Clinton primary coattails

I've been tracking the PA-18 Democratic primary for a while now as I think the incumbent Republican, Congressman Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair) is vulnerable to an aggressive challenge, as he has not had that since he took the R+2 district immediately after it was redistricted to favor him in 2002. I think Beth Hafer (D-Mt. Lebanon) is a pretty good Democratic challenger who has a decent range of party/institutional/good ole boys support, as well as progressive activist support. She fits the district, and she has a good political last name, as her mother, Barbara Hafer has been a fixture in moderate politics in SW PA for a while.

I just received a fundraising e-mail from the Hafer campaign (the first one I have received in months), and it has a couple of strong points in it. The one I liked was the attempt to focus most of her energies against the incumbent, and not her two Democratic primary challengers. She is framing Murphy as corrupt and out of control, which if she can make it stick, is a powerful frame. There is enough supporting evidence circulating that enough people have heard/seen that this charge should stick if aggressively pursued.

Another aspect that is interesting in her e-mail is the assumption that the energized Democratic Presidential Primary vote will help her campaign. I think this is very likely as I am projecting PA-18 will go heavily for Hillary Clinton on April 22nd, and one of Clinton's strongest groups of support are older female voters. Hafer should get a significant boost from down ballot waterfall voting, and in a three way primary, that will be a decisive factor. I wonder if there are other districts that will see Democratic Primary Clinton coattails?

However there is one thing that I really don't like the e-mail and it is who she is using for her polling/strategy:

We have raised the most money of any Democratic challenger. And have put that money to good use. Our campaign team includes nationally renowned firms Penn, Schoen & Berland, Adelstein Liston media services, and JMG 360 direct mail. Moreover, our new campaign manager comes from Joe Sestak’s 2006 Congressional campaign and is familiar with unseating a corrupt Republican incumbent. [emphasis mine]

Bragging about Penn is never a good idea among Democrats. It is a statement with no real value add to it unless the message is being aimed at high money, DLC/Emmanual aligned donors, but this e-mail is targeted at small and medium size donors ($50 to $250 is probably the quartile range that they want to get from this segment of the donor base). Even the people who think what he does is valuable don't like him. The Clinton campaign team, for whom he works for, has buried several battle axes into his back already this month. Most of the activist base of the party thinks that he is a net negative at best. Just don't brag about bringing in the microtrending, school uniform, anti-video game violence, myopic Penn.

Pennsylvania Democratic Politics Overview

Barring anything shocking happening, Pennsylvania will matter quite a bit this cycle. Shocking!

As Chris Bowers notes, with Wyoming and Misssissippi being highly probable net delegate wins for Obama, the pledged delegate math by the Ides of March is back to where it was Monday morning --- Obama up by a significant margin but with far fewer delegates left to contest. Pennsylvania right now is the only chance Clinton has a blow-out win that has enough delegates to matter. So let's take a quick look at the Pennsylvania Democrats.

1) Pennsylvania is a closed primary state, and it is a hard closure. Non-affiliated/unaligned/independent and registered Republicans voters do not vote in the Democratic Primary.
2) Pennsylvania Democrats are on the whole ideologically about the median national Democrat, at least measured by our House delegation.
3) 'Pittsburgh on end end, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in the middle' or Pennsyltucky are two quick and simple ways of describing the state politically as a whole. The rural/mountain regions tend to vote conservative to very conservative while the cities vote liberal and come out in large numbers.
4) Delegate allocation rules can be found at the Greenpapers.
5) Delegate allocation rules significantly favor Obama --- very plausible for him to lose the state by eight to ten points and win the delegate fight.
6) GOTV operations are not that good in SW Pa. The machine Democrats have been fighting a long and slowly losing battle in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh's home county) with the reformer Democrats as the reformers are able to out-hustle the GOTV on lower value races. Endorsements have not been delivering the same type of punch as they used to.
7) In 2006, most regional GOTV was provided by outside organizations; the Casey-Rendell coordinated campaign just sought to flush the Dem supermajority precincts and call it a day.

Pennsylvania Delegate Allocation rules

I'm doing some prep work for a conversation tomorrow about Pennsylvania politics, and I'm looking at the delegate allocation formula for the Pennsylvania Primary. I'm grabbing this information from the Green Papers

158 of 188 delegates to the Democratic National Convention are allocated to presidential contenders based on the results of the voting in today's Pennsylvania Presidential Primary. A mandatory 15 percent threshold is required in order for a presidential contender to be allocated National Convention delegates at either the congressional district or statewide level.

