Posted on 09/13/2006 9:11:40 AM PDT by gopwinsin04
September 13, 2006 How Chafee Won
Late last Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Dole hurried up to Sen. Lincoln Chafee on the floor of the Senate and put her foot down. You might lose this race, she told him, if you don’t put your best ads back up.
Chafee, gun-shy about the negative ads he knew Dole was referring to, relented, as he’s done innumerable times in the year and a half since it became clear that he’d face a primary challenge.
The next night, Rhode Island television viewers were once again treated to the sounds of Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey joking that old people should die off. They heard the charges that he had doctored his resume. The tag line: “Steve Laffey: Untrustworthy, unpredictable, unreliable.” And the most important part of the ad was the FEC-mandated ending. Lincoln Chafee approved this message. A contrast was drawn.
By Tuesday, six months worth of hard-hitting spots like these, many funded directly by the NRSC, had driven unfavorable perceptions of Laffey to scary heights among non-affiliated voters.
But Laffey’s campaign professed not to worry. They weren’t concerned about unaffiliated voters. They assumed that few would be motivated to spend an hour at the polls waiting to vote for Lincoln Chafee. Laffey ran his campaign as if he were a presidential candidate preparing for a caucus. He tried to meet as many Republicans as possible. His campaign identified and kept in touch with about 30,000 stalwarts. Based on past turnout, that seemed like enough.
In every speech, Laffey touted his conservative credentials, his record as mayor, and, somewhat discordantly, his independence. After all, his audience was the small and restive Republican base in RI – conservative and independent. The ads he ran were all positive, but the Club for Growth spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running spots that blasted Chafee. The messages were was confusing. Some of Laffeys’ ads were populist in content; he recalled how his brother died of AIDS and his parents live on Social Security. Others stressed his commitment to lowering taxes, securing borders and protecting America. Laffey’s campaign and the Club could not coordinate their strategy, and they often dismissed each other’s decisions in private.
Laffey hoped to convince Republicans that he was better on their issues and could get things done. Chafee’s ads were designed to prevent Laffey from making a gut-level connection with voters.
Rhode Island will become a case study in the effectiveness of the Republicans’ 72 Hour Program. Behind the curtain, Chafee’s campaign spent $500,000 to squeeze out every conceivable voter from neighborhoods across the state. They searched for independents who voted Democrat in municipal elections but who had once upon a time voted for a Republican for president or governor or senator. There were a few of those. They looked for non-affiliated voters in Republican neighborhoods. Using microtargeting techniques, they even tried to figure out which committed Democrats might be tempted to vote for Chafee.
By the end of the summer, Chafee’s campaign had identified 42,000 potential supporters. Then the second part of the program kicked in. Message, here, is a verb. The campaign “messaged” these voters, often individually. Chafee himself called more than 100 of them who were identified as being capable of swinging the votes of colleagues and friends. The standard complement of robocalls, mailings and personal visits were employed. In the twelve days of September, Chafee, the RNC and NRSC made more than 198,000 phone calls to the voters on their list. Many voters received one every two days.
On election day, the Chafee campaign stationed poll watchers at 100 key precincts across the state. By 10:00 am, the RNC and the NRSC were confident that Chafee would win.
It didn’t faze them when Laffey’s campaign bragged about meeting their targets. Chafee had simply found more voters. Laffey’s turnout was sufficient for a universe of Republicans and identified conservatives. But Chafee had found just about every Republican he could hope for and managed to attract at least 10,000 non-Republicans to his tally. One Republican in the state estimates that as many as 60 percent of the primary electorate were not affiliated with the Republican Party. (More than 20,000 Rhose Islanders requested formal disaffiliation forms after voting.) Chafee even managed to blunt Laffey's margin of victory in Cranston to just a few hundred votes.
The same factors that drove Chafee’s victory are giving his Democratic challenger, Sheldon Whitehouse, some comfort. The universe of identified Chafee voters is at least 20,000 less than the number of Democrats who voted for Whitehouse in yesterday’s noncompetitive primary. [MARC AMBINDER]
The national Republican Party consistently says conservatives should make their will known in the primaries, and then support whoever wins the primary in the general.
