|
Truthout has an excellent article detailing the struggles faced by progressive and grassroots Democrats in key US House primaries last year: CA-11, FL-13, FL-16, and IL-06. At the time, Republicans held all four seats, but considering the 2006 political environment all four would quickly become competitive for the Democratic nominee. The central argument of the piece is that in "lean Republican" districts, Rahm Emanuel favored conservative and wealthy candidates in Democratic primaries, and assisted them against progressive, grassroots candidates in violation of the DCCC's policy of neutrality. This assistance did not come in the form of direct support, but instead was largely in the form of better connecting preferred candidates to an elite group of fundraisers and media types. For example, in FL-13, Jan Schneider, the 2004 Democratic nominee, was not included in fundraising materials the DCCC published on the district:
Schneider claims that Emanuel broke this policy during the 2006 primary race. "Emanuel caused the Schneider campaign to be removed from the DCCC website and circulated solicitations for contributions to Democratic candidates indicating that there was no [Democratic] primary in the Florida 13th," according to a memorandum Schneider prepared.
Schneider blames the DCCC for misleading Senator John Kerry (D- Massachusetts) into thinking that Jennings was running in the primary without any competition from within the party. Kerry gave a $1,000 donation to the Jennings campaign, which was publicized by Jennings as an endorsement. When Schneider confronted Kerry about this donation, Kerry apologized and said that he donated based on assertions by Emanuel that the race was "a targeted race with no primary," and that he never meant to interfere with an intra-party contest, according to Schneider. Congresswoman Shelly Berkley (D- Nevada) says that the DCCC sent her a letter asking her to contribute to races where there was no primary. The letter listed the Florida 13th as a race with only one Democrat pursuing the party's nomination.
This was a pattern that I saw repeated in other DCCC fundraising materials, including documents that did not list Christine Cegelis as a Democratic candidate for the primary in IL-06. Apparently, the problem was widespread for the Cegelis campaign:
Tim Bagwell, a grassroots activist and Cegelis campaigner, said that Duckworth was "hot-wired" into the national media and fund-raising circuit by the DCCC. George Stephanopoulos, who served in the Clinton administration with Emanuel, interviewed Duckworth on his Sunday morning ABC News program, elevating her to national prominence.
According to Spidel, the Cegelis campaign was prevented from accessing Democratic fund-raising and Political Action Committee lists held by the DCCC. Cegelis said that many of the potential donors she contacted had been instructed by the DCCC not to give her campaign money. She felt that she was locked out.
The key point here is that it is not necessarily the DCCC that directly makes decisions on who becomes the Democratic nominee in key US House districts, but rather a small group of fundraisers and media types that can propel one candidate to the nomination by providing them with superior monetary, media, and advocacy organization resources. By providing one candidate with greater access to this network of PACs, wealthy individual donors, elected officials, established media pundits, and advocacy organization leaders, that candidate is essentially crowned the nominee by an elite group of decision makers who collectively have a tremendous amount of influence over the process. This elite network can effectively determine the outcome of primaries before votes are cast, and key Democratic figures like Emanuel can provide candidates with favorable access to that network.
The reason I bring this up is that over the past month, in at least two circumstances the progressive blogosphere, grassroots and netroots has demonstrated that it can actually function in the same manner as this established group of elite decision makers. In WA-08, through a large, nationwide blogosphere fundraiser, the blogosphere effectively chose Darcy Burner as the Democratic nominee for the district. Although it was accomplished through thousands of small donations and earned, straight talking independent media instead of through a top-down group of elite donors and advocacy organizations, the result was the same: Darcy Burner was able to leverage her support from this network into an early end to the primary campaign. In June and July, much the same took place in NY-29, where for a while Eric Massa was facing a competitive primary David Nabchar. However, Massa also won the primary before it began by locking down the support of the local blogosphere and netroots, every local Democratic committee, and a sizable amount of small donor, grassroots fundraising. Again, a network of grassroots progressives effectively played the same decision-making role to force an early end to a primary that PACs, wealthy donors, established media types, elected officials, and advocacy organization leaders have played in many other Democratic primaries. The grassroots network of small donors, blogs, and local precinct captains leveraged such an enormous amount of support for Eric Massa that there was no way for other, more elite networks to overcome it.
|
