Hackett steps aside

February 14, 2006

For months, Dem leaders in Ohio and DC have fretted over what to do in Ohio’s Senate race. Incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine (R) is considered one of the more vulnerable Republicans in the country this year, and Dems had two great candidates — Rep. Sherrod Brown and Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett — who were poised to have a costly primary that might have left the victor in a weaker position for the general election.

Yesterday, the party got its wish. Under pressure, Hackett dropped out — but he’s not going away quietly.

Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent. […]

“This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me,” said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state’s filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.

“For me, this is a second betrayal,” Mr. Hackett said. “First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me.”

I have mixed feelings about this, but ultimately believe Hackett made the right call and shouldn’t be quite this bitter. As Kos noted, this isn’t really a “betrayal.” Dems wanted, and still want, Hackett to run for the House. Hackett has suggested the party is afraid of his candid, unvarnished style, but the truth is the party doesn’t want to change Hackett, it just wanted to change which race he’s in.

Many Hackett supporters have noted that he was recruited by the same people who urged him to quit. That’s true, but the timing matters. Brown entered the race first, then Hackett threw his hat into the ring, after a considerable delay.

As far as the party’s concerned, they had two open slots and two great candidates. Party leaders looked ahead and asked themselves, “How do we get both of these guys to win in November?” Brown for the Senate and Hackett for the House was the answer.

Hackett is suggesting now that he’s soured on the political scene altogether and won’t seek any office, which is a shame. Hackett is an engaging, talented, no-nonsense Dem who could be a rising star for the party. He wasn’t positioned to do well in the race against Brown, but the House race could be a key opportunity. I can only hope he’ll reconsider.

CB, are you sure about the succession of events you cite above? It was my understanding that Brown stated he was going to pass on this race, and then as it looked like no top notch Dem was going to take on DeWine, Hackett threw his name into the race. Then AFTER that, after Brown saw that no one else other than Hackett was going to challenge Dewine, and seeing the polling numbers indicating Dewine was weak, Brown stepped in causing this dilema. No?

  • I have to agree with the previous comment. Hackett was only recruited, and only decided to run, after both Brown and Tim Ryan passed on the race. Then, after Hackett had decided to run, Brown changes his mind and decides to run anyway.

  • I too remember Hacket going in first as well, but today the experts (Kos and CB) seem to recall otherwise. It could be a matter of filing or proper announcements

    I thought Hackett should have gone for the House seat first (he would likely win the rematch v. Schmidt) and then go after Voinovich in 2010. That’s a House and Senate seat now with a second Senate seata on tap in a few years. the Party had the right idea.

    I think they handled Hackett badly, but I also think he is overreacting.

  • CB, are you sure about the succession of events you cite above?

    Good question. Here’s the rough timeline:

    * Dems woo Brown, Brown says no in August. (He had some personal stuff going on, including just having gotten married.)

    * Dems woo Hackett, Hackett says maybe.

    * Before Hackett decides, Brown reconsiders.

    * On Oct. 6, Brown announces he will run for the Senate.

    * On Oct. 24, Hackett announces his own Senate campaign.

    To be fair, Hackett had sent signals that he probably would run before his 10/24 announcement, but in terms of officially throwing their hat into the ring, Brown came almost three weeks sooner.

  • The main problem with the two party system is that there are only two parties and neither one gives a rat’s ass about the walking around citizenry. Of course the Democrats sold Hackett out. That’s what they do.
    Bill Maher got it right: “The only difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is that the Democrats have sold out to a slightly less scary group of special interests.”
    No average citizen has a chance until there is one, or more, viable additional political party.

  • Hmmm-I still think Hackett was a bit more than “maybe.” I will search for the announcements I received from his campaign. And I agree with Mr. Furious. They mishandled Hackett, but Hackett is overreacting. Can’t blame him for being disappointed, but he should also know sometimes you have to take one for the team, and I think not only does he have a great shot at ousting mean jean traitor machine, taking that seat would go a long way towards the Dems controlling the House, which I think could then pose a great challenge, if not the greatest challenge, to the president, his status as president and his policies, in many ways.

  • I think it’s about honor. The Dem leaders should not have gone behind Hackett’s back to his donors and Hackett gave his word to others that he would not be a candidate in OH-2. What is just politics to politicos sometimes translates into dishonorable behavior to principled people.

  • “The only difference between the Democratic and Republican parties is that the Democrats have sold out to a slightly less scary group of special interests.”

    Great description. As far as I’m concerned, the DLC can go jump off a cliff, to join the rest of the people they’ve thrown over it (except Clinton, but he did his own thing once he was in office).

    Paul Hackett can darn close to winning against a conservative in a strongly conservative district in Ohio, a state Democrats must get a grip on if they hope to elect a president any time soon. He’s a veteran, he’s tough and plain speaking, and he’s exactly the type of politician Dems desperately need in order to re-shape themselves as non-repub-lite.

