There are rumors Jim Ogonowski, who narrowly lost to Niki Tsongas in MA-05 in 2007, is going to challenge John Kerry. Kerry doesn't have terrific approvals in Massachusetts, but I don't see how Ogonowski comes close. If he does it, John Kerry will have to spend more time in his home state. But that's about it. The Republicans have been murmuring about starting their own 50 state strategy, but recruiting on their side has just been dismal. Ogonowski really is the best they have, which does not speak well of their chances in 2008.
The Chris Dodd campaign has done a great job with its debate talk clock meter. I would like to introduce a new debate meter, one that measures how many times Iraq was mentioned in each of the last five debates. The pattern is illuminating:
Iraq peaked as an issue in the Democratic primary in late September, when the residual forces issue hit the mainstream. Since then, it has been a straight, downward decline, with mentions of Iraq cut 80% over the last five debates. Iraq is clearly being "taken off the table," not only by Democrats but also by the media outlets that sponsor their debates. Bill Richardson seems to be just about the only candidate discussing Iraq these days.
Avoiding Iraq is a path to doom for Democratic candidates. In the two most hotly contested special elections this year, MA-05 and OH-05, Republican candidates over-performed first by blurring on Iraq themselves, and then by benefiting from the Democratic candidate taking Iraq off the table. It unfortunately seems to be the path we are walking down. I think we need a series of primaries that will match the impact of Lieberman-Lamont last year in order to, once again, make this point clear to the Democratic establishment.
For all the talk that Hillary Clinton is running a strong campaign, I think she's quite vulnerable in a general election. The MA-05 election results, while you could chalk them up to a weak Democratic general election candidate and localized conditions, suggests that the strategy of running as a nonpartisan get things done Republican against corrupt DC Democratic insider could work. And let's not forget, that the local dynamics notwithstanding, Ogonowski was outspent 4:1.
Giuliani is a potentially strong Republican nominee in Ogonowksi's mold, given that the right-wing noise machine, combined with Democratic ineptitude on communications, will give him the opportunity to systematically lie about his entire record and that of his opponent. He is crazy on the Middle East, and will destroy America, but it's not clear enough that Clinton takes a different posture on Iran to have that matter. There's actually a good but depressing case to be made that there is much less room between any of the top candidates on Iran, that the 2008 election doesn't actually matter, and that all that does matter is the gobs of money being printed by the Fed and shipped to our enemies to pay for the war in Iraq.
But let's talk politics and what the MA-05 race means for the 2008 election. Clinton is running a reasonable primary campaign, but in a general election campaign, though, it's going to be very difficult for her to get around perceived slippery answers on Iraq, Iran, and even torture. She will have to make news to drown out the lies, something her current campaign isn't doing.
While I've thought for some time that the public has learned to hate Republicans over the past seven years, I'm not so sure anymore. Ogonowski wouldn't commit to voting for children's health care, and he came within 6 of beating Tsongas. More than that, I think his basic argument is correct. This Congress is broken. Nancy Pelosi promised to 'drain the swamp' and change directions in Iraq. That hasn't happened. Jim Webb in his state of the Union response said that if Bush did not shift strategies 'Democrats would show him the way'. That hasn't happened.
Ultimately, Ogonowski's argument is that there is no difference between the parties, that both are full of people who break faith to the voters. And given that the Democratic Congress lied to the American public, promising but not delivering change in Iraq, it's actually true. Tsongas ran a campaign playing into that, saying that her vote would end the war, which of course it won't.
When Clinton says she'll end the war, while keeping troops in Iraq, the Republicans will be sure to point out that this is double-speak. My crystal ball is blurry as always, and I have no idea how the Republican candidate will handle President Bush being a militaristic asshole (he can't help it) while the candidate tries to run around convincing everyone that Republicans stand for not Bush. I can see a weird scenario where the Republican says that the Bush-Clinton war was a mistake, pointing out that Bush executed the war while Clinton authorized it, but that we have to get it right now or we'll have to go back later. This was Ogonowski's line, and it seemed to work well enough.
