Those of you who frequent the more intensively political regions of the Democratic blogosphere undoubtedly know about Paul Hackett‘s campaign in a special congressional election in Ohio, and his impressive 48 percent showing yesterday. It doesn’t require spin to call this a large moral victory, given the overwhelmingly Republican nature of the district and the difficulty of mounting a successful insurgency in a special election, where turnout is usually abominable. In terms of its broader implications, the result is being widely interpreted as (a) a very good sign for Ohio Democrats looking forward to ’06; (b) a very good sign that Democrats nationally can compete in very red districts in ’06, with the right kind of candidates and committed support; and (c) a vindication of the power of the “netroots,” which raised a lot of money for Hackett and all but coerced the DCCC into a serious effort in this race. Taking these interpretations in order:(a) Absolutely, Ohio Democrats can and should have a spectacular year in 2006. The state’s entrenched GOP leadership, which controls all aspects of state government, has thoroughly worn out its welcome with Buckeye voters, combining bad policies and rampant corruption on a scale that seems to expand endlessly. And Ohio Democrats have properly made reform their mantra. Polls consistently show either of the current Democratic candidates for Governor, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman or U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, with sizeable leads over the most likely Republican candidates. Sen. Mike DeWine’s increasingly obvious vulnerability will almost certainly attract an A-list opponent in the next few months. The legislature is poised to flip. It’s all blue skies at this point.(b) It’s trickier to assume the Ohio Special is a 2006 bellweather nationally, though I obviously hope it is. As I recall, Dems did pretty well in Specials in 2003 and 2004 as well; Stephanie Herseth won in a South Dakota at-large district that was nearly as “red” as Ohio-2. On the other hand, the Hackett race was much more of a referendum on GOP policies in Columbus and in Washington than those earlier Specials. The real question is whether Dems nationally can win big with the kind of reform/anti-corruption message that worked well in Ohio. Yes, Ohio presents an especially lurid example of the consequences of total Republican control, but Ohio GOPers do live in the same debased moral and ideological universe as their brethren elsewhere, especially in Washington. So it’s definitely worth a try in ’06.(c) The “netroots” deserve a lot of credit for making the Hackett race competitive financially and organizationally, and for drawing larger attention to it. But obviously, a quasi-nationalized Special Election is an almost ideal playing-field for netroots-based fundraising and organizing. Replicating their disproportionate Ohio-2 impact in a national campaign with hundreds of targets and a plethora of local factors won’t be easy. The best sign, IMO, is that all this excitement was generated on behalf of a candidate nicely tailored to a “red” district, whose policy views probably were at odds with those of a lot of the folks generating the excitement and the cash. And I gather the national groups and bloggers involved in Hackett’s campaign let the candidate and his staff call all the important shots. In any event, it was a great effort in tough terrain, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing again soon from Paul Hackett.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 25: Can “Reverse Coattails” Help Biden Win?
A relatively new term is popping up in articles on 2024 strategy for Democrats that I explained and explored at New York:
When you have a presidential candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm in the party base, it’s natural to look for some external stimulation. In the case of Joe Biden, the most obvious source of a 2024 boost is the deep antipathy that nearly all Democrats, many independents, and even a sizable sliver of Republicans feel toward Donald Trump. But in case that’s not enough, Team Biden is looking at another avenue of opportunity, albeit a risky one: the possibility of “reverse coattails” taking him past Trump on a wave of turnout that incidentally benefits the president of the United States.
That’s not the conventional wisdom, as the term reverse coattails makes clear: Normally, it’s the head of the ticket from whom all blessings flow, which makes sense insofar as presidential-election turnout dwarfs that of off-year and midterm contests in no small part because people who don’t necessarily care about the identity of their senator or governor are galvanized by the battle for the White House. But as Russell Berman of The Atlantic explains, this year is different:
“Faith in the reverse-coattails effect is fueling Democratic investments in down-ballot races and referenda. In North Carolina, for example, party officials hope that a favorable matchup in the governor’s race — Democratic attorney general Josh Stein is facing Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who has referred to homosexuality as ‘filth’ and compared abortion to slavery — could help Biden carry a state that Trump narrowly won twice. Democrats are also trying to break a Republican supermajority in the legislature, where they are contesting nearly all 170 districts. ‘The bottom of the ticket is absolutely driving engagement and will for all levels of the ballot,’ Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me.”
In other states, high-profile ballot measures, particularly those aimed at restoring the abortion rights denied by conservative courts and Republican lawmakers, may generate bottoms-up enthusiasm benefiting Biden and embattled Democratic Senate candidates as well:
“In key states across the country, Democrats and their allies are planting ballot initiatives both to protect reproductive rights where they are under threat and to turn out voters in presidential and congressional battlegrounds. They’ve already placed an abortion measure on the ballot in Florida, where the state supreme court upheld one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on the procedure, and they plan to in Arizona, whose highest court recently ruled that the state could enforce an abortion ban first enacted during the Civil War. Democrats are also collecting signatures for abortion-rights measures in Montana, home to a marquee Senate race, and in Nevada, a presidential swing state that has a competitive Senate matchup this year.”
Berman notes that the reverse-coattails strategy is unproven. Voters, for example, who attracted to the polls by abortion ballot measures don’t always follow the partisan implications of their votes when it comes to candidate preferences. Red-hot down-ballot races are probably more reliable in attracting voters who can be expected to follow the party line to the top of the ticket. A positive precedent can be found in Georgia’s coordinated effort of 2020, when a powerful campaign infrastructure built by Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock clearly helped maximize Biden’s vote; the 46th president won the state by less than 12,000. Perhaps a strong Senate candidate like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey could help Biden survive as well. As for the possible effect of ballot measures, it was once generally accepted that in 2004 a GOP strategy of encouraging anti-same-sex-marriage ballot measures helped boost conservative turnout in battleground states like Ohio, enabling George W. Bush’s narrow victory (though there are analysts who argue against that hypothesis). One reason it may work better today is the increasing prevalence of straight-ticket voting and the heavy emphasis of Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot on the kind of support for abortion rights that should help them take advantage of ballot-measure-generated turnout.
We won’t get a good idea of how either reverse-coattails strategy is working until late in the 2024 campaign when it becomes possible to measure new voter registrations, screen registered voters for their likelihood to participate in the election, and assess states where down-ballot contests are turning into a Democratic blowout. Team Biden would be wise to do everything in its power to lift the president’s popularity and build a favorability advantage over Trump that can reduce the number of “double haters” likely to stay home or vote for a change in the party management of Washington.