First up, the Winners.
WINNERS
Dave Brat. Obviously Dave Brat is a big winner, as he’ll get to escape the teaching of the dismal science to work in a place where the laws of economics have no meaning. Seriously, though, Brat worked his tail off and truly earned his victory. Congratulations to him and his team.
And good luck in Washington!
Eric Cantor. Cantor went into Congress as a regular middle class citizen-legislator. He emerged from Congress with a net worth north of $16 million. That’s a really neat trick! Such acumen in the ways of federal power will serve him well on K Street and in corporate boardrooms across the country. He can consider that $16 million seed money for the real money he’ll make in the next phase of his career.
Dave Brat’s Campaign Team. Here, I don’t mean necessarily just his staff, but the dozen or so grassroots leaders who organized a field army of several hundred volunteers to do with individual effort and no money what Cantor’s campaign couldn’t do with millions of dollars. These folks should be sought after commodities, and should be getting paid gigs with Brat’s staff, Ed Gillespie’s campaign, or the RNC-funded field operation this fall. These are people who know how a ground game gets done, and Virginia Republicans shouldn’t let their talents go to waste.
Supporters of Nominating Conventions. Oh the irony! Among Virginia Republicans, the perennical battle is whether to nominate candidates via a party-run convention with delegates from around the state or district, or via a state-run open primary conducted without the benefit of voter registration by political party. Cantor and his crew are, for lack of a better word, notorious for supporting Virginia’s state-run open primaries over the convention process favored by many grassroots activists. Open primaries give huge advantages to the guy with the name ID and big bank account, something with which Cantor has been blessed for a very long time. Supporters of conventions have argued that the open primaries we have here in Virginia (where there is no registration by party) allow too many non-Republicans to have a hand in choosing our nominees. Well, on Tuesday Cantor’s precious open primaries backfired on him, when thousands of Democrats helped turn him out of office. No one thinks they made up the huge margin of victory, but in a closer case it would have been really ugly.
Jamie Radtke. For many years, The Bull Elephant’s own Jamie Radtke has been fighting the fight Brat won yesterday. Brat owes a good deal of his victory to the groundwork laid by Jamie, and to the activist network she energizes in the 7th District. Brat’s victory is a vindication for Jamie’s years of tireless work in service to the cause.
The American People. OK…that sounds hyperbolic, but it’s not. The people have won not because Eric Cantor specifically is retired from Congress (though obviously many people feel that way), but because Eric Cantor the Majority Leader was defeated. It is a healthy reminder for all politicians, no matter how high and how mighty, that they, too, can fall. The lesson for politicians everywhere is that they cannot escape the reach of an informed and motivated electorate.
LOSERS
Ray Allen. Cantor’s top strategist Ray Allen drove his candidate into the ground. There is no sugar-coating possible here. Allen is a disaster, and from 2009 onward has counseled his chief patron to do literally all the wrong things with respect to handling the influx of newcomers into the GOP. The result has been years of mounting difficulty for Cantor and acrimony within his district, culminating first in the ouster of Cantor’s right-hand party official Linwood Cobb, and then in Tuesday’s near-landslide defeat at the polls. Along the way Allen has consistently advised Cantor to attack, destroy, marginalize, threaten, ridicule, intimidate and run over anyone who even whispers about standing in his way. Allen has done a fair amount of that kind of thing personally. On top of seeding the electorate with die-hard enemies over the years, Allen then ran one of the worst possible campaigns, where voters were treated to displays of obvious dishonesty about Dave Brat, over and over again, doing nothing but driving up Cantor’s negatives while driving up Brat’s name ID. One absolutely telling factoid: of all the counties outside Richmond that comprise the 7th district, Cantor won only Spotsylvania, Culpeper, and Orange. The counties where Cantor won happen to be the three counties outside the Richmond media market, meaning that the less they saw Cantor’s TV spots or heard his radio ads, the more likely people were to vote for Cantor. WELL DONE, RAY!! Can you please join Mark Warner’s team…pretty please?
