Not Just a Redistricting Fail

Still a bit jet lagged and fighting the crud, so my brain isn’t processing what would even normally be its subpar capacity. Ugh.

I’d like to take a short minute to follow up on a post Mister Mix wrote a few days ago he titled Redistricting Fail. Here is - to me - the key para in the post: “One of the clear issues is that sitting representatives get a lot more attention and deference than overall party strategy. Representatives like their D+20-30 districts — it’s easier to fight off the infrequent primary challenge with the buckets of cash they’ve collected than to run in the general.”

Having spent time as a candidate on the inside, having been named first-wave Red-to-Blue by the DCCC in one of my races, and having been recruited by the DSCC to run for US Senate, I can safely say that Mister Mix is more spot on then even he can probably imagine.

The DCCC and the DSCC are - first and foremost - incumbency protection organizations. That was explicitly told to me by reps of both orgs during my time as a candidate. They seem to invest very little in understanding the specific dynamics in individual districts, especially rural ones. Their approach in my races was one size fits all.

Quick story.

One condition for being named Red-to-Blue was that I hire approved DCCC consultants: pollster, media consultant and direct mail consultant. I had used local folks in my first race and almost pulled off the biggest US House upset in many years. So, I hesitantly agreed. The new DC consulting gang flew out to meet me in my hometown. As we sat around a conference table discussing tactics/strategy, it slowly became apparent they were literally ignoring me and talking amongst themselves about what they wanted to do. Forget the fact that me and my small local team had nearly pulled off the impossible (or, as some believe, actually did but, well, voting issues and machine issues…), that we might have more knowledge of our district (in this case, an entire state) than them, or that I might actually have some semi-valid ideas of my own on how I wanted to run my race, that I might actually have a brain of my own. Didn’t’ matter.

That’s when I realized the DC consulting game is a racket. Sure, electoral success would be nice, but it’s not necessary. But I was just the flavor of the day, one of the hot races, and they mostly wanted that on their CV.

Postscript: two of the three consultants were fired and gone within months. The story of how that went down is for another post…