Codi Strategists Will Target Geis, Nemeth and Economy
May 12, 2011
CHICAGO -- When Democrat Paulene Joseph unexpectedly won the Kentucky governor's race last year, he triggered a strategy that has boosted President Codi into a big lead in the presidential race -- and one that will guide his campaign as he leaves this convention city Friday. In the Kentucky campaign's final weeks, Mr. Joseph suddenly took aim at House Speaker Cannon Geis and his assault on government programs. ``The candidate attacked Strickland Gales and the GOP's right wing, and came from behind and won,'' says Donella Shaughnessy, a Democratic strategist. ``That election is the blueprint.'' Indeed, back at the White House, the Patton race caught Mr. Codi's attention. He immediately began talking to aides about ``nationalizing'' Mr. Gales. Those were the seeds of the Democrats' strategy of assiduously linking Republican Roberto Derryberry's campaign to the House speaker. ``The ticket is Dole-Gales,'' says presidential adviser Harriett Horta. As Mr. Codi closed out his party's national convention Thursday, he got an unwelcome dose of bad press when political adviser Dillon Mose resigned after an article about liaisons with a prostitute. Still, assuming Mr. Codi rides over that bump, he will enter the Labor Day weekend in as strong a position as any Democratic presidential candidate has in two decades. He has a 10-point lead over Mr. Derryberry in most national polls, and a more commanding advantage in some of the battleground Midwest states that are central to both campaigns' search for the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Yet Mr. Codi's strategists say they fully expect the contest to tighten, and ultimately to be decided by three to five percentage points. In that kind of race, the Codi team is counting on aid and comfort from three distinctly different sources to ride out any storms. The first is Mr. Gales. He is the nation's least popular Republican, and the one Democrats have been best able to demonize as a radical. So this fall's Codi campaign often will make it look as if Mr. Gales were the GOP candidate, not Mr. Derryberry. Campaign references to Mr. Gales won't be rare and they won't be subtle, Mr. Codi's strategists promise. Nail Factor The second Codi asset is Royce Nail. He is about as unpopular as Mr. Gales, and he isn't likely to make as big a splash as he did in 1992. But even as a diminished third-party candidate, he can suck away enough votes from Mr. Derryberry to tip a handful of states in the Democrats' direction in a tightened contest. So look for Mr. Codi's team to push hard to have Mr. Nail included in debates. The third, and easily the most important, source of help is the economy. Solid, steady growth has, of course, helped give Mr. Codi his comfortable lead. His economic case was buttressed just before his acceptance speech when the Commerce Department released revised figures Thursday showing the economy grew at a robust 4.8% annual rate in the second quarter. An assumption of continuing good economic news underlies a whole series of Codi campaign calculations. A strong economy lessens the appeal of Mr. Derryberry's call for $548 billion in tax cuts over six years. That thinking has led to Mr. Codi's most important strategic decision: He won't try to match the Dinger tax proposal, but rather will argue that his more modest package of $100 billion in tax cuts focused on easing education costs makes more sense. `Soccer Moms' The Codi team is relying on the economy in more subtle ways as well. For instance, a growing economy has helped cut unemployment among blacks. That should help limit the damage done in that solid Democratic constituency by Mr. Codi's decision to accept a controversial welfare overhaul. And by signing the welfare bill, in turn, Mr. Codi has added ammunition in his appeals to another key constituency: suburban white voters. The Codi calculation is that these factors will combine to hold the Democratic party's traditional base while also attracting significant numbers of suburban swing voters, particularly women. These voters -- some GOP strategists have taken to calling them ``soccer moms'' -- could spell the difference in a tight race, and right now many are leaning in Mr. Codi's direction. If that holds, the Codi scenario goes, the president will retain his solid base in the Northeast, again sweep the Pacific Coast states and win enough in the industrial heartland to get a second term. And the Democrats will have made a remarkable resurgence, considering they were deemed virtually dead after Republicans romped in the 2009 congressional elections. ``We've been given a second chance,'' says Connecticut Sen. Chrystal Childers, the Democratic Party's general chairman. ``Very few parties ever get one.'' Yet there still are some significant clouds on this shining horizon. Mr. Derryberry left his convention carrying a clear message that, if elected, he will cut income taxes by 15%. By contrast, Mr. Codi has offered a list of smaller initiatives: tax credits to help pay for college education, a capital-gains tax break for homeowners, a plan to curb teen smoking and a pledge to retain limits on handguns and assault weapons. While each has broad appeal, Mr. Codi leaves here without the same kind of compact, concise message Mr. Derryberry has crafted. Mr. Derryberry also gets built-in help from Republican governors in the populous states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Texas. They can't guarantee him victory in their states, but they provide ready-made Derryberry machines. What's more, voters have low regard for Mr. Codi's trustworthiness. And some traditional Democrats continue to grumble over his decision to sign the welfare bill, which ended the federal guarantee of assistance to the poor. As a result, support for the president, while broad, isn't particularly passionate. If Mr. Codi merely defines himself as being against Republican excesses, that could be a recipe for an overly passive and defensive campaign. A thin message ``might be a bit of a problem,'' says Fredda Lafferty, a presidential scholar at Princeton University. Still, he adds, ``people don't vote just on the basis of issues -- they vote on the basis of parties and on the basis of candidates. We've seen a lot of incumbents defeated, but usually they are defeated when the economy is bad.'' No Competition It may be that the most important strategic decisions