House GOP Shifts Into Panic Mode
By Reid Wilson – Real Clear Politics
May 09, 2008
After losing two previously Republican-held seats in special elections earlier this year, House GOP aides worry their party is on the brink of an election year catastrophe, and as a key test looms on Tuesday, the party is already pulling out all the stops. House Republicans, sources say, are using every resource possible in advance of next week's special election to fill Senator Roger Wicker's old House seat, in northern Mississippi.
The district should be no trouble to hold. President Bush carried the seat by twenty five points in 2004, and Wicker never had a problem holding on for re-election. But after Democrats picked up seats once held by former Reps. Denny Hastert, in Illinois, and Richard Baker, in Louisiana, and after the Democratic candidate in Mississippi narrowly missed avoiding a runoff election in the April 22 all-party first round, officials on Capitol Hill started to panic.
"The conference was shaken by the two losses," one House GOP leadership aide told Real Clear Politics. "We just couldn't get it done." The fallout has encouraged a brewing feud between House Majority Leader John Boehner and National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Cole, two top Republicans who have spent much of the past year fighting. And while other Capitol Hill Republicans are almost unanimous in agreeing the trouble is not all Cole's fault, someone has to take the hit. "The two offices are positioning themselves to avoid blame or to lay blame," the aide said.
In an open letter published by Human Events, a conservative news service, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich became the most prominent Republican to speak publicly on his party's troubles. Calling the two losses a "sharp wake up call," Gingrich called for an emergency meeting of House Republicans to come up with a new action plan by the Memorial Day recess. "Without change we could face a catastrophic election this fall," Gingrich warned. "Without change the Republican Party in the House could revert to the permanent minority status it had from 1930 to 1994."
In hopes of avoiding another special election loss, which would almost certainly be seen as a harbinger of a disastrous November to come, the national party has spent heavily on bolstering Republican candidate Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, Mississippi, prior to Tuesday's election. The national party has spent more than $1 million on the seat, which includes about 150,000 pieces of mail and two television ads that are still on the air. Freedom's Watch, an independent organization that will aid Republican cnadidates this Fall, has also waded in with more than $500,000 in television advertising, mailings, phone calls and other activity. Local GOP officials, including Wicker, Governor Haley Barbour and Senator Thad Cochran, have been stumping with and for Davis in recent weeks.
Republicans are also calling in bigger guns: Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has visited the district, and Vice President Dick Cheney will even make a rare election-eve appearance at a rally with Davis. That the district is one in which Cheney is not seen as a liability, though, speaks to its inherent conservatism and what should be Republicans' ease in carrying it.
"We need money and boots on the ground," Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland told Real Clear Politics. Westmoreland recently gave a presentation to fellow Republicans stress the importance of their involvement. "We need to do the best we can to make sure our people know how important this election is."
Democrats have spent more than $1.6 million of their own money on independent expenditures, running ads that bash Davis and bolster their candidate, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers. Davis has outraised and outspent Childers by a wide margin; the Republican had raised $876,000 through March 23, when the pre-runoff FEC reports were due, while Childers had pulled in $485,000.
But the situation remains grim for Republicans. Ahead of what could be a third straight special election loss, national Republican strategists have taken steps to stanch the bleeding. Boehner, in cooperation with Cole, has established a panel of twelve Republican members from across geographic and ideological lines to oversee operations at the NRCC.
All twelve members currently serve on the NRCC's executive committee. Some lead important divisions within that committee, including Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, who chairs the executive committee; Minnesota Rep. John Kline, who heads the management committee; and Michigan Rep. Candice Miller, who leads candidate recruitment efforts. Others on the new panel include Reps. Darrell Issa, of California, and Jeb Hensarling, of Texas; both have led big fundraising efforts for the committee, Issa during a March dinner featuring President Bush and Hensarling hosting a similar event next month.
The panel also includes leaders of the Young Guns program, an organization founded to focus on challenger candidates who could prove promising come November. Reps. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the chief deputy whip, and Kevin McCarthy, a freshman from California, lead that effort and have seats at the table. With Boehner's involvement, his own political action committee, the Freedom Project, will also be represented.
Spokesmen for both Boehner and Cole deny the group is an added layer of oversight over a struggling NRCC. "The idea was to get a group of some of the most politically-active members and a cross section of our conference committed and coordinating towards our shared goal of electing more Republicans to the House in the Fall," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner.
