2005's Top Story: The National Democratic Party Discovers the Illinois 6th District.
This was originally composed for Eric Zorn's roundup of Blogginois year-in-reviews... or years-in-review... or something...
The National Democratic Party Discovers the Illinois 6th District.
For a Democrat living in the 6th District, like me for instance, the political story of the year is that the Democratic Party's leadership have focused their brilliance and cunning on our district. But while that has been big news in the district, it has been something less than good news for the district's long-time Democratic activists.
In early 2005, 6th District Dems heard rumors that the DCCC was taking a serious interest in the 6th District race. Naturally, we expected that the DCCC would get behind Christine Cegelis, the Democratic candidate that garnered 44% in the last election. But the DCCC insisted on being coy. They told the Cegelis supporters that they would have to raise $100,000 by June 30 FEC filing and then the DCCC would support Christine's ongoing grassroots campaign for the 6th District seat.
But while the DC Democratic leaders were assuring the Cegelis team that it would have their backing if it met their fundraising benchmarks, they were simultaneously undermining the Cegelis campaign by courting other potential candidates to run in the 6th District Democratic primary. The DCCC leadership was sending feelers out to multi-millionaire Democrats who would be able to self-fund their own campaigns.
And what happened when the Cegelis team met the fundraising goal set by the DCCC? The DCCC raised the fundraising target.
The Cegelis team was now told that, because the Republican's Crown Prince, Peter Roskam, had raised vast sums, they would have to prove themselves by meeting a new goal in the next fund-raising cycle. Never mind that Roskam raised so much money only because the House Republican leadership -- including Majority Leader Tom "Mugshot" Delay and Speaker Denny "Denny Boy" Hastert -- was fundraising for him. And, of course, the Republican corporate PACS raised money for Prince Pete too.
But while the GOP culture club of corruption and cronyism was lining up behind Roskam, the DC Dems were letting big donors know that they were looking at fielding another candidate for the primary. That's right true believer, just when the DCCC told the Cegelis team that they needed to raise unprecidented sums of Democratic money, they let big money donors know that they were considering fielding another candidate. Well, you know what happened next -- the big Democratic donors decided to keep their metaphorical powder dry and Christine's fundraising calls suddenly fell on deaf ears.
And the DCCC leadership then turned around and used that fundraising drought -- if you can call raising over $160, 000 by Sep. 30 a "drought" -- as their excuse reason to parachute a candidate in from outside the district.
And the 6th District will only get more attention from the national leadership of both parties in the New Year. It'll sure be interesting.
13 comments:
The Duckworth move will backfire.
Thanks, anon, for that insightful bit of analysis. Kudos for taking the time to put that together...
If Duckworth wins the primary, I see a lot of Democrats voting for Roskum... just to put Rahm Emmanuel in his place.
Rahm Emmanuel is a sleaze. He took money from the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO) connected to Heroin dealers and Hired Trucks.
Rahm is cynical, power hungry, a liar and a dirty trickster
Perfect for Congress and Chicago
No wonder he did well under Clinto and Daley backed him
In his second-quarter filing, Roskam raised 400K. Cegelis raised 60K while spending 45K, and just broke 100K for the cycle. At the end of the second quarter, Cegelis had a COH deficit, relative to Roskam, of 330K, after he'd only been fundraising for one quarter and she'd been fundraising for two. Are you really arguing that under those circumstances, the DCCC was wrong to ask Cegelis to demonstrate that she could step up her game? Are you also arguing that raising 160K by the end of the third quarter with 50K cash on hand is seriously competitive with a candidate who raised 680K by the end of the third quarter with 500K cash on hand? Really?