Clinton might go all Kerry-esque with the 'I voted for the authorization not the war', since that's what she genuinely thinks, and I'm now going to vomit a little in my mouth. I can see now how all the people who think Clinton's campaign is great instead of a vicious back biting swamp that all campaigns turn out to be will turn on her, as they did Kerry's campaign. And really a campaign isn't that complicated, but is always 'garbage moving in the right direction'. There are a few key decisions that matter, and that's it. Clinton made the decision to run as John Kerry 2.0, since he nearly won. And Democratic primary voters don't really have a choice, since Clinton's the only candidate who actually understands how crazy the right-wing really is. But anyway, Clinton could be saddled with her war vote, and Iraq may no longer be Bush's war in 2008. She'll promise to end the war, but then again, so did the Democratic Congressional leaders. And they didn't.
There are a lot of variables here, so one question how do we think through testing the blurring model that Ogonowski semi-successfully used. I'm having trouble at this point advocating for a Democratic President, except that I think another Republican administration is a threat to the well-being of everyone I care about. If I were Lee Atwater, I'd know how I'd run the Republican campaign. It would be dirty, it would be nasty, it would be full of lies, and it would hit the Democrat from all sides, but above all, on the notion of trust. And it's hard to argue that you should trust these Democrats.
49% reporting: Ogonoski 51%--46% Tsongas. That's pretty bad
3% Reporting: Tsongas 59%--38% Ogonoski
Looks like a 6% final margin--exactly what I thought. I may not be good at much, but I have gotten pretty good at calling election results after my 2004 failures.
A 6% victory in a D +10.7 district is pretty bad. It isn't quite as bad for us as a 3% victory for Republicans in the R +13.1 OH-02 in August of 2005, but it is close. The difference in swings is about 23 points compared to 16 points. As with the OH-02, much of the problem rests in the ossified local machine of the favored party nominating a weak candidate. Tsongas isn't as bad on the trial as Jean Schimdt, but she is close.
Well, the MA-05 special election is finally taking place tomorrow. The most recent poll on the campaign in this D +10.7 district shows a fairly close result looming:
A couple of notes on this poll. First, IVR polls like Survey USA tend to capture more young votes than other survey methodologies, which would mean that this poll is inflating Ogonowski's numbers since he leads 2-1 among younger voters. However, this poll only projects 10% of the electorate under 35 years of age, which is either low or probably about right. So, it is possible that Ogonowski is closer than this. Second, there are basically no undecideds, but one can usually expect about half of voters who say they are going small third party to break with one of the two major parties. Normally, they would break for the "challenger" party, in this case Republicans, but with over 80% of current third-party supporters identifying as either moderate or liberal, and with Tsongas leading both categories, those voters do not seem fruitful ground for Ogonowski. Add it all up, and my best guess is Tsongas by six. That would make this campaign close, but not quite, the equivalent of Paul Hackett's 3% loss in the Republican +13 OH-02 back in 2005.
Now, let me ask what on earth is happening with younger voters in this district? No matter the small sample size, a 54-27 advantage for Ogonowski among voters under 35 is eye-popping. Let me venture a guess that a Democratic candidate over 60 years old, who appears to have won the nomination because her late husband was a Senator who ran a presidential campaign to the right of Bill Clinton, in an environment where Democrats in Congress are unpopular among their base, isn't exactly the best candidate to appeal to younger voters. In fact, it should be clear by now that Niki Tsongas wasn't a very good candidate to appeal to pretty much any voters. She almost blew a 25 point lead in the primary despite a million dollar fundraising advantage and, yeah, she is only in this position because of her late husband. The whole thing reeks of an ineffective, local Democratic machine that operates based on loyalty rather than merit or ideas, and which hasn't been tested by any serious opposition in a long time. For example, when we targeted the former member of Congress in this district in the Use It Or Lose It campaign last year, the four million dollar cash on hand Marty Meehan, a local editorial board called the campaign a "a nasty shakedown by rotten political scoundrels." This seems to be a very insular environment that is producing some mediocre candidates.