PAC Staffers, Hotels, and Steakhouses. Cantor was a prolific fundraiser, owing both to his status as Minority Leader and as the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the country. The various recipients of this largesse (beyond the hapless Ray Allen, and other politicians’ committees) include PACs, Committees, and 501(c)(4) organizations Cantor controls. They employ countless staff members, including John Murray, who in 2012 was paid over $600,000 for his part-time job as head of Cantor’s YG Network. One of the biggest expenditures of these committees has been on lavish hotel facilities and extravagant “food and beverage” costs. You can peruse campaign finance reports for that, or you can check out Katie Pavlich, who pokes fun at the fact that Cantor’s campaign spent more at steakhouses ($168,637) than Brat spent on his entire campaign ($122,793). Meanwhile, of course, Ray Allen boasts about the starvation diet he wants to use to control GOP politics in Virginia.
7th District Republican Party. Say what you will about Cantor, but he did use at least some of his money wisely. A lot of that went to the 7th District Republican Committee, and was used to host great events, and to help local Republicans get elected (as long as, of course, they were the right kind of Republican). Without a patron like Cantor, it’s more likely that Committee will soon find itself in the uncomfortable position of spending some of their Cantor-generated fat bank account on getting the underfunded Brat elected.
Heavy-Handed Pols. Finally, the last group of losers are those politicians that fell into Cantor’s orbit a little too closely, and who followed his and Ray Allen’s lead in waging war on various GOP district chairmen and grassroots activists around the state. I don’t need to call them out by name…they know who they are (rhymes with Shmagner and Shmurt). It won’t come today, and may not come tomorrow, but it’s coming. The grassroots have figured out who is in charge, and it ain’t you, fellas.
27 comments
[…] A great deal more of that money and power subsequently came to bear in the Cantor’s primary race. Cantor’s chief consultant, Ray Allen, characteristically went for overkill. In an attempt to crush the upstart challenger with truckloads of negative mailers and non-stop negative radio and TV ads (both of which undoubtedly made Allen a small fortune), Allen instead drove up Dave Brat’s overall name identification and drove down Eric Cantor’s positives. Solidifying his moniker of “Worst Consultant Ever,” Allen’s handiwork could be seen in the results of the primary, where ironically those voters outside the Richmond media market (i.e., beyond Ray Allen’s aerial bombardment) w…. […]
[…] 3:03 pm – Steve Albertson Mick, I think you missed the terrible decision making by the Worst Consultant Ever™ back in 2014. It wasn’t that he ignored the unknown Dave Brat…it was that he didn’t ignore him, and instead spent tons of Eric Cantor’s money to raise Dave Brat’s name ID. Here’s what I said in the 2014 Cantor/Brat post-mortem: […]
[…] is this worth pointing out again? Well the WorstConsultantEver(TM) has been making noise about Cantor’s historic defeat being a result of Democrat […]
I to say “Excellent analysis.” And I love this part, “The counties where Cantor won
happen to be the three counties outside the Richmond media market,
meaning that the less they saw Cantor’s TV spots or heard his radio ads,
the more likely people were to vote for Cantor. WELL DONE, RAY!! Can you please join Mark Warner’s team…pretty please?”
They not only didn’t see or hear his TV and Radio spots in Orange County, they didn’t see him either and never had, according to the folks at the door when we knocked there last weekend. BUT more people turned out for Dave Brat in this election than in the 2012 election – 551 (he received 778 votes) of them did because Dave held a Town Hall there (hmm, what a novel idea to meet and greet your Constituents) and went and met folks at their annual Fireman’s Carnival. Eric Cantor lost votes in Orange compared to 2012.
Nailed it.
I am by no means an expert in ground campaigns. When I door knock for various organizations and candidates – I simply do what I am told by the planners. However, I do know that game plans that worked in a GOP primary, may not be effective in a general election, where we are trying to persuade a different kind of voter.
Someone needs to inform the Comstock campaign that Ray Allen may become Barbara’s preverbal boat anchor. He has been so successful in alienating the Tea Party and grassroots in general all over the state. It might be prudent to ditch him now before he infects her campaign in the 10th District with his losing campaign advice.
She seems to know how to do it all by herself.
Jamie Radtke laid the groundwork? Please. What has she done besides lose….badly, I might add
Jamie played a vital role in getting the truth out on slating attempts including live blogging the main event.
