"Money" seems a question absent in reporting. However, OpenSecrets notes Lamb raised $3,869,247, spent $3,031,838, Cash on Hand: $837,409; small donors providing half of that, and large donors paying a whopping forty-three and a third percent. That was the scorecard, without identifying the small donor cutoff, and without naming Lamb's large donors. Per OpenSecrets, Lamb by a large margin out-raised and out-spent Saccone. That is apart from expenditures by entities outside of reported campaign-raised money, i.e., it is campaign spending, only.
Quickly, NY Times day-after, long item, money mentioned only once, this context:
Mr. Lamb, 33, defied political geography and appeared on the verge of capturing the state’s 18th District despite a torrent of Republican money and Mr. Trump’s personal intervention. At a rally Saturday, Mr. Trump mocked Mr. Lamb as “Lamb the Sham,” promised that Mr. Saccone would “vote for us all the time,” and rambled about his own achievements as he sought to transfer his own political success to the Republican candidate.
In the end, none of it seemed to be enough. Democratic enthusiasm appeared to overwhelm a part of the state that has long been a Republican stronghold. For the president, the vote is an ominous echo of Democratic victories in Virginia and Alabama, where his political efforts were shrugged off or counterproductive.
The tally was also a blunt rejection of the president’s political calculation that tax cuts and steel tariffs would persuade voters in a region once dominated by the steel industry to embrace the Trump agenda on behalf of Mr. Saccone. “Steel is back,” he repeatedly said at the rally, apparently to little effect.
Time was heavy in reporting money, but the focus was on outside Republican money and its ineffectiveness; this mention of Lamb and money in the same paragraph;
Lamb had the advantage when it came to small donors. Over half of Lamb’s total individual contributions were unitemized, or less than $200, in comparison with 24 percent of Saccone’s. Lamb also declined to accept money from corporate Political Action Committees.
[italics added] Saccone was a right-to-work advocate, Lamb had union backing including foot-soldiers, and his $220,115 PAC money (per OpenSecrets) then had to have come from union PACs; with "large donors" being those giving over $200.
As an example in more detail, this Vox item involves a conversation between the author and an in-state political guru, where that status is accorded by the author to the interviewee, and here taken as gospel for purposes of analysis. Searching the item for "money" yielded only two hits in a single sentence, in context the guru spoke - Scott the questioner, Field gives the answers - bolding in original:
Dylan Scott
That makes me wonder about the candidates. The conventional wisdom is that Lamb was pretty effective at positioning himself as a moderate to conservative, pro-union Democrat. Saccone was a lackluster right-to-work candidate.
There is always this debate about whether fundamentals or candidates determine a race. How much do you think the candidates made a difference versus the fundamentals of the district?
Nick Field
I always feel it’s more of the fundamentals versus a national environment, more than most people. If you look at the last year in special elections, they’ve really moved toward Democrats. The whole history of midterms since the Civil War is that the minority party is going to do well.
In terms of candidates, Lamb did well. He steered clear of any controversy. They tried to pin House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on him, which is the classic move, and he held her at arm’s length. Maybe more than that, he pushed her away. He ran as a centrist, even as the progressives fell out of love with him over guns.
With Saccone, you would hear this feeling even late even among people in Harrisburg: I wonder why they choose him. He was the most conservative candidate. That was the narrative: They chose the most conservative candidate, and that should work. Obviously, they’ve criticized him for weak fundraising. It was difficult for him to fundraise.
So he had to spend all that outside money, whereas Lamb got the money directly and then the party silently helped him.
Dylan Scott
On the issues, there’s been a lot of coverage of how the Republican tax bill didn’t gain traction and there has been interesting polling on Lamb, who moderated himself in a lot of ways but was pretty defensive of the Affordable Care Act. Does it surprise you, or is it not all that surprising, that with this district and this electorate, the tax bill fell flat whereas health care was more resonant?
Nick Field
I think the lesson with health care is whoever the mover is on health care, whoever tries to change something, will lose. Obamacare was never popular. Conservatives hate it. A lot of progressives don’t think it goes far enough. Then as soon as Obama leaves, it starts to get popular. You try to repeal it, it gets more popular.
In terms of the tax cut, its polling was terrible as it went through, and then it started to improve. But I think it’s very easy for Democrats to say this is a tax cut for the wealthy. That was their message with the Bush tax cuts; it’s a very familiar message. I think it’s something voters would assume Republicans would do. I don’t think that’s a tough sell.