-Mark
yes, if they froze her fundraising
Duckworth did NO fundraising
and is a cynical attempt (and seen through by grassroots Dems in DuPage) to exploit a war hero/victim that lives OUTSIDE the district, had NO Community nor political involvement and did NO fundraising
Help her fundraise
mark, here's the problem with your reasoning:
first of all, it neglects the actual fundraising environment here in chicago on the democratic side. rahm himself is the biggest factor in preventing democrats from raising adequate sums in this area. rod also deserves a mention, but rahm is raising lots of money for the dccc out of this area.
that's fine, but let's not pretend that it doesn't affected other people's fundraising.
the second factor that must be accounted for is that rahm is telling people not to give money to cegelis. turning around and critizing her for not raising sufficient funds is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy. i don't think anyone would challenge that characterization of rahm emanuel.
finally, one must challenge the inference that democrats have to raise the same amounts of money as republicans in order to compete. not only is that untrue, but it's based on several false premises. raising unlimited amounts of money does not guarantee success and roskam had a reason to raise so much money immediately that cegelis never did: he wanted to intimidate potential republican challengers from entering the race. he was sucessful at that. you won't see cegelis trying to intimidate duckworth or scott from running, so she didn't have the same need to raise that kind of money.
cegelis did what she was asked to do, and that wasn't good enough. rahm thought she couldn't meet his challenge, but she proved better than he thought -- again. duckworth would have served us all better if she had stuck with her plan to run in the 10th. but i guess we have rahm to blame for that, as well.
Ok. So argument 1 is that it's Rahm Emanuel's fault, because he's raised so much money for the DCCC out of the Chicago area. I'd be interested in a cite for that proposition, but leave that for a moment. What about the fundraising of other Chicago area challengers since 2002, when Rahm first got involved with the DCCC? In '04, of course, there was Melissa Bean. By the end of '03, she'd raised less money than Cegelis has thus far (though not significantly so), but had a lot more COH thanks to her lower burn rate. And it certainly wasn't like Rahm prevented her from raising a whole lot more money in the rest of '04, nor since. (Note, of course, that in '02, Bean raised twice as much money as Cegelis did in '04). Note also that Tari Renner in IL-11 in '04 was able to raise significant sums of money (similar to Bean in '02) despite the influence of Rahm. In this cycle, the only other challenger who's been around for a significant period of time is John Pavich, also in IL-11. He's raised almost as much money in two quarters as Cegelis has in three, and as of 9/30/05, had twice as much COH, again thanks to his hugely lower burn rate. I confess I'm not convinced that Cegelis' fundraising troubles (especially the low COH and the high burn rate) can fully be laid at Rahm Emanuel's door.
Argument 2 is that Rahm is telling people not to give money to Cegelis, then criticizing Cegelis for poor numbers. I've seen this contention made several different places, yet haven't yet seen any supporting evidence be provided. I'm curious if any exists, and if it does, what that evidence is. I note that at least one of the blog posts cited in the original post mentioned that the DCCC was worried about Cegelis' fundraising as far back as Q2 of '05, which as far as I can tell is before Rahm allegedly tried to cut off Cegelis' fundraising. Leave aside, of course, the whole point that a candidate who only raises 150K in an election cycle to begin with (as Cegelis did in '04) had better be prepared to show that they can ramp up their fundraising a whole lot when they run again. Cegelis certainly didn't do that in the first two quarters of '05.
Argument 3: the problem of money. I never said that Democrats have to raise equal amounts of money to be competitive. It would probably be helpful, though, to avoid being outraised and spent by 5:1 or worse! Raising unlimited amounts of money doesn't guarantee success, that's true. But raising large amounts of money as a strong candidate sure helps one a whole lot, no? Just ask Howard Dean in 2003. And besides, it doesn't matter _why_ Roskam had to raise that money; the fact that he has done so and demonstrated the ability to do so means that he now has that money to use, which means that any Democratic candidate has to be able to raise serious money to keep up. Even if Cegelis didn't need to raise serious money to intimidate Duckworth or Scott from running, she did need it to stay within touching distance of Roskam.
Yes, Cegelis did what she was asked to do. She raised 100K by the end of Q2 (barely). And within a month of entering the race, Peter Roskam had outraised her at the end of Q2 by 300K, with a COH advantage at that point of 325K. The original post's argument (and I would surmise yours as well) is that it was unfair of Rahm and the DCCC to then ask Cegelis to step it up another notch, because Roskam had successfully moved the goalposts. I don't agree. It's all very well and good to say that you're running a grassroots campaign; but you have to either raise a lot of money from a lot of people and spend it efficiently, or run a good shoestring operation from small-dollar donations and spend your money extremely efficiently. Cegelis isn't raising enough money for the former (indeed, has never done so), and is spending money at way too high a clip (her burn rate in Q3 was 75%!) to do the latter. Why then is the DCCC unfair?