Throughout the country, most of the Democratic Party is run by ossifying, New Deal era local machines of this sort. It is reflected in Washington, D.C., where the party is actually run somewhat like a local machine (seniority, dues, loyalty, insularity, etc). The struggles that Tsongas is facing in what should be a very, very easy election is just one example of the ineffectiveness of these machines as electoral vehicles. Republicans are collapsing nationwide, and it would appear that only the ineffectiveness of the Democrats can save them right now.
That's the mailer that Jim Ogonowski sent out that should be hitting the district in the next few days. It's the cover he's using for opposing SCHIP expansion, so expect to see this all over Republican messaging in the next year. The Republicans are testing out messaging with the Ogonowski campaign.
The flyer is not true - the Lowell Sun didn't make those arguments. Still, I am curious if the MA-05 electorate is receptive to this messaging. It's a conservative Democratic district that has not been targeted by Republicans for some time on a national level, though the vicious race-baiting happened on a gubernatorial level in 2006 against Deval Patrick.
The combination of blurring on Iraq, calling for bipartisanship, and nativism is an expected formula for Republicans who have to run against their party without losing their base. Tsongas is becoming more progressive and partisan, and she's not that well-liked by the Lowell Democratic insiders. If you're in the area, consider helping her out. It's going to be a low turnout election, so volunteering will have an outsized impact.
You can always find more at Blue Mass Group. And if you know the district, give us your thoughts in the comments.
Last night, Deval Patrick and Hillary Bill Clinton held a rally for Niki Tsongas. Patrick had some choice words on the blurring strategy, which you can watch in this video:
Here are the passages that really caught my attention (emphasis mine):
But the change, the change has got to come from us, because we, regularly political people of every political background, keep falling for what Republicans say, and not holding them accountable for what they do.
There is a great deal at stake in this election, but if you listen closely to the two candidates, to the substance, they will sometimes sound a lot alike. And that's because if you are a Republican today in Washington, or rather if you are a Republican running to go to Washington, you run as fast as possible from away from the administration in Washington, and you try to blur the difference between that administration and Democratic principles and ideals.(…)
They both say, I've heard them both say, that they want an end to the war in Iraq, but one candidate wants to keep the troops there indefinitely. Does that sound like an end to the war in Iraq to you? And the other candidate, our candidate, is ready to make that hard call now.
In a funny way, both candidates sound like Democrats, but only one candidate is one. Only one is one, and that candidate is Niki Tsongas.
This is a great speech for Tsongas by Patrick, and it shows he really gets what is going on in terms of Iraq and electoral politics. Given that Hillary Bill Clinton was also at the event, I hope he has a chance to repeat the emphasized passage to Bill, and ask him to give the message to his wife. Hillary Clinton has still not said when she will pull all of the non-embassy troops out, and 2013 is apparently too early. To paraphrase what Deval Parick said, keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely does not sound like an end of the war to me.
The following post is provided by ActBlue's President, Benjamin Rahn.
When I'm explaining ActBlue to people who don't spend much personal or professional time on politics, I usually start with something like "Most PACs operate by endorsing candidates who are strong on their issues and raising money for them. But we're not like most PACs."
At ActBlue we pride ourselves on being an honest broker in the Democratic movement. Concretely, that means that every Democrat running for President, House, Senate, and state executive and legislative races around the country that's registered with the appropriate election office is listed in our candidate directory (or at least they should be -- if you notice someone missing just let us know) and we provide them all with access to exactly the same software and services.
And we're particularly proud that campaigns trust our neutrality: in primaries including the recent MA-05 special election and the upcoming ME-01 and CA Senate District 3 races, all (or almost all) of the Democratic campaigns are using ActBlue as a core part of their online fundraising program.
But for an organization with an inherently political mission, it's an odd route to take. So why'd we do it?
When Matt DeBergalis and I founded ActBlue in 2004, this course was a straightforward choice for several reasons:
Republicans controlled every branch of government and were on an unchecked tear to remake this country in their own horrifying ultra-conservative vision: a disastrous war abroad, erosion of civil rights at home, and a government run for the benefit of corporate greed -- social and environmental consequences be damned. We needed to push back--hard--by returning the Democratic Party to power.
