February 23, 2011
WALSH'S "TEXTBOOK CAMPAIGN" WAS WIN FOR TEA PARTY
ANALYSIS & OPINION BY RUSS STEWART
There are brilliant campaigns, and there are textbook campaigns. The former are breathtakingly successful in outcome. The latter are legendary in execution.
The 290-vote upset by Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh over entrenched Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean in the northwest suburban 8th U.S. House District last November ranks as legendary (to Republicans) and incomprehensible (to Democrats).
"People were angry, scared, worried," said a prominent McHenry County Democrat. "He exploited those fears. She received death threats. Everywhere she went, people were yelling and screaming at her. It was a hostile environment, which Walsh created."
That's rubbish, retorted Nick Provenzano, Walsh's campaign manager, who said that his candidate won because of the "impact of Bean's arrogance."
"She voted with (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi on 92 percent of the roll calls," Provenzano said. "She supported Obama health care, the stimulus, card check, cash for clunkers and cap and trade, and she refused to defend and explain those votes. She was no 'moderate,' and people were angry because of her deceitfulness."
Walsh beat Bean because of the "Five P's": positioning, preaching, persistence, the pledge and Pelosi.
First, Walsh positioned himself astutely, understanding that he could not win by simply "motivating" the conservative base. He had to expand his base.
There is, in America, a 40/40/20 electoral split: Roughly 40 percent of the voters habitually vote conservative or Republican. Another 40 percent vote liberal or Democratic. The remaining 20 percent constitute the "skeptical center," and their vote (or non-vote) is based on candidates and issues. In 2008 another 10 to 15 percent of the population surged to the polls to support Barack Obama. Walsh's goal was to win half of the "skeptical" 20 percent and hope that the Obama vote returned to hibernation.
Roughly 100,000 fewer 8th District voters cast ballots in 2010 than in 2008, and almost all of them were Obama supporters. In 2008 the breakout was 40-40-20-33. In 2010 that "33," the 100,000 Obama voters, evaporated.
Second, Walsh relentlessly stayed on message and preached "Say No to 'Obamacare.'" Bean supported the Obama health care plan. For six months, Walsh traveled the sprawling district in a car towing a horse-trailer festooned with posters onto which voters could scribble notes or sign their names.
From April through October, at least twice per week, Walsh held "health care forums" to which he invited Bean and the news media. Each attracted between 150 to 500 people, the bulk being virulently against "Obamacare." At each of the 70-plus gatherings, Walsh began the session by announcing that "Congresswoman Bean was invited." Bean, with $2.5 million in her campaign account, ignored Walsh. Virtually everyone who attended left as a Walsh supporter, and, by word of mouth, criticism of Bean's avoidance -- and arrogance -- began to spread.
Most of the people who attended the meetings, so-called "Tea Partiers," were neither hard-core Republicans nor Obama haters. They were part of the "skeptical center," literate and thoughtful, fixated and repulsed by the huge federal debt and spending of the Obama Administration. Many supported Obama and Bean in 2008. Walsh had the right message.
Third, Walsh was persistent, demonstrating resolve and grit. Walsh won an upset in the 2010 Republican primary, finishing first in a field of six with 16,182 votes, or 22.3 percent of the total cast. The party choice, Long Grove Mayor Maria Rodriguez, was third with 9,803 votes (13.5 percent).
Thereafter, Republican bigwigs pressured Walsh to resign, deeming him a flawed candidate and a certain loser. Bean and the Democrats were of the same opinion. Walsh had run for Congress and state representative in the Chicago Lakefront area in the late 1990s, he had a foreclosure on his rented Evanston condominium, he allegedly had "issues" regarding his driver's license and back inheritance taxes, and he filed a financial disclosure indicating that he loaned his campaign $28,000 even though he had earned $41,000 in 2009 and $25,000 in 2008. Two of his campaign staffers quit and released a letter stating that Walsh "lied" to them. Capitol Fax called Walsh a "walking, talking time bomb."
"There are venial sins, which are pardonable, and mortal sins, which are unforgivable," Provenzano said. Walsh's "personal problems" were venial, suffered by many others, but Bean's "liberal votes were mortal sins," he said.
Walsh's roots in the 8th District were shallow, his primary victory was no mandate, and his initial campaign issues -- gun rights and extending Illinois Route 53 -- were duds. But once he shifted his focus to repealing "Obamacare," the message became more important than the messenger.
Fourth, there was "The Pledge," a seminal event that demonstrated the power of the Internet, Facebook and Fox News and that catapulted Walsh into contention. At a late-October debate hosted by the League of Women Voters, one of Walsh's "plants" rose and demanded that the Pledge of Allegiance be recited before the debate began. The moderator refused, whereupon Walsh and more than hundred people (but not Bean) stood and recited the pledge, while being videotaped by a Walsh worker.