    Another stupid move to reward the losers that have been slowly draining the power out of a once powerful party. When will Dem leaders stop seeing current elected officials as their last hope and start seeing them as the leftovers from a group that failed, repeatedly and extraordinarily, to capitalize on the constant failures of the Republican leadership. We have indictments, convictions, Abramoff, no WMD, wire tapping, etc. ad nauseam (literally). I have no patience for politicians that have deserted liberty-minded Americans looking for a change in Washington. The apples may be a different color, but their all in the same rotten barrel.

  • I’m not sure I am in a position to say he is overreacting. Here is someone who is pretty well a neophyte on the political scene. We (menaing the party apparatus) build him up, promote the number of Iraq Vets running as Dems. He throws himself into it, the time demands, the emotional wear-and-tear, the fundraising (and likely the out-of-pocket costs). Here is someone who is a proud vet, surely sees himself as “not a quitter.” And when he is true to himself and doesn’t quit on our command like a lackey, we virtually wage a campaign against him to get him to drop.

    I, too, recall that he committed to run against a sitting Senator with all of the advantages that entails at a time when Brown was doing his Hamlet routine. As I recall, no more than had Hackett announced then Brown, seeing a door close, suddenly got decisive and joined in. It would be odd for so many of us on this board who tend to watch such things closely to be wrong in our recollection.

    Frankly, for all of the jokes about Cheney, the Dems probably shot themselves as badly as anyone could. The machine of politics sucks young idealistic change agents in and there are seemingly only two outcomes: they prove to be malleable and become Politicians ™ in the most compromising and compromised sense of the word, or they become cynical and drop out of elective politics. (no, i’m not someone bitter about past thoughts of elective office who decided it was so nasty and lie-requiring that i settled for behind the scenes work. why do you ask?)

    I really think this is painful. Through our inability to find a good way to handle this, we lose a good candidate now and probably forever, and this will get trotted out by the Rs everytime we reach for the “look at all the Iraq vets running as D’s!” talking point. We also have to be careful the infighting doesn’t result in our clutching defeat from the jaws of victory in a what had been a Republican nightmare in Ohio.

    Sad.

  • Consider Brown a Republican snack. After being called a taxandspendliberal, and with being married to a liberal ( Pulitzer) columnist, he’s ripe for the plucking. I really would have rather seen Hackett, the unapologetic vet, whose soundbites would have provided the Republicans’ ad agencies a field day. The seat remains Dewine’s by a huge margin again. Sorry.

  • The thought process I’d accuse Brown of going through is, “I don’t want to challenge DeWine… What’s that? Hackett thinks he can beat DeWine? If *HE* can beat DeWine, I’m *SURE* I can. Okay, I’m back in.”

    Hackett announcement of interest struck me as the impetus for Brown’s re-entry; forget the “who officially announced first” timing. I don’t think this is particularly honorable (or brave) on Brown’s part (though I think it’s a popular perspective among DC Democrats), but I understand it happens. So, if I were Schumer, I’d *LET* Brown stay in. I wouldn’t clear his fucking path to take on DeWine, though – I think that’s a punk move, and on top of that, I think it’s moronic, given the way that Republicans won a slew of Senate seats in 2004 that were supposed to be toss-ups, in which they’d had ugly, contested primaries. People said it was “despite” having nasty primaries. I think there’s a chance people had it ass-backwards, and it was *BECAUSE* there were primaries.

    Can we please stop trying shit that doesn’t work?

  • party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving

    I’m with Dale. this sucks. Asking him to step aside, telling him you won’t support him either financially, logistically, or in the form of personal appearances are all reasonable and honorable ways to say “yes, its your right to run, but the Dem leadership supports Brown.” But to actually proactively contact his donors to tell them to stop giving is terrible.

    Shumer, and whoever his equivalent in the House is, should contact Hackett and say “we’re sorry, our calling your donors was out of line. To make it up to you, we want you to run for the House seat, we will support you financially and in person if you want *and* will support your run for the senate against Voinivich in 2010.”

    We need Hackett back and in our camp. Otherwise we’ve just given the GOP a great weapon: Dems say they support the troops, but they didn’t support Hackett a decorated veteran. They only support career politicians. Just ask Hackett” That is an ugly future.

  • As I see it, there are two really big problems with Ohio’s Democratic Party. First, they’re overly fond of wearing comfortable shoes—even when those shoes are worn out to a point far beyond repair. Sherrod Brown is just such a shoe; he’a comfortable, but he can’t do what he was made to do any longer.