The organizations, bloggers, and grassroots activists we wanted to serve were all making different choices about who to support. With different issue priorities, different strategies, and different opinions about which campaigns were most likely to put Democrats over the top, the best way to help them all was to build a platform that could support all of the candidates for whom they wanted to fundraise.
It didn't hurt that this route was easy to implement. We could focus our efforts on building a novel fundraising platform rather than detailed candidate research.
Of course we got a good bit of flack for this choice in various corners: "Why are you supporting [candidate X]? They're way too conservative/crazy/long-shot to deserve help from ActBlue." One of my off-hand responses from 2004 lives on in our Frequently Asked Questions:
You listed a candidate who clubs baby seals-shouldn't you take them off the site?
We...don't impose our personal or ideological judgments on our decisions to include or exclude anyone. However, if our users share our anti-baby-seal-clubbing views, no one will promote them on their fundraising pages, and there won't be any problem.
In that quip, though, lies a more fundamental reason for our approach that we didn't fully appreciate when we got started. By offering a trusted, neutral platform for all Democratic candidates and fundraisers, we're creating a more democratic (little 'd') party -- and that ultimately makes the movement stronger.
Let me unpack that a bit.
The strategy of most political groups goes something like the following: "first, we'll build our capacity to raise funds, recruit volunteers, and/or persuade voters. Then, we'll use those resources to help elect the candidates we like. And, finally, we'll wield our money, volunteers and votes as carrots and sticks to encourage politicians to see things our way."
In creating ActBlue, we envisioned ourselves helping fellow progressives build the small-donor fundraising force Democrats need to fight back against the corporate money that fuels the GOP and stymies progressive change. But why be so general as to help support all Democrats? Why not restrict the use of ActBlue's fundraising tools so they could only be used to support specific, vetted candidates we like? If this is really such powerful stuff, why not wield our fundraising platform as a super-duper carrot-and-stick machine?
We've chosen to instead make ActBlue an honest broker because we believe that the best Democratic Party, and the best government as a whole, can only be achieved when every part of the political process -- including fundraising -- is conducted according to the greatest aspirations of our democracy. Only by changing the rules of the game can the competition for political influence be won by those who best represent the interests of the public as a whole.
In a Democratic movement with truly democratic fundraising, every Democrat with the courage to throw his or her hat into the ring -- regardless of issue positions, previous endorsements, or chance of success -- has the opportunity to pitch themselves and make their ask to everyone who wants to make a difference. And every person involved in our movement has the technology and organizing resources to gather like-minded individuals together and build political power. Our approach at ActBlue is backed by a belief that if we can level the playing field, the best leaders will emerge and the best ideas will win the day.
Paired with our idealism about bringing out the best in our movement is pragmatism about building the strength we need to fight the conservative movement. The standard political modus operandi ("Stay on message! Focus 100% on the endorsed campaigns -- otherwise you're wasting resources!") doesn't make sense for a movement as large and diverse as ours.
When someone goes out to make a fundraising ask, they're not going to be effective unless they passionately believe in the cause they are supporting. Of course activists and groups will argue about candidates and strategy. We won't all agree. But even with our differences, at ActBlue we believe that the combined power of everyone's full effort far outweighs the results when rigid adherence to a specific strategy is enforced. And so if institutions like ActBlue were to force people to follow a specific strategy designed by a few, we wouldn't increase efficiency at all. We'd just end up with a few people being more effective, and a lot more people staying at home. By empowering each person and each group to back the candidates they find y inspiring and to fight for the positions that they personally find most important, we maximize the power of our movement.
As a result of the Iraq war, the current coalition structure in America, which is dominated by the conservative governing majority for at least two decades and continues to be so now, has a reached a breaking point. Realignments in American politics take place when there is no compromise to be had on the major issues of the day, and when the current governing majority is actually in the minority position on those issues nationwide. Iraq is just such a dominant issue on which there is no compromise, and the current conservative governing coalition of George Bush, Bush Dogs, congressional Republicans, and anti-MoveOn, anti-Reid Feingold Senators is opposed to the will of 60% of the American people on Iraq.
