“You’ll Never Get Away with This”

Fast forward deep into my second campaign. As far as we (me, my Campaign Manager and my friend and political strategist) could tell, we were holding our own. Polling showed us neck and neck with my opponent, and in a red state, that was probably as much as we could ask for a couple of months out from Election Day.

I was having problems, though, with Joe H., our direct mail specialist.

Direct Mail is an art unto itself. It’s not good enough to send out one or two pieces of bulk mail to a voter. Stats show that in order to be effective, mail recipients need to be hit with several pieces that build a narrative over a period of time.

It’s expensive. It’s dated. It’s effectiveness is in question. But the DCCC requires it if you want their support.

Obviously, the tone of the narrative matters as well. As I mentioned previously, my goal was to run a different race from the vast majority of congressional candidates. Hold a candidate accountable and responsible for the things they say and do? You bet! Cast negative aspersions on a candidate or sling mud in standard DC fashion? No way!

As we approached time to discuss a Direct Mail campaign, two issues became readily apparent between me (and my team) and Joe: 1) he wanted to be much more negatively aggressive in his mailings than we did, and 2) he was simply too damn expensive. Based on what we thought we could afford and Joe’s pricing, we were looking at 3-4 direct mail pieces for the entire campaign. We wanted at least double that - 7 or 8.

I remember thinking that I should have listened to my spider sense in that first meeting in January, telling me that my hired “advisors” were not going to listen to me. As our discussion wore on, it became more and more clear that in dealing with Joe, it was his way or the highway.

Frankly, I don’t remember how long we went back and forth, trying to come to an acceptable arrangement that we believed would be affordable, effective, and in the spirit of our campaign. I do remember that I finally got to the point where I was tired of fighting a battle with one of my hired consultants, someone who, in theory, worked for me, not the other way around!

The last straw occurred while I was campaigning one day in a small town.

I was at my campaign office there and had just endured another marathon “negotiation” session with Joe and mu campaign manager. I called my manager back and told him it was time. We needed to find another Direct Mail consultant. Stat. And we needed to let Joe go. Stat. To my surprise, he told me he had already been searching for a replacement, and he thought he had just the right group, a local firm out of Oklahoma that had done mainly state-based races, did quality work, and was hungry to step up into the big time.

I loved it. I told him to give Joe a call, to be respectful but to be firm. But first, I told him I would call the Chair of the DCCC and let them know that we were making a change, and why we were doing it. We were moving on.

Yes, part of the job of Campaign Manager is to take the heat off of the candidate; to deflect everything so the candidate can focus on one thing – being the candidate. It kind of reminds me of the role of a best man in a wedding, which I’ve done several times. It’s not really to give the toast at the wedding, or to give the ring to the groom at the altar; it’s to do whatever one needs to do to insulate the groom – and the bride – from the stresses and pressures of wedding day. Family. Arrangements. Last minute issues. Whatever.

I called my manager back ten minutes later and told him I had spoken to the DCCC chair and they had no problem with our move, telling me to do whatever we felt we needed to do to be successful. We hung up so he could call Joe.

You know what happened next, right? It didn’t take more than 10 minutes before my cell phone rang, and up popped “Joe H.” on the caller ID. Yowza.

I answered the call. “This is Gary.”

“Gary. Joe H. here. Did I just get fired?”

“I don’t know Joe. Did you just get off the phone with my campaign manager?”

“Yes. He said you were moving on and would use another direct mail firm. I asked who it was, but he wouldn’t tell me.” ‘Smart move by my manager’, I thought. “You can’t do this,” continued Joe. His voice had risen an octave or so, and listening to his reaction, I no longer wondered whether we had just made the right move. Joe had just answered that question for me.

“Look Joe. I’m a busy candidate. My campaign manager is in charge of running my campaign. We’ve discussed this long and hard, and he feels strongly about this decision. And I can’t disagree.”

That’s where it got ugly.

“You can’t do this. I’ve worked for some of the biggest names in politics. I’m calling the DCCC immediately. You’ll never get support from them again. You’ll never get away with this. I’m calling the DCCC chair directly.”

I sighed deeply. Joe’s reaction removed any doubt I might have had in my mind about our decision. I did a quick mental debate with myself as to whether or not I should get upset about being threatened, but I knew it wasn’t worth it.

But I did want to leave him with a bit of a zinger.

 “Joe. I just got off the phone with the Chair of the DCCC. He’s good with our decision. Do what you have to do. I’ve got a campaign to win. I’m sorry it ended this way.”

He started to interject, once again threatening me with his “influence.”

“Joe, I’ve got to go door-to-door. Goodbye.”

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I don’t want to give the impression that everyone in DC is callous and looking out solely for themselves. I liked my media consultant very much, and while it wasn’t always easy, he truly made an effort to listen to what we wanted while bringing his expertise to bear.

My pollster is an incredibly talented and accomplished person who I liked personally very much. She was (and is) incredibly knowledgeable and insightful and I wish her all the best; but she was also extremely expensive. Not only did we have trouble agreeing on pricing, but when she came to us wanting to do national issue polling on the dime of our campaign, my campaign manager and I just couldn’t see the value proposition with her firm. Tough call, but by the end of the campaign, we moved back to having my local friend/political strategist do our polling. In my view, we got similar information for a third of the cost.

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Maybe we didn’t understand. Maybe we just didn’t know how DC worked. Maybe red state campaigns just didn’t’ have enough money to placate the pricing of DC Consultants used to high dollar campaign budgets.

I’d run several businesses and hired many outside consultants for a host of reasons. I’d simply never been treated the way DC consultants treated me – like I was a junior partner – no, a junior employee – in an endeavor where they had all the answers.

We had to please the DCCC to get their support. I get it. But there is clearly a “consultant class” in DC that is chummy-chummy with the “political class,” and much like politicians getting elected without the appropriate experience or job qualifications, in my view, DC consultants are not necessarily hired for their success rate or skill at listening to candidates and running the campaign the candidate wants to run.

To me, that’s sad. Seems to me that letting the candidate be who they are (in most, but not all, cases) is the surest way for a candidate to get their message through to voters. Consultants should be willing to work with that instead of trying to create a new beast.

My first campaign had nearly succeeded because of my authenticity and honesty, not in spite of it. In my view, we had nearly pulled off the upset of the cycle because we were viewed differently – people in my state were so tired of standard DC politics and politicians that they were even willing vote against their own party heritage going back generations for someone who was fresh, spontaneous, honest and nice, smiling and informed (have I mentioned ego yet?!).

And yet I almost felt as if I had two opponents in my second campaign: my actual opponent and the consultant class in DC. I felt comfortable vying against the former – our differences could not be more stark – but the insidiousness of the latter, who were ostensibly on my team, was a much more difficult foe. I didn’t need a new persona crafted by those who had never been to my state. I just needed professionals who could figure out how to present the honest alternative I offered to the people of my state. How hard could that be?