Chicago redux recap

"The lord can make you tumble, the lord can make you turn; the lord can make you overflow...but the lord can't make you burn."
- Randy Newman

Sorry for the delayed posting folks. I know a lot of you were keeping tabs on the race and waiting for some news but it's taken me until now to find the time to clean up some old thoughts and make sense of what just occured but here goes: what follows is actually a composite of thoughts typed out on two separate days: the day after the news hit and the day after the day after we lost. You'll see what I'm talking about. Comments welcome...

Well, that's all folks. Once again the lightning didn't quite make it out of the bottle here in the Windy City. With 100% of precincts reporting, it's the hospital bed-ridden incumbent over the shimmeringly vibrant insurgent by 4 points or roughly 20,000 votes out of some 600,000 cast. Turnout sucked out in our base and as the GOTV director I kind of take that shit personally. But when I consider our Election Day operation consisted of 300 odd volunteers spread out across 5000 precincts and the fact that we were up against a team comprised of the most powerful labor unions in town, thousands of county workers and a nosy ex-president I realize that 48% is nothing to sneeze at.

All in all it was a great experience. Great people, great candidate, great city, great opportunity. The roller-coaster ride of a race captured the attention of the New York Times here and again here. Professionally it opened up some doors for me and let's face it, there are worse places than the Chi to make a name for yourself in if you're looking to step up inside the world of Democratic politics. Which I am. More later...

The real excitement of this race came about a week out and it turned the race inside out. Here's what I wrote about it then:

First things first:

Gerry Mac is a pimp. The Cuse has most definitely been in the house this past week: knocking off the #1 team in country while taking out three other ranked teams on their way to successfully defending their Big East conference tournament title and earning a 5 seed in the NCAA Tourney. The Aggies of boo-ass Texas better watch the eff out: you are about to be definitely set on fiyah.

I haven't actually been able to pay all that much attention to Syracuse's incredible run due to this nagging job of mine. It requires my attention on nearly a daily basis and doesn't seem to provide me with much but delicious pastries and cakes to snack on while I try to overthrow the sitting county president here in the Chi.

It's amazing how quickly a campaign's fortune can go from good to bad to something completely different within 24 hours. As an example, here is my abridged attempt at a Google-Monkey dodging recap of the past 24 hours:

6 pm Monday night:

We're doing our thing in the office, awaiting the results of a Chi Trib poll that's supposed to be made public around 9pm. Now, it's a well-known fact that endorsements from respected or well-known local figures during the last weeks of a campaign can help solidify your base and generate the much-sought after BIG MO right before Election Day. You just hope those who have it within their power to annoint with a simple photographed handshake or an arm-in-arm stroll in a parade walk will either come out for you or stay out of the race altogether. In the Windy City, there are those that pull water and there are those that can make it rain. The water pullers operate mostly on the local level: aldermen, retired judges, some sitting state state senators, and so on. But in the Chi, there are only three undisputed rainmakers that, like Prince or Elvis, need only go by one name.

3) RDM

Yes, the son of that RJD. He's the mayor and he's on the record for our opponent, but as my guy is his former Chief of Staff, he's not exactly yelling "Mush!" to the Chi GOTV machine.

2) Junior

J3. As in Congressman for the heavily-African-American southside of Chi. Well-known for serving his constituency well, well-respected for his earning of a place outside of his father's shadow (though he's not afraid to wield the clout his name brings him through genetic default), he is THE MAN to the southside African American community, though still second to the Chi's #1 dude.

1) BHOJ

AKA Daddy Fatsacks AKA The skinny kid with a funny name with peoples in the red states AKA O'Bama to the city's considerable Irish population AKA AKA AKA AKA...The list goes on. Dude gets the Evanston liberals starry-eyed over lattes then takes the red line down to 95th St and goes "Number one in the hood, G". Even the fishes of Lake Michigan slap fins when he walks by. One hug from King Midas is all it takes to get a seat next to the throne. The campaign's been in constant contact with his peoples and so far he's stayed publicly neutral but one word, one flake, one crumb of love from BHOJ means this thing's over.

