With the Democratic presidential candidates focused, not surprisingly, on their own efforts to secure the party’s nomination, there’s been quite a bit of talk in Democratic circles about independent efforts to take on John McCain before he has a specific opponent.
It sounded like a pretty good idea, but the execution has been problematic. Ben Smith reported yesterday that donors hedged on the investment, leaving McCain’s public image intact while Dems involved in the projects engage in “a quiet round of finger-pointing.”
Despite the millions of dollars pooling around Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, anti-McCain funds have fallen far short of the hopes set in November, when a key organizer, Tom Matzzie, reportedly told The Washington Post that the “Fund for America” would raise more than $100 million to support the activities of a range of allied groups.
The Democratic National Committee, too, is organizing an anti-McCain campaign, but a spokeswoman, Karen Finney, said fundraising to support that effort has met “mixed” results.
So while news releases and Internet ads have been launched, the largest-bore weapon in contemporary politics — a sustained television campaign — hasn’t. That’s because, people involved say, the soft-money groups don’t have the soft money.
“Many of the people who would normally be involved in such an effort are overly focused on the primary, which is a mistake,” said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for George Soros, who is the largest individual donor to the Fund for America, which in turn has passed on at least $1.4 million to what was expected to be the main attack group, an organization called the Campaign to Defend America.
“We know we’re going to have a good Democratic nominee — it’s time for Democrats to turn their attention to John McCain,” Vachon said.
What a concept. It’s not as if we’ve seen the importance of defining the rival party’s candidate early on.
Oh, wait, that’s exactly what we’ve seen.
So what happened?
The Campaign to Defend America even solicited drafts of advertisements from several Democratic consultancies, which it showed to potential donors and tested on focus groups, said a person familiar with the activities. But McCain’s victory speeches came and went without the group making an impact on his campaign.
In the run-up to the March 5 vote in Ohio, the group aired an ad titled McSame tying McCain to President Bush’s policies. “We need a new direction, not the McSame old thing,” the ad concluded.
The Campaign to Defend America spent $141,073 to air the ad in parts of Ohio, according to a federal report, and a similar amount airing it just across the state line in Erie, Pa., according to a person familiar with the spending.
Those areas, though, weren’t chosen to impact public opinion. They were chosen because they were cheap, and representative of swing voters. The ads were aired as “message testing,” according to two people familiar with the spending; they were followed by a round of polling.
But while the message is said to have tested well in Ohio and Pennsylvania, no further ads have aired. The bottom line, people familiar with the group’s fundraising said, was the bottom line.
“Fund for America and its spinoffs that are supposed to be handling the creative on this really aren’t raising much money,” said a Democratic operative familiar with the effort.
The operative noted that the group that attacked President Bush in independent television advertisements in 2004 was run by Harold Ickes, now an aide to Hillary Clinton.
“A lot of the big Media Fund people were Hillary people, and [California billionaire Steve] Bing’s just not going to write a check unless she’s the nominee,” the operative said.
I can’t help but think some folks are unfamiliar with the phrase “eyes on the prize.”