Egan

Are Spouses Fair Game?

Finley Peter Dunne was an Irish-American writer and humorist and the creator of a once-popular character – Mr. Dooley – who Dunne famously had say in the 1890’s that, “politics ain’t beanbag.”

Mr. Dooley’s full quote, even more appropriate perhaps to the latest news out of a heavily contested congressional race in Idaho, was a bit more expansive. “Politics ain’t bean bag,” he said. “Tis a man’s game; an’ women, childher, an’ pro-hybitionists’d do well to keep out iv it.”

Idaho Republican Congressional candidate Vaughn Ward, the perceived front runner to take on Democrat Walt Minnick in the sprawling 1st District of Idaho, has been dealing with the enduring truth of Mr. Dooley’s famous quip the last couple of days.

The Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey wrote a long takeout on Ward’s family situation this week that centered on the fact that the candidate’s wife is a decade-long employee of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. The relevance of that fact to Ward’s candidacy is that he has made a centerpiece of his campaign his opposition to federal bailouts of the big financial institutions that helped cause the mortgage meltdown. By inference, one of those financial institutions is the employer of Ward’s wife whose salary has allowed him to campaign full-time for high public office.

Ward blasted back at the story, saying he “never thought” his wife would be attacked. A careful reading of Popkey’s piece, played with up most prominence on page one under a headline stating that Ward’s family is supported by the bailout he opposes, indicates more emphasis on what some might see as Ward’s effort to have it both ways – attack the bailouts that arguably preserved his wife’s job – than any real attack on his wife. The newspaper, meanwhile, pushed back saying that the story was entirely appropriate, in part, because Ward had himself created the issue.

Still, the story begs the question: just what is fair and what is off limits when it comes to a political spouse? The simple answer: there aren’t any rules.

Was Michelle Obama’s comment during the last presidential campaign that for the first time she was “proud to be an American” relevant? Were Hillary Clinton’s long ago trades in cattle futures relevant? Montana Senator Max Baucus’ ex-wife had a run in at a garden store some years back that made headlines. Was that relevant?

Politics is a fish bowl where the water gets changed every day and it sure ain’t beanbag and never has been.

In 1989, Dan Popkey wrote a series of very tough articles focused on the nomination of then-Idaho first lady Carol Andrus to the board of then-Boise based Morrison-Knudsen Corporation. The allegations, at their core, were about integrity and struck at the potential for a conflict of interest. I know first-hand how tough the pieces were because I was serving as then-Gov. Cecil Andrus’ press secretary and had the unwelcome responsibility of fielding Popkey’s questions. When a prominent GOP legislator jumped on the story, it went quickly from personal to very political and Mrs. Andrus, a highly intelligent, thoughtful and very private person, alone made the decision to withdraw from consideration for the corporate board.

Obviously, 20 years later, I remember many of the details of that story with a certain pit in the middle of my stomach. Was it uncomfortable to deal with? Absolutely. Were the stories inherently unfair? Given the day, I can argue it either way. I do know that it is not realistic to think of any governor’s wife as anything other than a public person. Same goes for a congressman’s wife, or the wife of a congressional hopeful.

I also know, and Andrus says as much in his memoir, that it was a darn painful experience for a close family that knew the rules of the political game and above all valued personal integrity. He adds the observation in his book – with Bill and Hillary Clinton in mind – that “attacking the family has become a kind of blood sport nowadays.”

It is the rare public person who can for any length of time keep the political separate from the familial. True fact: stories like the Ward story have become an expected part of suiting up and climbing in the political ring. Perhaps in a more genteel world it wouldn’t be so, but in that make believe world genuine bipartisanship would exist, as well. What often matters most with such stories is how the politician deals with the adversity, particularly when the adversity involves a family member. In that case, it is not just politics, but very, very personal and in my experience one of the touchiest of all political issues to manage.

So, politics sure ain’t beanbag, but tis surely a game for grownups and it helps as a candidate to have a very thick hide. Helps if the spouse does, too.

How Good Is the Data…

The image of the just re-elected Harry Truman holding the front page of the Chicago Tribune is one of the most recognizable photos and one of the most spectacularly inaccurate headlines in American political history.