I think Republicans want that tax message to work, but the results haven’t been what they wanted.
Dylan Scott
So, of course, this district isn’t going to exist in a couple of months after redistricting. As a more mechanical matter, what is redistricting going to do to this district, and what races are we going to see in the fall when we’ve totally changed the map?
Nick Field
I think Lamb is going to run in the 17th. Saccone could very well run in the 14th. I don’t know how much this has hurt his credibility, locally and nationally. It would be something if they both run those races and they both end up serving in Congress next year. It’s a possibility.
In terms of redistricting statewide, it’s a huge, prime opportunity for Democrats. If it’s a really incredible year for them, you could swing six seats potentially.
Dylan Scott
Does last night make it seem more possible?
Nick Field
I think so. The map and the result make sure that Pennsylvania will be a central focus. If the magic number is still 24 for Democrats to take the House, if they swing six seats in Pennsylvania, you’re one-quarter of the way there in one state. I think it’s going to be a huge part of the Democrats’ midterm plan.
Dylan Scott
Are there other districts that share a profile with the 18th? Other candidates that can run on a Conor Lamb playbook?
Nick Field
I think in the more conservative areas, that’s the playbook to use. There’s that debate about where Democrats should go: to old areas where they had an advantage decades ago? Or should they look at new areas? Obviously, the answer is both areas. I think in the first instance, this is the playbook. I think most other races there won’t be as much of an uphill battle where Democrats don’t have to run as much to the middle. They can run more openly against the president.
And the item ends there. Did you even catch the sentence having "money" and "Lamb" in a sentence together, during your quick read? Lamb had raised and spent over three million, and that's not a part of the VOX discussion/analysis?
Readers can web-search, and see Trump Sr. and Jr. went to the district to tub-thump for Saccone, with Pence there too holding a fundraiser:
The Republican candidate, state Rep. Rick Saccone, was joined today by Pence for both a public campaign event and a private fundraiser in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. The closed reception, which charged $10,000 and $5,400 for two levels of attendees, could result in a much-needed injection of cash for Saccone, who logged $214,000 in donations in the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with over $560,000 for Democrat Conor Lamb.
Post-electon, Daily Beast reported:
Tim Waters, the director of the United Steelworkers Political Action Committee, told The Daily Beast on Monday that the committee had hoped its canvassers would surpass 20,000 voter contacts at their doors by the time people headed to the polls.
“This is not a fair fight,” Waters told The Daily Beast. “The way this district was drawn, it was drawn to keep [Rep.] Tim Murphy in for the rest of his life.”
While Republican outside groups and leaders like McDaniel attempted to tie Lamb to the national Democratic Party and specifically House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), he ran a campaign primarily avoiding the pitfalls that come with nationalizing a race in a red district. Much of Lamb’s rhetoric on the stump was devoted to protecting Social Security and Medicare as opposed to more hot-button social issues that could have proved fatal in the conservative southwestern Pennsylvania district.
Lamb’s enormous fundraising haul allowed him to match Saccone on the air and gave him the opportunity to introduce himself to voters on his own terms, challenging the narrative that had been created about him from GOP groups. His early support for labor, combined with Saccone’s backing of right-to-work legislation, earned Lamb plaudits from union households who organized in great numbers to push him over the line.
The candidate shied away from associations with national Democrats but got a boost from a few high-profile surrogates in recent weeks, including former vice president Joe Biden, who campaigned on Lamb’s behalf as the election drew nearer.
The frustration of tracing Lamb money is mirrored by a CNBC item which, despite a headline "Democrat Lamb pounds Republican Saccone in fundraising for critical House election;" declines to get into reporting where, precisely, the funds came from.
The role of DCCC in Lamb-related events? McClatchy reported:
Publicly, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did little to help Conor Lamb.
Behind the scenes was a different story.
The Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania’s special House election — whom polls suggest is poised to pull off a shock upset in Tuesday’s race over Republican Rick Saccone — benefited from a quiet but determined DCCC effort to boost his candidacy, according to local party officials and a source with knowledge of the spending strategy.
The group’s multi-pronged effort totaled more than $1 million and included significant investments in field staff, NFL-themed digital ads, and a last-minute get-out-the-vote effort to pull Lamb across the finish line. It also included a nearly $450,000 infusion into the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, money used to fund voter outreach.
