Are you a 50-state “attack ’em where they live” strategist? Or should we carefully choose a few GOP strongholds while reserving money for close contests around the country?
Whatever your strategy, we need to pick up 15 seats. And we can’t afford to lose a single seat in 2006. ( POLL BELOW.)
“Liberal activists want Democrats to storm congressional races, even on GOP’s turf,” writes Ron Brownstein in today’s LAT (sub. free).
An array of liberal Internet activists is urging Democrats to vastly expand the 2006 congressional battlefield by recruiting and funding challengers in dozens of districts that have been virtually conceded to the GOP, like the one represented by Pitts.
Those calls are drawing new energy from Democrat Paul Hackett’s narrow defeat this month in a special election in an Ohio district where Republicans usually romp. Hackett’s showing “proved that you could build the party if you pay attention to every race,” said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the popular liberal website the Daily Kos.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has responded to the pressure from liberal activists by saying he intends next year to fund Democratic challengers for 50 Republican-held seats, about double the number the campaign committee backed in 2004.
But the committee, and many leading Democratic strategists, say that funding a wider circle of challengers in heavily Republican areas would divert money better spent on districts more closely balanced between the parties.
More BELOW from Brownstein — including a quote from MyDD‘s Jerome Armstrong, and Mark Gersh, a strategist, calling us “crazy” (!) — and a clip from today’s WaPo piece on values versus issues:
Mark Gersh almost calls us crazy!
Mark Gersh, a longtime strategist for Democrats, said the liberal websites and blogs were right that the party needed to expand the battlefield for House seats.
“But to expand it into districts where [Democrats] have no chance of winning is absolutely crazy,” he said. … […]
In an article last week, Jerome Armstrong, co-founder of the popular liberal website MyDD.com, called on Democrats to run “Hackett-like operations” against every Republican House member.
But Gersh argued that it would be a mistake to build a strategy around the Ohio example, because special elections often produced surprising results that didn’t necessarily offer clues about the general election to follow.
But a WaPo story warns that Democrats face a tough fight because cultural values trump issues:
Dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq, the economy and rising health care costs might spell trouble for Republicans, but a study by Democratic strategists warns that their party’s failure to connect with voters on cultural issues could prevent Democratic candidates from reaping gains in upcoming national elections. …
The LAT story goes on:
Diverting money to long-shot contests is “what the Republicans would want to see,” Gersh said. “This kind of craziness would exactly play into Republican hands.”
Advocates of the expand-the-map strategy counter that writing off so many districts carries its own financial cost.
Walter Ludwig, a former aide in Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, has calculated that Democrats failed to mount serious challenges to about 120 House Republicans in each of the last three elections — and that those Republicans contributed $63 million to colleagues in closer races.
“The fact that we are basically giving up on a quarter of the House in every cycle is just appalling,” said Ludwig, who has formed a political action committee called Project 90 to support Democratic challenges in heavily Republican districts.
“Campaign Battlefield May Grow,” LAT, Aug. 10, 2005
