This past week 5^th Congressional District hopeful Luke Messer held a press conference with only (16) sixteen people and two children present and announced he had hundreds and hundreds of supporters. Now I looked down the list and it is full of insiders, former State Party employees, former Mitch for Governor Campaign staffers, a few state legislators and a number of others.

Let’s take a look at Luke Messer, he was once the Executive Director of the State of Indiana Republican Party, a former Legislator turned lobbyist and a former partner at the law firm Ice Miller. Most of his supporters are people who used to work for him and with him at Ice Miller and the Indiana State Republican Party. This is full of insiders and most of them don’t even live in the 5^th Congressional District and want a voice in this race?

After Luke’s press release this past week Brose McVey went on the attack for this “insider” and buddy buddy system” and he asked the voters if they have “Had enough”? He states this from his recent press release:

“Now, I don’t have any trouble on the personal level with these guys or their backers.  I know them, like them, respect their service. But, if you are like me, you’ve had enough of the insider baseball, the money politics and the buddy-buddy system!

I have to agree with him on this, I’m not saying that Luke Messer is a bad person, I believe in his family values and his willingness to serve his country, but when you leave office to become a lobbyist at a huge Indianapolis Law firm and want to come back into office and have your buddies back you….that concerns voters and I personally think they are tired of it.

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Only three seats away from having a majority in the state House of Representatives, Republicans have fielded a team of candidates that have some potential in southwest Indiana.  The area is culturally conservative in its makeup and is far from being a hopelessly liberal Democrat region.  Evidence of this can be found by looking at some of the Democrats who currently represent the area in the House.  They are not overtly liberal and on the spectrum of their own party they may be considered somewhat more fiscally responsible than most.

Yet not being terribly bad does not mean you are exactly good, and what Indiana needs is good leadership.  Over time the party of government, even if some members believe in growing it slower than their more progressive party compatriots, will take our state down the wrong road.  Taking the middle ground is not the same as taking the high ground and doing nothing wrong is no substitute for doing what is right.

The Evansville Courier Press, not a favorite of some Republicans in times past, has a good article on the four Republican House candidates who are challenging four incumbent Democrats in southwest Indiana.  With a variety of experience and seniority in the statehouse, all of these incumbents do share one thing in common: their districts have been carried at least once by Mitch Daniels.  It is ironic then that in defending the idea that these legislators are not as vulnerable as some currently estimate them to be, the local Democrat Party chairman takes a direct swipe at Gov. Daniels.

“The governor has his agenda, and he’s upset that he can’t get it passed.  I suppose he has a few more highways he wants to give away, and the Democratic House is stopping him from doing that.”

(Read More Below the Fold)

(This post was originally written by Michael Davis, Vice President for Political Affairs at the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and originally posted the Chamber blog.  It is Part Two to his first post on repeat candidates entitled “Repeat Candidates Tend to be Losing Candidates in Indiana (Unless You’re a Rock Star)”.  This has been reposted with permission.)

In a previous post, we showed how difficult it was for a repeat candidate to win in his/her second attempt at an office. Since there was so much interesting data on this topic, we decided to turn this into several posts. This second post will refine the original target audience of 81 repeat candidates down to 32 repeat candidates who ran in two straight general elections with the opponent in the second general election being an incumbent.

From this more narrow group of 32 repeat candidates, only 1 (3.1%) was successful in his bid to become a state legislator — and that was the Elvis impersonating rock star Bruce Borders in HD45.

In addition, nearly two-thirds of these 32 candidates performed worse in their second attempt compared to their first attempt.  21 of these 32 candidates (65.6%) received a lower vote percentage in their second attempt while only 11 (34.4%) performed better than their first attempt.

In contrast, first-time state legislative candidates who were facing an incumbent won 5.7% of the time (18 out of 316).  Nine of these were House Democratic candidates, eight were House Republican candidates and one was a Senate Republican candidate.

It is also interesting to note that out of these 17 first-time House candidates who defeated an incumbent, the Democratic candidates in those nine districts have won all 17 (100%) of their contests since first winning the seat from a Republican, while the Republican candidates in those eight districts have won five of 15 (33%) of their contests since first winning the seat from a Democrat.