However... there is another.

If one were to take a poll in any black community outside the Chi, and ask the people who they would wait in line the longest to see speak, who they would take four trains just to get a chance to touch or just chill and drink some drink with, there's only one dude who cuts a wider swath than Barack. And his name is Bubba. And Bubba just slapped his big ol thing down on the table here in the Chi.

"Come on man, bring it in for the real thing"

Oh no he didn't. Around 6pm we get word that our opponent has snagged a recorded endorsement from Bubba himself. There are many reasons why this turn of events is surprising but nonetheless Bubba is right now up on black radio and on the answering machines in the homes of both black and progressive voters asking them to support his good friend, the incumbent. Oh yes he did.

Time passes quickly as we're scrambling to confirm the message's existence and measure the impact on motivating and suppressing our respective base constituencies when the Trib poll hits. Their dude 47%, our dude 37%, 15% undecided with a 5% margin of error. Not as close as we would have liked but it's much closer than the last poll had the campaign two months before and the high count of undecideds this late in the campaign only helps us.

I go out late that night to drink and catch The Books show at someplace downtown and eventually crawl into my bed at 3am convinced that if only we could get all of Chi-town to listen to more found-sound cello compositions we just might have a chance at this thing.

9am, Tuesday morning:

I arrive at the office with a pouch of stale bourbon where my inspiration used to be. There's a crowd around the television and I learn that around the same time I was passing out the night before our opponent was waking and complaining of feeling weak in his left side. He's rushed to the hospital for tests and while his press officer is saying he's just feeling tired and the visit is a precautionary one nobody with a medical degree is saying anything just yet.

The incumbent is a 76-year old African-American with diabetes and a recent survivor of open heart triple-bypass surgery. He's a visibly unhealthy man and when word hits that he indeed did suffer a stroke in the middle of the night an unsettling feeling sweeps through the office. Mixed feelings of concern, worry, relief, shame and general nervousness are exchanged as two new teams trot out onto the field for fresh set of nine innings. AKA it's a whole new ballgame .

6 days to go...

OK, back to the present day. This may sound silly but in the end it came down to not enough people voting for us. While that's always the case for one candidate in every race it's particulary helpful as an illumination of what worked and what didn't on this particular campaign. It's one thing if the universe of voters you've been trying to persuade doesn't come out in droves for you. You can blame their decision to stay home on any number of factors: not targeting the right campaign themes or messages to encourage the crossover, your direct mail pieces not having enough bite or resonance visually, poor choices in empowering surrogate candidates to politic on your behalf, the list goes on. These people weren't with you in the first place so it's harder to create a compelling reason for them to go to the polls and easier to forgive them nor turning out. But when your base, your core group of consituents, doesn't turn out it's usually due to a larger fundamental flaw in your GOTV plan.

In this case, I think it's pretty clear the missing piece was a legitimate knock-and-drag effort in our base. Knock-and-drags are a long-standing component of urban campaigns, especially for Democrats, and the importance of these types of operations is well-articulated here. The candidate can blame voters for not showing up all he wants, but the fact remains this was a county race with no compelling primary battle at the top of the ballot to bring voters out and some money set aside to hire half-a-dozen buses worth of high school kids to knock on doors in our base on Election Day wouldn't have been a bad idea. But wtf do I know...

There are plenty of scapegoats to go around...

As for me, I'm taking my ass up to Minnesota for a little fresh air. Longtime readers are well aware of my last journey (scroll down about halfway until the pictures start) to the frozen north country and I pledge to keep my jacket with me at all times to avoid further late-night goodbye phone calls.

In the meantime, there's much more non-campaign stuff that I've been putting off writing about so I've got some catching up to do. In the meantime, please accept ths following as a fitting farewell tribute to one of the greatest players to ever don the Syracuse Orange. I was wrong about the Cuse-Aggies matchup but only a Final Four run could have topped the Big East Tourney run as a proper send-off for Gerry McNamara. Not that he'd need me, but if dude ever runs for mayor of Scranton, I'm there. You da man, Gerry.