Under the Iron Dome

Congress from the Inside

Paul Herrnson, Colton Campbell, David Dulio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000438093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Regierung

This book provides a glimpse into the professional lives of members of Congress and the staff, political consultants, and others who work beneath the Capitol's iconic dome. It shows some of the historic challenges, daily trials and tribulations, and public and private triumphs and failures that defi ne working life on the Hill. Original chapters by practitioners who have been there off er a fresh understanding of congressional elections, policy making, and party leadership, as well as landmark institutional developments, such as the growing influence of women and minorities in the legislative process. Each author brings a personal knowledge of Congress, providing unique insight into the opaque world of committee assignments, the hustle and bustle of fl oor activity, the cross- examination of committee testimony, and the beehive of activity in a member's Washington or district offi ce, or committee's office. Collectively, they provide keen insights into the institutions, procedures, and politics that shape congressional policy making. Additionally, the historic two impeachments of then- President Donald J. Trump are examined to showcase some of the extraordinary politics taking place on Capitol Hill. Aimed at anyone working in Congress or wanting to infl uence public policy, this book is also an excellent classroom supplement for political science courses at every level and a compelling read for citizens who want to understand how Congress works and why it sometimes does not.

1 Campaigning for Congress

Kelly D. Patterson and J. Toscano

Before someone serves in Congress, they need to run for Congress. Campaigns are also a primary means for connecting citizens to lawmakers. Through campaigns, candidates project a compelling image they use to win support and build a career on Capitol Hill. Robust campaigns provide candidates with multiple ways to engage with voters, including public appearances, media interviews, news conferences, social media communications, grassroots organizing, volunteer door-knocking, and text and telephone banking, but the preponderance of campaign dollars goes toward advertising on television, radio, and digital platforms.

Candidates make a variety of strategic and stylistic decisions as they reach out to voters. These decisions are difficult in the best of times. They are even more difficult in the midst of a pandemic, where even the most reliable methods of contacting voters come under scrutiny. For example, in the 2020 election cycle, in Utah’s Fourth District, Democratic Representative Ben McAdams contracted COVID-19 and had to spend time in the hospital. The diagnosis meant a suspension of all his campaign activities. It also raised the question of whether a candidate should discuss his illness on the campaign trail. After some debate, the campaign ran an ad showing a haggard and gaunt McAdams sitting up in a hospital bed with a breathing tube attached to his nose. The unflattering image served as a segue to the issue of insurance coverage for those who fall ill, reflecting an issue that was at the core of McAdams’s campaign. This example demonstrates how campaigns consider imagery, content, and the medium when designing a campaign ad.

This chapter explores the nature of those strategic and stylistic decisions based on our many years of working on and observing congressional campaigns—Patterson at Y² Analytics and Toscano first at GMMB and most recently at Backstory Strategies, each considered a leading Democratic strategy and communications group. We use our experience working in these types of organizations to help describe the technology that campaigns use to make strategic decisions with regard to voter outreach, the types of messages they use to motivate voters, and the impact of the Digital Age on campaigning. Our experiences help make sense of the stylistic decisions that campaign professionals make when formulating a message and selecting the media used to deliver it. Finally, we touch on the ways in which the crisis atmosphere of a pandemic has affected these decisions.

The Enduring Nature of Congressional Campaigns

It is difficult to talk broadly about congressional campaigns. There are 435 congressional districts spread over 50 states, and no two districts are exactly alike. Nationalized political environments and the presence (or lack thereof) of a presidential race on the ballot make the dynamics of every political cycle different. However, one dimension that must be established is the competitiveness of the district or state in which the races occur. Another dimension involves whether an incumbent seeks reelection or if the seat will become what is normally referred to as an “open” seat. Incumbents running to retain their seats win reelection at a rate hovering around 90 percent, and most win with more than 60 percent of the vote, which means that it is much easier for a candidate to win an open-seat contest, in which there is no incumbent (Figure 1.1). Of course, this does not mean that all the races in which an incumbent participates result in a lopsided victory for the incumbent. Increasingly, competitive primaries are being fought as younger politicos ride public frustration with a seemingly non-responsive political system to victory over entrenched incumbents of their own party, on both the right and left. However, open-seat races are often the most competitive races because savvy politicians wait for a race that maximizes the opportunity to prevail.¹

Figure 1.1Incumbent Dynamics in House Elections.

Source: Adapted from Vital Statistics on Congress, available from the Brookings Institution (www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/vital-statistics-on-congress/).