All the respected pollsters of the day – it was 1948 – got the outcome of that election wrong. Most had quit polling a week before the election certain that New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey had a lock on the White House. It turned out to be an historic mistake that the Truman-hating Tribune was all too eager to believe as the early results trickled in on election night. Truman, of course, staged what it now considered one of the biggest comebacks in political history, likely turning the tide in the last few days of his feisty campaign.

Polling has come a long, long way since Truman’s day and even farther since the Literary Digest famously predicted Alfred Landon beating Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. In that case, the Digest relied for its self selecting sample on folks with a telephone or an automobile registration. Many Americans didn’t have either in 1936.

Yesterday I offered up some observations on the state of the current Otter – Allred race for Idaho governor that were prompted by a recent Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen’s Idaho research – he bills himself as a strictly independent pollster – was one of two or three polls on various political races that he releases every week.

In a nutshell: Otter appears to have a comfortable lead and Allred is still introducing himself as a first-time candidate unknown to most Idahoans. In my view, Allred may also come to regret missing a strategic opportunity during the legislative session to cast himself as the anti-Otter. While the press and many in the public, including education supporters, human rights activists, park users and those who think texting while operating a motor vehicle is a bad idea, were focused on the daily actions of the legislature and the governor, Allred hardly got up on the stage to offer a counterpoint. We’ll see if that turns out to have been a big mistake or not.

The Rasmussen poll shows Otter up 60-28.

How Good Is Rasmussen’s Research?

That is a good question regarding Rasmussen’s poll, or for that matter any poll that finds its way into the public arena. Just how good is the data?

The first thing to say about Scott Rasmussen is that he nailed the 2004 and 2008 presidential races and has a respectable record in state level contests.

Left-leaning bloggers don’t like him and accuse him of partisanship. The respected polling analyst Nate Silver noted in January that Rasmussen’s numbers “tend to be more favorable to Republican candidates and causes than most other polling outfits.” Silver is quick not to accuse Rasmussen of bias. It could be, he says, an issue with the methodology of Rasmussen surveys; he screens for “likely voters” when other pollsters don’t and Rasmussen uses automated data collection techniques that some folks question. And Silver notes, Rasmussen, who did polling work for Republicans and George W. Bush in 2003 and ’04, could be right on with his numbers even as some question his methods.

In any event, Silver’s analysis of Rasmussen’s work and methodology is worth reading, as is a piece by Mark Blumenthal in the National Journal who asks and tries to answer the question of when a poll is “partisan.” The conclusion: it is getting harder and harder to tell.

Thoughts to keep in mind as you read about polls

1. Most reporting on surveys is less than adequate. Even the big news organizations like the Washington Post and CNN never seem to provide enough context as to how the survey was conducted and what was going on that might influence the results. Idaho reporters are at an even greater disadvantage in reporting on polls since they are often writing about something for which they have no first hand knowledge. An Idaho reporter gets what looks like interesting information from a Rasmussen – or soon you can bet from a more Democratic-leaning pollster – and about all they do is report the findings and add the comments from the opposing camps. When it comes to polls we need more context. We need explanation of how the surveys were conducted. What and how many questions were asked? We need more detail. We need more reporting.

 

2. The real value in polls is contained in the “internals.” We all love the horse race question: “if the election were held today”…and those results typically get the headlines. The really valuable strategic information is always buried deeper in a good survey. How are the demographics of age, religion and gender sliced? Do Idahoans feel the state is heading in the right direction? What issues make one candidate or the other vulnerable? The horse race is fun and it tells us something, but it is far from the complete picture. I’d love to see such a survey, but that information is going to be held very close to the vest by both campaigns and pollsters like Rasmussen don’t do that kind of sampling, at least not that they make public.

 

3. Idaho news organizations would do all political junkies and the election process a real favor if they were to develop their own research capabilities. Good research costs money, but perhaps a collection of news organizations could pool the resources – The New York Times/CBS News model – and provide the context and “internals” that would provide real value to voters and policy makers.

