The vast left-wing conspiracy has come to Virginia.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has drawn a huge collection of allies to his side here, by far overpowering the independent spenders that have lined up on the right for Republican Ken Cuccinelli. And even more impressive than the diverse list of organizations spending on McAuliffe’s behalf – greens, abortion-rights and gun control advocates, unions and more – is the military precision with which Democrats have organized their activities in the state.
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Since the start of the race, McAuliffe’s campaign has relentlessly exploited Virginia’s loose election laws, which allow for direct coordination between campaigns and outside groups and have enabled McAuliffe to leverage the resources of staunchly progressive organizations to help him win in a genuine swing state.
It’s difficult to say exactly how much other Democrats can learn from the McAuliffe campaign’s tactical success, since most candidates won’t have the benefit of Virginia’s almost-anything-goes election rules. But Democrats involved in the effort say it will have a lasting effect in Virginia, since future Democratic candidates will benefit from the data and infrastructure McAuliffe’s coalition has built up. Within the community of McAuliffe-aligned interest groups, the 2013 election has helped cement a culture of cooperation that began during the 2012 presidential campaign or even earlier.
(PHOTOS: Ken Cuccinelli’s career)
The range of groups piling money and manpower into McAuliffe’s campaign is remarkable and unmatched on the Republican side. Among environmental groups, the Virginia League of Conservation Voters has spent about $1.7 million boosting McAuliffe – including nearly a million dollars in direct cash contributions – and the Sierra Club has put in $464,000, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. California billionaire Tom Steyer’s political committee, NextGen Climate Action, has spent well over $2 million on TV as well as untold additional sums on digital and field efforts.
The list goes on: Planned Parenthood’s political arm has put in over a million dollars on issues related to contraception and abortion rights, while Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC is on track to spend $2 million on ads hitting Republicans on gun control. Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has also sent mailers on the gun issue. People for the American Way has run Spanish-language television ads and the SEIU has put boots on the ground in Northern Virginia.
Most importantly, campaign officials said, the Democratic Governors Association has transferred about $6 million directly into McAuliffe’s coffers through its federal super PAC. Several labor groups have done the same.
Indeed, if the likely defeat of Republican Ken Cuccinelli were a mystery novel, it would be a “Murder on the Orient Express”-style tale where the victim has literally dozens of killers.
(Also on POLITICO: The demise of the Republican surrogate)
Managing this array of independent backers has been a challenge on its own. The McAuliffe operation made it an early priority to get outside groups on the same page, strategists said, in order to avoid a cacophony of uncoordinated messages and duplicative turnout programs at the height of the general election.
Now, McAuliffe campaign strategists and leaders in more than half a dozen outside groups described a close working relationship that coordinated activities down to the groups of voters field organizers would target and the exact dates mail pieces would drop, to avoid deluging any given household with too much campaign material.
“The campaign coordinated with different people in their areas of expertise. Ours is certainly in this area of getting out the Latino vote,” said PFAW president Michael Keegan. “The good thing about Virginia is, you can work on maximizing your influence as opposed to everybody working on everything.”
McAuliffe communications director Brennan Bilberry said the intense collaboration had “resulted in unprecedented efficiency and an ability to ensure that Virginia voters are hearing about the issues they care about the most – whether that’s valuing women’s health care access, scientific research or education.”
There were several points during the campaign when independent spenders were asked to “buy in” to the McAuliffe effort – when progressive interest groups were asked to ante up a contribution to the Virginia Democratic Party in exchange for proprietary data from the campaign, and the promise of contributing their own data in the future.
(Also on POLITICO: Virginia blame game begins)
The first of those checkpoints came in February, when McAuliffe conducted a large set of focus groups and a poll on voter turnout – a notorious challenge for Virginia Democrats in off-year elections. Campaign partners were given access to that information if they bought into the larger McAuliffe operation, as well as access to McAuliffe’s central database for housing voter information.
Early in the campaign, McAuliffe also built extensive models for the Virginia electorate, conducting an initial poll of 10,000 voters to build support and turnout scores. That poll was refreshed every two months until the fall and is now refreshed weekly. All that data has been accessible to partner groups from the start.
In August, on the cusp of the race’s final stretch, McAuliffe offered partner groups access to an experiment-informed program that would guide campaign mail after Labor Day. The so-called EIP involved a controlled test of different mail messages: the campaign sent mailers featuring three different messages to a universe of 25,000 households. After the mail was sent, the targeted households were polled and the data was fed into a central database.
The result was that both the McAuliffe campaign and the whole constellation of groups planning to send political mail had a sharp sense of which voters to target on the issues of abortion and contraception, which moved on the message that Cuccinelli had extreme views on taxes, and which were open to the argument that Cuccinelli was ethically compromised by his ties to an out-of-state fuel company.
