Back in the Game

Political Party Campaigning in an Era of Reform

Brian J. Brox

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781438446097
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The years from 1996 to 2008 mark an important watershed in American politics. During this period changes in the political, demographic, regulatory, and technological landscape created an opportunity for political parties to increase their relevance in the electoral system. In Back in the Game, Brian J. Brox argues that while political parties still provide services to candidates, as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, they have now become influential and independent campaigners in their own right. In addition to providing services, parties now work with candidates as true partners, and increasingly parties act independently of their candidates to pursue collective party goals. Drawing on sources such as interviews with top party staffers and Federal Election Commission data, Brox carefully reveals how modern parties choose among races in an effort to allocate resources in a way that satisfies individual candidates, while simultaneously advancing broader party goals.

ONE

THE PARTIES STRIKE BACK

In the aftermath of his party's defeat in the 2004 presidential election, Howard Dean launched his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee with a bold suggestion. At a forum for eight potential successors to previous DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, Dean suggested that the Democrats adopt “.a 50-state strategy in this country, not an 18-state strategy. If you don't run, you can't win,” (Nagourney 2004). This suggestion, echoed by many of the other candidates for the DNC chairmanship, tapped into the frustrations—and aspirations—of many Democrats in late 2004. As one party strategist noted, “People are in the mood for somebody to offer a strategy for success here—not just how we win in 2006, but how do we change the party so it is competitive in the long term?” (Marlantes 2004).

With the “Fifty-State Strategy,” Dean was advocating a shift in focus away from a single-minded pursuit of short-term electoral success. Instead, Dean was arguing that Democrats should campaign in areas that were not immediately competitive in hopes of making them competitive in the future. To that end, the Democratic National Committee would place renewed emphasis on building grassroots organizations¹ in all fifty states. Upon his election to the chairmanship, Dean implemented his plan, and within a year it paid dividends with Democratic wins in unlikely congressional districts (Kamarck 2006; Kasindorf and Kenworthy 2006). Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama would continue this strategy in 2008 by implementing a fifty-state strategy during his general election campaign (Wolffe 2008). But the true test of the Democrats' strategy shift would be seen beyond 2008.

Around the same time, the Republican National Committee was in the midst of a project that would radically alter the way it would persuade and mobilize voters. Following the 2000 election,

Republican technicians began to upgrade their Voter Vault database. Essentially an electronic card catalog of the nation's potential voters, Voter Vault, according to the instruction and training manual the R.N.C. distributes, allows Republican workers to log on over the Internet, pull up a voter profile and then—after calling that particular voter or making a home visit with a hand-held computer—add vital personal information to the record … This under-the-radar data-mining campaign has been joined more visibly by Republican figures [who] asked supporters to supply the party with their church membership rolls, hunting-club registries, college-fraternity directories and P.T.A. membership rosters. The hope is not only to target individuals and specific segments of society, but also to get those quarries into the voting booths. “We can tailor our message to people who care about taxes, who care about health care, who care about jobs, who care about regulation—we can target that way,” [said] Ed Gillespie, the Republican National Committee chairman. (Gertner 2004, 44)

Voter Vault would make use of advanced (and cheap) computer technology as well as developments in market research to compile a national voter file with extensive political, cultural, and consumer data on each voter. With these data, Republican candidates and party organizations could “microtarget” voters—deliver narrowly tailored messages directly to voters—rather than rely on television advertisements and hope that targeted groups would be watching the right channel at the right time.

Thus, 2004 would prove to be a dynamic year for America's political parties. The Democrats implemented a shift in strategy, while the Republicans developed new tactics in their quest to win elections. But why did these changes take place? Why would the Democrats return to grassroots organizing in all fifty states, even those that were Republican strongholds? And why would the Republicans invest money and time to develop a national voter list—a task traditionally left to state and local party organizations? The answer to both questions is simple: because the parties want to win elections. But the story is more complicated. American political parties are doing new and important things in election campaigns in order to remain relevant.

POLITICAL PARTIES: A FUGITIVE PROPOSITION

The Fifty-State Strategy and Voter Vault are not the only examples of the recent advances made by the American political parties. Like their Republican counterpart, the Democratic National Committee sought to create a national database of Democratic voters. The DNC's initial effort, DataMart, had over 160 million entries by the 2004 election (Farhi 2004). DataMart was later scrapped, to be replaced by Vote Builder for the 2008 election cycle (Jaquith 2007). But the advances made by the parties were not limited to voter identification and targeting; throughout the 2000s the parties adapted their nominations processes, mobilization efforts, and finance operations to increase their relevance in the American electoral system.