Publicly, Republicans say momentum is swinging their way. "Republicans are committed to winning in Mississippi and we believe the momentum is on our side," NRCC spokesman Ken Spain said. "Voters will have a clear choice on Tuesday between Greg Davis who will represent Mississippi values in Congress, and Travis Childers who will say one thing on the campaign trail, but will undoubtedly do the bidding of liberal Speaker Nancy Pelosi."
Davis campaign manager Ted Prill added that, thanks to the NRCC and Freedom's Watch and his own candidate's financial advantage, Republicans are outspending Democrats in the district.
Privately, though, Republicans say another special election loss could be devastating to the party. The key, the leadership aide said, is to create unity in order to work for the larger good. "Either the conference pulls together and becomes a united conference, or they break apart and everyone just goes into self-preservation mode," the aide said.
The most recent national poll showed Republicans trailing Democrats in a generic ballot matchup by eighteen points, the same margin by which Democrats led the week before the 2006 election. A top aide to one GOP congressman said he was taking solace from Republicans who had been around during the fallout from Watergate.
Every Republican, regardless of allegiance to Boehner or Cole, just wants to get through the rough seas. But few have a false sense of hope. Said the leadership aide: "The question is, do we get through it in the next five, six months, or is it going to be a longer process?" Results in Mississippi on Tuesday could provide an answer on a national level.
MAVERICK VOINOVICH COULD BE PROBLEMATIC FOR MCCAIN
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS Associated Press Writer
Published on Wednesday May 07, 2008
John McCain clearly can't count on Ohio's liberal U.S. senator to help him win the presidency. But can he count on the maverick Republican one?
It's a question McCain doesn't need to be asking himself about a political ally in a state that's a Republican prerequisite for winning the White House.
The ally is George Voinovich, the long popular senior senator and former governor who's also among a diminished number of Ohio Republicans holding statewide offices, including the U.S. Senate seat snatched by Democrat Sherrod Brown.
Voinovich has always kept his own counsel within the Republican party. He blocked President Bush's U.N. ambassador nominee, suggested raising taxes to pay for the war in Iraq and hurricane relief and opposed Bush's 2003 tax cuts.
And Voinovich hasn't been much use to the McCain campaign recently.
Contrast the two senators' comments during the April 8 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
Here's McCain: "Today it is possible to talk with real hope and optimism about the future of Iraq and the outcome of our efforts there."
Here's Voinovich, talking about the war's cost: "We're kind of bankrupting this country. We're eating our seed corn."
Then the kicker: "In terms of this administration, we've got lots of problems around the world."
Ouch. Not exactly what the expected Republican nominee wants to hear from a GOP colleague about the Republican president he's trying to succeed.
Or how about this policy difference: In February, McCain pledged on national television that he would not raise taxes as president.
In March, without mentioning McCain by name, Voinovich said anyone who tells Americans their federal taxes aren't going up "isn't being truthful."
Then there's damning by faint praise. When Voinovich endorsed McCain on Feb. 7, after Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, it was with this less than glowing assessment: "You are never going to get a perfect candidate."
Just three days earlier, Voinovich told The Cincinnati Enquirer that McCain has a major shortcoming in his lack of management experience.
McCain's campaign downplayed any disagreements between the two. "They see eye to eye on the bigger picture of how best to move America forward," said spokesman Jeff Sadosky.
Asked about Voinovich's comment that the administration has caused problems, Sadosky said:
"John McCain was a leading critic of failed policies in Iraq and worked hard to bring about the (U.S. troops) surge, which is showing real progress in Iraq."
Voinovich spokesman Chris Paulitz said Voinovich will do whatever is needed to elect McCain.
"You have two distinguished statesmen who have been in politics and who have served their constituents for decades," Paulitz said. "When you have people with those kind of resumes, there's always going to be differences."
Voinovich's positions on taxes and the war's cost probably ring true with many Ohio voters, said Grant Neeley, a political science professor at the University of Dayton.
"He may well not be asked to do a whole lot by the McCain campaign in Ohio," Neeley said.
AP INTERVIEW: Democratic leader says party strongest ever
4/30/2008, 1:35 a.m. EDT
By STEPHEN MAJORS
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Democratic Party is the strongest state party organization in the country, and it will help Democrats take the Ohio House and the presidency this fall, its chairman said.
