Not long before Tuesday's special election for Congress in southwest Ohio, a Republican spokesman in Washington promised that the GOP would “bury” Democratic candidate Paul Hackett, an Iraq War veteran and an uncompromising critic of President Bush. Apparently the GOP buried Hackett in a very shallow grave.
Hackett came tantalizingly close to scoring a major upset, winning 48 percent of the vote in a district that went 64 percent for George W. Bush last November. His near-victory sent shock waves through Ohio, where long-dominant Republicans are being laid low by a series of scandals, and the tremors are being felt far beyond the state's borders.
Hackett's strong showing in the scarlet-red 2nd District upends a number of fixed ideas about the nation's politics: that Democrats can't compete in districts like the 2nd, which stretches from Cincinnati's exploding suburbs out east through sleepy rural towns; that Republicans can't be touched on national-security issues; and that Democrats must cower before the GOP's vaunted attack machine.
Throughout the campaign, Hackett, a major in the Marine reserves who served until March in Ramadi and Fallujah, called the Iraq War a distraction from the real war on terrorism. Though he opposed the war, Hackett volunteered for duty because he said he felt an obligation to serve when Americans were under fire.
Hackett repeatedly referred to Bush and his administration as “chicken hawks.” Although national Republicans poured half a million dollars into attack ads against him in the final week of the campaign, he remained on the offensive till the very end. In his concession speech, Hackett told supporters not to fear future fights with the GOP, because “the chicken is a very strange bird, but it is no bird of prey.”
For Democrats desperate to clip the wings of the GOP, the big question now is whether Hackett's success can be reproduced in other heavily Republican areas. Did this Marine major forge a model that other Democrats can follow? Or was he an utterly unique candidate who nearly rode out this year's perfect storm?
It must be said: Hackett is a candidate with rare gifts. A tall, charismatic trial lawyer, he is a born campaigner. Though his only political experience was as a councilman in a small Cincinnati suburb, he has an uncanny ability to make Democratic ideas palatable to conservative crowds.
Hackett routinely rode to campaign events on his Harley -- without a helmet, of course -- and once there he boasted of his National Rifle Association membership. Then, in a transition that was somehow seamless, he'd declare himself a proud Kennedy Democrat, careful to invoke the names of John and Joe and Robert rather than Ted. Still, Hackett made it clear he was decidedly liberal on economic issues.
He also benefited enormously from the cloud of scandal that seems to be hovering over every Republican officeholder in Ohio right now. It clearly cast a shadow over Hackett's opponent, Jean Schmidt, who served until last year as a state representative.
During the campaign, Hackett hounded Schmidt with charges that she'd accepted free skybox seats to a Cincinnati Bengals game from a biotech lobbyist, and that she'd pressured Republican Governor Bob Taft to approve another lobbyist's Internet gambling scheme -- a lobbyist who later donated $1,000 to her re-election fund.
But Hackett did more than highlight Schmidt's grubby dealings. He brilliantly co-opted Karl Rove's strategy of targeting an opponent's strengths. In the socially conservative 2nd District, Schmidt, who is also president of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, should have gained a clear advantage from her anti-abortion stance.
But instead of painstakingly avoiding social issues, Hackett attacked Schmidt for exploiting religion for political ends. “Religion is the responsibility of families and churches, not the government,” he said in their final debate, continuing a drumbeat of criticism against her “extremist” values.
In one interview, Hackett was asked about his position on gay marriage. “How do gay people threaten my marriage?” he fired back. “Let's move on to issues that really matter, like the economy and the war on terror.” Hackett never did get bogged down in the values debates that paralyze so many Democrats. Clearly, Hackett honed a message that resonated in the suburbs and small towns that have been so hostile to Democrats for so many years.
Although Hackett is a gifted messenger, he's not the only Democrat who has learned how to deliver this message. Out west, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer has built a reputation for translating blue-state ideas into a red-state idiom. And back home in Ohio, Hackett himself acknowledges his debt to Representative Ted Strickland, the populist Democrat from the nearby 6th District who's preparing to run for governor in 2006.