If they really mean that then the national party should be NEUTRAL in the primary. They were NOT. (Snarlin Arlen two years ago is another good example of this.)
I won't go along with this anymore. If I lived in Rhode Island I would either not vote for either candidate, or I would vote for the Democrat.
So what the article is tellling me is Laffey won the republican primary by getting 27k out of 30k or so republicans to vote for hhim. (There are 50k registered republicans in RI) Linc, the RNSC and RNC Got 20k out of 40k unaffiliated voters to vote for him.
And then, like clockwork, we go to the polls and pull the lever one more time for our bum.
Didn't Chaffee just single-handedly kill the Bolton nomination? Is the the Repub plan to hold on to power?
Where did the rest of Chaffees votes come from? (you have it 27k Laffey to 20k Chafee)
Hmmm, yeah and when those 27K republicans decide not to bother to go out to vote this year they can thank Ms Dole and her NRSC, and their new minority position.
Will he now support Bolton for UN Ambassador when the Senate Foreign Relations committee votes on it again?
Interesting article and in fact the bit about the 72 hour get out the vote campaign is encouraging.
As to Chafee well he is the nominee and we need to support him. He is my least favorite to say the least of the Senate but if his vote in 06 or more importantly in 08 keeps the Senate under Republican leadership then it worth the effort.
There seems to be a lot of griping about how the GOP was backing moderates in moderate to liberal states or districts. Well part of the job of the party is to make some hard pragmactic choices. The GOP is a conservative party and if truth be told the average Goper or Republican voter is a little bit more liberal or to it more precise a little bit more diverse than the base on certain issues.
If Chafee had been abandoned that might have sent the wrong message to the moderates to the liberals in the GOP wing. Occasionally you have to throw them a bone. In the end we need the Social Conservative , the conservative that are conservatives as to tax policy and similar conserns, and then a little extra to maintain control. People like Snowe and Chafee are that little bit extra that is needed. to have effective control in the Senate. Conservatives gain far more in the deal than lose.
That being said I just pray that Chafee has learned a valuable lesson about loyalty and will not have a repeat of the monkeyshines he did in the Bush/kerry race.
Democrats pulling GOP ballots, probably.
Silver lining ...
At least the NSRC knows how to win a race.
Please have them do this well on 'microtargeting' in Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania! I dont care about Chaffee, but I want to see Steele, Santorum, DeWine, Talent and Kean beat their liberal Democr*p opponents.
Probably not, pitiful isn't it?
What do we do in the CA Gov. race? The (R) is really a (D), and the (D) is really a Communist.
Probably the same lesson Jeffords learned when the GOP made a gargantuan effort for him in 2000.
Exactly and that is the great thing to take out of this article if it was indeed a factor to which I hope it is. That gameplan is going to be much needed in some of these states. We need to hold on to everything we can because 08 might be brutal
Well I am praying that will not happen.At the end of the day at least more Dems have defected than Repubs so that might give us some hope
This is very discouraging. Laffey would have won but for the Senate helping an incumbent who should have been defeated in the primary. That's what primaries are for. If we lose the seat, it's already lost to Chafee, but at least Laffey builds name recognition, and maybe he has a shot next time. Either way, it's a no-lose situation, and for the Senate Republicans to get involved in primaries is bad for the party, as it cuts the faithful out of the process.
It would have been nice to see what would have happened to Toomey if they had supported him, too.
"What do we do in the CA Gov. race? The (R) is really a (D), and the (D) is really a Communist."
Well, I'd recommend the AIP candidate were it not for the fact that his position on the War on Terror is identical to the rabid moonbat left. So I guess that leaves this lady... (*WARNING -- pornographic, don't view at work or with kids nearby !!) http://www.marycareyforgovernor.com/ I guess if it's a choice between 2 boobs, might as well vote for an authentic (I think) pair of breasts.
If I read this right, he won because he got 20,000 dems to cross over to vote for him.
If I lived in CA, I'd inform the Re-Elect Arnold team that I am going to leave the Governor race blank, then vote for McClintock and other Republican candidates for office.
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