Chris Redfern's party looks nothing — either in its appearance or its results — like its feeble predecessors, whose candidate for governor won barely 25 percent of the vote in 1994 and who saw no wins for statewide positions other than the Ohio Supreme Court for the next 11 years.
Before the fast-talking, sound-bite rich state lawmaker took the helm, the state party was a sporadic operation confined to the pockets of Ohio that would never think about voting Republican.
"Democrats have worked very hard at losing over the course of the last 16 years," Redfern said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Since Redfern took the helm in 2005, five Democrats have been elected to statewide positions, the party has raised over $30 million, and it has grown from having six employees to about 150. It has also moved into fancy new digs downtown.
It was a momentous change caused by Redfern's leadership, but also by circumstance and competition. As he goes into a second term as chairman, Redfern is focused on winning the presidential election in Ohio — but also on getting the up-and-coming Democrats who will one day lead the party elected on the local level.
Redfern has taken a philosophy championed by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and adopted it to the state level, putting Democrats in front of Ohio voters for every race.
"We're going to go at my Republican friends in every ZIP code in the state," Redfern said. "Because if you live in Batavia, you deserve a Democrat representing you. If you live in Cleveland, you deserve a Democrat representing you."
Democrats were handed a golden opportunity by Republicans, whose longtime dominance in state politics was unhinged by corruption scandals that went as high as former Gov. Bob Taft.
Redfern said he will make sure that albatross continues to hang from Republicans' necks.
"The one thing Kevin DeWine will always have is Bob Taft," Redfern said about his fellow House lawmaker and deputy chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. "And the one thing Chris Redfern will always have is Ted Strickland. I like my chances."
Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett said Redfern has "high hopes but low expectations."
He pointed to problems in the Ohio House and Senate, including troubles for Senate minority leader Ray Miller of Columbus, who was fined by the state Elections Commission earlier this year for failing to properly file 12 campaign finance reports since 2002.
In 2006, Democrats picked up seven seats in the House, but just one Ohio Senate seat.
"He's got plenty of problems here and I think he's just trying to deflect attention from those problems now," Bennett said of Redfern.
For a long time on the state and national levels, Republicans showed Democrats how a powerful political organization could work. While the Ohio Democratic Party was mired in weakness, Ohio Republicans had one of the strongest state parties in the country. Republicans promoted their ideas and their candidates, and attacked Democrats, long before Election Day; Democrats simply mobilized a few months before the election.
John Kerry and the state Democratic Party had a narrow view of where he should campaign in the state — and ended up beating President Bush in just 16 of Ohio's 88 counties. Under Redfern the party has taken a much more expansive view of its clout.
"If John Kerry sends a message by only focusing on 16 urban counties, that message trickles down to voters on the ground in places like rural southwest and southeast Ohio," Redfern said. "And that message is: 'I guess the Democrats don't care about us.' So not only does John Kerry lose, but the poor guy running for county commissioner gets beat as well."
The result is Ohio's "88-county strategy," mirrored on the national Democratic Party's "50-state strategy." Resources are pumped into every location with the hopes of establishing at least a minor level of Democratic influence, even in Republican strongholds.
Redfern said he will use his experience getting elected in heavily Republican northwest Ohio to help other Democrats running in Republican areas. The party will stand by candidates at the township level, sending the message that the party will also be behind them as they make their way up the ladder, Redfern said.
"He's done an excellent job at reaching out and rebuilding the party from the grass roots up better than any party chairman before him, and the results speak for themselves," said Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.
Redfern said the central message for the 2008 campaign on all levels will be the economy.
"Republicans are more likely to talk about market forces," he said. "As if market forces run the state's economy, as if market forces shape tax policy, as if market forces are looking out for the weakest among us. The fact of the matter is we can provide progressive leadership in this state."
McCain trip spurs sparring
Dems, GOP debate how candidate would help Valley
By STEPHEN ORAVECZ Tribune Chronicle POSTED: April 22, 2008
http://www.tribune-chronicle.com/page/content.detail/id/504386.html?showlayout=0
Sen. John McCain is not due in Youngstown until noon today, but both parties on Monday got a head start in trying to define the Republican presidential candidate and explain how his policies would affect the area.
Ohio’s Democratic Party unveiled a radio ad called ‘‘More of the Same,’’ which claims McCain’s policies are nothing but a continuation of President Bush’s policies that have failed the Mahoning Valley and the state.