Right now, perhaps the most pressing issues in the party aren't ideological as much as logistical. Now that Democrats like Schweitzer and Hackett seem to be reconnecting with middle America, maybe the party needs to spend its energies figuring out how to provide the financial and organizational support that will put them in office.
That was a subject much discussed by the end of the evening at Hackett's election-night party at downtown Cincinnati's Aronoff Center for the Arts. By the end of the evening, exhausted staffers, teary-eyed interns, and even gimlet-eyed reporters were slumped beneath the soaring ceiling of the Aronoff lobby, wondering whether Hackett could have won if the national party had provided more support.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) both declined to commit resources to Hackett until there were only two weeks left in the race.
In fairness to the party committees, it required a huge leap of faith to believe that any Democrat could win the 2nd District. Rob Portman, the Republican who'd held the seat until Bush named him U.S. trade representative in March, had won all his elections during his 12-year tenure by more than 2-to-1 margins.
Nevertheless, attorney Michael G. Brautigam, a longtime Hackett friend who persuaded him to enter the race and served as a close adviser, blasted the national party. “This was a winnable race, and they screwed it up,” Brautigam said. “The Democrats inside the Beltway didn't get it. They told Paul, ‘Raise a hundred-thousand dollars and then come talk to us.' Then when he did, they still wouldn't take him seriously.”
“We did commit ourselves to the race,” countered DCCC communications director Bill Burton. “We helped out Hackett where we could. We believe he's a great candidate, and he's got a great future.”
Once the DCCC and the DNC entered the race, they did contribute significant resources to it. The DCCC spent $200,000 on television ads to counter the GOP's last-minute ad buys; DCCC political director Dave Hamrick and DNC vice chair Susan Turnbull were both on the ground in the stretch run, as were half a dozen other full-time staff and roughly 20 interns. The Ohio Democratic Party added another five of its full-time field staff to the race.
Patrick Foster, director of Hackett's field operation, said, “Actually, I'm glad the money for TV came in late. If we'd had ads on the air, it would have let the Republicans know this was a real race.” As it was, Foster believes the GOP got caught flat-footed. He said his volunteers told him they saw little sign of a Schmidt field operation.
Still, Foster believes a little more money spent earlier on Hackett's race might have made the difference. With a few more field staff, Foster says, the campaign could have pumped up its meager absentee ballot effort as well as its bare-bones veteran-voter program. “Field people are cheap,” Foster noted. “I get paid two grand a month. That's a drop in the bucket, and who knows what the payoff might have been.”
Astonishingly, in the end, it wasn't the national party that provided the bulk of Hackett's funding; it was the flood of small-money donors who contributed to the campaign over the Internet. With bloggers like DailyKos and Atrios touting the race, the political fund-raising Web site ActBlue raised roughly half a million dollars for Hackett. Unfortunately, the “Netroots” also failed to turn their full attention to the 2nd District until late in the race.
Though Hackett campaign manager David Woodruff said he was grateful for every cent, he noted, “We got all our money in the last six days of the campaign, not the last six weeks.” Because the resources arrived so late, Woodruff said, crucial work was put off till the last minute.
Partly that's the nature of special-election campaigns, which must contend with truncated timetables. But for Democrats in many places, especially places like the suburban and rural counties of Ohio's 2nd District, too few resources and too little organization are problems that plague every campaign.
Out in the exburbs of the 2nd District, the Republicans have hardy phone trees and permanent precinct-level organizations to mobilize their base. Until the 2004 presidential race, the Democrats were lucky to have a reliable volunteer in each township. But last year's manic push for votes in Ohio began to re-energize the party base. The Hackett campaign built on that foundation, and on election day it had volunteers swarming precincts even in arch-Republican Warren County north of Cincinnati, the fastest growing county in the district.
In November, John Kerry got trounced in that half of Warren County that lies within the 2nd District; Kerry failed to get even 20 percent of the vote. On Tuesday, Hackett won 42 percent of the vote in Warren County.
Hackett's tremendous skills as a candidate certainly account for much of that jump. But on Tuesday, the nation may have gotten a glimpse of something happening within the Democratic Party that transcends one candidate and one campaign.
Jim McNeill, a journalist in Washington, D.C., is a former managing editor of In These Times who has written for The Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Dissent, and The Baffler.