Despite the glut of other campaign propaganda, "The Pledge" became an Internet sensation, making Walsh an instant hero to the "Rush Limbaugh Nation." His flaws evaporated, and he became a cause célèbre.
Fifth, and most importantly, Bean was slothful, timid and complacent -- as were most Washington Democrats. The "Nancy Pelosi Strategy" was to ignore issues, avoid defending the accomplishments of the 111th Congress, and concentrate on demonizing their Republican opponents' flaws. After all, Bean presumed, why would the intelligent voters of her district oust their personable, supposedly "moderate" (but clearly pro-Obama) congresswoman for an alleged Tea Party "nutcase"?
Yet they did. In 2008 Bean spent $2.9 million and trounced Republican Steve Greenberg by 179,444-116,061, getting 60.7 percent of the vote and winning by a margin of 63,363 votes. Obama beat John McCain in the presidential race by 170,333-130,384, getting 56.0 percent of the vote and winning by a margin of 39,949 votes in a turnout of 308,717. In 2004 George Bush topped John Kerry in the district by 153,245-121,710, in a turnout of 274,955.
To Bean and area Democrats, 2008 was a harbinger of "realignment" and the rejection of Republicanism. Turnout surged by 33,762 over 2004, to 300,717. Obama got 48,623 more votes than Kerry in 2004. Bean won with more than 60 percent of the vote, the threshold beyond which incumbents are deemed safe. But "realignment" was illusory.
"She didn't campaign (in 2010) like she used to," said the Democratic politician. "That was a huge mistake."
The 8th District encompasses the affluent, semi-upscale towns of Antioch, Wauconda, Grayslake, Mundelein, Lindenhurst, Round Lake Beach, Lake Zurich and Fox Lake in western Lake County, plus the bulk of McHenry County, including McHenry, Woodstock and Hebron. It also takes in a slice of far northwest Cook County, including Barrington and Schaumburg. The population of the district is 72.2 percent white and 15.3 percent Hispanic; 66.7 percent of residents are white collar, and 85.4 percent are employed in the private sector. That, by any yardstick, makes it a Republican district. It's not the North Shore.
But for the sloth, complacency and inattentiveness of Phil Crane, the district's Republican congressman from 1969 to 2005, it still would be. Crane won reelection in 2000 by 51,141 votes (with 61.0 percent of the vote). In 2002 upstart Bean ran a below-the-radar campaign, spent $320,956, and cut Crane's margin to 24,649 votes and his share of the vote to 57.0 percent. The somnolent Crane ignored the wake-up call. He lost his rematch with Bean in 2004 by 130,601-139,792, getting 48.3 percent of the vote, losing by a margin of 9,043 votes, and running 22,644 votes behind Bush. "He should have quit," was the universal Republican refrain about Crane.
In 2006, against a self-funding Republican who spent $3,745,545, Bean countered with $3,571,893 and won by 93,355-80,720, getting 50.9 percent of the vote and winning by a margin of 12,635 votes in a turnout of 183,387, with 9,312 votes going to another candidate. She won in 2008 by a stupendous 63,363 votes.
What changed from 2008 to 2010? Walsh spent only $450,000, but his volunteers disseminated more than 80,000 pieces critical of "Obamacare" door to door. Bean embraced the Pelosi agenda, and her support collapsed. She won McHenry County by 5,603 votes in 2008 but lost the county by 3,345 votes in 2010; she won Lake County by 32,256 votes in 2008 but lost it by 3,122 votes in 2010; she won Cook County, her base, by 25,504 votes in 2008 but by only 6,177 votes in 2010.
Walsh "has too many (personal) problems," said the Democratic politician. "He'll lose in 2012." Potential Democratic candidates include Bean, who is lobbying to get a federal job, and 13-year state Representative Jack Franks of Woodstock, who voted against the state income tax hike. "(Bean) has lost the fire," Provenzano said. "If she couldn't win as an incumbent, she won't win as a challenger. Obama's vote will diminish." Franks "would be tough, but his focus on pension reform is hollow," Provenzano said. "He's got his."
My prediction: The 2012 election will be a referendum on Walsh's voting record and whether he kept his promises, not on his personal flaws. Absent a re-emergence of the "Obama Nation," the idiosyncratic and iconoclastic Walsh will prevail. The "anger" of last fall has not subsided. Walsh's "textbook" 2010 victory will be replicated by a "textbook" win in 2012.