Lessons From Distant Campaigns

I have been deeply involved in two statewide races for governor – 1986 and 1990 – and have watched every race since from the back row. One of the surprising findings from our research in 1986 – Cecil Andrus was mounting his comeback that year after having been off an Idaho ballot for a dozen years – was that fully a third of the probable voters didn’t know the former governor and Secretary of the Interior from a bale of hay. He just didn’t register with those voters who had come of voting age or moved to the state since he had been governor in the 1970’s. In other words, the candidate needed to be introduced to these voters.

The lesson: most candidates underestimate the level of public understanding of who they are and what they stand for. This is a particular problem for first time candidates and it often proves fatal.

[A footnote: Andrus relied on Jimmy Carter’s controversial and outspoken pollster Pat Caddell for research in 1986 with mixed results. Doug Schoen, who polled for Bill Clinton, did the job splendidly in 1990. In the small world category, Scott Rasmussen touts endorsements from both Caddell and Schoen on his website. Both Caddell and Schoen often provide contrarian views at odds with national Democratic talking points and both provide commentary for FOX News. Each pollster has predicted massive Democratic loses at the polls this fall as a result of health care legislation.]

Another polling lesson for me comes from 1992 when four-term Democratic Rep. Richard Stallings, who represented southern and eastern Idaho, ran for the United States Senate, I’m going to bet Stallings’ name ID north of the Salmon River never got above 60%. I can’t prove that notion, but the election outcome demonstrated that Stallings was not able to connect with voters in that region of the state. For a guy from Rexburg, the territory north of Riggins might as well have been in another state.

The lesson: being well known in Boise doesn’t mean much in St. Anthony or Sandpoint. Statewide name recognition is a long, hard and expensive slog. You earn it with time or with money or both. It is but the absolutely first step to a successful political campaign. There is an old, old fomulation in politics that holds that every candidate must travel a cycle. First the name must be established, then who they are as a person can be developed, and finally comes the message. But it all starts with name recognition. You don’t have that you don’t have much of a political campaign.

Here’s my guess: Otter is not in quite as good a shape as the Rasmussen poll indicates and Allred is not in quite as bad a shape. Such polls measure name ID and party affiliation and not a lot more. Having said that, and with the acknowledgement that it is early in the cycle, campaigns do develop a certain rhythm and pace – call it the narrative – and this one is starting to firm up. Today it is very much Otter’s race to lose and his name ID, his long record of familiarity with Idaho voters, Idaho’s strong R tendencies and this being a GOP year all put him in solid shape to be re-elected.

A further guess: Otter will run a very traditional, tried and true Republican campaign based on presenting a united GOP front and emphasizing the party’s anti-tax stand. Couple that message – we’re Republicans and you can trust us on taxes – with a strong ground game to turn out voters and that has been enough for a GOP gubernatorial candidate to win every time over the last 20 years.

If Allred is to have any chance of pulling the big upset, he had better start running soon with the political equivalent of football’s “wishbone offense.” He needs something to revolutionize the game. He has to shake up the race in a very significant way, change the developing narrative and move the polls or he’ll find himself on the wrong side of “Dewey beats Truman.”

A 21st Century State…a 20th Century Tax Structure

The Idaho Legislature stumbled to adjournment on Monday after reducing state spending by 19% over the last two sessions. Now, you might ask, what next?

At some point – in the not too distant future, one hopes – the economy starts to grow at a stronger clip and the revenue streams at the state level start to produce the dollars needed to rebuild an education system and sustain other basic services. Education gets a lot of attention, as it should. For two years running state support has been reduced in real dollars. That has never happened before. At the same time, a number of other agencies – like the Departments of Environmental Quality and Water Resources – that consume a small slice of the budget, have been close to crippled.

Despite election year rhetoric about holding the line, the budget outlook this year and next is nothing less than bleak. The line hasn’t really been held, it has been moved backward.

Even as the session was dominated by the scramble to patch and scratch a budget together, some legislators were seriously floating the notion that taxes, particularly the income tax, should be cut. Others, like the state senate’s budget leader Dean Cameron were more realistically suggesting that the 2011 session will need to find a way a raise revenue. Cameron told the Statesman’s Dan Popkey that next year could “be even more difficult.”