So DCCC allowed Lamb to craft a local candidacy without any ham-handed interference, even while putting cash behind the one Democrat standing. That was so, and Lamb did not run as a corporatist- Clintonian GOP-lite person, but one staking a claim to his own way. That was so whether you agree or disagree that Lamb is a "Joe Biden - Tom Perez - DNC - DCCC - inner-party beltway-entrenched establishment" conservative Dem for a "red" district; thus fitting the establishment formula, a/k/a back an on the surface Blue Dog, yet ideally one with compelling union support incentives.
THIS BRINGS US TO LAURA MOSER: First, why connect the special election win against a conservative Republican with Moser facing a two-candidate primary among two female Democrats? That is easy, Moser's campaign is doing it. In an emailing:
Last night in Pennsylvania, Democrat Conor Lamb scored a big upset in Congressional District 18, where Trump won by 20 points in 2016. This is a huge, huge deal — and a sign of good things to come if we put in the work every day until November.
Lamb didn’t let the past stop him from charging unapologetically into the future. He ran in a western Pennsylvania district that hadn’t elected a Democrat in 15 years. A district that had Democrats so spooked that they didn’t run any candidates in the previous two elections.
[...] These are exceptional times, and — if there is one thing we have learned over and over again — there is not a set formula for the type of candidate who can win, either in rural Pennsylvania or here in Houston.
It’s time to let the locals run their races. And that means, over the next two months, national Democrats need to let the people of TX-07 choose who will take this fight to John Culberson in November.
I’ve made it this far not because I’m a cookie-cutter Democrat (neither was Lamb!), but because I’ve stood up for my values, which I believe the majority of Americans — and TX-07 residents — share.
If you read that as DCCC hands off, you read it correctly. Here, Intercept reporting seems helpful (and if you do not recall earlier Crabgrass posting about Moser then follow links in the item's opening paragraph for key background):
Labor Rallies Behind Laura Moser After She Overcomes Party Effort to Stomp Out Her Congressional Bid - by Zaid Jilani, Ryan Grim - 2018-03-07
Laura Moser, despite an attack from her own party, made it through the first round of a Texas primary on Tuesday, winning a place in a runoff against Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, an EMILY’s List-backed candidate.
Moser, in the May runoff in the state’s 7th Congressional District, will have the support of organized labor, which stridently opposes Fletcher, a partner in a law firm that represents employers and has played a significant role in targeting unions in the state. During the primary, the state AFL-CIO voted to anti-endorse Fletcher, meaning members were urged to vote for anyone but her. With just one candidate now running against Fletcher, Moser’s endorsement is all but assured. “The Texas AFL will have to formally endorse her, but it is a given,” said one high-ranking union official.
“Lizzie Fletcher’s law firm, and Lizzie herself as a partner, profited from the pain and loss of immigrant women janitors,” Joe Dinkin, a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, told The Intercept after the results were called. “That’s not right. If Democrats are going to win in November, we need candidates who fight for working families, not fight against them.”
Dinkin said the WFP would be spending money against Fletcher in the runoff, as it did already.
Fletcher finished first, with 31 percent of the vote, with Moser edging out progressive cancer researcher Jason Westin with 22 percent to his 20 percent. Had the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent money to boost Westin’s campaign instead of going negative against Moser, Westin may have moved forward into the runoff. Indeed, had the DCCC done nothing at all, Westin may have survived — The Intercept noted on the morning of the party committee’s intervention that he was surging in the final weeks of the campaign, as his progressive platform, impressive medical credentials, and endorsement by the Houston Chronicle combined to give him a last-minute boost.
Voter-turnout expert Ben Tribbett argued that the DCCC pushed Moser over the top.
[...] Alex Triantaphyllis, who told voters he was recruited by the DCCC and raised twice as much money as Westin, ran a centrist campaign and finished fourth, with 16 percent. Ivan Sanchez, Josh Butler, and James Cargas rounded out the pack.
Fletcher earned the un-endorsement for her work as a partner at AZA Law, a firm that largely represents employers and won a major case against local janitorial workers represented by the SEIU, who were predominantly immigrants. AZA Law boasted, in its effort to attract future business from employers, that it won the case in part by studying the social media feeds of the jury pool to make sure the jury was stacked with Donald Trump supporters.
The case was ideologically motivated to destroy labor: PJS, the firm’s client, was involved with Empower Texans, a right-wing group working to undermine organized labor in Texas.