Competition and incumbency have major impacts on how much money a candidate raises, which in turn affects the nature of a candidate’s campaign. A challenger in a lopsided district favoring the incumbent rarely has the resources available to a competitive challenger or an open-seat candidate running in a toss-up district. Consequently, candidates who are unable to raise sufficient funds are unable to build an elaborate campaign organization and run non-competitive campaigns. In some cases, the campaign consists of family members and a handful of well-wishers.

However, online fundraising by savvy operatives can upset this dynamic by building small-dollar fundraising machines that reach beyond a district’s borders and often seek to nationalize a race to attract attention and dollars. For example, in 2020, first-time candidate Jamaal Bowman overcame opposition from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to raise nearly $1 million during his primary victory over a better-funded incumbent congressman of his own party in New York’s 16th District, following a model established by Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) in an adjoining district two years earlier.

In one of the costliest races of 2018, candidate Kim Schrier (D-WA) raised $8.13 million in the open-seat contest in Washington’s Eighth District. Schrier was an unknown quantity politically—a local pediatrician for 17 years who had not been involved in politics at any level. She squeaked past establishment Democratic candidates in the “top two” primary to face longtime Republican politician Dino Rossi in the general election. Schrier’s campaign had sufficient funding to establish her profile early, launching a campaign video that is discussed later in this chapter and that fueled her fundraising operation 13 months before the election. Digital acquisition ad campaigns expanded her fundraising capacity. Despite early fundraising success, the campaign remained lean, not hiring significant staff until later in the cycle and holding off on media expenditures, except for fundraising ads, until two months before the primary. Her fundraising prowess meant that the campaign could hire a professional campaign manager and communications director from the very beginning of the race, along with a set of top-flight consultants, including media, digital, polling, research, and fundraising firms. The campaign added a social media director, field organizers, and other staff. Schrier won the general election with 52.4 percent of the vote and became the first Democrat ever to represent this swing district.

At the same time, money does not always guarantee victory. In 2008, community organizer Donna Edwards ran a scrappy, financially strapped campaign in Maryland’s Fourth District to a stunning primary victory over a longtime Democratic incumbent who was well funded and considered unbeatable. Using social-media tools and striking with a red-hot attack featuring video of the incumbent entering an upscale Washington, DC, fundraising reception hosted by big energy companies, we created a viral ad that tapped into voter sentiment that the incumbent had lost touch with his constituents back home.² We used the ad to generate free news coverage and to raise enough money to place the ad on local cable outlets just before voting began. Edwards won the primary with 60 percent of the vote and handily won the general election as well as a special election when the incumbent resigned early; she went on to serve four terms in the US House.

Managing the Race

With the caveats that candidates in the most competitive races generally spend the most money, and that campaigns with the most money can assemble a more complete candidate organization, we can begin to examine the ways in which some of those who work in the campaigns go about their business. Conveying the most persuasive messaging to the right mix of audiences for a particular candidate requires both art and science. Public opinion research helps determine the universe of persuadable voters and the most effective messages to gain their support. Data analytics predicts the most cost-effective channels and platforms on which to find targeted voters. Advertising development requires creativity in shaping ads that credibly communicate a political message while holding viewers’ attention long enough for them to absorb it.

The first order of business is understanding the composition of the district. Members of Congress develop home styles that correspond to their perception of their district, including its economic interests, political inclinations, history, and geographic contours.³ In suburban districts, for instance, members notice the sorts of occupations held by district residents and the preoccupation of the constituencies with schools and other quality-of-life concerns. Other districts contain a surfeit of farms and rural residents who care deeply about agricultural issues and trade with China. Still other districts encompass an urban setting where the residents face issues about mass transit and environmental concerns.

Some districts include elements from suburban, rural, and urban areas. The Fourth District in Utah, a race on which Y² Analytics worked during the 2016 and 2018 elections, is a combination of suburban and urban elements. It includes swathes of Salt Lake County and the northern part of Utah County. While Utah County is a sprawling suburban area with a focus on high-tech companies, Salt Lake County contains the bulk of the racial and ethnic diversity in Utah and encompasses much of the manufacturing done in the state.