“Our budget is full of places where we have robbed from one fund or another to keep programs or services going,” Cameron said. “Now, we’re at the end of it.”

Here is the reality: even when you account for the many tweaks that have been made to the Idaho tax system over the years – sales and income tax rates have increased over time, for example – the essential structure has gone unchanged since the historic decision in 1965 to create an Idaho sales tax. What has changed is a steady deterioration, made worse by the awful economy, of revenue to support critical services like public and higher education. Public school support, to a substantial degree, has shifted from the more stable property tax to the more volatile sales tax. Meanwhile, sales tax exemptions have grown like noxious weeds with each exemption eating away at the state’s general fund and, by definition, diminishing the state’s ability to support education.

Somewhere on a shelf in the spiffy, remodeled Statehouse is a box full of studies analyzing how the state’s tax structure has become the sick man of Idaho. Every serious look at Idaho’s “three legged stool” of sales, income and property taxes has concluded that the basic structure is badly dated. Those past studies have accumulated dust and not influenced policy and the just adjourned legislature – after two years of slashing spending by 19% – couldn’t even bring itself to study the system one more time.

That famous 1965 legislative session designed a tax structure for its time. Idaho had a resource dependent economy in those days. The timber industry was in full flower and the Coeur d’Alene mining district was producing vast amounts of silver and creating family wage jobs. Agricultural production was the dependable staple of the Idaho economy.

Forty-five years ago, Hewlett-Packard wasn’t in Boise, Micron either. The service economy hardly existed. Idaho’s corporate community, including mainstays like Albertson’s and Morrison-Knudsen, created stability and jobs. Now much of that is gone or at least diminished. Many things about the Idaho economy are vastly different today, yet the tax structure remains pretty much the same. No less an authority, and advocate for Idaho business, than former Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry President Steve Ahrens outlined what needs to be done at a Boise City Club event during the first days of the legislative session back in January. Was anyone listening?

A question for the next Idaho Legislature is how much more cutting can the state really stand? At some point, a 21st Century economy will require new investment and new thinking about a 21st Century education system. Good jobs require better schools and a trained workforce. The millions in revenue lost to Internet sales (at a detriment to hometown businesses) or left untaxed due to exemptions may not represent comfortable rocks to look under, but the alternative, if Idaho wants to grow a 21st Century economy, is unsustainable.

At the federal level, a few smart people know that spending restraint and tax increases are the only way to get the ballooning federal deficit under control. At the state level, lawmakers have done the cutting. It will take real political courage – and a view to the long term – to confront the need for new revenue.

The 2011 Idaho Legislature will need a Pete Cenarrusa, a Perry Swisher, a Cecil Andrus and a Phil Batt. Those guys, and others lost to history, made the tough decisions in 1965 that put in place a tax system that served the state well for a generation and ushered in the modern Idaho. What next?

Last One Out Turn Off the Lights

I have started to believe that Idaho Democrats have been down for so long that they might be suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. That’s the psychological phenomenon named after a small group of hostages in Sweden in 1973 who, despite being held against their will, came to closely identify with their captors.

OK, I’m being a little facetious. Still as one who believes that a genuine two-party system just might serve Idaho better in the long run, it’s difficult when looking at the shape of the 2010 contests not to think that Idaho Democrats are destined to be down for a long, long time. Like the Stockholm captives, they have gotten so very used to the GOP calling all the shots it has become difficult for Democrats to envision an alternative reality.

The Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey noted, as of the election filing deadline a week ago, that Idaho Democrats have already conceded two of every five legislative seats statewide. There is no serious candidate on the Democratic side for the U.S. Senate, the 2nd Congressional District, Lt. Governor or Secretary of State. No Democrat filed at all for Attorney General, Controller or Treasurer. Furthermore, the D’s lost some of their best legislators, people who might actually be able to run for something else some day, when Senators Kate Kelly and Clint Stennett and Rep. James Ruchti all opted not to seek another term.