    Second, what they did to Hackett was far beyond deplorable; it was mean-spirited, cheap, and completely dishonest. In a time where Democratic party-cogs all over the state are brandishing the phrase “culture of corruption” and pointing to how much of an “Old-Boys’-Network” the GOP is, this pretty much seems a prima-facie case of “the pot calling the kettle black.” The Ohio Democratic Party owes every Ohioan—not just members of their party, but ALL Ohioans—a straight-up apology for this. Maybe they even ought to consider the possibility of owing that apology to the whole of the nation itself. Otherwise, they’ve just made it a great deal easier for Mike DeWine to keep his seat in the Senate—because people ’round these parts are just plain sick and tired of wearing worn-out shoes….

  • The Democrats disgraced themselves on this one, and probably blew off a foot in the process. Why are they so scared of competition?

    I don’t know much about Brown, though he seems like a good man and a good progressive. But considering Hackett’s obvious appeal and charisma, and the injection of energy he supplied in summer 2005, this just was not right.

    We need more candidates who enter politics on the grounds of citizenship rather than careerism, and we should embrace–not fear–honesty, unscriptedness, and resistance to consultant-driven politics as usual… particularly given where that approach has landed us, and the country. The “Fighting Dems” storyline was, IMO, our best asset this year–and the slimy tactics used to undercut Hackett could well short-circuit that whole strategy. The message sent is “We want you as window dressing, but if we can’t control you or something better comes along, you’re out.”

    I know the professionals are looking at this and made a call based on their reasoned view of who’s more likely to win in November. They’d damn well better be right, because if DeWine beats Brown, these guys all need to find new jobs.

  • Apparently Hackett will not run for the House seat due to committments he gave to those actually running for the House sseat. If only the rest of the higher level in the Dem party would learn what “committment” really means.

  • Damn the Democrats, especially Schumer and Reid. I am so sick and tired of Democrats second-guessing themselves, triangulating, trying to find the center, looking up their assholes, sniffing each others’ butts, etc. Go for what you believe in … full speed and damn the torpedoes!

    Progressives can win but they have to be “up front” first. If Progressives play coy, as Schumer and Reid are, then Republicans will always win because they have well-funded, rock-solid base of ignorance, bigotry and hate which is always unthinkingly “in knee-jerk gear” and usually “up front” (and even when it’s not, there’s a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to communicate the message).

  • Let me second jeffstoned’s skepticism about the skills of the professionals involved here. Yeah, they were making an analysis on who they thought could beat Dewine, and yes they’d best be right. But the real calculation seems to have been that if Hackett let Brown run for Senate, Hackett would be able to run against and beat an R for the house seat, thereby getting the D’s two pickups.

    Which is a great idea, although some intellectual giant among the professional political class might have thought to actually ask Hackett first, before pulling the trigger on the plan. i suspect things might have worked out better that way.

  • I don’t follow Ohio politics closely, but upon hearing about Hackett’s withdrawal, I immediately recalled that I thought Brown jumped in only AFTER Hackett had shown DeWine vulnerable. That perception is live, and I read Kos’s statement of “non-betrayal,” and thought it sounded so “party line.” Hackett is not a seasoned politician; that was a big part of his appeal. This situation proves the conventional wisdom that anyone not “in” with the party wire pullers can never aspire to change our pathetic political landscape. Maybe Harry Reid should spend more of his time pushing Sen. Roberts to follow up on the second phase of the Iraq intelligence investigation or was – perish the thought – shutting down the Senate just so much grandstanding to appear tough and get Freak Boy Frist’s panties in a bunch? I so WANT him to be effective, but I am disappointed time and again by him going to the brink and then retreating. Poorly done, Mr. Reid and Co.

  • CB- How about the fact that the ‘Senior Democrats’ in D.C. have shown an extremely impressive record in regards to LOSING just about every damn election they could in the past decade?
    I think Hackett is right on the mark with his being pissed off at them. These guys haven’t shown us how to win elections- just how to lose gracefully. And we are supposed to trust them to find the ‘right’ candidate?

  • Damned, dumb, doomed Democrats can’t do anything right. YOU’RE THE OPPOSITION! Get it? THE OPPOSITION!

    The people who you feel comfortable with as leaders ARE LOSERS! Get it? LOSERS! Ignore them. Follow your heart (it’s the only thing which hasn’t been tried … not in years, not since FDR, HST and JFK).

  • Of course Hackett is right about being pissed and the more people dig into this the more obvious how much it stinks. The bizarre thing is how many of the progressive bloggers (Kos, Atrios, and now Carpetbagger) are turning into shills for the democratic crap that turns so many off. Are they getting too incorporated into the political scene to see what the rest of us notice? Stand up for what is right not politics as usual. We aren’t going to capture independents with Sherrod Brown and dirty politics.

  • If this is all that it took to get Hackett as steamed as he appears to be, perhaps it’s for the best that he was culled from the field early on.

    Granted, yes, the Dem machine didn’t play this smoothly — but the GOP plays politics while the Dems play bean-bag, and if Hackett can’t play bean-bag well enough to survive inside the Dem machine, then he sure as shit didn’t stand much chance against the well-greased Ohio GOP-Diebold nexus.