We have come to a point where either we will witness the success of the last-ditch effort of the conservative working majority to stay in power, the Iraq Blurring Strategy, or we will witness the completion of the Iraq realignment in the 2008 elections. I explain in the extended entry.
Jean Shaheen has entered the Senate race in New Hampshire. From what I am told, I am pretty sure this means both Katrina Swett and Steve Marchand will drop out. As for Jay Buckey, I honestly don't know, but I hope he stays in. Not only do I like Buckey, who is both an astronaut and a progressive (two of my favorite things), but the last thing Shaheen needs now is an uncontested primary. While polls show her ahead of Republican incumbent John Sununu by anywhere from 16-28 points, I do not have a lot of confidence that those enormous leads will hold. At the very least, Shaheen needs to be pushed to become a better campaigner in the primaries. Hopefully, such a primary will also force her to adopt a more progressive outlook (seriously, check out that link)
Now, even if he stays in, I am under no particular illusions that Buckey would have anything more than a moonshot to actually defeat Shaheen in the primary. However, to be perfectly frank, I feel like Shaheen is one of the many, many Democrats who first helped lead the party into simultaneous minority and pro-war status back in 2002-2003, but who is now capitalizing on the favorable electoral stage that was prepared mainly by the progressive movement during four years of intense guerilla warfare against conservatism from 2003-2006. While the Jean Shaheen's and Rahm Emanual's of the party were supporting things like the Bush tax cuts, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, and legislation to support Terry Schaivo, it was the netroots who were doing the bulk of the heavy lifting in opposition to Republicans. I feel like they are capitalizing on what we rightfully earned, and both dissing us and preparing to destroy all of our work in the process. They are pretenders to the new Democratic majority.
Why am I so pissed at Democrats lately? Simply put, it feels like many Democrats are taking something that does not belong to them--their excellent 2006 and 2008 electoral advantages--and then thoroughly ruining it. And why am I so convinced they will ruin it? Because, as a progressive Democrat, I have already seen the blurring strategy on Iraq successfully used against my candidates by centrists from my own party. The most graphic example was Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont in the 2006 Connecticut Senate general election. While nutmegers now regret falling for that strategy, it still worked, and Joe Lieberman is still in office. Now, with even Bush supposedly promising withdrawal by next summer, with the country grossly misinformed about withdrawal plans, with supposedly "anti-war" Republicans not being forced to vote on anything that will actually end the war, and with Republicans starting to capitalize on Democrats refusing to say how many troops they will leave in Iraq and for how long, I can see how it will broadly be used against progressives in 2008. Bush Dogs will be empowered. Progressives will find "moderate" Republicans much more difficult to defeat. Our chances for sweeping gains in the House might be wiped away. Even our advantage in the Presidency might disappear, as long as our nominee ends up supporting an indefinite amount of American troops in Iraq for an indefinite period of time. And so, like a nightmere version of Groundhog Day, those same, pretenders to the new Democratic Majority could very well lose because they shat on their base, and refused to take stronger stances on Iraq.
Sometimes I wonder if this problem is a combination of the progressive movement growing too effective too quickly, and Bush policies creating national and international disasters even more rapidly than expected. It takes a long time to build a bench. We are talking at least four years to build a member of the US House, and probably more. It takes ten years to build a US Senator, and often more. To build a President, it takes at least fourteen years, and often more. In the five year period from 2002-2007, the movement simply did not have enough time to build up a series of candidates and professional activists to replace the pretenders in Congress, in the party leadership, and throughout the progressive establishment. So, we set the table, but most of the people available to sit down and eat were the same Democrats who screwed everything up so badly from 1994-2004. And so, Jean Shaheen loses in 2002 while supporting the war and the Bush tax cuts, is floated as a "stop Dean" candidate for DNC chair in late 2004, but then gets to re-enter the Senate in 2008 largely because of the work of other progressives who she largely opposed. However, many other Democrats could easily end up losing in 2008 because of a blurring strategy on Iraq that Democrats like Shaheen will facilitate.
