Soren Dayton's blog

This weekend, I heard a presentation from a Republican operative and strategist who claimed that to be competitive in the 2012 Presidential race, the GOP candidate will need to raise $1 billion. I suspect that that number is a touch high, but it is not an unreasonable assumption. Let's run some numbers on that.

If you assume that the donors all came from maxed out donors and that the new limit is $2,500, that would mean that the candidate would need to find 200,000 donors. More likely, the average donation size would be much smaller and the number of donors much larger. Barack Obama had over 3.1 million donors by October, averaging about $200/donor.

Consultants, who get paid by campaigns, tend to focus on the dollars. But that's not what we should be focusing on when we look at the Obama campaign. We should be looking at the numbers of bodies. It is the size and scope of Obama's grassroots organization that is really the phenomonal innovation that could transform our politics. That, not the money, is what we need to figure out how to match.

Let's put it slightly differently. Obama got about 3m donors. He got about 6m cell phone numbers. And about 10m on his email list. Turning that around, about 1 in 3 of the people who signed up to his email list gave him money. That's earth-shattering.

I wrote a piece for Pajama's Media on technology in the 2008 race. The key point about the campaign was its decision to put the organizational focus on its grassroots:

In the end, the Obama campaign’s various technologies for fundraising, GOTV, and communications were side shows. They all derived from a much more fundamental innovation. Rolling Stone described the most important insight of the Obama campaign from one of their trainers: “We decided that we didn’t want to train volunteers. We want to train organizers — folks who can fend for themselves.”...

You can make the fundraisers a little more efficient. You can make the GOTV more efficient. You can have a better message and get it out better. These are linear improvements. But political organizations grow exponentially when you improve the organizers. That’s what the Obama campaign did. Everything was focused on making the organizer better.

In the end, either Obama's organization will be a one-off, which I wouldn't count on, or conservatives and/or Republicans are going to have to learn to match that level of organizing. But just as Obama's organization has partially transformed the Democratic Party and Dean's organization definititely did, the Republican Party will probably be transformed by a shift to a focus on grassroots. Some thoughts on how:

1. The power of the donor class will be signficantly reduced as it shifts to the grassroots.
2. This party would likely involve an overthrow of the current party leadership. And I don't necessarily mean at the RNC, but down at the county party level.
3. A party with that level of grassroots activity and energy might be more ideologically broadly-based than our current party.

That would be a fundamentally different Republican Party, and one that is focused on the voters and the activists and the donors rather than the intrigue of Washington, which has been so much the focus of the party.

The third point about a somewhat different ideological composition could be important, and the Republican primary might even provide a guide. John McCain won his primary based on winning rank-and-file Republicans who were not part of the party apparatus. He campaigned to these people. In March of 2007, I was in New Hampshire on the Straight Talk Express, and McCain was speaking at veterans halls to whoever would come. Mitt Romney was speaking that same day to Lincoln Day dinners. McCain probably wasn't even invited to those dinners.

At the same time, at some state and local conventions the local parties only maintained control under the attack by Ron Paul supporters by cheating them out of their delegate spots. A more vibrant party could have handled -- and perhaps beaten -- new entrants into the process. A more vibrant party could have built a coalition with those people rather than driven them away. Healthy political parties add people because they help them win. Unhealthy ones drive people away.

So in the end, I am somewhat bored with an ideological debate about the future of the party. The real change will be if people are willing to empower a new grassroots of this party and give up power to it. If we don't it's over. If we do, there could be tremendous opportunities that start to address some of the weaknesses of our party.

I have spent the last week recovering from the disappointment of election day. I have spent a lot of time talking to the mid-level operatives from the McCain campaign. (the top level are on TV playing the recriminations games, in undisclosed locations, or drinking their brains out in Vegas)  There are things that we can learn from this election.

The first is that John McCain won the primary because of an often neglected part of the coalition: military voters. Redstate's Erick Erickson said the point well on the night of the Florida primary:

Tonight was not a failure of conservatism, but a triumph of military voters who have made their home in the Republican Party because we are the party of a strong national defense.

In both South Carolina and Florida, they won it for McCain. In the grand coalition of the GOP, we've talked about social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. We've all ignored the military voters, except John McCain. And he won them big. His message resonated.

This is not a sufficient grassroots for the GOP in a national race, but it was a powerful one in the primary. We as a party should feel and water this part of the coalition better than we have done in the past. We will likely get a generation of candidates who served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan who will be powered by the volunteer work of volunteers who supported McCain. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if this developed into a meaningful faction in GOP politics in the next couple of years.

Second, the GOP is good at managing the mechanics of GOTV. However, we are not very good at managing and empowering our grassroots. The Democrats are. Open Left's Mike Lux, now on the Obama transition team, said:

I am grateful that field organizing and working with grassroots volunteers is actually in fashion again, and in so much bigger a way than it has ever been in my lifetime.

