The First Fast Break

Once every few decades someone comes along with an innovation that completely changes a game.  I'm thinking of the invention of the Fast Break or the Fosbury Flop that made previous strategies obsolete.

I have to give credit to Team Napolitano for fundamentally altering the game this election cycle.  In every campaign cycle both parties try to recruit and support candidates.  But Team Napolitano has gone the extra step of backing their slate with unheard of amounts of union and tribal money.  Arizona hasn't ever seen a cycle in which one party coordinates half a million (or maybe even a million) dollars for 10 or 15 candidates. 

I think Team Napolitano will have little to show for their efforts, but they have fundamentally altered the game.  I think they will have little to show because they are going to get wiped out with matching money. 

Have I mentioned how much I like Clean Elections?  Dude, Clean Elections is the ultimate example of a liberal program with unintended consequences.  It's like a steroid-enhanced version of the War on Poverty.  Clean Elections was supposed to take the special interest money out of politics so that centrists and moderate Democrats could get elected. 

I don't know what they were thinking.  Centrists and moderate Democrats are campaign contribution magnets.  Instead, Clean Elections has empowered the guy at the Republican District meeting who used to be relegated to blasting the Federal Reserve Board and claiming that the 16th Amendment never really passed. Now that guy and two hundred of his best friends can run a credible race.  I've written about it extensively here.

This cycle, Clean Elections may save the Republicans one last time.  Each time Team Napolitano takes a Union or Gaming contribution and spends it on a swing district, the CCEC writes a check to Team Napolitano's target.  The public money more than offsets the independent expenditure because the recipient of the public money gets to coordinate how to spend it.

It's possible that the Governor will still pick up a few seats so she can have a face-saving exit on her way to becoming Deputy Director of HUD in the Obama Administration--but I doubt it.

After all, the latest strategy is part of the huge plans that Team Napolitano had for this election cycle.  They were going to put the TIME and Trust initiatives on the ballot, run a bunch of moderates in the GOP primary and now conduct huge independent expenditure campaigns for the General Election.

Everyone knows how badly TIME and the Trust Initiative were botched.  As for the GOP primaries?  None of her challengers won and both of her incumbents lost.  So we are at strike two.

Now she's pumping unheard of amounts of money into key races and Clean Elections is cranking out checks right behind her. 

I say "one last time" because it's pretty clear that the matching provisions are unconstitutional.  Isn't that ironic?  The Democrats create an unconstitutional public financing scheme that ultimately benefits conservative Republicans and then Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy shut it down.

We don't yet know if Team Napolitano will pick up that third strike.  With the failure of TIME and the Trust Initiative to even make the ballot and the defeat of O'Halleran and Hershberger et al, they have had a humiliating election experience so far. 

However, they have reinvented the game.  The days of the lone candidate are over.  The new game is coordinated recruiting and a million dollars of outside cash.  The old way is obsolete.  Napolitano's First Fast Break has changed the game forever.

The only question is what to call it.  If she picks up four seats and takes over the House, then we can rightly call it the Fast Break.  If not, well, there's always the Napolitano Flop. 

Comments

[The Bull]

Greg - giving Napolitano's inept crew of political cronies credit for developing the sophisticated strategy you have uncovered and written about here is like saying man discovered oxygen. They stumbled across an old play book and are trying to implement it. It’s like having a blind quarterback.

Most reading this blog know the two or three jerks that run around touting their successes as if they've ever really known how to run a real campaign. Candidate recruitment for Republican primaries has been a strategy for years. Independent Expenditure committees are nothing new. Strategically selecting the right ballot initiative to create additional campaign spending vehicles is a long-time strategy on both sides of the aisle. Don't forget the other way to leverage Clean Elections. Recruit Democrat and Republican candidates in lopsided districts and use their dollars to turn-out the base, impacting statewide and congressional elections.

The Governor's team is not clever enough to develop these strategies, they're copying them. Hell, they're not even competent enough to implement whatever plan they picked up, dusted off, and updated the dates to 2008.

This entire campaign has been a strategic blunder by the Dems though they may not even get punished for it. Considering McCain is the worst presidential candidate in history (see also Mondale, Dukakis, etc...) and Obama is tracking towards a very close defeat in AZ, McCain's home state, our voters are more than willing to elect Dems. If this attitude translates to down ballot races, Dems will win big in this state.

