a bad match for the district. But the upshot was DCCC did not invest heavily in 2008"
I beg to differ. Patty Wetterling wasn't a bad match; her campaign manager didn't know what he was doing and he let the DCCC take over. The DCCC put TV ads out that made no sense what so ever against Bachmann going after her on taxes. She is anti taxes and they played right into her hands by trying to demonize her on that issue. Instead of going after her extremism they handed her the win. As far as Tinklenberg is concerned, it wasn't too little to late as far a the money, he had 2 years to get out in front of the voters and he wasn't present. He was supported by the rest of the MN reps; Oberstar, Peterson, Ellison, McCollum and others in Washington but the DCCC left him (and the rest of us) out in the cold.
I am not a fan of the DCCC, they have done more harm than good here in the MN 6th.
April 22, 2009 6:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't Minnesota expected to lose a Congressional seat in the 2010 census? They'll have to re-district and I don't think Bachmann's future looks so good (i.e. whether or not the majority of voters in her district are loons, Bachmann's district is probably going to be carved up into pieces scattered in other districts). I seem to recall her district was originally designed to clump a bunch of conservatives together. Without that bias where will she go?
April 22, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The DCCC didn't support a lot of viable candidates in 2008 but I think there were so many targets of opportunity they couldn't fund them all.
In 2006 the DCCC seems to have had a particularly bad ad shop. The ads they ran for Tammy Duckworth (IL-06) backfired too.
April 22, 2009 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink