Down-Ballot Statewide Office a Graveyard; Not a Launchpad
Almost every election cycle someone who holds a down-ballot statewide office is touted early on as nearly unbeatable for the office of governor or U.S. Senator. And every cycle that unbeatable candidate gets beat and both the press and armchair pundits are surprised. After over four decades of the same scenario playing over and over again the only surprise is that conventional wisdom remains so invincibly ignorant.
I wrote on Monday that with the exception of Secretary of State, where an official gets a patronage army, statewide office-holders are almost invariably doomed in their bids to move up to the big chairs of Governor or Senator. Let's start with the last previous job of four decades worth of governors:
Blagojevich - U.S. Congress
Ryan - Secretary of State
Edgar - Secretary of State
Thompson - U.S. Attorney
Walker - Montgomery Ward Executive
Ogilvie - Cook County Sheriff
Not an exception in the bunch. Now let's go backwards ten years and see how constitutional officers fared in their bids for the bigs.
In 2004 no statewide official ran for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. On the Democratic side Comptroller Dan Hynes was the early front-runner. Kazillionnaire Blair Hull was spending huge sums in his quest for the seat, but the smart money said he would fade and that Hynes, with his superior name recognition and support of the Chicago machine would dominate. Hull did fade, but the fabled Hynes machine never got going and a little known state senator by the name of Obama became a rock star and cleaned everyone's clock.
In 2002 former Comptroller Roland Burris (two times the state's top vote-getter) ran for governor in the Democratic Party. U.S. Rep. Rod Blagojevich beat him handily. In the Republican Primary Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood and Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan ran for governor. Ryan prevailed and lost the general election to Blagojevich.
No statewide offices were up in 2000.
In 1998 former Comptroller Roland Burris ran for the Democratic nomination for Governor and lost to Congressman Glenn Poshard. Sitting Comptroller Lolita Didrickson ran for the GOP Senate nomination against little-known State Senator Peter Fitzgerald. Didrickson was, again, the early favorite. She lost to Fitzgerald who went on to oust incumbent Carole Moseley-Braun.
In 1996 no statewide officials ran for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Little known State Rep. Al Salvi challenged sitting Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra on the Republican side and scored an upset that very few among elite opinion-makers saw coming.
You get the idea...you want an upset special bet, take a look at any race for governor or senator in which a constitutional officer other than secretary of state is involved and bet on one of his opponents. You'll not only win, but get great odds in the process.
Why is this so? Several reasons...
First of all there is the difference between what I call a feature race and a down-ballot race. A feature race has both ideological significance and commands widespread voter attention. Electors pay real attention to candidates' character, message and competence. These are the races in which voters make real decisions. Down-ballot races get little voter focus. Who wins them, barring major scandal or disfunction, is more a factor of name ID and party fortunes than anything else. Thus, for an open seat, the candidate who wins is almost always of the same party as whoever wins the feature race (when both governor and senator are up, the governor's race is overwhelmingly more important in predicting who will win the down-ballot races). If an incumbent holds the down-ballot office, unless he shaves his head and starts slobbering all over himself, he will keep the office.
Second, you have those lying seductresses called early polls. Any poll for a statewide primary before January in Illinois is purely a function of name ID (there is an exception to this rule, but it is not germane to this article). Naturally holders of statewide office are going to dominate these early polls. But ask Hynes, Burris, Wood, Didrickson, Kustra et. al how much this means. A dominating early poll is like a majestic wave on a calm, sunny day; impressive but transient. The wonder is that so many professional pundits and observers still ooh and ahh over the things.
I won't belabor the point by going through a year-by-year recitationof down-ballot statewide failures, but if you pull up the numbers yourself you'll see it holds true. What that means is that down-ballot constitutional candidates are not captains of any ship, but merely passengers at the mercy of the fortunes of the captains of the feature race. It is also why top vote-getter in statewide elections is a meaningless statistic, more akin to the Miss Congeniality prize than the Miss America crown. It almost invariably goes to an inoffensive candidate for a down-ballot statewide office in which voters don't care what the candidates think or stand for.