The bottom line here remains the same:

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I was teaching a candidate school recently in Minnesota and wandered into some dangerous territory. Our firm is often hired to do political education and one of our bigger clients is American Majority We teach several sessions that focus on Communications, Campaign Plans, Fundraising, Social Media and Grassroots Organizing (all ppts are available to download and steal here SlideShare )

The last session of the day focuses on Grassroots Organizing Online and Offline. One of the themes I present is how most grassroots movements are viral and require a “host”. I then go on to say that Ron Paul was too weak of a “host” to carry his “movement”. Full disclosure – I was a mail vendor for Fred Thompson’s campaign (that is a whole other discussion) and I did not support Ron Paul. Having said that, I was constantly intrigued by his supporters and his “movement”. I work in the business of political campaigns and like to think I am a student of how they work on a logistics and business end. So for the purposes of this post lets skip by issues and just talk nuts and bolts.

First I have to take a dig at my strident Libertarian friends who loved Dr. Paul – learn a lesson from him

1. Run as a Libertarian for Congress and lose
2. Run as a Republican for Congress and win
3. Run as a Republican for President and get to take the stage, be in the debates and air your issues

(**CORRECTION** thanks to my observant friend Steve from Minnesota I stand corrected. Dr. Paul was Republican Member of Congress from 1976 to ‘85. He then ran for President in 1988 as a Libertarian. He then returned to Congress in 1996 as a Republican. I was wrong and I repent. However I think it would be fair to say that he ran for Congress in 1996 as Republican because he knew he would not win if he ran as a Libertarian.) Pretty safe to say no one is accusing Dr. Paul of “selling out” even though he ran as a Republican. I can already feel the hate that point is going to draw…

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(This post was originally written by Michael Davis, Vice President for Political Affairs at the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and originally posted the Chamber blog.  This has been reposted with permission.)

Repeat Candidates Tend to be Losing Candidates in Indiana (Unless You’re a Rock Star)

For a number of years, I have had a strong bias against challenger candidates who lose and then run again in the next election cycle. Some of you have probably heard me say this whenever one of these repeat candidates makes that second attempt. For a repeat candidate to be successful, there must be something significantly different the second time around for that candidate to have a chance to win. This difference must fit into one of these categories: 1) the second attempt occurred after redistricting and the district is now different; 2) the race was an open seat race during the second try (as opposed to challenging an incumbent); or 3) something major changes the perception of the incumbent before the rematch, such as a scandal or the incumbent being clearly out of step with the district due to votes cast.

Now, thanks to some excellent research by IBRG manager of political affairs Chase Downham, this theory, and my long-time bias, have some numbers to back it up. Over the last 10 years, there have been 81 candidates (we have only included Democratic and Republican candidates) who have lost and then made a second attempt for the General Assembly in the next election cycle.

From this group of 81 repeat candidates, only 8 (9.9%) were successful in their bid to become a state legislator. Let us take a look at these 8 successful repeat candidates and see how many had something significantly different in their second attempt:

• In 2000, Don Lehe narrowly lost to incumbent Claire Leuck in HD25. After the 2001 redistricting, Lehe defeated George Baranowski in the open HD15 contest of 2002.
• In 2000, Terri Austin lost to incumbent Jack Lutz in HD36. After the 2001 redistricting, Austin defeated Andy Kincaid in the open HD36 contest of 2002. Following the redistricting, HD36 changed significantly and incumbent Lutz was moved to HD35.
• In 2002, Joe Micon challenged incumbent Sue Scholer and lost in HD26. Following Scholer’s retirement, HD26 was an open seat in 2004 and Micon defeated Connie Basham.
• In 2002, incumbent Vern Tincher was defeated by Brooks LaPlante in HD46. In 2004, LaPlante initially did not seek re-election following a $10,000 fine from the Indiana Election Commission, but was placed on the ballot near general election day. Following a court case, Jeff Lee was removed from the ballot and LaPlante inserted. Tincher then defeated LaPlante.
• In 2004, appointed state senator Nancy Dembowski was defeated in the SD05 contest. In 2006, Dembowski ran for the House against incumbent Steve Heim in HD17 and won.
• In 2004, incumbent Ron Herrell was defeated by John Smith in HD30. In 2006, Ron Herrell defeated John Smith in a recount. The significant difference here is that labor unions played a major role in 2006 after helping the Kerry effort out of state in 2004.
• In 2006, John Barnes challenged incumbent Larry Buell in HD89. In 2008, following Buell’s retirement, Barnes won the HD89 open seat.