    And whatever happened to “chain of command,” and a soldier’s honoring of it? Hackett should swallow his pride, say “yes, sir,” and run for the House.

    Look, folks, we’ve all been puling for 6 years about how tough Rove and the GOP are — message discipline and campaign efficacy require certain sacrifices. If Hackett doesn’t realize that, he doesn’t have any future in politics.

    (And to reiterate, the Dems indeed did fuck this up with their bumbling. But Hackett’s being a petulant child.)

  • One more thought on message discipline: it does NOT mean, as many on the Left seem to believe, “everybody say things I agree with.” It means “everybody say the most effective thing to generate a Democratic majority.”

  • Those stupid, callow men in the DCCC/DCSC should be ashamed of themselves. This Hackett guy nearly won in one of the most Rethug districts in the country and they are throwing him out of the game because he might be too truthful about the crap that goes on in the leadership circles. Thank God, I only have to hold my nose and vote for Bill Nelson in Fl. If I were in Ohio, I just might sit out the entire election

  • “I just might sit out the entire election ”

    As long as butt-kissing Democrats continue to follow LOSERS, like lemmings marching over a cliff, there’s no point in participating in elections. Ever again. Waste of time.

    I wish Hackett would come back, shouting damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Threaten to ignore or trash the “politics as usual” routine and you just might find all those disenchanted voters out there are suddenly behind you.

    Who’m I kidding? He already caved, and the Democrats will continue to follow LOSERS.

  • Hackett would have been an interesting candidate, and he’s been treated badly. He did indeed get into the race first, when no one else wanted to take on DeWine, after Brown had said he was not interested. I don’t know about the timing of formal announcements, but local papers were covering Hackett’s candidacy significantly before Brown announced his interest in running.

    I was looking forward to voting for him. That being said, Sherrod Brown is one of the better politicians out there, and I’d be perfectly happy to have as the Democratic candidate running against DeWine. I hope party officials can get their act together and work constructively with Hackett.

  • the timing matters. Brown entered the race first, then Hackett thew his hat into the ring, after a considerable delay.

    If they already had such a good candidate in the race, why did they recruit Hackett? They set him up to fail and then went behind his back to torpedo his campaign. They jerked him around and he walked. Just the kind of guy we need, and he gets pushed overboard.

    The Dems control zero of three branches for a reason.

  • Hackett has every right to be angy about the way this sorry situation was
    handled by the Democratic leaders.
    Kos, too, has to answer for his lackluster response to this fiasco.
    Don’t back a guy and say how great he is and then aquiese when
    he is edged out of the race for some other candidate.
    Isn’t this what the Republicans were doing to Katherine Harris in
    Florida? (I’m glad she is staying in the race since it will only highlight
    the perfidy of the Repbulicans and make them look like the losers they
    really are). But why are the Democrats doing this to one of their own?
    This is going to make it harder in the future to recruit quality candidates
    (especially Iraq war veterans) who will wonder when they will be
    dumped.
    Hackett deserved better. The Demos need to come up with something
    better than this if they execpt to win elections this Fall.

  • Brown has impeccable progressive credentials and Hackett has no state-level political experience, so the ODP’s preference for Brown is understandable and probably strategically wise. Still, I can’t help but think that Hackett would have made greater inroads among white working-class and rural voters than Brown would have. I hope we haven’t seen the last of Hackett, but he should get a term or two in the House under his belt before he runs for the Senate. A combat record and a plain-spoken style will draw attention, but they don’t guarantee effectiveness as a legislator.

  • I watched Hackett take on that terrible Schmidt without one bit of help from our wonderdful Democratic party, and even gave money to help him. I will vote Progressive from now on, nothing to choose between Democrats and Republicans. We are truly screwed!!! Norma Lampson

  • I’m from Cincinnati and let me tell you that Hackett has generated tremendous excitement in southern Ohio. I’ve seldom seen the kind of activism that Hackett stirred up — groups of 18-49 year olds genuinely excited about this straight talking man. Southern Ohio has been so rigidly conservative that it was refreshing to see so many people actually looking forward to change with Hackett. I resent the senators from New York and Nevada making MY choice for a candidate. I’m so sickened by the Democratic leadership … did I say LEADERSHIP? I fear for our country with the anemic opposition we’ve seen from these spineless people.

  • In regards to the post by The Confidence Man – I think it is unfair to say that Hackett is not tough enough to take on Republican Politics. He left because he was stabbed in the back by his supposed allies. As a man of strong values, he was right to do so. Working with the Democrats would have compromised his values, and that is very, very sad.
    Lying about your values may work for the GOP, but the progressive bas has more integrity than that – hence the disgust with the Dem’s “GOP-Lite” strategy.

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