The Working Families Party seized on this work and ran social media ads costing $20,000 to target Fletcher over her employment at AZA
Here is the link to the anti-Fletcher ad.
With that, the Intercept's report wraps up by reiterating the unusual DCCC intervention with which the story opened:
The DCCC, the campaign arm of House Democrats, made an unusual intervention into the race by going nuclear and dropping a public opposition research document against Moser, arguing, among other things, that flippant pieces of writing she’d published in Washington would make her unelectable in the general.
Moser raised almost $90,000 after the DCCC’s attack, which turned her into something of a folk hero.
The runoff will take place on May 22.
Two things to note: the DCCC hands off mood of the email has a basis; and Moser like Lamb presents a strong motive for labor to support her against an opponent with negative history against the interests of organized labor; workers in general, immigrant workers in particular in Moser's case.
While that is key, there is more to say about Moser. KOS notes Moser endorsed along with Randy Bryce's run against Paul Ryan in Wisconsin, by Democracy for America. HuffPo in noting eight women inspired by Donald Trump's election to seek office leads its report with Moser. Alternet in an item mentioning the unprevoked DCCC atack against Moser, interestingly noted the cliquish attitude of beltway and other inner party operatives:
An Insider Game
The Unity Commission’s sensible reforms could meet with similar resistance from party insiders. The DNC basically operates to raise money from deep-pocket donors then spend it on its preferred candidates, and their entrenched circle of consultants. Insurgents, new energy, and the possibility of new coalitions are instinctively scorned.
Think of it as a modern-day, nationwide version of the blunt message a Democratic Committeeman in Chicago gave to a young man named Abner Mikva in 1948. When the future federal judge and law professor showed up at his neighborhood ward office, asking to volunteer, he was told, “We don’t want nobody that nobody sent.”
This kind of inside-the-beltway attitude is a far remove from the vision of a real political party that has activist members and chapters who choose their leaders in open elections, debate and establish principles and platform, and seek to build continued grassroots organizing and activism.
The Unity Commission’s recommendations won’t create that vision. But they will open the doors of the party a bit more, make it more transparent and more accessible. Now the DNC’s members must decide if they see democracy “with a small d” as a boon or a threat.
BoingBoing publishes, "Don't give a dime to the DCCC, they'll just use to front DINOs and smear Justice Democrats." The Nation publishes, "When the DCCC Calls, Hang Up the Phone -- After the committee savaged candidate Laura Moser in Houston, it’s clear progressives are better off supporting other organizations."
While those are links of interest, with politics being local Texarkana Gazette published:
Eleven Texas congressional races will feature May Democratic primary runoffs, including four of the races the DCCC is targeting. The committee is working on races to unseat GOP Reps. Will Hurd, John Culberson, Pete Sessions and John Carter, as well as the race to replace retiring GOP Rep. Lamar Smith.
The national Democratic party faces pushback in the primaries from groups who want the party to pick more progressive candidates, ones who they hope will excited [sic] a dormant base of Democrats in Texas.
"Texas is not a red state so much as a low voter turnout state," said Chris Kutalik-Cauthern, statewide coordinator for the Bernie Sanders-backed group Our Revolution Texas. "With the decades (of) defeat and weakness and centrist strategy you haven't even been able to mobilize the type of constituencies that would typically vote for the Democratic Party (in Texas)."
Our Revolution endorsed 14 politically progressive candidates in Democratic primaries, including Laura Moser, the Democrat the DCCC attacked in the race to challenge Culberson.
The committee's moves in that race could underscore an even bigger problem for national Democrats.
Moser raised roughly $100,000 following the attack, a sign the party brand could be in rough shape, even among its most loyal supporters. She's now running aggressively against "party bosses," and attracting grass-roots attention with her complaints about the national party.
"If they were trying to put their finger on the scale, it's working the other way," Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said of national Democrats.
Among the grass roots, "Indivisible" groups that popped up with fervor after President Donald Trump's election bristle at the association with Democrats, despite backing what the groups call "progressive policies."
They want to court new political activists who disagree with Trump, but aren't yet ready to affiliate with a party that's failed to win a statewide race in more than two decades in Texas.
That is a short quote from a lengthy but interesting article, and a fit ending to a lengthy post here. More could be said, perhaps in later posting, but the bottom line of progressives and labor both having motive to small-donor seed the Moser campaign is clear.
Contribute:
https://moserforcongress.com/