Just as importantly, they learned which voters not to target with those messages: which Virginians would react with hostility to a message about contraception, for example, or to a mailer carrying the label of a national environmental group.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has drawn a huge collection of allies to his side here, by far overpowering the independent spenders that have lined up on the right for Republican Ken Cuccinelli. And even more impressive than the diverse list of organizations spending on McAuliffe’s behalf – greens, abortion-rights and gun control advocates, unions and more – is the military precision with which Democrats have organized their activities in the state.
Continue Reading
Since the start of the race, McAuliffe’s campaign has relentlessly exploited Virginia’s loose election laws, which allow for direct coordination between campaigns and outside groups and have enabled McAuliffe to leverage the resources of staunchly progressive organizations to help him win in a genuine swing state.
It’s difficult to say exactly how much other Democrats can learn from the McAuliffe campaign’s tactical success, since most candidates won’t have the benefit of Virginia’s almost-anything-goes election rules. But Democrats involved in the effort say it will have a lasting effect in Virginia, since future Democratic candidates will benefit from the data and infrastructure McAuliffe’s coalition has built up. Within the community of McAuliffe-aligned interest groups, the 2013 election has helped cement a culture of cooperation that began during the 2012 presidential campaign or even earlier.
(PHOTOS: Ken Cuccinelli’s career)
The range of groups piling money and manpower into McAuliffe’s campaign is remarkable and unmatched on the Republican side. Among environmental groups, the Virginia League of Conservation Voters has spent about $1.7 million boosting McAuliffe – including nearly a million dollars in direct cash contributions – and the Sierra Club has put in $464,000, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. California billionaire Tom Steyer’s political committee, NextGen Climate Action, has spent well over $2 million on TV as well as untold additional sums on digital and field efforts.
The list goes on: Planned Parenthood’s political arm has put in over a million dollars on issues related to contraception and abortion rights, while Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC is on track to spend $2 million on ads hitting Republicans on gun control. Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has also sent mailers on the gun issue. People for the American Way has run Spanish-language television ads and the SEIU has put boots on the ground in Northern Virginia.
Most importantly, campaign officials said, the Democratic Governors Association has transferred about $6 million directly into McAuliffe’s coffers through its federal super PAC. Several labor groups have done the same.
Indeed, if the likely defeat of Republican Ken Cuccinelli were a mystery novel, it would be a “Murder on the Orient Express”-style tale where the victim has literally dozens of killers.
(Also on POLITICO: The demise of the Republican surrogate)
Managing this array of independent backers has been a challenge on its own. The McAuliffe operation made it an early priority to get outside groups on the same page, strategists said, in order to avoid a cacophony of uncoordinated messages and duplicative turnout programs at the height of the general election.
Now, McAuliffe campaign strategists and leaders in more than half a dozen outside groups described a close working relationship that coordinated activities down to the groups of voters field organizers would target and the exact dates mail pieces would drop, to avoid deluging any given household with too much campaign material.
“The campaign coordinated with different people in their areas of expertise. Ours is certainly in this area of getting out the Latino vote,” said PFAW president Michael Keegan. “The good thing about Virginia is, you can work on maximizing your influence as opposed to everybody working on everything.”
McAuliffe communications director Brennan Bilberry said the intense collaboration had “resulted in unprecedented efficiency and an ability to ensure that Virginia voters are hearing about the issues they care about the most – whether that’s valuing women’s health care access, scientific research or education.”
There were several points during the campaign when independent spenders were asked to “buy in” to the McAuliffe effort – when progressive interest groups were asked to ante up a contribution to the Virginia Democratic Party in exchange for proprietary data from the campaign, and the promise of contributing their own data in the future.
(Also on POLITICO: Virginia blame game begins)
The first of those checkpoints came in February, when McAuliffe conducted a large set of focus groups and a poll on voter turnout – a notorious challenge for Virginia Democrats in off-year elections. Campaign partners were given access to that information if they bought into the larger McAuliffe operation, as well as access to McAuliffe’s central database for housing voter information.
Early in the campaign, McAuliffe also built extensive models for the Virginia electorate, conducting an initial poll of 10,000 voters to build support and turnout scores. That poll was refreshed every two months until the fall and is now refreshed weekly. All that data has been accessible to partner groups from the start.
In August, on the cusp of the race’s final stretch, McAuliffe offered partner groups access to an experiment-informed program that would guide campaign mail after Labor Day. The so-called EIP involved a controlled test of different mail messages: the campaign sent mailers featuring three different messages to a universe of 25,000 households. After the mail was sent, the targeted households were polled and the data was fed into a central database.
The result was that both the McAuliffe campaign and the whole constellation of groups planning to send political mail had a sharp sense of which voters to target on the issues of abortion and contraception, which moved on the message that Cuccinelli had extreme views on taxes, and which were open to the argument that Cuccinelli was ethically compromised by his ties to an out-of-state fuel company.
Just as importantly, they learned which voters not to target with those messages: which Virginians would react with hostility to a message about contraception, for example, or to a mailer carrying the label of a national environmental group.