chris faulkner's blog

Governor Daniels of Indiana is not an easy guy to figure out. He confuses members of the press and political people of both parties. Why you ask? Because he is a leader.

In these times of GOP doldrums, when we do see someone who bucks the conventional wisdom and easy path, it is so uncommon it usually confounds us.

Case in point: the Butler University commencement speech of 2009. A nice, safe, warm and fuzzy send off for the graduating class right? Wrong. More like a 2x4 to the collective face of baby boomers who, quite frankly, deserve it. 

Read some excerpts from this incredible speech below:

“As a 10-year-old, new to Indiana, Butler basketball was about the only entertainment our family was able, or at least willing, to purchase for me. On countless frigid evenings, someone's dad would drop us off in the Fieldhouse parking lot, and someone else's dad would pick us up, after watching the Bulldogs either beat or scare the pants off some big-name larger school.  I might stumble over my own college's fight song, but I still know yours by heart.”

Hey, it is Indiana so of course it is going to open with basketball. He went to Princeton, so who can blame him for loving Butler athletics.

Even though the whole notion of a "generation" must be discounted as the loosest of concepts, within limits it is possible to spot the defining characteristics of an age and the human beings who create it.  Along with most of your faculty and parents, I belong to the most discussed, debated and analyzed generation of all time, the so-called Baby Boomers.  By the accepted definition, the youngest of us is now forty-five, so the record is pretty much on the books, and the time for verdicts can begin. Which leads me to congratulate you in advance.  As a generation, you are off to an excellent start.  You have taken the first savvy step on the road to distinction, which is to follow a weak act.  I wish I could claim otherwise, but we Baby Boomers are likely to be remembered by history for our numbers, and little else, at least little else that is admirable.

Ouch.

All our lives, it's been all about us. We were the "Me Generation."  We wore t-shirts that said "If it feels good, do it."  The year of my high school commencement, a hit song featured the immortal lyric "Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today."  As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish.  Our current Baby Boomer President has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about..himself. As a generation, we did tend to live for today.  We have spent more and saved less than any previous Americans.  Year after year, regardless which party we picked to lead the country, we ran up deficits that have multiplied the debt you and your children will be paying off your entire working lives.  Far more burdensome to you mathematically, we voted ourselves increasing levels of Social Security pensions and Medicare health care benefits, but never summoned the political maturity to put those programs on anything resembling a sound actuarial footing. 

At this point the squirming in seats of the parents section must have been almost audible.

Our irresponsibility went well beyond the financial realm.  Our parents formed families and kept them intact even through difficulty "for the sake of the kids."   To us, parental happiness came first; we often divorced at the first unpleasantness, and increasingly just gave birth to children without the nuisance of marriage.  "Commitment" cramps one's style, don't you know.  Total bummer.

Let no uncomfortable topic go untouched.

As time runs out on our leadership years, it's clear there is no chance that anyone will ever refer to us, as histories now do our parents, as "The Greatest Generation."  There is no disgrace in this; very few generations are thought of as "great."  And history is not linear.  Many generations fail miserably at the challenges they confront, and their societies take steps backwards as a consequence.  Consider Japan before World War II, or Americans in the decades before the Civil War. And yet in both those instances and many others, the people who followed did great things, not only redeemed all the failings but built better, fairer societies than their nations had seen before.  In fact, true greatness can only be revealed by large challenges, by tough circumstances.  And your opportunities for greatness will be large.

Your generation can be great…especially compared to your parents'.