-Mark
i think that you've read more into what i've said than what i've said, but let's focus on melissa bean. rahm supported bean, and by all accounts that i've heard, helped her raise money in 2004 (after the primary). bean is a perfect example of how rahm can help a less than perfect candidate instead of standing in her way. the bean example suits my argument (in the precise meaning of the term) -- not your's, as near as i can tell.
but it's possible that the bean example doesn't support rahm's interests here, because bean's campaign combined ample fundraising and massive grassroots support. rahm seems interested in proving that money, not people, are what matters in winning campaigns and elections. money is something he can control.
as for the renner example, i was unaware that he was raised significant portions of his money from chicago, but i wasn't around that much. and i didn't even know that renner had raised more money than cegelis!
i have personally been told by several democrats who contribute significantly to progressive and democratic politics that they have been encouraged to put their money elsewhere by rahm and those associated with him. that's why i said that. i'm not an avid reader of blogs, so i can't say that i've seen the posts to which you seem to refer; i'm relying on my own contacts.
as for cegelis' fundraising prowess, one shouldn't expect her to do any better than she has until the primary is settled. as for relying on peter roskam's numbers, that is *very* misleading. roskam has had karl rove showing him the ropes in the fundraising department; christine does not. roskam needed extraordinary sums to dissuade some strong republicans from entering the primary; christine did not. roskam is not likely to continue to raise 600k every quarter -- and he didn't in the 3rd. roskam's money is something to be accounted for, but not to be feared. just ask rahm -- he spent millions in his first primary, but only by a mere whisker!
melissa bean's 04 fundraising is a much more appropriate comparison to what a *reasonable* person could expect from christine. rahm has chosen to shift the focus to other areas because he doesn't want christine in this race. it looks to me to be personal; it's too bad that other people have chosen to accept his 'frame' -- presumably because they don't know any better.
as for your comments about burn rate, i find it virtually meaningless. the dccc itself has had a higher burn rate than cegelis, and they should have been saving their money for the half-dozen or so highly vulnerable democratic incumbents (including melissa bean). have you seen any commercials on bean's behalf paid for by the dccc?
the cegelis' campaign spending is not out of line with what happens to challenger campaigns (and cegelis is *still* running a challengers campaign, because of rahm). i don't think anyone really argues that it is; it's just that rahm tries to frame this in a way that redirects your attention from electing good democrats to supporting his proteges. rahm didn't send christine, and who sentcha is still the most important thing to rahm. that's why he recruits republicans to run as democrats when there are perfectly good democrats already in congressional races! he sent them!
finally, i didn't say that the dccc is unfair, i said that rahm was a hypocrite. that's easy to stand by. the dccc can do what it wants, it will anyway...
I'm interested to know that you consider Melissa Bean to have been a less-than-perfect candidate; is there any particular reason you would view her that way? I'd also note that while Bean's pre-primary numbers in '04 are comparable to Cegelis' current figures, Bean was/is in a far more Republican district and was a much bigger underdog at the time than Cegelis is now, even against Phil Crane. (I note, for example, that Charlie Cook's House Race Chart didn't even mention the IL-08 race at this point last cycle). As best as I can tell from OpenSecrets, etc, Renner raised something near 20% of his money from Chicago, which considering that his district is nowhere near Chicago, doesn't seem too bad; I freely confess I'm not an expert in such matters.
I'm also curious about how Rahm has gone about discouraging donors. I don't have your contacts, so the question I still have is _when_ Rahm told people to avoid giving Cegelis money. I do think the timing would shed some light on the causation and motivation of such an action; it would seem a lot more defensible to me if it happened after some mediocre fundraising quarters without any prospect of improvement.