Surveying those puny pickings leaves the battered Democrats with only a trio of seemingly serious hopefuls at the top of the ticket. All the marbles are on races for Governor (Keith Allred), the 1st District Congressional seat (incumbent Walt Minnick) and Superintendent of Public Instruction (Dr. Stan Olson). Even in Idaho’s largest city, where Democrats have made inroads and held them over the last 10 years, no Democrat filed for the Ada County Commission.

By contrast, and by my quick count, Republicans filed against all but three incumbent Democratic state legislators and the GOP will have contested primaries involving more than 20 of their incumbents. It’s not hard to see which party enjoys the enthusiasm advantage headed toward November. Democrats better hope for many, many nasty GOP primaries but, in politics like football, basing your strategy on a hope that the other side will fumble is not a very smart path to end zone.

Randy Stapilus has a pretty good round-up of the filings at Ridenbaugh Press.

So, what do Democrats need to do in Idaho that they haven’t been doing? Where to start. Here are three steps that might begin to form a strategy.

First, Idaho Democrats need a full-time party chairman. That chairman should then go to school on Phil Batt’s playbook when he brought Idaho Republicans back from a series of defeats that culminated in Democrats reaching their high water mark of modern political success in 1990. After that election, ancient history now, Democrats held three statewide offices, both congressional seats and managed an even split in the state senate. Republicans were stunned and turned to Batt to devise their comeback. He downplayed ideology, traveled the state, held countless meetings, preached the gospel of organization and cooperation, recruited candidates and, not incidentally, positioned himself to run for governor and win in 1994.

Batt did most of this work out of his own pocket, which would be ideal for Democrats who are always strapped for money. No matter. Reality dictates that resources must be found – or donated – or the Democratic status quo will continue. The work Batt did for the GOP was hard, time consuming, under the radar organization and planning. It is the type of work that Idaho Democrats have never been very good at doing.

It’s darn hard to begin a comeback without a leader and Idaho Democrats haven’t really had a “face and a name” since Cece Andrus left the stage in 1995. A full-time chairman would provide a focus and a face.

Second, Idaho Democrats must embrace a youth and minority strategy. At the national level, thoughtful GOP strategists realize that unless Republicans find a way to consistently appeal to younger people, Hispanics and African-Americans they will be the minority party forever. No less a big political thinker than Karl Rove knew that the GOP had to make a stronger appeal to Hispanics and he crafted an approach for his boss that did just that in 2004. The one sure demographic that will grow in Idaho over the next decade are folks of Hispanic heritage and new, first time voters. Democrats better get after them.

Third, Democrats need to stand for something that has broad appeal. And they have to systematically sell to Idahoans a version that is different – and better – than not just being a Republican. They also need to shun litmus tests. Any appeal must take into account the fundamentally conservative nature of most Idahoans.

The message is about jobs, schools and a place to recreate on the weekend. As governor, Andrus was a champion of all that, but especially education. So was John Evans. Both spoke with conviction about creating a “quality of life” in Idaho that combined jobs, good schools and a conservation ethic built around hunting and fishing. The GOP-dominated legislature has just approved significant cuts in education, at every level, for the second year in a row. I know, we’re in a recession and every state seems to be cutting education, but some day – I hope – the economy will improve. Meantime, what do Democrats really stand for? How do they articulate what a better education system looks like and what it will do for kids, the economy and more and better jobs? Where is the personality? Where is the brand? Without a vision – and a much more compelling message – the party perishes.

Re-building ain’t easy even with Republicans offering up some tempting targets and struggling with their own Tea Party problems. A Democratic resurrection in any of our lifetimes will require the small handful of real leaders in the state party to admit the obvious. What they have been doing clearly isn’t working. A little public soul searching wouldn’t hurt. Maybe the party need to convene a very public discussion about priorities and shortcomings. They need to take some risks and they might start by airing out the corpse.

The first step on any road back is to have a plan – a real plan – that realistically puts one foot in front of another on the long slog back. As they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results.

For Idaho Democrats, the 2010 election looks a lot like 2008, 2006, 2004, 2002…and the captives don’t seem very restless.