103 district delegates are to be allocated proportionally to presidential contenders based on the primary results in each of the State's 19 congressional districts.
CD 9: 3 delegates
CDs 5, 10, 16, 17, 19: 4 delegates each
CDs 3, 4, 11, 12, 15, 18: 5 delegates each
CDs 6: 6 delegates each
CDs 1, 7, 8, 13, 14: 7 delegates each
CD 2: 9 delegates
In addition, 55 delegates are to be allocated to presidential contenders based on the primary vote statewide.
35 at-large National Convention delegates
20 Pledged PLEOs

The dark blue districts are areas where Hillary Clinton should wrap up big margins, while the light blue areas are demographically favorable to Barrack Obama on the basis of large African American and/or creative class Democrats. Just guessing right now, but in my mind it is very plausible that Hillary Clinton could pull a Nevada here, and win the state's popular vote and break even in the delegate count. I don't think Obama will lose even delegate low value districts by 25 point margins, so he'll break even there, and he can afford 2:3 and 1:2 splits in the odd delegate districts. I think he can make up significant ground in Pittsburgh and Philadelaphia and I see 58:42 splits which would give him two or three net delegate gains much more readily than I see 63/37 splits for Clinton in other areas of the state.

Virginia Exit Polls and Pennyslvania

Midwest Progressive in comments earlier today asserted that Obama has to be the favorite in Pennsylvania. I disagreed as the Congressional districts in SW PA are dominated by beer track Democrats. Given the new information from the Virginia exit polls, I think that I am wrong.

Clinton's generic winning formula so far has to been to win the white vote by fifteen to twenty points against Obama, avoid being blown out like a Republican within the African American vote, and win the non-white, non-black groups by twenty to twenty five points. That is her generic success story.

The Virginia exit polls are showing that Obama has basically tied her in the white vote, and is treating Clinton as if she was a Republican in the African American vote, winning this group by a 90:10 margin. They are splitting the small Latino vote about even.

Furthermore, there are very few splits in the exit polls where Obama does significantly worse than his aggregate totals, so it seems that the Democratic Party in Virginia at the very least acted in an information cascading fashion and have begun to coalesce around him.

IF THESE RESULTS ARE GENERALIZABLE, Clinton is in serious trouble before she gets to Pennsylvania as her basic formula is under serious threat. Even assuming she makes it to Pennsylvania, I am re-evaluating my opinion of her probabilities of winning majorities in the three SW Pennsylvania Congressional Districts that I am most familiar with (PA-4, PA-14, PA-18).

Right now I would project that Barrack Obama would win PA-14 which encompasses Pittsburgh and its immediate eastern suburbs on the basis of a dominant win within the African American community as well as dominant wins within both the Dean/Clark/Peduto/Hans-Greco activist base as well as the tens of thousands of college students.

PA-18, in the South Hills is a split district with a slight current Clinton lean as there are more Reagan Democrats, and the one area of hope in tonight's numbers for Clinton was she won the Virginian foothills to the Appalachians. That area has significant commonality with significant portions of Washington and Westmoreland Counties. PA-4 to the north is another toss-up, but I think Obamaa can quickly capitalize on a unified progressive activist base while the powerful unions are split up north.

Hafer's weak 4th Quarter

I have been curious as to how Bethany Hafer did in the 4th quarter fundraising as her campaign seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth in December and early January. Her year end report has been filed and it was at best a mediocre quarter, as she took in roughly $25,000 in primary election money, and a couple of big donations for the general election fund. Interesting, and this may be an FEC data entry glitch, there does not appear to be any disclosable, $250+ donations in the 4th quarter. She spent more than she raised in the quarter, and was out-raised by at least one self-funding primary challenger, and by the incumbent Republican Tim Murphy. Over the course of the primary cycle, she has raised a little less than $100,000 in primary funds, which is more than Chad Kluko, the Democratic challenger in 2006 raised in the entire cycle.

This district is heating up with another Fighting Dem challenger entering the race earlier this month in Wayne Dudding and Dan Wholey dropping out of the primary race. Two Political Junkies recently attended events with Dudding and Hafer and has a good update on the coalition Hafer is trying to build:

Ok, so I went to this meet and greet thing with Beth Hafer this evening at the Shadow Lounge. A more than respectable number of what I assumed to be mostly eastside progressives tucked into a dark room just across the street from the East Liberty Presbyterian Church....

City Councilman Bill Peduto hosted the event and before it began, I asked him about his connection to Beth Hafer's campaign. He said he was there to offer her support and to help out networking with some of the leaders of Pittsburgh's progressive community....

On the race, she said she was optimistic she could win it. There are more Democrats than Republicans in the district. And a sizeable number of independents. She's got a union endorsement: The Communications Workers Union. Going door-to-door she said she learned that even Republicans are upset with the way things are going. It's winnable, she said.