At a time that technological and volunteer energy was at an all-time high, even on the GOP side, the RNC deployed a mythically small number of field staff, opened a mythically small number of campaign offices, and generally deprioritized grassroots. We simply didn't tap into that energy effectively. Often we failed because we were inept. Often, these were the product of intentional decisions by state parties (see below) who were afraid of new people (see above). More broadly, a whole number of volunteer engagement plans failed to materialize. I still have drafts of some of them.

Third, many of our state parties are completely dysfunctional. COMPLETELY. There have been some horror stories out of state parties that should have been able to pull their own weight but simply weren't. I won't name names yet, but it is not good. There is indeed a correlation between the states that have lost elections and the state of their parties. There are two solutions to this. Either someone needs to take them over from below or, much less preferably, they need to be fixed top-down from DC with new staff, bypassing and eventually surpassing the state parties.

Fourth, history will probably show that the mistake of squashing of the libertarian grassroots out west in the form of the Ron Paul campaign could resonate for years. Fewer activists, less money, etc. Many people will try to blame McCain and/or his campaign, but I do not believe that a single state party stood up for a significant part of their grassroots. Often, the parties were so weak that they ended up being complicit in tossing out Paul-supporting libertarians because they were afraid of new people coming in and taking over. These same parties were already in desperate places because of their inability to respond to the growing strength of latino voting blocs with outreach to bring them over. These are not the responses of healthy parties.

Last week, I wrote that the links between ACORN, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and the group Secretary of State Project were concerning. I asked how many other Secretaries of State were backed by ACORN.

Well. There's a recount in Minnesota that will determine whether Norm Coleman keeps his seat. And another ACORN backed, Secretary of State Project-backed candidate will be doing the recount. Let's see what they say about Ritchie.

The Secretary of State Project describes him as:

In 2006, the SoS Project helped elect one of the most progressive Secretaries of State in the nation, Mark Ritchie. How he got his start in politics? As a community organizer.

The SoS Project describes Brunner and Ritchie as their success stories. Recall that Brunner tried to throw out all of the McCain absentee ballot applications, violated federal law by sepcifically directing Ohio to turn off validity checks on registration, and encouraged county election officials to not allow Republican election officials to observe voting. In every case, courts said she was simply wrong. There is a reason that SoS Project backed Ritchie, just like they backed Brunner. Partisanship at the cost of electoral integrity.

Here's Ritchie's background. He used his government office for political gain:

Ritchie acknowledged asking a campaign volunteer to copy a list of participants in a civic engagement program through the secretary of state's office to his campaign newsletter, which included a political contribution request.

He was endorsed by ACORN.

So we have a guy who was elected by a group whose practices encourage at least voter registration fraud and make it easier to cheat in elections. He was elected by a group that is seeking to make sure that the people who count votes are partisans, and their other success story in 2006 has been shot down by the court repeatedly in her attempts to rig Ohio elections. And he misused government resources for political purposes.

This is the guy counting the votes. Who is he going to dance with? The ones that brought him? We know how they play.

Cross-posted from Election Journal.

Fox28 in South Bend, Indiana has a report of an attempt to mislead voters. After a voter told the caller that she supported John McCain, the caller said that her vote had been recorded, and she didn't need to vote on election day:

She says she received a phone call from a woman claiming to be an elections official. “This young lady was saying they’re doing something new and something different and I don’t have to go out and vote,” she said. The caller said people could now vote by phone and asked her who she wanted to vote for. The woman said John McCain. She was then told her vote was cast and she didn’t need to vote Tuesday.

Watch it:

Hat Tip: Frugal Hoosiers

Cross-posted from Election Journal.

Palestra.net finds that Barack Obama campaign staffer (described on an Obama site as a field organizer and at a Zoroastrian site as Obama staff) Minwalla Farah is registered to vote in 3 states.

Meet Farah Minwalla, an Obama field organizer in North Carolina. She registered to vote in Mecklenburg County, NC on October 4. According to county auditor reports, the address Minwalla used belongs to a Wanda Nabors. But oddly – Minwalla is also registered to vote in New York AND Nevada. All three registrations are listed as active. So, is she a resident of North Carolina, Nevada or New York? Technically, it appears she could vote in all three.

Minwalla’s online bio for NextGenNow says she is currently pursuing a degree in English and Journalism in New York City. As recently as July, Minwalla wrote a review for a band in Brooklyn, but now she’s registered to vote in swing state North Carolina. The latest RealClearPolitics poll shows Obama ahead by 0.3 percent, in New York Obama leads by 29.7 percent. As I’ve heard so often from campaigners, every vote counts.

I checked the voter file and found that Minwalla registered on the day of the Nevada Caucus with a mailing address in  New York.  The Nevada caucus allowed registration and participation on the same day. Yet, two weeks later, someone with the same name, New York City address, and birthday voted in the New York Presidential primary.  She registered at the New York City address in 2007.

I have not been able to confirm the North Carolina registration, but the evidence looks solid.

UPDATE: A North Carolina reader confirms this in the comments.

Cross-posted from Election Journal.

