Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

7 February 2014

John Walsh’s possible road to victory in November

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Gov. Steve Bullock announced today he’s appointing Lt. Gov. John Walsh to serve the remainder of Sen. Max Baucus’ term. No surprise here. Walsh wanted the job, and the conventional wisdom is that serving as interim Senator will help him in his campaign to be elected this fall to a full six-year term in the Senate.

Bullock did not announce who will replace Walsh as Lt. Governor. I suspect he has someone in mind, but wants to hold a separate press conference to introduce his choice.

Walsh needs all the help he can get. Right now, he’s not raising the amount of money he needs — he has one-fourth as much cash as Rep. Steve Daines, the putative Republican nominee for the Senate — and hasn’t heard the last of his adventures with the Army’s inspector general. Serving as Senator raises his profile, improves his access to money, and gives him a leg up on seniority if he wins in November.

But although he can run as an incumbent, he can’t urge voters to “Re-elect Sen. John Walsh.” He’ll have to settle for “Return John Walsh to the Senate,” a slogan that’s still more effective than “Elect John Walsh Senator” or “Send John Walsh to Washington.”

Midterm voter turnout and the Bannock Street Project

Apart from money, Walsh’s most formidable obstacle is diminished voter turnout in a midterm election year. Sen. Jon Tester ran an efficient get out the vote operation in the 2006 midterms that contributed mightily to his narrow plurality victory over the Republican incumbent, Conrad Burns.

Four years later, however, millions of Democrats who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 stayed home. Republicans seized control of the U.S. House and came close to winning control of the Senate. Voter turnout in Montana in 2010 was the lowest since 1980 as measured by the Voting Eligible Population. (See Flathead Memo’s voter statistics page for detailed and downloadable data.)

One of the few bright spots in 2010 was in Colorado, where a modern GOTV operation helped Michael Bennet win election to the U.S. Senate. Bennet was an appointed incumbent Senator. Bennet’s former chief of staff, Guy Cecil, now heads the Democratic Party’s Bannock Street Project to boost Democratic turnout in the 2014 midterms in key states.

As Ashley Parker reported in yesterday’s New York Times, that won’t be easy:

Even with new funding and tactical tools, the Democratic Senate campaigns face considerable challenges. The voting rates of core Democratic constituencies — African Americans, Hispanics, unmarried women, younger voters — historically drop off considerably in midterm elections. According to data from the Voter Participation Center — a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing the share of historically underrepresented voting groups — the drop-off among these groups between 2008 and 2010 was nearly 21 million, going from roughly 61 million to 40 million.

Moreover, in many of the states, especially those where the Obama campaign had little real presence, they are basically starting from scratch. Young voters, for instance, are highly mobile and often have to be registered again because they have moved in the past two years. The effort is also in part reliant on volunteers, and many of the nearly dozen states in play do not have a strong Democratic volunteer culture.

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The Bannock Street project is specifically focused on ten states — Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Michigan, Montana, and West Virginia — with plans for senior field operatives and other staff members to be in place by the end of the month.

The state teams will each be required to each come up with a “strategic plan,” complete with a budget and data-mapping program. Paul Dunn — the newly hired national field director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who also ran the 2010 Bennet field effort — will travel around the country, subjecting the teams to “murder boards” and making sure they are in constant communication with the Democratic committee.

The Bannock Street Project can help Walsh immensely. Democrats win statewide elections in Montana in Presidential years. If Walsh achieves rough parity with Daines in fundraising, continues to distill and sharpen his message on the issues, and keeps the Army IG’s report from hammering down his positives after Labor Day, he has at least a fighting chance of beating Daines.