Both parties took increased control of the calendar for their presidential nomination contests. Democrats in 2006 altered their calendar to lessen the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire (Nagourney 2007) and proceeded to strip delegates from Florida and Michigan for scheduling primaries not in accordance with the new rules (Shear 2007). Republicans had earlier altered party rules to prohibit 2008 nomination contests before February 5; they chose to punish violators (most notably Florida) by stripping convention delegations of half of their delegates (Santora 2007). Also related to the nomination calendar, in 2004 the Republican National Committee scheduled its national convention for August 30 through September 2 (Lambro 2002). By pushing the convention back to the end of the summer, the Republicans managed to place the major media event quite close to the traditional Labor Day beginning of the general election campaign when voters would be starting to pay attention. This decision had the added benefit of extending the nomination season and allowing their nominee to continue to spend money under the nomination season campaign finance rules while also shortening the general election season, thus maximizing the impact of the general election public funding. In 2008, both parties would schedule their conventions as close to Labor Day as possible (Cillizza 2007).

In response to the Democrats' traditional strength at last-minute getout-the-vote operations, the Republicans in 2000 implemented a coordinated seventy-two-hour strategy to make sure that Republican voters were mobilized to go to the polls and vote during the last three days of the campaign (Kirchhoff and Kornblut 2002). In subsequent elections this effort would be conducted by a formal seventy-two-hour task force that would use personal contact by over 1 million volunteers to mobilize Republican voters (Mooney 2004). Republicans also innovated in their mobilization efforts by reaching out to churches in an effort to expand their base and turn conservative voters out on Election Day. By collecting directories of church members, Republican party organizations sought to register and mobilize Christian congregations because “people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote,” (Cooperman 2006).

In the area of campaign finance, party contributions to candidates took on a new importance. While remaining nominally marginal, contributions by party organizations to candidates were seen as “signals” to other contributors—in particular, political action committees (PACs)—that the recipients were worthy of support (Herrnson 2007a). In addition, parties began leaning on their own candidates, especially incumbents and others in uncompetitive contests, to use funds from their own campaign accounts and leadership PACs to support fellow partisans in close races (Dwyre et al. 2007; Herrnson 2007b). Finally, following their wins in the 1994 midterm elections—and accelerated upon reclaiming the White House in 2000—Republicans instituted the “K Street Strategy.” This strategy aimed to marshal the resources of federal lobbyists (frequently located along K Street in Washington) toward Republican goals. Lobbyists, if they wanted access to the now-Republican-controlled government, were expected to purge Democrats from their offices and to funnel large campaign contributions to Republican candidates and party organizations (Confessore 2003).

It would not be an overstatement to suggest that 1996–2008 constituted a critical period in the development of party campaigning. Yet the parties are fundamentally a “fugitive proposition.” As the parties evolve, journalists and pundits do well in describing the changes, though journalistic accounts of party campaigning tend to be atheoretical and idiosyncratic. Those most capable of offering more thorough descriptions and explanations for evolving party behavior—scholars—have largely failed to come to terms with the development of party campaigning during the critical period of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, parties are a “fugitive proposition,” elusive in nature; their true character is captured only in fleeting glimpses by journalists and only in detail by scholars in hindsight.

In this book I provide that detail and perspective on the current state of party campaigning. Specifically, in the subsequent chapters I address three important research questions related to party campaigning in the most recent critical period. First, I provide a thorough description of how the national political parties are involved in American campaigns and how that involvement differs from the recent past. Next, I offer an analysis of how parties target resources in order to remain relevant in American campaigns. Finally, I assess the impact of systemic changes, most notably changes in campaign finance regulation enacted in 2002, on the behavior of political parties. As we shall see, the new role that parties play in American campaigns is more than just a service provider to autonomous candidates; instead, it is an independent role that suggests we have entered an era of parties in partnership with candidates.

PARTIES AS PARTNERS—AND WHY WE SHOULD CARE

In this book I argue that American political parties have become more than the organizations that support their relatively independent candidates; they have become important actors in their own right in ways that are fundamentally different from the roles they have previously played in the American electoral system. In answering the question, What are parties doing now? I help address the empirical puzzle of how parties remain relevant to campaigns in light of changes that would seem to marginalize them.

