Today's Star Tribune reports "Key fall campaigns poised to turn tough; Experts say Minnesota should brace for big-spending, bare-knuckled "hand-to-hand" candidate combat." We read:
Experts say some of Minnesota's most important races -- governor, U.S. Senate, key congressional districts -- are expected to be tight, drawing massive money infusions from national parties and outside interest groups and some of the hardest-edged ads and tactics Minnesotans have seen in years.
"This is going to be hand-to-hand combat from here on out," said Steven Smith, a Minnesota native and political science professor from Washington University in St. Louis.
"There are less than three dozen House races and six or seven Senate races in the country that are intensely competitive and Minnesota has several of those," Smith said.
Already the Republican National Committee (RNC) has acknowledged in a recent Washington Post report that it plans to go on the attack with brawling ads that zero in on personal issues and local controversies. In a memo cited in the Post story, the RNC urged House and Senate candidates to find "damaging material about challengers" and "define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly."
Democrats are expected to wage a fierce contest as well, with strategies to shove their opponents "into the right-wing corner," Smith said, while non-incumbent challengers throw in charges about a Washington "culture of corruption."
While Gutknecht certainlng enjoys some ties to the DC "culture of corruption," the race in the First has centered around policy differences on issues such as Iraq and health care, and local issues such as the DM & E loan for upgrades, as well as Gutknecht's renounced pledge to term limits and other career challenges.
It's not just experts raising these points about tactics but local bloggers as well. On Monday, Minnesota Central posted an informed comment about the negative campaign we're beginning to see emanating from the right (edited slightly to make links hot):
"Not long ago, Checks and Balances reported an unsourced rumor that the Gutknecht campaign was going to go negative."
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I suspect that you’ve read the Washington Post story on Sunday about the GOP’s plan to spend mega-dollars going negative. . . .I think they will use a three prong approach.
#1. Overt – i.e. sending the info to pseudo-bloggers like MDE and forcing the press to publish or miss the story.
#2. Covert through push polls. The GOP has already used push polls in Iowa and last week in Rhode Island. Here’s the Lincoln Chafee story –it’s a good one.
#3. Selective – or should I say Intelligent – voter/issue advertising.
Do you recall back in February when the GOP sent out a C/D to gather voter input on issues … in reality, it was just to determine how to market the Republican team to the voter. Here’s a link to the MPR story with sample questions. . . .
All of these are interesting forecasts. The Washington Post article contains this information:
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.
We turned to Gutknecht's FEC reports to see in there was any substance--in the form of dollars received or spent--of any coming unslightliness. On page 75 of his pre-primary report, we find that Gutknecht had spent $20,488.00 on August 2 with the Tarrance Group for polling. The Tarrance Group is a well-known Republican pollster.
Perhaps this is the source of the bad polling results that a Republican friend whispered into Toule's ear over at Checks and Balances.
More recently, Gutknecht received a flurry of large contributions within the period covered by the "48 hour contribution notice" rule, kicked in by yesterday's primary. On September 7, the Gutknecht campaign received $10,000 from TOMPAC.
TOMPAC is a leadership PAC run by Tom Reynolds. His biography on TOMPAC's website begins:
U.S. Representative Thomas M. Reynolds marks the start of the 109th Congress as a member of the Republican Majority's leadership team, after being unanimously re-elected to the post of Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
Ah yes. That Tom Reynolds. In the Washington Post article referenced above, Reynolds discusses his research philosophy:
"Opposition research is power," said Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), the NRCC chairman. "Opposition research is the key to defining untested opponents."
The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has enlisted veteran party strategist Terry Nelson to run a campaign that will coordinate with Senate Republicans on ads that similarly will rely on the best of the worst that researchers have dug up on Democrats. The first ad run by the new RNC effort criticizes Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) for voting against proposals designed to toughen border protection and deport illegal immigrants.
Because challengers tend to be little-known compared with incumbents, they are more vulnerable to having their public image framed by the opposition through attacks and unflattering personal revelations.
And with polls showing the Republicans' House and Senate majorities in jeopardy, party strategists said they have concluded that their best chance to prevent big Democratic gains is a television and direct-mail blitz over the next eight weeks aimed at raising enough questions about Democratic candidates that voters decide they are unacceptable choices.
"When you run in an adverse political environment, you try to localize and personalize the race as much as you can," Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said.
In a memo released last week, Cole, who is running to succeed Reynolds at the NRCC, expanded on that strategy. The memo recommended that vulnerable incumbents spend $20,000 on a research "package" to find damaging material about challengers and urged that they "define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly."
GOP officials said internal polling shows Republicans could limit losses to six to 10 House seats and two or three Senate seats if the strategy -- combined with the party's significant financial advantage and battled-tested turnout operation -- proves successful.
Vulnerable incumbents? We like the sound of that.
And already we begin to see some of the results of that oppo research in this race, with statewide political operative bloggers and the NRCC being struck by a lethal dose of the barking fantods and the vapors upon reading an old speeding ticket dug up in Nebraska. The attack doesn't seem to have defined Walz, but rather energized him, if his performance in the Rochester debate is any indication.
Small town newspapers editors in the district are calling Gutknecht out. His team is investing in oppo research. The race attracts national attention from NPR, Time, and the Wall Street Journal. The DFL challenger has energized the local grassroots.
But you won't know any of this if your only source of news is the Strib. Eric Black sniffs:
Gutknecht has won his last several races by wide margins, but Walz has been generating a lot of buzz in DFL circles. The race may bear watching.
With DFL circles like the Wall Street Journal and TOMPAC generating buzz about this race, Black may be on to something there.
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