And please, just to revise another current practice, be judgmental.  Whatever they claim, people always are, anyway - consider the healthy stigmatization of racist comments or sexist attitudes or cigarette smoking.  It's just a matter of which behaviors enough of us agree to judge as unacceptable.  As free people, we agree to tolerate any conduct that does no harm to others, but we should not be coerced into condoning it. Selfishness and irresponsibility in business, personal finances, or in family life, are deserving of your disapproval.  Go ahead and stigmatize them. Too much such behavior will hurt our nation and the future for you and the families you will create. Honesty about shortcomings is not handwringing.  Again, this is a blessed land, in every way.  Amidst the worst recession in a long time, we still are wealthier than any society in history.  We are safer, from injury, disease, and each other than any humans that ever lived.  Best of all, we are free.  The problems you now inherit are not those of 1776, or 1861, or 1929, or 1941.  But they are large enough, and left unattended, they will devour the wealth and, ultimately, the freedom and safety we cherish, at least in our thankful moments.  So you have a chance to be a great Butler class, part of a great generation.

Take that political correctness.

In a brief, intelligent, yet straightforward head shot, the Governor has done what almost no one in Government, media or certainly academia has had the stones to do…lay guilt where it belongs.

A lot of my friends keep asking me if this guy is going to run for President and I just say, “he is doing too good a job as Governor for us to spare him.” But, of course, doing your current job really, really well is a great way to get promoted.

You can read the entire speech here.

Chris Faulkner

The short answer is no. The “why not” is a little more complex. There will be some who will now be angry at Sen. Cornyn and the National Republican Senatorial Committee for backing him in the first place. Really? Keep in mind the RNC, NRSC and the NRCC are NOT issue driven organizations. They are member driven organizations with only ONE goal…majority status, that’s it, no other reason for being.

I had some quality time walking door-to-door recently in NY20 to think about how most Republican campaigns approach GOTV. “Most” is a broad statement and I realize some of you work campaigns in areas where some of the methods I will discuss are not relevant. It is also important to consider the myriad of variables that affect a GOTV operation in preparation and execution.

I am beat.

I walked precincts all day for Jim Tedisco and when the polls closed I thought I could head to the party…but then things went awry. In the next 13 days political communications will play as important a role as the legal fight and I want you to know the facts.

• The election is NOT over. There are still over 4,000 absentee ballots that have not been returned which totaled with the 6,000 already received would be almost 10,000 absentee ballots that have NOT been counted. These ballots will continue to be accepted until April. 13th. ANY premature counting of votes will, basically, be counting BEFORE the voting is over…and that is just wrong.
• Jim Tedisco is currently trailing Scott Murphy by 59 votes according to machine tallies. NOTICE I did not say ballots. NY 20 uses old school level machines to vote so there is NO "ballot" to count. Votes are tabulated on the machine as people pull levers. Most of these machines are probably older than me.
• The results you saw tonight were nothing more than the UNofficial notes of whichever random poll worker transcribed results from the machine to the form that they report to the Board of Elections. It is fair to say that these numbers are often riddled with mistakes as people mix up numbers and read the wrong tallies.

With memories of Washington State 2004 and Minnesota 2008 looming in my mind here are some things to consider.

• Jim Tedisco will win the absentee vote.
• The only way Scott Murphy can win is too challenge and disqualify absentee and military ballots that will, most likely, be votes for Jim Tedisco.
• Scott Murphy is so anti-military he tried to stop Harvard from having a ROTC program on campus while he was a student there and prevent military personnel from teaching classes. Knowing that, it is hard to imagine military members voting for him.

It's 3:23 AM so forgive the horrible grammar and even worse sentence structure.

Chris Faulkner

P.S. Somehow I knew wearing my "Coleman Recount Team" polar fleece today was a bad idea…

I was teaching a candidate school recently in Minnesota and wandered into some dangerous territory. Our firm is often hired to do political education and one of our bigger clients is American Majority We teach several sessions that focus on Communications, Campaign Plans, Fundraising, Social Media and Grassroots Organizing (all ppts are available to download and steal here SlideShare )

Yes, I said white people and yes I know “Strategery” is not a word.

So why do we need a political map for white people? Aren’t they all the same? No.

