Posted on 06/19/2002 4:05:53 PM PDT by xsysmgr
Republicans moved quickly last week into a damage-control mode after a White House political analysis that raised doubts about GOP prospects in the mid-term congressional elections came to light.
The analysis, presented to California Republicans on June 4 by senior White House aide Karl Rove and Political Director Ken Mehlman, spurred candidates throughout the nation to respond to the candid contents.
Campaign officials in both parties sought to capitalize on the memo’s revelations, putting their own spins on the data.
The memo had an immediate impact on the Maine Senate race, where the contest is between Republican Sen. Susan Collins and her Democratic challenger, former state Sen. Chellie Pingree, which Mehlman saw as a possible Democratic pickup.
But Collins’ chief of staff, Steve Abbott, pointed out that polls have consistently put Collins comfortably ahead.
“I’m not even sure that this presentation is even the White House’s deepest thinking on this race, but it certainly doesn’t reflect what’s going on,” Abbott said. He speculated that the presentation had just been “cobbled together, and pieced together in not the greatest fashion,” a theory that concurs with Mehlman’s own explanation.
But the alleged misjudgment did not prevent the Pingree campaign from drawing inspiration from the disputed findings.
“It‘s nice to know that the White House is recognizing what Chellie Pingree is doing here in Maine,” said Pingree’s press secretary, Jennifer Sargent.
She added that White House acknowledgement of a competitive race for Collins’ seat is nothing new. “They know that Chellie is a great candidate,” she said. “They know that she can win in November.”
Such optimism may be misplaced, says Dr. Christian Potholm, a professor of political science at Bowdoin College and author of Insider’s Guide to Maine Politics 1946-1996.
Noting that recent polls show Collins leading Pingree by a 64-22 percent margin, Potholm asserted “that Senate race is not competitive.”
Potholm also noted that the Pingree campaign has spent some $500,000 on television ads with limited results. When asked if the memo might impact the November results, Potholm responded, “Absolutely not. A memo, a statement, a gaffe aren’t going to make any difference. ... She’s not vulnerable except in the minds of Democratic strategists,” he added.
In citing the analysis, Pingree spokesperson Deborah Barron said: “We’re obviously a competitive candidate and we’re obviously in a competitive race. And everybody from Karl Rove, to the White House, to the Democratic leadership that’s been up here helping us raise an unprecedented amount of money knows that. We’re comfortable being the underdogs, and we’re confident that we have people standing up, paying attention, and running scared.”
Elsewhere, campaign officials embraced the opportunity created by the presumably unwanted publicity to promote some of their candidates’ central themes.
Thus, in New Hampshire where Sen. Bob Smith (R) remains locked in a close primary race with Rep. John Sununu, Smith Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski was quick to portray the White House analysis as confirmation of Smith’s viability, even though it said there’s a “strong” possibility that Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen could win the seat in November.
“Obviously, since Sen. Smith is the White House’s candidate by Karl Rove’s own words, they believe that Sen. Smith can win,” Lewandowski said in a press release.
But Paul Collins, Sununu’s campaign manager, sees it differently. He said the White House recognizes that holding on to the New Hampshire seat is critical to the GOP bid to regain control of the Senate and the polls show that Sununu “is the only Republican who will beat Jeanne Shaheen.”
Not surprisingly, New Hampshire Democratic Party leader Kathy Sullivan disagrees. “Apparently in the White House they know just how vulnerable Bob Smith and John Sununu are,” she said in a press release. “Maybe it’s because everyone in Washington has watched first-hand while Smith and Sununu voted again and again with special interests and extremist factions instead of with their constituents back home in New Hampshire.”
Colin Van Ostern, the Shaheen campaign’s communications director, added, “It doesn’t change the fact that we know this will be a tough race. Republicans have already said they plan on throwing a lot of national money at us. And we’re going to fight for every single vote.”
The rush to capitalize on the White House’s downbeat analysis was not confined to the Northeast.
Mehlman’s evaluation of the Arkansas Senate race — where, he said, there is a strong possibility that Attorney General Mark Pryor (D) could upset incumbent Republican Tim Hutchinson — elicited powerful responses from both campaigns.
“It never has been a secret that this will be a very tough, competitive campaign and this does not change that one bit,” Hutchinson told reporters.
Pryor spokesman Michael Teague suggested that Hutchinson is vulnerable because of “his voting record and his neglect of issues that matter most to Arkansas.” In a statement, he asserted that Hutchinson has run a “very negative and deliberately misleading campaign to compensate for his vulnerabilities.”
The White House political memo first became public when some of the information appeared in The Washington Post. Subsequently, the entire contents were posted on Roll Call’s website.
This is an internal document, "lost" by a dimwitted Republican staffer and "found" by a Democrat staffer and released to the press. As Stu said on CNN, this is a fund-raising document for insiders. So, you make some races seen tighter than they are to hype the sense of urgency and keep the checks flowing.
Duh. Even a layman like me could figure that out. Thanks, Stu. The author of this piece, like Woodruff, could not or would not, see through their bias and report the correct meaning of the charts on this computer disk.
Congressman Billybob
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