The record on The Bull Elephant more than testifies to the truth of the assertion.
http://thebullelephant.com/author/jamie-radtke/
She jumped on the anti-slating bandwagon after MANY others had already been publicly denouncing it. Put down the kool aide, Alexis.
I cut my teeth on Jaime’s campaign and learned what TO do and what NOT to do. I learned how to door knock and the hard work it took to get out the vote. I learned how to start to mobilize a ground game effort and get volunteers to step up. While we did not win that race, it was a learning experience that served me well and taught me that being just good enough was NOT enough, it had to be my very best effort. She and Floyd Bayne paved the way for Dave Brat to win.
I’m glad you had fun working for Jamie and learned a lot about campaigns and voter mobilization and working hard. There’s always that first campaign that gets ya hooked for life. That’s great!
But that isn’t relevant to this conversation. Through her assertiveness, Jamie has managed to keep herself about a heartbeat above relevant and as a result, has managed to claim some credit for brats victory. She didn’t lay single piece of groundwork- the task was too big for her. Brat accomplished this monumental task on his own and with the help of his campaign team.
Leave Jamie out of this- her time has passed.
Reality Check, your vendetta towards Jamie is showing. We all work in our own ways with the task before us. Jamie has just as much right taking a little credit for what happened like all the others coming out of the woodwork who were proud to be part of the effort. Since you choose to be anonymous, other than blogging your responses by putting folks down, what did you do for the campaign and how many doors did you knock?
Excellent analysis.
I love that Brat won but I absolutely hate the convoluted system here in VA. Why haven’t grassroots activists lobbied the General Assembly to pass a bill to change the voting laws? If we registered by party then conventions to nominate would be obsolete and there would be no “open” primaries. It would be SO much easier to get out the vote because we could target GOP voters. And the bizarre “slating” tactic couldn’t be attempted because the county or district secretary and her team could properly credential GOP registered delegates. Delegates and alternates allotted to a county or district would be based on the percentage of GOP residents in that county or district.
And two more things: there should be a statewide filing deadline for all political partied for ALL races. Then there could be no all of a sudden democrat opponent like there now is in VA7. And all primaries for all parties should be on ONE day. Look to the neighbor to the south, NC, and the great success they’ve had since 2010. These changes could be extremely helpful.
The Republican Party of Virginia does not have to introduce state law to register their members. They are not any different than say a labor union who keeps their own membership rolls. In addition, RPV could make the rules of who is allowed to vote based on membership in good standing for a specific period of time. When primaries are used they should not be based on a plurality of votes but a simple majority with a run off with the two highest vote getters.
The problem is RPV has been designed for years to reward incumbents and consultants. They are driven by personalities and campaigns and without the political will, the attitude of incumbent subservience will never change.
you know nothing about Virginia Election law. And Labor union members pay union dues as well.
My understanding is that primaries are party functions, not state elections,. I don’t know about you but I pay money to the Fairfax County Republican Party to be a member, sounds like dues to me.
There isn’t anything that Reagan George that isn’t sensible or logical so why you’d make a statement like that seems weird. The GOP itself should be able to change who is allowed to vote in it’s primaries. If indeed it requires legislation, well, then we certainly have had our opportunities. Nominating a party candidate should be up to members of that political party, and it should exclude those of other political persuasions who have a different agenda.
The GOP actually has tried to change the open primary system we have here but the dems keep blocking it. That issue just came up most recently in 2012 when the GOP wanted voters to sign that loyalty pledge. They need to keep pushing this issue though and call out the left for opposing it.
We’ve been trying to close our primaries in Virginia for as long as I can remember, but elected officials like it, so it has been difficult to change it.
I think that all the reasons listed are correct . But the article MISSED the # 1 reason Had Commander Peter Greenwald not chosen to selflessly to step aside and join ranks and unify so that the vote would not been split THERE IS NO WAY Brat wins . So when we start thanking people we might want to start with the one person that made this all happen and thank Commander Peter Greenwald
I totally agree!
Who was Brat’s political consultant? I received an email from John Pudner of Concentric Direct indicating he was Brat’s consultant. Is this true?