It continues to amaze me how many involved in politics (including the press) will make great strides to stratify Latino and Asian voters by their appropriate subgroups but then make almost no effort to better understand white voters. I recently read Sen. Jim Webb’s book Born Fighting on the history of Scots-Irish Americans (sorry to all my GOP friends in VA).  This is a must read for people in politics who are looking to better understand rural, southern and Appalachian voters.

This attitude that white voters are somehow a monolithic voting bloc is a relatively new phenomenon. I recently bought a GOP poll book for the 1898 election in IL on Ebay and it was incredible to see how some things change a lot and some not at all. It was a detailed list of all the voters in a various precinct used by the Party’s Precinct Chair for the purpose of voter turnout. It listed each voter with several points of data, interestingly the “Ethnicity” section was divided into Italian, German, Irish, Polish, White and other. Hilarious. The reality of course is that the longer these groups stayed in American the more they lost touch with their individual group identities. So do all these voters now fit into a great big bowl of vanilla?

White voters affiliation with their grand parents and great parents ethnic background may be watered down but how else can you explain these differences.

• The Scandinavian and democrat leaning voters of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
• The German and Republican leaning voters of Ohio and Indiana.
• The Polish and democrat leaning voters of Chicago.
• The Scots Irish and (newly) Republican leaning voters of the Old South.
• The Irish and democrat leaning voters of Boston and New York.

Of course country of origin is only part of this identity. Often the religion and early economic class of many of these groups pushed them into the arms of either party.

So how are Irish and Scots Irish backgrounds different? In a nutshell, Socts Irish got to American first , settled (or migrated) in the  south and west and were Protestant. Irish were Catholic, came later and settled mostly in cities in the north. The history of the early Scots Irish is truely American. They were originally from lowland areas of Scotland and were Presbyterian. The English moved thousands of them to Ulster in Ireland to help quell the Irish, quickly the English realized they could not control either group so they began to ship these very poor settlers to “buffer” areas in between the wealthy English gentry and the Indians. The original “40 acres and a mule” program. These early Scots Irish moved into the south and Appalachia extensively. They had some interesting characteristics that many would recognize today. They were religious, gun loving, family oriented rural people who had a deep distrust of central authority.

So when you are trying to figure out messaging and strategy for voters make sure you talk to your pollster about ALL of the subgroups for each ethnicity.

Chris Faulkner

Alicia Davis is a principal with TargetPoint Consulting. TargetPoint is a leader in the field of micro targeting and, unlike so many pretenders out there, has written most of the conventional wisdom on how to do advanced market segmentation at the individual level.

Alicia joined Target Point Consulting from the Republican National Committee where she most recently served as Regional Political Director. Prior to returning to the Republican National Committee, Alicia served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Communications at the United States Department of Commerce.

Leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Alicia served as the Director for the Presidential Coordinated Fund for the Republican National Committee.  Prior to her return to Washington for the fall campaign, Alicia worked in Manhattan as the Republican National Convention’s Director for External Relations.

 From 2001 to 2003 Alicia served as Associate Political Director in the White House Office of Political Affairs.  Before moving to Washington, Alicia worked for the Bush/Cheney 2000 presidential campaign and in Massachusetts for Governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci.

As my main man Ron Burgundy would say “She is…kind of a big deal.”

CF - What campaign on the GOP side showed real innovation in fundraising?AD - I may be biased, but I believe that Mitt Romney’s fundraising team utilized innovative new tools and pushed the limit on all fundraising mediums.  From building out an online platform for lower dollar donors, to developing a tracking system that utilized tools seen in the business world, to creating interesting events like national call day to draw donors together to compete – they covered the spectrum.  More importantly, they made sure that each piece worked in concert with the others – so, for example, big events had an online, mail and phone component.

CF - What campaign on the GOP side had the most effective use of New Media?AD - This is one area where we need to catch up.  Traditionally Democrats spend significantly more funds than Republicans on new media staff and resources.  Clearly Obama took advantage of his funds to maximize his reach and was successful at doing so.  There are a number of innovative ways to influence and motivate voters, we just need to invest.