Even given all this, holding lower statewide office should be a good preparation for running for one of the feature seats. And it would be if the holders of those offices recognized they were passengers on the ship of electoral fortune and not captains. But because the media and their acolytes all say so, they come to believe they actually steered the ship they rode in on safely to harbor. They usually are sloppy and diffuse on message, have pitifully weak and self-absorbed organizations, and are often combative rather than diplomatic with critics. Since none of this generally affects their ability to continue to hold down-ballot office, they operate under the dictum, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' and often even begin to believe their weakness to be strength.
But when they go for a feature office, the gentle breeze that has propelled them suddenly turns into a howling wind. The benevolent sun gives way to malevolent storm clouds, menacing bolts of lightning and violent waves slamming their hull from all sides. Having convinced themselves they are master sailors because they never faced anything more threatening than a rainy day, they are utterly unprepared for this onslaught. The neglected substructure of their hull begins taking on water faster than they can bail. Before you know it, they have been lost to the briny deep of electoral politics.
Bottom line: the fellow who has never seen an ocean but has actually captained a small boat on a midsize lake is better prepared to take the helm in the stormy sea of a feature race than someone who has made extensive trans-oceanic trips as a passenger.
18 comments:
Too long of a blog Charlie. Weren't you pimping for that Mickey Mouse Andy McKenna as a good candidate a while back? Didn't he come in dead last with a that money? How is your girl McKenna doing?
Things must be slow on the McSweeney campaign.
I think your sample size of examples is too small to draw any firm conclusions. The individual circumstances and charactersitics of particular candidates, as well as the dynamics of a particular election year, are ultimately the determining factors. For example, if you had to choose one person in the state right now with the highest probability of being governor in the future (i.e. beyond 2006), there's no one even close to Lisa Madigan. Not that her probability is way above 50%. A million things could happen. But the point is that she is a popular attorney general, and this will help her move up. Her particular circumstances (i.e. her father) are favorable but they carry baggage as well. She has used the office of Attorney General to establish her independence. So at least in this case, there is a good chance that the down-ballot office will prove to be a stepping stone to the governor's chair.
Forty years is a pretty good sample size. You may be right about Lisa Madigan, but it will be because she uses her time in down-ballot office to strengthen herself and her organization - which if all down-ballot candidates did, would make them genuine forces rather than chimeras when running for a feature race.
Good article. Boy, I knew some folks who were on the Kustra wagon, and were dead certain he was going to be it. Almost had me convinced I should skip grad school to be a campaign gopher.
That would have been a pretty bad idea. Sometimes luck is better than foresight.
Hello anon 7:22...
Yes I did work for Andy McKenna on his Senate race. He did not come in last, but he wasn't near first, either. He was a candidate who had some great strengths and I am proud of having been associated with him and his family.
Early on in that campaign I made the worst strategic blunder of my career. I was not the chief strategist, but was very high in Andy's counsels.
When Jack Ryan did an early TV blitz and mailings in the fall before the primary, we had to decide whether to respond or not. The general attitude was to wait. I airily dismissed the importance of early paid media (TV, radio, mailers) as a waste of money. My experience had been that anything done that early gives a big bump in the polls but is quickly forgotten. Attention focuses after January 1st - and you get a much bigger bang for your buck with money spent on paid media then.
That had always been accurate in races involving two or three major candidates. What I did not factor in was that with a multitude of candidates, the media never really got them defined and differentiated. Meanwhile, there was so much clutter on the airwaves and in the mailboxes with that many candidates it was very difficult to grab and focus people's attention with paid media, either.
It is a mistake I will never make again in a large field of candidates. In such a situation I now believe early media is critical - and not just with a "getting to know you" message. You need to hit clearly, meatily and briefly on your candidate's major themes so that by the time January begins, the electorate already has a very well-defined mental picture of who the candidate is.
It was not the only challenge we faced, but it was the most significant - and a better decision in that case would have made us much more competitive. Had I seen what I missed and lobbied hard for it, I believe we would have done it. As I say, it is a mistake I will never make again.
As for what McKenna is doing now, he is the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party - and I will write about that in the next week or so.
Yes, Larry, Paul Simon and Adlai Stevenson are the exceptions. Stevenson was the treasurer when he was elected to the senate.