Hafer is sending off the right markers and signals for Pittsburgh's progressives to support and fund her campaign. I know when I worked on Tom Kovach's campaign this was something that we tried to catalyze, but was unable to do so in an effective manner. I think she is right that this is a tough but winnable campaign for an aggressive Democrat; Murphy does a good job of blurring his and his party's sharper edges and his constituent service and outreach is not bad; not the best but not a net negative. But if she wants to be that Democrat, she needs to do better this quarter which is the last full quarter before the primary.

Update on the Hafer Campaign

I've been trying to get in touch with the Hafer campaign to follow up on my post asking what was going on with the low level of activity. I have a second order connection with the campaign manager via previous political work and LinkedIn and e-mailed him about a week ago, and also went through the website. So far I have heard nothing back. However, it looks like the campaign is active again after taking most of a month off from public events.



At least some events are being hosted in the next couple of weeks, and the phone number is the campaign office number. Good to see. The next thing I want to see if the 4th Quarter fundraising which should be released within the next week or so.

What's Up with the Hafer campaign

In the 2006 cycle, I did a little bit of volunteer work in the Democratic primary for Pennyslvania's 18th District, currently held by incumbent Republican Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair). Congressman Murphy rolled up an easy win in a lean GOP district that is definately flippable. This was his third straight token opposition victory in a district that should be contested. The ideological ground is no worse, in my opinion, than the 4th Congressional District which was taken by conservative Democrat Jason Altmire away from Santorum ally Mellisa Hart in 2006.

Democrats have offered fairly weak candidates in the past with minimal funding. Candidates have not had either the pre-exisiting social and political networks that could put in a reasonable amount of early viability cash, OR had the charisma, luck and grit to raise the initial viability cash.

This time around, Bethany Hafer, a member of a regional political family through her hat into the ring to contest the Democratic nomination, and through the 3rd Quarter of 2007, had shown decent fundraising; pulling in roughly $75,000 or slightly less than what the Democratic general election candidate could raise during the entire election cycle in 2006.

Going through the disclosed donor list, she is pulling an interesting collection of donors. There are establishment Democrats, office holders and Friends of XYZ committee donations that show the good ole boy's network support, and also a couple of reasonably influential local progressive activists have donated at least $250.

Checking out the disbursement data, the campaign manager, or at least the only person who was routinely getting paid for 'consulting services' has a recent success running an effective GOTV program that pushed a progressive candidate over the top in a local primary. I still think this race is a tough pick-up opportunity for Democrats, but the early viability building blocks are in place.

And then I checked on her website and there is a problem here:



Nothing scheduled for most of the past month. Where are the meet and greets? Where are the Westmoreland County Democrats Hot Cocoa and Membership Meetings? Where are the hand shakes at the Peters Township High School basketball games? Furthermore, there is no mention of her or her campaign on Google News:



What's going on here? Murphy is beatable, but it will take an active and energetic candidate to do so, and I am not seeing that right now. What am I missing here?

Cheating the wounded

Local Pittsburgh reporter Marty Griffin, via the Carpetbagger Report, is breaking a damn interesting and shameful story concerning a local vet who was discharged from the Army due to his injuries incurred from an IED attack in Iraq:

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills....

Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

This is chickenshit.

He signed a contract that contained the enlistment bonus and through no fault of his own he was discharged. And this is a pattern of behavior on the part of the US military to be penny wise and platinum foolish. Last month I noted two instances of the same behavior; writing deployment orders for a Minnesota National Guard brigade that had the longest sustained combat deployment of any active or reserve component manuever brigade so that the mobilization order was one day short of what was needed for the Guardsmen to have access to full G.I. benefits, and then the bouncing of soldiers who are suffering from mental health problems that being in combat has most likely had some causatory factor for 'pre-existing conditions'. This dodge puts people who otherwise would have qualified for DoD and VA medical care on their own after a combat deployment.

This pattern of behavior is a great way to ruin a complex social system. John Boyd made the important point that success runs through people first, ideas second, and equipment third. Routinely demonstrating a lack of loyalty and reciprocation of sacrifice destroys success.

Steve Benen is reporting that freshamn Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA-4) has met with this soldier and is introducing a bill to resolve this problem:

Mr. Altmire’s legislation, the Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act, would require the Defense Department to pay bonuses in full within 30 days to veterans discharged because of combat-related wounds.

As a side note, this is slightly interesting from a political junkie angle as Jason Altmire is pulling a smart move on getting ahead of the story's curve and furthering his growing reputation of doing good constituent service which should help him in his probable tough re-election fight. Even more interesting is that Rep. Altmire's district is to the north of Pittsburgh, while the soldier's home is strongly implied to be south of Pittsburgh which is the turf of Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA-18) who looks to be facing his first serious Democratic challenge in years.... interesting

PA-18 Dem Candidate??