That, in a nutshell, is why I am directing so much vitrol at members of my own party right now. It feels like pretenders have usurped our new majority. Right now, I feel like a wave of primary challenges and trying to put an end to the blurring strategy is practically a last ditch effort to keep the situation from growing even worse. The Iraq blurring strategy is largely engineered by Republicans Bush Dogs as a means of keeping the conservative working majority in place. In order to break the conservative governing majority, that strategy must be smashed.
I just got a press release from Republican Jim Ogonowski that validates two of Chris's concerns. One is his post on 'Warning Signs' in MA-05, and the other is his post on the Republican blurring strategy on Iraq. Ogonowski is running against Bush, on a Petraeus withdrawal, and is criticizng Tsongas for wanting to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely. The argument, that Tsongas's desire for an irresponsible withdrawal will necessitate returning troops to the region, is crazy, but Republican grassroots are pretty psyched about it and it makes sense as a pitch to independents, with whom Ogonowski is competitive.
Tsongas just got through with a nasty primary, with vicious negative attacks coming from a Lowell machine that will probably support Ogonowski. She didn't have the pull of the progressive base in the primary, because they got behind Eldridge. I hope that changes, which it seems to be as it becomes clear that Ogonowski will vote badly on things like SCHIP. If you want to know why I got so up in arms about Warner's messaging against partisanship, it's because that's exactly the message Ogonowksi is running on. It's also, incidentally, exactly what hyperpartisans like Mitch McConnell are running on as well.
Here's the press release.
OGONOWSKI TO BUSH: DEMAND IRAQI GOVERNMENT ASSUME MORE CONTROL
Tsongas wants to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely, Ogonowski calls to bring all the troops home safely and responsibly
The first general election poll out of MA-05 shows a surprisingly competitive race in this extremely pro-Democratic district (PVI D +10.7). From Survey USA, 9/7-9/9, 411 LVs, MoE 4.9:
The worrying part about this poll is that Tsongas is losing independents, 46-39, and that Ogonowski holds Republicans better than Tsongas holds Democrats. That is the old formula we saw working against Democrats before the wave started to build in mid-2005. Most worrying of all, Ogonowski is nearly even with Tsongas among those who disapprove of Bush, 46%-47%. If Democrats no longer hold the edge in partisan coherency, are behind among independents, and local Republicans have successfully distanced themselves from Bush and national Republicans, then the two-year plus run where Democrats held a decisive electoral advantage nationwide might be over.
To see if this really was a warning sign, or simply to be expected in an open seat campaign, I went back to 2006 and compared this result to a pre-election poll in a very similar district in 2006: Vermont At-Large. Back then VT-AL was also an open seat. It has a PVI of D +9.1, and is also situated in New England. It was somewhat of a relief to see that the final pre-election poll in that district was identical to this poll in MA-05:
MA-05 poll, 9/7/07-9/9/07: Tsongas (D) 51%--41% Ogonowski (R)
VT-AL poll, 10/23-10/24/06: Welch (D) 51%--41% Rainville (R). Welch went on to win 53-45. The poll was taken by Research 2000, and can be found in the subscriber section of polling report.
Now, that isn't to say that we are entirely out of the woods. There were other heavily Democratic open seats in 2006, which ended up as more comfortable Democratic victories than VT-AL. Here are a few:
HI-02, PVI D +9,7: Hirono (D) 61%--39% Houge (R)
IL-17, PVI D +4.6: Hare (D) 57%--43% Zinga (R)
IA-01: PVI D +4.8: Braley (D) 55%--43% Whalen (R) (Final polls showed Democratic leads of 56-35 and 49-42)
TN-09:PVI D +15.7: Cohen (D) 60%, two others split 40%
So, in these comparable districts, the Democrats all won by more than 10%, all better than Welch's performance in Vermont. They also pushed the party to the left, as all four joined the Congressional progressive caucus, including two in leadership positions in the caucus (Hirono and Hare). They also replaced to Blue Dogs (Case in HI-02, Ford in TN-09) and one Republican (IA-01). Peter Welch also joined the CPC.