CF - What candidate on the GOP side best leveraged earned media to get traction?AD - Huckabee certainly used earned media to his advantage in the primary process.

CF - What campaign on the GOP side showed the greatest comeback?AD - Clearly John McCain made quite a comeback in the primary process.  While he may have been the heir apparent in early 2007, his prospects weren’t looking so good the summer prior to the New Hampshire primary.  McCain continued to fight and won the reward of New Hampshire and ultimately the nomination.

CF - What campaign on the GOP side had the most effective GOTV organization?AD - The push for the Saxby run-off was an intense and well run operation that mobilized supporters and got the vote out.

CF - What GOP candidate has the biggest ideas for the future of our party (even if they lost)?AD - Again, I may be biased, but I believe Mitt Romney has the best ideas for our party.  He spoke out in 2007, stating that the we  “put our own house in order” and return to our principles.  With a foundation of our principles and a party that is constantly investing in modernizing and innovating its efforts.

CF - What GOP campaign was really good at the small stuff? (yard signs, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc)AD - This t-shirt certainly qualified as the most interesting approach - http://www.adn.com/ted-stevens/story/572441.html

The ongoing RNC Chairman debate is interesting to watch. I have been an employee and vendor to the RNC and really think there are a lot of folks with a lot of opinions, both good and bad, about the RNC. What seems to be in short supply is people who actually know what goes on inside the building. That will be another post…

One of my favorite parts is the Victory Department. What is the Victory Department? In a nutshell, they are the folks that plan, train and monitor GOTV and AB/EV programs around the country. Notice I did not say implementation, that is for the campaigns to do. Michael Beach has been the National Victory Director for the last two years. Michael got his start in Ohio, the mother of Presidents…and great political staff, as a field staffer he then moved to Nevada where he headed up GOTV and AB Chase programs for the State Party. In 07 he was brought in to take a hard look at the metrics of what we were (and were not) accomplishing with our voter contact activities. Few people in the building have killed, or tried to kill, more “sacred cows” in their time than Michael Beach. Here is the results of our chat.

CF – What were some of the biggest changes in application and technology that our side saw when compared to 2004 and 2006?

MB - There were many technical advances that were made this cycle, but the two that stand out to me were in data gathering and volunteer productivity. Despite only having a field operation active for 20 weeks in 2008, we were able to collect 10 times the amount of data that was collected in all of 2003 and 2004. Improvements in volunteer efficiency played a major role in the collection of data. Improvements such as our VoIP system allowed our volunteers to go from making an average of 30 calls per hour to an average that approached 38 calls per hour.

CF - Was the base engaged? How so?

MB - On the volunteer side the base was definitely engaged. The goals for our volunteer GOTV program were very aggressive and nothing that we accomplished would have been possible without the support of our base. Our volunteer program made over twice as many volunteer contact attempts during the post-convention period in 2008 as was made during the same period in 2004.

CF - Which states showed the greatest adaptation to new techniques and tech for GOTV?

MB - The majority of our states ran very effective GOTV programs, but the states that stood out to me were the ones that were not top tier targets in 2004, but were very competitive in 2008. North Carolina (1400+% increase in data collection over 2004) setup an excellent operation despite starting a few weeks later than the larger group of target states. Virginia (500+% improvement in data collection over 2004) was able to get buy in from a wide variety of down ballot candidates and integrate them into our GOTV program. California (1500+% increase in data collection over 2004) provided a great amount of output into the state during the summer and then provided other western states with significant help during the GOTV period.

Following the November election we moved into Georgia and setup a full GOTV operation for the Senate runoff. Despite not having a great deal of recent history running statewide GOTV efforts that involved the RNC we were able to work with the NRSC, GAGOP and Chambliss campaign to setup an excellent program in just a few weeks. The statistic from this race that sticks out the most to me is the fact that we collected over twice as many AB votes from our GOTV universe in the runoff as were collected during the general despite a significant drop in overall turnout.