I hate it when stupid gets rewarded!

[Matt S.]

Dude, and I'll never understand why the Commission interprets "Voter Education" to mean "make advertisements with tiny bug-like stick figures to tout ourselves." Would anybody really want to educate voters?

[Name:]

The Bull is right on target. Also, if Clean Elections gave me, as a candidate, a check today that I wasn't expecting, what exactly am I going to do with it? I should be using the funds to respond to the hit piece, so my old stuff is no good. I'd have to make new print, radio or tv ads, get in there and make the buy, and basically have something slapped together for the weekend. No matter how you slice it, the matching money comes too late to use effectively.

[The Bull]

Thanks, Name:. I think matching funds are a gift so in the end a real hack can use any dollars, even those that come late, effectively. In this case I'd use them to run live push calls to high efficacy poll voters. Read more about a hacks perspective by visiting: http://stylitics.blogspot.com/

[Sad Democrat]

Adept analysis, Greg, except I think it misses one key point and the glaring failure of Team Napolitano: If her gang truly were the savants everyone says they are, they would have recognized that the smart money has always said 2008 will be a Democratic year. They would have seen that there was real opportunity to take back the Legislature and plant grassroots of local office holders.

Hypothetically, let's examine if Team Napolitano hadn't wasted enormous amounts of traditionally Democratic resources on pet-project diversions like TIME and ineffective IEs for demographically doomed moderate Republicans who, golly gosh darn are just so nice; imagine if those Democratic resources had ALL been directed toward building a Democratic majority. We would be talking a whole new ball game.

If you're a Democrat in Arizona, it's like you're a kid who just got into Yale, and in response your parents spend half your college fund at the casino, exclaiming all the while, "at least you got into Yale! At least you still have half the money left!"

[Jim Torgeson]

Forget which side you support. It's sad that any party is trying to buy an election.

[Ephram]

Greg, what I don't understand is that it is well documented that Republicans are the beneficiaries of the Clean Election system. Why is it that Republicans and their organizations are the ones that keep trying to kill it. I'm not sure who brought the suit that is before the court now but I bet it has ties to or has Republican leanings.

[ron]

Ephram, I have wondered the same thing...

[Donna]

"Instead, Clean Elections has empowered the guy at the Republican District meeting who used to be relegated to blasting the Federal Reserve Board and claiming that the 16th Amendment never really passed. Now that guy and two hundred of his best friends can run a credible race.

And this is why you LIKE Clean Elections? Oy vey.

Also, right there with ya, Ephram and ron. Notice how it's the Country Club Republicans and the Goldwateroids who are trying their damnedest to shut it down. Some people are just insistent on biting the hand that's been feeding them (or keeping their discombobulated party on life support, as it were).

So cool, Clean Elections will likely be dismantled in the wake of court decisions. An empowered Democratic party will get the lion's share of the campaign lucre going forward well into the future, irrespective of what happens in this year's race. GOP politicians will be forced to moderate their stances, or else. Movement conservatives will return to spouting conspiracy theories at Republican district meetings.

So I guess there's a bright side to the loss of Clean Elections after all.

[Chad]

Ephram, conservative opposition to CCEC is a matter of principle. We do not want the government taking other people's money and spending it on candidates they do not support. That's unfair.

If you support someone for office, you should support them with your money (and as much of it as you want!). You should not force other people to support your candidate.

Before calling conservatives who participate hypocrites, bear in mind that if you do not participate you are severely punished. Just ask Matt Salmon.

[Mesa Republican George]

People supporting a position based on principle, even if it hurts their party's chances of success in elections, is a great example of integrity. Too bad that we are all so surprised when it occurs.

[Thane Eichenauer]

As a Libertarian I oppose government financed campaign advertising twice as much as the average Republican.

However if a broken and immoral system (the CCEC) can manage to promote citizen education about the Federal Reserve then it only goes to prove that a broken clock can tell the time correctly twice a day. I still that continuing to pay for a broken clock is a stupid idea.

http://www.themoneymasters.com/

[nick]

Donna,
Are the dems going to continue acceptance
of contributions from DOODAD PRO, ES ESH,
LOVEN O BAH NOT, and all the other freaks?

[ron]

Chad, from reading your comment you would applaud Obama for collecting money from folks and would be booing McCain for his 'sour grapes' because he took public funding?