Thought Theater

Dean 50 State Strategy Leaves Dems Cash Poor genre: Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

There have been significant differences among Democrats as to the most effective campaign and cash management strategy for the Democratic National Committee as November approaches. The conflict between Howard Dean and Rahm Emanuel, who heads the DCCC, has demonstrated a strategic split that some feel may well cost the Democrats the ability to win control of the House or the Senate in the upcoming midterm election. CBS News offers some added insight into the current status of the DNC in a new article that can be found here.

(AP) The national Democratic Party has spent millions on consultants, Internet services, catering and building state parties, entering the weeks before Election Day with only about one-fifth as much as the Republicans for races that could decide control of Congress.

The Republican National Committee is prepared to spend $60 million over the next seven weeks on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts to protect the GOP's narrow majorities in the House and Senate.

The Democratic National Committee plans to use about a fifth of that, all devoted to getting voters to the polls. Even in that effort, though, it has set aside only an average of $60,000 in each of the 40 most competitive congressional races in the country.

Despite the fact that few Democrats would argue that the Party didn't need to build a better structural system in more states, there is ample concern that Democrats may have hurt their chances to take advantage of what appears to be a unique opportunity in 2006. The inherent advantage that the GOP has with regard to get out the vote efforts along with the huge cash disadvantage further hinders the DNC's ability to deliver a victory in November. The situation also fits well with the Rove led strategy that favors voter saturation in the final weeks of the election cycle...especially considering that the primary goal of the GOP is to give voters pause with regards to national security and terrorism. Democrats may find themselves struggling to offset the negative advertising that is certain to dominate Republican efforts.

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman has developed a highly touted voter outreach operation that party operatives say he will blend with targeted television advertising. It is an operation that helped with a Republican victory in a special congressional election in California and with securing Sen. Lincoln Chafee's Republican primary win in Rhode Island.

"Republicans have unlimited resources," said Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic strategist and expert on voter mobilization. He predicted Republicans will "bloody the waters enough with negative ads and come in below that with a campaign that is mailings, phone calls, personal contact with voters they know they need to get out to win."

But the DNC's money has been directed to all states, many of them solidly Republican where Democratic candidates for national office stand little or no chance.

Meanwhile, the RNC has already spent more than $300,000 in advertising against Rep. Harold Ford, the Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, and more than $1 million against Rep. Sherrod Brown, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio. The DNC plans to spend no money advertising, leaving that task to the party's campaign committees.

Thought Theater has previously discussed the Dean 50 state strategy in a detailed posting that can be found here. Clearly, the DNC would have been at a financial and organizational disadvantage regardless of the strategy they elected to pursue. What remains to be seen is whether the Dean gamble will prove to be prudent or will be reported after the election as a critical error that allowed the Republicans to overcome a lead that was once perceived to be insurmountable.