CF - Which campaigns showed the best ability cooperate with other campaigns to achieve better turnout?

MB - There was buy in from day one from the majority of our targeted and senate candidates. By the summer of 2007 the RNC had met with over 35 campaigns to discuss the Victory program. The next challenge for us is to get better engagement with non-federal statewide races as well as state senate and house races.

CF - What was the most valuable tool in the GOP GOTV tool box this year?

MB - AB/EV data collection was the most valuable tool for our GOTV program this cycle. The RNC and McCain campaign devoted significant resources (labor and technology) towards the collection of AB/EV data. We were able to identify the majority of voters that had cast an absentee or early vote and then they were removed from our paid and volunteer universes.

CF - Which states showed the most improvement in GOTV from 2004 to 2008?

MB - Colorado, Maine, and Ohio are excellent example of states that made improvements across the board from 2004. These three states all made large improvements in their data collection over 2004, but their AB/EV programs were the ones that really stood out. Each of these states was collecting data for almost every county/municipality on a daily basis despite the fact that there was no statewide file. This allowed us to no exactly where we stood in terms of votes in the bank and also gave us the opportunity to be reactive to what was actually happening on the ground.

CF - Which states showed the most innovation and use of tech in their GOTV?

MB - Florida has taken all of their experiences with AB/EV to develop an excellent reporting system that allows you to identify the AB/EV broken up by several variables. Nevada tested a very aggressive online voter registration program that we feel will play a major role in future elections. Missouri utilized a phone from home program that had a few features that were more advanced than even the neighbor to neighbor tool that the Obama campaign utilized.

The list of states that stood out from a technology standpoint could have been longer, but our states did such an excellent job of sharing best practices with other states, that good ideas were quickly adopted on a national scale. The ability to move best practices out on a national scale is the main reason that I feel that we need to have a very strong national Victory team in DC to compliment the work that our state programs our doing.

Part 2 of our series was with Erin VanSickle. She is the communications director for the Republican Party of Florida.  She served as the RPOF’s press secretary during the ’06 election cycle and served as press secretary for the Florida Senate Majority Office prior to that.

Florida GOP’s Lessons from the Trenches

CF Tell me about Florida?

EV Due to its sheer size, the State of Florida necessitates more than retail politicking—it requires any statewide campaign to have a methodical and energized ground game that can conquer ten media markets and a message that resonates with an incredibly diverse population—Hispanics from distinct countries of origin, African Americans, Veterans, seniors, the Jewish community, and military families, to name a few.  This vast state compels campaigns to master a complex political strategy that incorporates the ever-critical I-4 corridor, “condo commandos,” Hispanic Little Havana, and conservative Northwest Florida.  As a political party, the Republican Party of Florida is here to provide support, guidance, infrastructure, and fundraising for campaigns, from the presidential campaign down to the Broward County Sheriff’s race.

CF What does Obama’s victory in Florida over the McCain campaign say about the political ground game in Florida?

EV It shows that this was a perfect Democrat year.  The Obama campaign simply had more resources.  The Obama camp out-spent McCain 7-1 in Florida, an extreme TV state where TV advertising is critical to success.  I would note, however, that because of the Republican team in Florida, McCain came within 21/2 points of winning Florida—which says a lot about the folks who worked tirelessly across Florida on behalf of the Republican ticket. Additionally, while Florida Democrats were awash in cash, political operatives, and newly registered Democrat voters, the Florida Democrat Party utterly failed to take advantage of it, defeating not one single Republican incumbent in the Florida House or Senate. Congressmen Gus Bilirakis and Bill Young both got 60+% in Tampa – an area Obama carried. In Miami – another area Obama carried – Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart both fended off credible, well-funded, DCCC-backed candidates. I think our performance across the board bodes very well for the Florida GOP.