The Dems are feeling relatively confident about the ’06 midterms, but the optimism has done nothing to ease the often-intense animosity between DNC Chairman Howard Dean and DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, whose disagreements over campaign strategy have grown so heated, they reportedly can’t even be in the same room with one another.
Fortunately, yesterday, the two committees reached a truce.
Chicago’s Rep. Rahm Emanuel likes to speak of “Kumbaya” moments when referring to political rivals coming together. Finally, after months of sometimes expletive-laced sparring, the architect of House Democrats’ election efforts seems to be having his moment with Howard Dean. The Democratic Party chairman apparently has agreed to pony up $12 million for get-out-the-vote drives aimed at capturing control of Congress Nov. 7.
The sum, together with the House Democrats’ own money and the $40 million that the AFL-CIO has said it will spend to mobilize voters for Democrats in the most hotly contested congressional races, could effectively put the Democrats on par financially with the vaunted Republican “GOTV” program, for which party Chairman Ken Mehlman has pledged about $40 million. And that would blunt the Republicans’ one clear advantage in an otherwise bleak election year for the party in power.
And not a moment too soon. According to the arrangement, the DNC will invest $12 million into voter-mobilization efforts (the largest hard dollar sum it has ever spent on GOTV in a midterm), with $2.4 million going directly to Emanuel’s top 40 most competitive House races.
The negotiations were not exactly effortless.
National Journal, which broke the story yesterday, noted:
Sources outside the party said that some Dean advisers wanted to include a “good behavior” clause that would increase the amount of money given to House races if Emanuel refrained from publicly or privately denigrating the DNC. But that idea never made it past the drawing board and was never introduced by the DNC.
I wasn’t in the room, obviously, and “sources outside the party” doesn’t exactly sound rock-solid, but if anyone at the DNC seriously considered a plan that would effectively buy Emanuel’s silence, that’s deeply embarrassing. I don’t like Emanuel’s criticism of the DNC either, but trading campaign resources for pleasantries is silly.
Nevertheless, with this unpleasantness behind them, maybe the [tag]DNC[/tag] and [tag]DCCC[/tag] can actually work together to take back the House? Is that too much to ask?