The GOP’s other ground game
by digby
As we start to shift focus to the ground game I’d urge Democrats not to rest on their laurels. And the press should not rest on its narrative. Once again, this article by Addie Stan from last month tells why:
Liberal pundits often make the mistake of comparing the GOTV efforts of competing Democratic and Republican campaigns, as conducted by the parties and their candidates, concluding that the Democratic efforts are far superior. At the party and candidate levels that may be true, but the Republican turnout operation exists largely outside of the party structure, through organizations such as Reed’s, and the Koch-backed Tea Party group, Americans For Prosperity. Unlike unions, whose budgets are limited by the size and scope of their membership, FFC and AFP could have access to however much money they need to get the job done.
As Stan documented at the time, Reed’s organization, along with Americans for Prosperity, was responsible for the Walker victory in Wisconsin — a state where the unions were very mobilized. (Reed was extremely upset by this article, by the way.)
The victory narrative from the 2008 campaign is that the Obama team closely studied the playbook assembled by Karl Rove (now a Republican sugar daddy in his own right) for the 2004 Bush campaign, and appropriated a number of its methods.
So who is Ralph Reed studying? The Obama campaign of 2008. As Reed told the activists who attended his Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington last June, in 2008, the Obama campaign “ran circles around us.”
“I founded Faith and Freedom Coalition because I vowed that as long as I was alive, we were never going to get out-hustled on the ground again,” he said.
In Florida alone, Reed said, his organization had identified 200,000 unregistered conservative Christians, and FFC planned not only to sign them up, but to make sure they voted, even if they had to drive them to the polls himself. And it’s not just religious voters he’s after; any right-wing voter will do, and Reed is determined to find them all.
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As Robert Arnakis of the Leadership Institute explained at a recent workshop conducted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C., told two dozen activists, “You know, we don’t want to turn out all voters. The fact of the matter is, we want to turn out voters who think like us and who vote like us.”
And they are using all the social media tools at their disposal along with the traditional churches and social conservative organizations.
I bring this up again, because I keep hearing on TV that the Democrats don’t have anything to worry about because their ground game is so much better than Romney’s. People are counting election offices in swing states and looking at the number of early voters and extrapolating from some pre-set formula that for all his money, Romney’s at a disadvantage.
Maybe he is. But there is a rushing river of right wing money in this race and a huge amount of it has gone toward making their traditional religious right GOTV practices into a modern GOP operation that exists outside the Party. I wouldn’t assume that the situation on the ground is the same as 2008.
FreedomWorks for America had its best month yet in September, getting there with even more small donors than usual. And it’s on its way to even bigger numbers in October.
The group, a conservative super PAC with tea party roots, is an anomaly among super PACs in its emphasis on small-donor funding. In September, unitemized contributions, or those of $200 or less, made up 47 percent of contributions to the super PAC, exceeding its 35 percent average for the year.
Even larger contributions to the group were relatively small in September. There were many $250 donations and only five contributions of $10,000 or more that didn’t come from a FreedomWorks affiliate. The largest donation, $750,000, came from Mary Stiefel, a retiree from Pinecrest, Florida. This was her first contribution of the year, although she gave the group $5,000 in 2010 and has contributed to seven 2012 campaigns across the country.
Yet even without contributions from the Sheldon Adelsons and Bob Perrys of the super PAC world, FreedomWorks for America managed to raise about $3 million last month and spent about $4 million.
FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon says that part of the group’s strategy is to expand a network of supporters that totaled 45,000 people last year.
“Small donors tend to be very stable. They become part of the community,” Brandon said. “What ends up happening with these small donors is not only do they donate but they also volunteer…We are building a machine that on the day after the election is stronger than the day before.”
FreedomWorks’ network of small donors is all the more impressive when compared to other major super PACs’ fundraising statistics. As the table below shows, none of the other active super PACs raising as much or more money this election cycle comes close to having as large a share of funds from unitemized contributions. (Super PACs connected to labor unions are not included because they are in large part fueled by members’ dues, which are difficult to compare to individual donations to other super PACs.)
Brandon says that unlike other super PACs — for instance, the three big dogs, American Crossroads, Restore Our Future, and Priorities USA Action — FreedomWorks uses its funds for phone banking and lawn signs instead of television ads.
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