Well thought thru, and well said.
A few thoughts: Your headline "... A Graveyard" may be catchy, but your article only addresses those *leaving* their down-ballot position for a "higher" statewide office that attracts more competition. These office holders have a great reelection rate.
Also, you have nearly as many "exceptions" (Simon, Stevenson, possibly Madigan) as examples (Obama, Blogojevich, Fitzgerals, Salvi). Perhaps a more overwhelming case would have been legislators who have unsuccessfully sought statewide office- then the headline would have been "legislative office a graveyard". Likewise, a similarly overwhelming case can be made that businessmen seeking statewide office are similarly unsuccessful and suggest an article "business a graveyard", with Oberweis, McKenna, and Roeser as examples.
Last, since you work in republican circles, why no analysis of the Topinka campaign apparatus? The real question is, has she built and strengthened an organization? If she has, she is in the presumed (Lisa) Madison category, and the competition is toast.
Not sure how this applies to the 8th Congressional District.
Ahh, for those of you concerned about David McSweeney's campaign in the Eighth Congressional District, it is going great guns! But thank you so much for expressing your concern. Fortunately, I am able to multi-task, and taking a few moments in the early morning to write a few bits seems not to get me off track at all.
As for anon 4:25...going back 40 years there have been 2 exceptions. That's 11 gubernatorial races and 17 U.S. Senate races for a total of 28 races. In the majority of them a down-ballot statewide official was the early and overwhelming frontrunner - and in nearly all of those races the overwhelmong frontrunner lost. The arguments for the inevitability of each of those failed frontrunners is almost always identical - won statewide before, often was a top votegetter, blah blah blah. It's as if the mighty Indianapolis Colts played the lowly Houston Texans for 16 straight games, came in 40-point favorites in each and only managed to come away with one or two wins. No other type of occupation has as many candidacies, starts with as many advantages, or has anywhere near the failure RATE of down-ballot state officeholders. When I quote statistics like this, I will state the principle, give a reasonable number of specific examples, and then suggest how to look it up for yourself to check my facts. I am not going to write a 50,000-word post covering every example.
If, as I suspect, you are a Topinka supporter, the proper response would be to cheerily give specific reasons why your candidate will beat the trend, not to get defensive and try to pretend that a specific, verifiable phenomenon I have identified doesn't exist.
Right now most of the media and insider world are touting Topinka as inevitable and unstoppable. It undoubtedly sends a chill up your spine to be reminded how often we have heard that tune before - and how it is almost always prelude to stunning defeat. The answer is to do solid field work, exercise diplomacy and deal effectively with adversity. If this is how you deal with those howling winds and crashing waves, you will indeed become another example to add to my thesis.
Don't forget Lt. Governor Paul Simon was a 'sure thing' for the '72 Democrat nod for Governor (with the blessing of Hizzoner too).
All the polls had him running away with it; except for a guy who walked the length of the state and pulled the rug out from under him and went on to beat the incumbent Ogilvie -- Dan Walker.
Also, Dixon was a treasurer before he was Sec of State and then Senator. That's sort of an exception.
No,anon 9:14, that's not an exception. A down-ballot statewide official CAN be successful at running for SOS as an intermediary office. But SOS is the only office which is successful at a reasonable rate at going directly to Gov or Senate.
JBT has NEVER had a tough statewide primary, I suspect her support is a mile wide and a 1/4" deep.
She is not 'ready for prime time,' and that has become quite apparent in her inability to control harmful quips, and her managers rudeness and incivility.
So your advise to Dan Hynes would be to run for SOS after Jesse retires?
If your thesis is accurate, does this mean a conservative win is not due to ideology, and the same for a JBT loss, and that we may well see another ideological battle next election cycle?
Agree that it turns on solid field work- any analysis of how the JBT team does/is doing?
It sure doesn't hurt to have those 4,000 SOS employees.
But what a successful official should do is concentrate on being the best damn SOS, or Gov or Sen...whatever, that Illinois has ever had, and the POLITICAL end will largely take care of itself.
They all try to be the slickest POLITICIAN the state has ever had, that's where they go wrong. And we've got the indictments and convictions to prove it.
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