Election Journal is working with a large number of activists around the country, tracking election fraud and other irregularities. Check out this video of some of our greatest hits from monitoring elections in the primary:

If you see anything at the polling place that raises a question, take a picture and send it to us — even from your camera phone — to votefraud@gmail.com or email us at electionjournal@gmail.com.

These discussions about what an online right should look like seems to miss several points. There are distinct problems, and they need to be handled seperately. Some of these problems need to be solved organically, some will require time, but some can be solved somewhat mechanically.

One of the things that we need to solve immediately and may be susceptible to a mechanical solution is the crisis of information. The crisis of information is that righty information outlets are having incrementally less influence on the news cycle than lefty ones. The chart is from this WSJ story about the rise of the lefty blogs and specifically Huffington Post vis-a-vis Drudge. TPM, Chris Cillizza, Howard Kurtz, Halperin and others have been talking about this also.

On the list above, Townhall, Michelle Malkin, Newsbusters, and Redstate were the only sites to demonstrate triple-digit growth during the last election period, and only Redstate's and Newsbusters' was truly explosive. (full disclosure: I am a front-page contributor to both of those)

But I don't want to focus on traffic, but rather a related question: who drives the news cycle? This used to be Drudge and still is to a great degree. But any experience watching this electoral cycle will tell you that TPM and Huffington Post are essential in setting narratives and forcing campaigns and other political actors to respond to specific reported and sourced information and distributing it quickly. With that in mind, let's look at something Mark Tapscott said:

But I want to offer a third essential element in addition to punditry and activism. The RightRoots must make a top priority of equiping vastly more of our sites with the reportorial and investigative skills required to dig up and present credible exposes, fact-based analyses and concrete news stories.

In short, we've complained about liberal media bias for decades, but now that the mainstream media is steadily being displaced by online media, many of us need to become ..... journalists, or capable of doing the online analogy of traditional journalism, particularly in its investigative phase.

I would state this slightly differently. Stories are started online with HuffPo and TPM. They are completed on TV and in the newspapers. We are playing in no part of that process. One of the reasons for that is that there is no reliable place to go for fact-based conservative perspective.

This is something that we could do now. There are enough talented reporters to start training and mentorship programs for more. These people could play in the news cycle. This would not necessarily require donors to dump money on "bloggers". Rather the people would be established journalists with records.

Other parts of rebuilding the right as a coherent ideological and electoral force will depend on other things (like a coherent ideological framework linked to coherent policies). But this we can do relatively quickly and start demonstrating immediate results by attacking the terrible policies of a Democratic Congress and, potentially, a Democratic White House.

A number of former DoJ officials have sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasy asking why the DoJ is not enforcing the law and correcting the record regarding a previous letter sent by another set of former attorneys. The key passages seem to be:

As these cases show, in more than four decades of operation, the Civil Rights Division has never hesitated to fulfill its responsibilities by filing lawsuits to enforce federal voting rights laws that govern access to the polls and the administration of elections even on the very eve of Election Day. Against this backdrop, the Division’s recent failure to act in the case filed by a private party against the Ohio Secretary of State in which two federal courts, including the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, have specifically found that the Secretary of State is not complying with the verification requirements of Section 303 of HAVA, is difficult to fathom. Its similar lack of action in Wisconsin, where the state election board has also admitted that it is not complying with this provision of HAVA, is equally perplexing. This appears to be a dereliction of the Department’s obligations to enforce federal law.

Full letter after jump

Yesterday, a very important piece of information popped. The fundraising consultant for the Ohio Secretary of State in her 2006 election, Jennifer Brunner, is the Director of Development for Project Vote, Karyn Gillette.

It is easy to see how Brunner's strategy of turning of HAVA checks (and then suing to keep them off) melds nicely with ACORN/Project Vote's strategy to flood the voter rolls with fake people.

This suggests that Brunner is probably a creature of ACORN in some form. One wonders how many more Democratic Secretaries of State were backed by ACORN.

UPDATE: Brunner's office contacted me with a correction. I didn't mean to suggest that Gillette was still a consultant and I have clarified that.

Some coincidences are just too rich that you have to start drawing conclusions. Here are four facts that suggest that there might be a line between them:

• Dale Rathke embezzled money from ACORN totalling about $950k. Apparently, commitments have been made to return about $210k, for a total of $740k still missing.
• Barack Obama's campaign paid ACORN, via a political consulting affiliate, $830k, but ACORN says that they only received $80, leaving $750k unaccounted for.
• Dale Rathke embezzled this money in the period of 1999-2000, when Barack Obama was running for US Congress with the backing of SEIU Local 880 and ACORN. SEIU Local 880 is basically ACORN controlled. Rathke even filed the LM-2 form with the Department of Labor in 2000, signing it as "Treasurer", which I have previously written about.
• Obama, ACORN, SEIU 880, and Rep. Danny Davis, appeared to act together in a number of local political engagements.

Here's my question: Did SEIU Local 880 and/or ACORN use some or all of that embezzled money to fund operations for Obama's Congressional race in 1999 and 2000?

Details and sourcing after the jump.