In terms of Cegelis' numbers, I think an interesting comparison is to other candidates in competitive open seat races. Cegelis is pretty close to last in Q3 numbers, had the highest Q3 burn rate by far of any candidate I looked at, has lower total '06 numbers than all but a couple of candidates who haven't been running as long, and has pretty much the lowest COH of any candidate I looked at. The candidate who came closest to her, Tinklenberg in MN-06, raised slightly more money in Q3 and overall, has a slightly lower burn rate, and has twice her COH. Remind me again why these numbers shouldn't matter? (As for nobody saying that Cegelis' spending and burn rate are out of line with other challenger/open seat campaigns, somebody had go tell ArchPundit that he doesn't count; he's been harping on this for months). I note on the subject of burn rate that for 2005, from what I could tell from the FEC website, Cegelis' overall burn rate is slightly higher, not lower than that of the DCCC. That this leaves Cegelis with 46K COH and the DCCC with 10M COH is of course only a minor detail.
I'm not saying that the viability of Cegelis' candidacy should be judged based on Peter Roskam's numbers. He raised more than virtually all of those open seat Democratic candidates I was talking about a second ago. So? I'm not saying she has to match those numbers; I'm saying that a) she ought to be able to stay within shouting distance of them (you know, raise $150K in Q3 vs. his 285K as opposed to her actual 52K?), b) Roskam's fundraising decreased by 25% in Q3 but still outraised Cegelis by 5.5:1, c) It doesn't matter why or how Roskam raised the money he did, it still counts. Roskam has already raised more than Henry Hyde did for the entire '04 cycle. If you think that the DCCC, Cegelis, and Duckworth should _not_ be worried about those numbers I'm at a loss as to why. If you think that those numbers, once demonstrated, didn't raise the bar for what Cegelis needed/needs to raise, I'm again at a loss as to why. For shoestring grassroots candidacies to overcome massive fundraising disparities, I would think they'd have to be strong campaigners facing relatively weak ones, have sufficient money floating around that the campaigns hit the point of diminishing returns and advertising saturation, or have external circumstances playing a role. None is true here.
To sum up: you seem to have concluded that this is a personal attempt by Rahm Emanuel to oust Cegelis' candidacy because she's independent and he doesn't like that, rather than because her fundraising numbers are poor along several different dimensions. I still don't see how you, or the original poster, have shown that. The only things that have, as far as I can tell, definitely been demonstrated is that 1) Rahm is pushing Duckworth, 2) Rahm seems to be discouraging donors from supporting Cegelis, 3) the DCCC promised the Cegelis campaign it would support them if Cegelis raised a certain amount of money, then changed its mind, at the same time that Roskam's Q2 numbers came in. I don't see how this proves that Cegelis is a strong or even viable candidate who deserves the DCCC's support, or that Rahm Emanuel is a hypocrite. Can you enlighten me?
-Mark
the only time i've ever met/heard melissa bean was two years ago; i was not impressed. i am assuming that her consultants did a good job with her. it happens. as i recall, bean is in a +8R district, cegelis in a +6R. as for your question about rahm's involvement, the first time i heard this was in may or june 2005, well before the end of the june.
you'll note that i did not say that cegelis' fundraising numbers don't matter! but i know of too many established candidates in illinois who are having trouble raising money to think that cegelis is out of the norm here. and my experience in federal campaigns have taught me that there are a lot of factors to consider, fundraising being only one. unfortunately, campaigns are not a simple calculus where you plug in the numbers/variables and get a predictable result. in my own experience, i've been burned when the candidate i worked for (a former state senate president who had all the endorsements, was square on the issues, and had raised by far the most money) lost to an ideologue who was outside the mainstream in the district and had little money. when this happens to you, you'll probably be as cautious as i!
personally, i think the comparison to roskam is silly, as cegelis has a contested primary before one can even consider the general. duckworth had zero dollars in the bank in the 3rd quarter, and no one seems to talk about those numbers! perhaps there are different standards for different candidates...
If the actions in the 6th District race are any indication as to what Cong. Emanuel is doing across the nation, then you can forget about the Democrats regaining control of the House in 2006. The House Democrats need to dump Emanuel as Chaimran of their Campaign Committee, because if he remains he will cost the party a good dozen seata.
Post a Comment