Now, for that one, lone exception among the group of 81 repeat candidates:

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Alicia Davis is a principal with TargetPoint Consulting. TargetPoint is a leader in the field of micro targeting and, unlike so many pretenders out there, has written most of the conventional wisdom on how to do advanced market segmentation at the individual level.

Alicia joined Target Point Consulting from the Republican National Committee where she most recently served as Regional Political Director. Prior to returning to the Republican National Committee, Alicia served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Communications at the United States Department of Commerce.

Leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Alicia served as the Director for the Presidential Coordinated Fund for the Republican National Committee. Prior to her return to Washington for the fall campaign, Alicia worked in Manhattan as the Republican National Convention’s Director for External Relations.

From 2001 to 2003 Alicia served as Associate Political Director in the White House Office of Political Affairs. Before moving to Washington, Alicia worked for the Bush/Cheney 2000 presidential campaign and in Massachusetts for Governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci.

As my main man Ron Burgundy would say “She is…kind of a big deal.”

CF – What campaign on the GOP side showed real innovation in fundraising?

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The ongoing RNC Chairman debate is interesting to watch. I have been an employee and vendor to the RNC and really think there are a lot of folks with a lot of opinions, both good and bad, about the RNC. What seems to be in short supply is people who actually know what goes on inside the building. That will be another post…

One of my favorite parts is the Victory Department. What is the Victory Department? In a nutshell, they are the folks that plan, train and monitor GOTV and AB/EV programs around the country. Notice I did not say implementation, that is for the campaigns to do. Michael Beach has been the National Victory Director for the last two years. Michael got his start in Ohio, the mother of Presidents…and great political staff, as a field staffer he then moved to Nevada where he headed up GOTV and AB Chase programs for the State Party. In 07 he was brought in to take a hard look at the metrics of what we were (and were not) accomplishing with our voter contact activities. Few people in the building have killed, or tried to kill, more “sacred cows” in their time than Michael Beach. Here is the results of our chat.

CF – What were some of the biggest changes in application and technology that our side saw when compared to 2004 and 2006?

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Part 2 of our series was with Erin VanSickle. She is the communications director for the Republican Party of Florida. She served as the RPOF’s press secretary during the ’06 election cycle and served as press secretary for the Florida Senate Majority Office prior to that.

Florida GOP’s Lessons from the Trenches

CF Tell me about Florida?

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As promised I am bringing you part 1 of our series on Lessons from the 2008 trenches. Our first contributor is Ben Porritt. Ben served as the national spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign and a co-founder of Outside Eyes strategy group in Southern California.

CF What campaign on the GOP side showed real innovation in fundraising?

BP – Although mainstream pundits never took Ron Paul seriously, the amount of money he raised as a dark horse candidate was outstanding. The disappointing factor in giving this award to Ron Paul is that our party never took him seriously. Ron Paul brought a fundraising engine to the GOP side that had only been replicated by Governor Dean in 2004. The difference is that the Democrat party took notice and invited him in to help with the revolution. Our party made Ron Paul look like a fringe candidate who offered very little. Maybe I am wrong on this but this is how it looked from the outside—which is where I was until July.

CF What campaign on the GOP side had the most effective use of New Media?

BP – Although we were overshadowed by Barack Obama’s $600 million force and unlimited text messaging, the McCain campaign had an amazing online team which made up one of our bright spots.

Stephan Dinan of the Washington Times posted a story in March crediting McCain’s blogger outreach as the simple aspect that kept the Senator alive during tumultuous times. During biweekly conference calls with McCain, bloggers provided the Senator the only opportunity outside of staged events to deliver his message. After the implosion the mainstream media was busy asking questions regarding financial longevity and writing the Maverick’s obituary. McCain found solace with bloggers who were interested in talking policy, Iraq, and Senator McCain’s favorite pork-barrel spending.

McCain treated the blogosphere not as an addendum to the mainstream media, but a completely separate application that offered him the opportunity to have a conversation that didn’t concentrate on soundbites.

Throughout the campaign, during the debates, and conventions our new media apparatus was aggressive and in my opinion better and more active than any other GOP or Dem candidate running.

CF What campaign on the GOP side showed the greatest comeback?

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