Posted on 09/13/2006 9:11:40 AM PDT by gopwinsin04
September 13, 2006 How Chafee Won
Late last Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Dole hurried up to Sen. Lincoln Chafee on the floor of the Senate and put her foot down. You might lose this race, she told him, if you don’t put your best ads back up.
Chafee, gun-shy about the negative ads he knew Dole was referring to, relented, as he’s done innumerable times in the year and a half since it became clear that he’d face a primary challenge.
The next night, Rhode Island television viewers were once again treated to the sounds of Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey joking that old people should die off. They heard the charges that he had doctored his resume. The tag line: “Steve Laffey: Untrustworthy, unpredictable, unreliable.” And the most important part of the ad was the FEC-mandated ending. Lincoln Chafee approved this message. A contrast was drawn.
By Tuesday, six months worth of hard-hitting spots like these, many funded directly by the NRSC, had driven unfavorable perceptions of Laffey to scary heights among non-affiliated voters.
But Laffey’s campaign professed not to worry. They weren’t concerned about unaffiliated voters. They assumed that few would be motivated to spend an hour at the polls waiting to vote for Lincoln Chafee. Laffey ran his campaign as if he were a presidential candidate preparing for a caucus. He tried to meet as many Republicans as possible. His campaign identified and kept in touch with about 30,000 stalwarts. Based on past turnout, that seemed like enough.
In every speech, Laffey touted his conservative credentials, his record as mayor, and, somewhat discordantly, his independence. After all, his audience was the small and restive Republican base in RI – conservative and independent. The ads he ran were all positive, but the Club for Growth spent hundreds of thousands of dollars running spots that blasted Chafee. The messages were was confusing. Some of Laffeys’ ads were populist in content; he recalled how his brother died of AIDS and his parents live on Social Security. Others stressed his commitment to lowering taxes, securing borders and protecting America. Laffey’s campaign and the Club could not coordinate their strategy, and they often dismissed each other’s decisions in private.
Laffey hoped to convince Republicans that he was better on their issues and could get things done. Chafee’s ads were designed to prevent Laffey from making a gut-level connection with voters.
Rhode Island will become a case study in the effectiveness of the Republicans’ 72 Hour Program. Behind the curtain, Chafee’s campaign spent $500,000 to squeeze out every conceivable voter from neighborhoods across the state. They searched for independents who voted Democrat in municipal elections but who had once upon a time voted for a Republican for president or governor or senator. There were a few of those. They looked for non-affiliated voters in Republican neighborhoods. Using microtargeting techniques, they even tried to figure out which committed Democrats might be tempted to vote for Chafee.
By the end of the summer, Chafee’s campaign had identified 42,000 potential supporters. Then the second part of the program kicked in. Message, here, is a verb. The campaign “messaged” these voters, often individually. Chafee himself called more than 100 of them who were identified as being capable of swinging the votes of colleagues and friends. The standard complement of robocalls, mailings and personal visits were employed. In the twelve days of September, Chafee, the RNC and NRSC made more than 198,000 phone calls to the voters on their list. Many voters received one every two days.
On election day, the Chafee campaign stationed poll watchers at 100 key precincts across the state. By 10:00 am, the RNC and the NRSC were confident that Chafee would win.
It didn’t faze them when Laffey’s campaign bragged about meeting their targets. Chafee had simply found more voters. Laffey’s turnout was sufficient for a universe of Republicans and identified conservatives. But Chafee had found just about every Republican he could hope for and managed to attract at least 10,000 non-Republicans to his tally. One Republican in the state estimates that as many as 60 percent of the primary electorate were not affiliated with the Republican Party. (More than 20,000 Rhose Islanders requested formal disaffiliation forms after voting.) Chafee even managed to blunt Laffey's margin of victory in Cranston to just a few hundred votes.
The same factors that drove Chafee’s victory are giving his Democratic challenger, Sheldon Whitehouse, some comfort. The universe of identified Chafee voters is at least 20,000 less than the number of Democrats who voted for Whitehouse in yesterday’s noncompetitive primary. [MARC AMBINDER]
In other words, Rhode Island is hopeless.
I always say when it's a choice between 2 'Rats in the general election, vote for the one whom is actually honest enough to declare himself one.
It's difficult to believe how aggressively the national Republicans attacked a serious conservative, in favor of a RINO like Chaffee.
And now we mack damn sure he will lose. And for the RINO appologists here, I'd rather give the Dems the whole Senate than continue to destroy "Conservatism" in the name of "he can win". At least then the 40some Republicans will find their backbone and vote on issues.
Chafee is a well known name in RI, he's a classic northeastern liberal Repub, he's against the war in Iraq, he voted against the tax cuts, ..., I'd say he has a better then 50/50 chance of winning re-election.
Well, well ... ol' Liddy finally puts her foot down for something.
It's difficult to believe how aggressively the national Republicans attacked a serious conservative, in favor of a RINO like Chaffee.
He won the old fashion way. He got the most votes.
Not that I believe that crap, but if you were to extrapolate from all their stories about the restless extremists this year, that would be the inevitable conclusion.
If either Chafee or the reporter expects us to believe this asseriton, they're lying losers. Chafee proved that he's quite happy to smear anyone who gets in his way, like the good little Clintonista RINO that he is.
That RI is hopeless has been the reality for a long time.
If it's Chafee's vote that makes the difference between Republican and Democrat control, he will all but certainly cross the aisle.
Why? it's all about Linc.
Naturally, the LSM keeps referring to the "moderate Republican" Chaffee. If he's a moderate, I'm Brad Pitt and believe me, I ain't near that good lookin'.
Of course, since about 98 percent of the media lurks in the neighborhood of Teddy Kennedy on the ideological scale, I suppose to them Chaffee appears moderate. But surely not by much.
In other words, Rhode Island is hopeless.
Well it proves that RI has very few Republicans. No Republican in his right mind would vote for Chafee.
Who is the bigger dunce -- Dole husband, or Dole wife?
If they ever can get impeachment out of the House, Chaffee will be the deci Bush from office.ding vote to remove
You would think after supporting Arlen Spector over the conservative candidate two years ago, that they would have learned something.
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