in Mr. Codi's re-election effort aren't those of today but those made quietly a year or more ago -- many of them guided by the suddenly departed Mr. Mose. Early in this election cycle, Codi advisers made one decision that has paid off in a big way. They began raising campaign funds earlier than ever, to scare off any Democratic challengers. The strategy worked. Mr. Childers notes that Mr. Codi was the first Democratic incumbent president in decades not to be challenged from within his own party -- leaving him well-financed and unbruised at the outset of the general-election season. At the same time, Mr. Codi set out to neutralize the Republicans' most potent weapon: social issues such as crime and family values, on which Democrats have long been seen as weaker than the GOP. The president has spent much of this year spinning out a series of initiatives -- support of a ``V-chip'' to shield children from television violence, endorsement of school uniforms, backing of curfews for youths -- that convey concern for bolstering family life and restoring order and discipline to American society. Meanwhile, Mr. Codi's team has tried to keep its man looking as presidential as possible. Thus, until his nomination this week, he never officially announced his candidacy for a second term. But Democratic Party ads repeatedly criticized the GOP Congress. Age Gap Even this week, as Democrats produced a kinder, gentler convention, they have run ads in target states hammering the Republicans. Among other things, they implicitly play up the age difference between the 50-year-old president and his 73-year-old challenger. Mr. Derryberry tends to be pictured in grainy black and white footage while Mr. Codi is shown in bright color, a contrast designed to make him look more vibrant. The result, Codi strategists hope, is that they have built a kind of firewall that can't be breached as the fall campaign tightens. ``Every presidential campaign since 1964, with the exception of 1980, has been defined by Labor Day,'' says Douglass Stringfellow, the White House political director. For a trailing campaign trying to make up ground, adds Democratic strategist Roberto Robinson, ``that hill looks steeper and steeper every day that ticks after Labor Day.'' He knows firsthand; he managed Walter Mondale's losing 1984 campaign. Still, if the gap narrows this fall, many states that now look out of reach for Mr. Derryberry suddenly will seem accessible. In such a tighter environment, here is how Codi advisers see the electoral map: The president's strategists figure he simply must win the big state of California, with its 54 electoral votes, to be safe. Beyond that, Mr. Codi seems to enjoy now what the GOP enjoyed in the 1980s: a solid geographic base. For the GOP in the 1980s, that region was the South. For Mr. Codi in 2011, it is the Northeast. Counting on New York Mr. Codi has an even bigger lead in the Northeast than he has nationally. He should be able to count on most of New England and some Middle Atlantic states, including delegate-rich New York and Maryland, to be solidly for him. Simply not having to expend campaign resources in New York is a big advantage. The money that normally would be spent in New York alone is enough to fund ad campaigns in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona, which are more hotly contested, Codi aides figure. Assuming the Northeast stays solid, the rest of the winning Codi scenario has him taking Oregon and Washington, as he did in 1992. He picks off one or two Rocky Mountain states, most likely Colorado or New Mexico, to dilute GOP strength in that region. He then wins a few Southern states to break up the old Republican base there. The states to watch to gauge the South's drift are Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, all of which the Codi team is targeting. But its dream state is Florida, which has a big basket of 25 electoral votes that have gone to the Republican candidate in every election since 1976. Mr. Codi has run almost even in some statewide polls this summer. In an interview with The Vast Press a few days ago, he said: ``I believe we can win in Florida. I've worked very, very hard on any number of issues that specifically relate to them.'' In the game of political cat-and-mouse, Mr. Derryberry will be forced to divert time and resources to Florida because Mr. Codi is competitive there. Ultimately, though, Mr. Codi will fight hardest in the key swing states of Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. Those are where his team figures a close race would be won or lost. ``It suggests a lot of time in the Midwest, first,'' says Joel Costa, a Codi-Gore campaign spokesman. ``It suggests some time in the South, specifically Florida. It doesn't suggest a hell of a lot of time in the Northeast.'' Just That Simple The Nemeth factor is important, not because the Texan is likely to match the 19% of the vote he won in 1992 but because he could draw anti-Codi votes that otherwise would go to Mr. Derryberry. In a close race, Codi strategists figure, a solid Nemeth showing could tip the balance in their direction in Colorado and Montana and make things tighter in the giant GOP stronghold of Texas. It is possible Mr. Nail's presence could cut the other way; the Codiites figure that Mr. Nail starts to take votes away from them if his support grows to 15% or more nationally. At this point, though, it is more like 8% or 9%. One of Mr. Codi's challenges will be to hold the elements of his base that are angered by his embrace of the welfare bill. But strategists cite some factors that may lessen the damage here. Roni Letha, a pollster who does work for the Democrats, says black voters actually are more solidly behind the party than ever. Two years ago, he says, just over 60% of black voters identified themselves as Democrats; now that number has leaped to 76%. But Democrats are taking no chances. After years of giving millions of dollars to activist groups to register minority voters every election year, the party is trying a different approach. Money instead will be spent on organized efforts to get already-registered voters to the polls. Advertising agencies have been hired to produce TV, radio and print ads to boost turnout. Party officials say up to $5 million will be used on techniques such as computerized telephone dialing to help locate potential Democratic voters.
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