I was perusing this interesting Congressional Quarterly analysis of partisan loyalty of the House members, and besides noting the joys of being able to set the agenda and wedge vulnerable GOP candidates, something else jumped out at me.

15. Tim Murphy, Pennsylvania’s 18th (72.7 percent). Democrats last year did not vigorously challenge Murphy, who was first elected in 2002 to a southwestern Pennsylvania district that was drawn by state GOP legislators to elect a Republican. The Democrats claim that the district (54 percent for Bush in 2004) can be captured in 2008, though: Their candidate is Bethany Hafer, a vice president at a consulting firm headed by her mother, former Pennsylvania Treasurer Barbara Hafer. [emphasis mine]

Before I continue, I need to disclose that I was Tom Kovach's netroots outreach coordinator for the PA-18 2006 Democratic primary election campaign. I met Tom at an outreach event and was very impressed with his principles, presence and decision processes. We lost the primary, but it was a good campaign to work for. I am also convinced that an energetic, grassroots Democrat who is wililng to be very aggressive in drawing a sharp distinction between themselves and Rep. Murphy has a very good chance of carrying the district. [/disclosure]

I have been trying to keep my ear to the ground on PA-18 out of personal interest and I have not heard a thing that Bethany Hafer was officially stepping into the race. I know during the 2006 cycle Barbara Hafer was being aggressively recruited by a couple of local heavyweights and on much lighter sourcing grounds now, the DCCC, to make a run at Rep. Murphy. I had heard she declined because she has her sites for the Spector seat AND also because her consulting business was just getting off the ground.

So what do people know about Bethany Hafer? I don't know much yet.

Instahoglets 9th Feb 06

Be sure to check out Little Green Fascists today. Wonderful parody.

Not that the Bush regime and their sycophants need parodied. They do that just fine all by themselves. Such as Alberto Gonzales forgetting which lie he told who and thus letting slip he told a pile of crap to either the FISA judges or the Senate. Hells bells, Alberto, I catch my 12 year old with stuff like that!

Now go read law expert Orin Kerr at the rightwing Volokh Conspiracy blog as the scales continue to slip from Orin's eyes and he figures out he's been cheerleading a bunch of incompetent sociopaths all these years.

He's not the only one. Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the rightwing Cato Institute, has an article for the Fox News website called "Dubious Assumptions about Iran". They are, he says, that a nuclear Iran would attack Israel, that Iran would pass along nuclear weapons to terrorist groups and that a democratic Iran would renounce all nuclear ambitions. That's the wingnuts arguments up in smoke then, and by one of their own experts!

They should have asked John Hope Franklin, one of America's most respected historians. He could have given them a heads up.

"This country is so arrogant, so self-certain," he says, asked whether the west is now engaged with the Muslim world in a war of civilisations. "I am not sure that is what we are confronting. [But I am also] not sure we have done what we ought to have done to cultivate the rest of the world. We're so powerful and so presumptuous that it makes us unattractive, almost unbecoming. We don't treat other countries and people right. Power without grace is a curse."

"Power without grace". Doesn't that just describe the Bush regime to a T?

Not that the Bushies will ever get the idea. They've been engaged in a pogram to make sure that analysts at the State Dept. are all yes-men instead of real experts who might notice that the "slam dunk intelligence" on Iran is nothing of the sort.

Here's an eye-opener from the Guardian. "Israel's Shin Bet security service chief has said his country may come to regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, because strong dictatorship is preferable to the present chaos in Iraq. Yuval Diskin, who was secretly recorded talking to teenage Jewish settlers preparing for military service, also said Israel's judicial system discriminates against Arabs." Hear that George? "Present chaos." No, of course you don't. You never hear or see evidence that conflicts with your own warped unreality...that's what sociopaths do.

Rummie, for instance, says Iraq is making good progress towards military self-sufficiency with around 90,000 soldiers and 137,000 police now trained and equipped. No word from Rummie on how many of those trained and equipped fighters consider themselves more a member of an ethnic militia than of the Iraqi services. No mention either on when Iraqis will get power and water instead of trained militias and bullets.

When reality isn't thousands of miles away or kept secret, where they can conveniently deny it's existence, the sociopathic Bush regime prefers to wait till everyone is looking the other way then bring back their plans to rob the nation blind by an underhanded, sly and backdoor route. Let my friend Dave Anderson over at the Kovach for Congress campaign tell you about Bush's latest attempt to gut your retirement to fund his tax cuts for the rich.

Richard Pombo, the Republican Congressman For Red Lobster, has been ringing up the corruption tally at a fantastic rate. He even managed to bill taxpayers for a family holiday! That's the modern face of the GOP, folks.