Unfortunately, much of the recent scholarship on American political parties fails to recognize the reality that parties are now partners with candidates in the business of conducting election campaigns. Indeed, the last fifty years of political party scholarship has closely tracked the ups and downs of these organizations as they have adapted to changes in the political system. Until the 1960s, political parties used to dominate the business of running campaigns. Throughout much of the twentieth century, parties controlled the nomination process, selecting which candidates would run for office under the party label (Hershey 2007). Those campaigns would be run by party organizations; the national parties developed separate organizations to run presidential, senatorial, and congressional campaigns (Kolodny and Dwyre 1998). Party machines then mobilized voters on Election Day, promising government services in exchange for people's votes (Hershey 2007).

Yet the 1960s was a(nother) critical period for political parties. Changes in electoral rules and communications technologies served to weaken the parties and usher in an era of candidate-centered elections. Declining partisan identification (Wattenberg 1990), increased use of primaries (Herrnson 1988), changes in campaign finance regulations (Dodenhoff and Goldstein 1998), and new technologies (Foster and Muste 1992) all contributed to the weakening of ties between candidate and party organization. As a result candidates grew increasingly independent of the parties when running for office.

Not to be left out of campaigns, parties proceeded to reform themselves. In the 1970s, the Democratic Party pursued reform through altering the structure of the party. The work of several party reform commissions led to the Democrats adopting new rules to regulate the selection of convention delegates and the organization and operation of state parties (Bibby 1998). These reforms took a toll on the Democratic Party as an organization; the new focus on candidates and special interests resulted in the organizational needs of the party being neglected (Herrnson 1998). The Republican Party also pursued reforms in the 1970s, but instead of altering rules and structure, the Republicans transformed the function of their party. Following electoral defeats in 1964 and in the mid-1970s, the Republicans initiated programs designed to provide candidates with the campaign money and services they would need to win (Cotter and Bibby 1980; Herrnson 1998). Unlike the Democrats, however, the development of the service party gave the national Republican Party more influence over national and state elections (Cotter and Bibby 1980). Democrats would quickly follow the Republicans in the development of party as a service organization (Herrnson 1988).

Though it began as early as 1972 with Saloma and Sontag (1972), scholars by the 1980s were starting to counter the previously dominant candidate-centered/party-in-decline paradigm with a recognition of this new perspective of the role of political parties in campaigns: the parties were strengthening as organizations in service to their candidates. The key features of the service-orientation framework are the ability of the national party organizations to raise funds and those organizations' use of funds to provide services on behalf of their candidates. Herrnson (1988, 47) describes this model as parties “act[ing] as appendages or accessories to the campaign organizations of their … candidates, providing advice, information, and a myriad of specialized campaign services that would otherwise have to be purchased from professional campaign consultants.” Even as campaigns modernized and political consultants began providing many of these same services, it was the political parties who adapted to incorporate consultants into the parties' efforts and to fund the services through the use of coordinated expenditures (Kolodny and Dulio 2003). Significant scholarship on political party organizations in the late 1980s and 1990s assumes this service-orientation framework,² and even as recently as the late 1990s and early 2000s, we still see scholars assessing the role of parties by describing their ability to serve candidates in a candidate-centered electoral environment.³

Yet it is important to move beyond the service-orientation framework that dominates the literature and consider how parties serve as partners with candidates in the conduct of American election campaigns. The importance of this endeavor is hard to overstate. Campaigns themselves—whether conducted by candidate or party—are fundamental to democratic governance. They serve as a forum for deliberation by presenting information to voters that allows the latter to exercise retrospective judgment on officeholders and to provide prospective guidance on the direction of public policy. Inasmuch as they are designed to affect voting behavior, campaigns are also significant in that by understanding the campaign process we come to know about the strategies of the elites seeking to control government and the preferences of the citizens who will put them there.

The parties' particular role in the process is also important. Since they continue to provide services to their candidates, it is only through the consideration of party campaigns that one can see how parties prioritize among candidates and subsequently how candidates employ party-provided resources in the pursuit of electoral success. Not only do parties help candidates, but they also engage in independent campaigning and activities ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One: The Parties Strike Back
• Chapter Two: What We Know—and Don't Know—about Party Campaigning
• Chapter Three: The Money Shuffle
• Chapter Four: Donating Money in All the Right Places
• Chapter Five: A Complex Game
• Chapter Six: Going It Alone
• Chapter Seven: The Parties-as-Partners Era
• Appendix: Summary of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and Related Supreme Court Decisions
• Notes
• References