So, there are at lest two reasons to be disappointed in the MA-05 election so far. First, it is doubtful that Tsongas will be the strong progressive that we tended to score in blue open seats in 2006 (although it is also unlikely that she will be a Bush Dog). Second, the campaign seems to be closer than blueish open seats were in 2006. Now, the latter could simply be the flukey results of one poll, which would make this over-analyzing a single result. However, I have to wonder if there is a connection between the two disappointments. Perhaps it is closer than it should be in MA-05 because there isn't as much local, grassroots, progressive activist energy behind Tsongas compared to what we saw in comparable campaigns in 2006. I can't prove that, but I do have to wonder. Reduced activist enthusiasm for electing just any Democrat, rather than preferred, progressive Democrats, could be a factor for Democrats in 2008. Finding a way to get that activism back will be a key to a larger Democratic majority in 2008.
Turnout looks to be under 50,000, Donoghue is peaking, and voters are deciding based on advice from friends and family without any overriding ideological interests. This thread on Blue Mass Group is kind of interesting, though the race itself has been mostly boring. No candidate has really solidly captured a progressive block of voters; the Deval Patrick reformer types are somewhat behind Niki, while the identity progressives are somewhat behind Eldridge. Mostly this is a regional friends and family affair.
We'll see who wins in a few hours. It's probably Tsongas, though local Lowell favorite Donoghue could surprise with an upset. She's been running TV ads recently, she got a bunch of newspaper endorsements, and her negative framing of Tsongas has been successful. If anyone has momentum, it's Donoghue.
UPDATE: Here's Dick Howe, who has followed this race closely, discussing coverage from the Eagle Tribune.
Andover, Haverhill Lawrence and Methuen expect only 10%-15% of registered voters to show up and cast ballots in the 5th congressional district primary.
The latest polling on the Massachusetts fifth primary is out (via Blue Mass Group), and it shows that Niki Tsongas is still in the lead, but Lowell City Councilor Eileen Donoghue is surging.
Undecided voters are breaking decisively to Donoghue, Finegold is dying, Eldridge is static, and Tsongas is static.
The race has shifted because of Donoghue's aggressive strategy, and the Lowell machine kicking into gear. Both the The Lowell Sun and the Eagle Tribune endorsed Donoghue, and Lowell machine people are engaged in some vicious negative attacks on Tsongas, putting up the site NotNiki.com. The attacks have clearly been successful, and though Niki's base isn't going down, late breakers are going for Donoghue. These are nasty people going after Niki; if you'll recall, it was the Lowell Sun that called the 'Use it or Lose it' campaign to get Marty Meehan to transfer some part of $5M from his PAC in a safe seat to the DCCC "a nasty shakedown by rotten political scoundrels."
This is going to be a turnout game on Tuesday. Lowell is going turn their people out for Donoghue, so Tsongas's organization needs to be solid. It's too bad she didn't operate as a progressive, otherwise that 15% Eldridge has would be hers and the race would be over. When I first looked at this election, I had thought this would be a standard progressive versus establishment race. But it's not quite that, it's more about a local machine (Donoghue) fighting against state elite liberal reformers and DC groups like Emily's List (Tsongas).
Once again, this race is up to the hard core support, since the special election is right after labor day and the fight is not generating big press. I'm not sure who wins in that scenario, though it is the only thing Eldridge has working for him.
Over the course of this race, I've become less interested in Jamie Eldridge and less hostile to Niki Tsongas. There are competing Democratic factions in Massachusetts politics, and while Eldridge is 'the progressive' brand-wise, he's also young, setting himself up for future office, and is drawing almost no support from conservative Democrats. Tsongas has a name that suggests a strong Massachusetts political reform legacy, and is polling well across all groups because that legacy fits with recent quiet Deval Patrick liberalism. She also has strong ties to DC, and is the perfect pro-choice 'don't rock the boat' Emily's List candidate.
It's really Donoghue who is drawing in the local Lowell machine, with Finegold running as a quirky moderate. Overall, Tsongas is pulling in roughly 38%, with 43% split among the three other major candidates roughly evenly. With support stable among the three, I don't see how any of them makes up ground. Surprisingly, there's only a small gender gap, with Tsongas drawing in 5 points more among women than men.
It's going to come down to turnout, but right now, I don't see how Niki Tsongas loses this one.
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