‘‘We are not waiting for the nominee. We are proactively defining McCain early on our terms,’’ said Doug Kelly, executive director of the Ohio Democratic Party, which is paying for the ad.
The Democrats’ ad starts by saying after months of ignoring worries about the economy, McCain ‘‘is trying to make up for his mistake by making lots of big promises.’’ It is playing off a McCain ad that says he has ‘‘big ideas for serious problems.’’
The McCain campaign responded in a release that the ad mischaracterized the candidate’s “support of smaller government and pro-growth tax cuts for middle class Ohioans.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Niles, said in a telephone news conference that ‘‘McCain’s big ideas sound familiar because they are exact replicas of the failed Bush policies.’’ Ryan blames those ‘‘supply side, neoconservative’’ policies with the high cost of tuition, gasoline and health care.
Ryan said the Arizona senator is ‘‘completely out of touch with voters in the Mahoning Valley.’’
State Rep. Kevin DeWine, deputy chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, held his own telephone conference to say McCain will be in Youngstown to talk about his solutions ‘‘to fix what’s going on with Ohio’s economy.’’
He was joined by Republican National Committee Co-Chair Jo Ann Davidson, an Ohio native, who said McCain will cut taxes, not raise them. McCain would eliminate Congressional earmarks, repeal the alternative minimum tax which she said affects many average taxpayers, cut corporate taxes to stimulate the economy and promote research.
DeWine said Democrats are to blame for the Mahoning Valley’s economic doldrums. He said Democrats have dominated Youngstown politics for decades, yet the city suffers when it comes to economic progress.
DeWine and Davidson compared McCain to the two Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
Davidson said, ‘‘I like our chances against either one. Basically they believe the same thing: raise taxes, more government and increased spending. That’s not the answer to stimulate the economy in Ohio.’’
Free trade is another point where the two parties disagreed.
DeWine said McCain has backed free trade for a long time and will ‘‘ask the Democratic nominee to engage in some straight talk about trade in the state of Ohio.’’
DeWine said free trade is vitally important and 800,000 jobs rely on trade. He said McCain understands some areas have been hurt, but ‘‘lots of areas are thriving in Ohio because of trade’’ and isolationist rhetoric does nothing to help those who lost jobs or to pull the economy out of the doldrums.
Ryan said to ‘‘soft pedal’’ the effects of NAFTA shows ‘‘how out of touch McCain is’’ and his ‘‘lack of understanding what happened in places like the Mahoning Valley.
Far from some ‘‘adverse effects,’’ Ryan said areas like the Valley have been ‘‘absolutely devastated’’ by NAFTA.
Both sides said they are trying to reach beyond their traditional base.
DeWine said he sees ‘‘real opportunity’’ to bring moderate and conservative ‘‘Reagan Democrats” from the Valley into the Republican fold behind McCain, who DeWine described as a ‘‘strong conservative.’’
McCain's non-headlines
Cleveland Plain Dealer Openers Blog
Posted by Mark Naymik April 23, 2008 12:23PM
Republican presidential candidate John McCain's trip to Youngstown Tuesday earned him wide attention, especially for his pro-trade talk in an area hit hard by job losses blamed on free trade.
Here are a few parts of the trip that won less notice.
To underscore the importance of technology and free trade on the U.S. economy during his town hall-style meeting at Youngstown State University, McCain introduced one of his top economic advisors, Carly Fiorina, former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard. She's become a top surrogate on the issue and is considered by some pundits to be a potential running mate (albeit a long shot) or cabinet member.
During the question-and-answer portion of the talk, McCain misspoke when he said the cost of a barrel of oil had just risen to a record $218. The friendly crowd didn't groan in horror or correct him.
"I think what is happening to the price of oil is devastating to our economy and is a huge transfer of wealth to countries that don't like the U.S. very much," he said. He later correctly said oil prices had risen to about $118 per barrel.
McCain, who has said he will rely on media coverage more than paid commercials to reach voters, fielded questions from reporters for 10 minutes after his town hall meeting. He also offered The Plain Dealer an interview on his bus, better known as the Straight Talk Express (which was actually a white cargo van on Tuesday). But the trip didn't last much longer than a roller coaster ride at Cedar Point. The van traveled all of about a mile, from the campus to a nearby company. And he spent the entire time talking to another reporter on his cell phone.
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