This insight about the nature of the district becomes clear when a campaign pollster begins to work. Often the first order of business for a campaign and a pollster involves a benchmark poll. The term accurately describes the purpose of the poll. The candidate and the campaign need to confirm their knowledge of the district and the sorts of issues that matter to potential supporters. The benchmark poll helps to establish a plan that the campaign can use going forward. The length of the questionnaire and the size of the sample vary from race to race, but the poll needs to be long enough to ask questions about a variety of policy issues and respondents’ knowledge of the candidate. It must also have a sample size large enough to allow for an analysis of different demographic groups (at least 500 “likely voters”—see p. 12 for a discussion of how these respondents are identified). These polls need to take place early in the election cycle, often in the fall or summer before the election, so that the consultants can use the results to note the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate and the challenger. They also need time to develop a message strategy for the campaign season.

For example, a benchmark taken by Y² Analytics in October 2015 for Representative Mia Love’s (R-UT) reelection campaign showed where in the ideological space of a campaign the voters located both the challenger and the incumbent. In such a survey, voters are also asked to place themselves on the ideological scale. With these data, the pollster can estimate the ideological space between the candidates and the voter. The distance becomes particularly important if the initial results show that there is little difference between the two candidates and the voter. The point of a campaign is for the candidate to occupy the ideological space necessary to assemble a plurality of voters.

When Y² Analytics initially asked the voters in 2015 about their perceptions of Love’s challenger, the data revealed that voters believed that the Democrat, Doug Owens, was almost as close to the ideological space of Republican voters as Representative Love. In other words, the voters did not see a whole lot of difference, ideologically, between the two candidates. The data clearly indicated that Representative Love should employ messages to differentiate herself from Owens in order to convince Republican voters, a majority in the district, that the Democratic candidate was more liberal than they originally thought. In such a scenario, it becomes the responsibility of media consultants, as we will see later in this chapter, to assemble the messages and images that will be most salient to those you want to support your candidate.

In theory, taking and using a benchmark (or some other type of) poll sounds simple. However, the decline of landline telephones and plummeting response rates has made this very challenging. Respondents with landline telephones now account for a much smaller fraction of the overall samples collected by pollsters. A poll conducted over telephone now needs upwards of 60 percent to 70 percent of participants to be contacted by cell phone. When landlines were widely used, response rates normally ranged from 40 percent to 60 percent. Today, pollsters are happy with any response rate in double digits. Low response rates can lead to non-response bias, but as long as the individuals responding to the poll reflect the general demographic distribution of voters, the data collected should allow analysts to make accurate inferences about the attitudes of the larger population of voters. For example, the Fourth District in Utah has a certain proportion of Republicans, Democrats, Latinx, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), non-LDS individuals, and people with a variety of other characteristics that are highly correlated with the vote. A poll in this district should reflect those proportions accurately.

The modern challenges in polling help drive up the cost of congressional campaigns because the pollster needs to ensure a representative sample of a likely voter population. Sometimes that means spending extra time calling specific segments of that population that are harder to reach. Costing between $15,000 and $25,000 depending on the length of the questionnaire and the desired sample size, rigorous polling is unavailable to many congressional candidates, particularly challengers in lopsided contests.⁴

Polling alone rarely provides the insights that a campaign needs to win. Micro-targeting has become a technique used in tandem with polling to identify the types of voters that need to be contacted and the ways in which they should be contacted. Of course, micro-targeting implies that the campaign knows who is going to turn out to vote, but determining that is harder to do than most people expect. Pollsters often use a voter screen in their polling to determine “likely voters.” A common question is one that asks respondents, “How likely are you to vote in the upcoming election?” While this question seems relatively straightforward, the answers that pollsters receive do not clearly predict who will vote. A large share of potential voters “flake out,” meaning that they say they will vote, but then they fail to turn up at the polls on Election Day. Another proportion of voters “flake in,” meaning that they say they will not vote in the election, but then they do. “Flaky” voters make it hard to determine who should receive the messages that the media consultants create.

Many polling firms will sample exclusively from voter registration lists. These pollsters surmise that those who are registered to vote have a higher probability of voting. And they are partly correct; individuals who are registered to vote do have a higher probability of voting. But that still does not solve the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Looking at Congress from the Inside Out
• 1 Campaigning for Congress
• 2 Women in Congress and Changing Power Dynamics
• 3 Changing the Face of Workforce Diversity on Capitol Hill
• 4 Serving the District
• 5 The Power of the House Majority
• 6 An Inside Look at Senate Floor Leadership
• 7 The Genesis of a Bill
• 8 The Eroding Congressional Budget Process
• 9 The Battle Over Health Care
• 10 Impeachment: The Constitutional Remedy of Last Resort
• 11 Reflections on Representation, Policymaking, Partisanship, and Other Challenges Facing Congress
• Conclusion: Lessons from Under the Iron Dome