“At the end of the day, he didn’t resonate,” said David Latterman, a San Francisco political consultant who supported Newsom in both his races for mayor but grew critical in recent months. “The issues he was talking about — high-tech, biotech, green this, environment that — are important. But not for a lot of people at a time the state is a disaster zone.”
Much of Newsom’s campaign was predicated on the notion that he could replicate Barack Obama’s success at riding social-media networks to excite young voters and attract other normally inattentive Californians. He worked hard to build the state’s most expansive electronic grass-roots operation. He raised money online. His events were organized via Facebook. He was a regular on Twitter, even from his wife’s bedside immediately after she gave birth.
Ultimately, however, none of that translated into broad success or financial support for the first-time statewide candidate. A Field Poll released earlier this month showed Newsom far behind Brown, who, at least publicly, all but ignored his challenger. The attorney general had the support of 47% of Democratic voters, compared with just 26% for Newsom. The only voters among whom the mayor was leading were those 18 to 39 — some of the least likely to turn out. With them he had a 9% advantage.
More important, Newsom trailed badly in the money chase. He had $1.2 million in the bank at the end of the last reporting period in June and had raised only $709,000 since. Brown had $7.4 million on June 30 and has raised $1.3 million more since.
Earlier this month, Newsom brought in former President Clinton, an old Brown nemesis, for an endorsement and fund-raising event. But the returns, at least as indicated by partial financial reports, were disappointing.
Time has some interesting revelations about the choice for Vice President when Tim Kaine was considered but ultimately passed over:
There was no great way to explain putting someone with no foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. If we chose him, we would need to rely on some of the same language we had used on this issue as it related to Obama — judgment vs. Washington experience, a new foreign policy vision vs. the status quo — but doubling down would make it twice as tough for us to roll this boulder uphill.
Later that night, we held a conference call with Obama to brief him on our day. “Well, it sounds like you both are for Biden, but barely,” he said. “I really haven’t settled this yet in my own mind. It’s a coin toss now between Bayh and Biden, but Kaine is still a distinct possibility. I know the experience attack people will make if we pick him. But if that really concerned me, I wouldn’t have run in the first place. My sense is — and you tell me if the research backs this up — that Barack Hussein Obama is change enough for people. I don’t have to convince people with my VP selection that I am serious about change.” (Read “Obama and Biden’s Chemistry Test.”)
But the money quotes are all about Sarah Palin:
We always knew this day was going to be a pain in the ass. Coming right off the exhaustion and exhilaration of our convention week and VP pick, we would have to jump right in and deal with theirs. But [Sarah] Palin was a bolt of lightning, a true surprise. She was such a long shot, I didn’t even have her research file on my computer, as I did for the likely McCain picks. I started Googling her, refreshing my memory while I waited for our research to be sent.
…
But here she was, joining our real-life drama. And given her life story, coupled with the surprise nature of her selection, her entrance to the race would be nothing short of a phenomenon. But I also thought it was a downright bizarre, ill-considered and deeply puzzling choice. The one thing every voter knew about John McCain’s campaign at this point was that it had been shouting from the rooftops that Barack Obama lacked the experience to be President.
…warned us that she was a formidable political talent — clearly not up to this moment, she assured us, but bound to be a compelling player and a real headliner in the weeks ahead. (Read about where Sarah Palin is going next.)
“All of you on this call should watch video of her debates and speeches,” Dunn counseled. “The substance is thin, but she’s a very able performer. And her story is out of Hollywood. She’ll be a phenomenon for a while.”
The Obama campaign was mostly annoyed that McCain had chosen a VP nominee that, they claim, had less experience than Obama:
Our strategy with the other potential picks would’ve been to start by saying that choice X subscribed to the same failed George Bush policies as John McCain; all they were doing was doubling down on the same out-of-touch economic policies that had hurt American families. We should have gone the same way with Palin. But McCain had been haranguing us for months about experience, and we were incredulous that he had picked someone with zero foreign policy experience who had been a governor for less time than Obama had been a Senator. Galled by the hypocrisy, we moved in a more aggressive direction.
We decided to call McCain on the experience card directly. The value was in making him look political — essentially, calling him full of shit — and we sent out a release making that clear. “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” it read. “Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need; it’s just more of the same.”
Creigh Deeds received the endorsement of the Washington Post in his quest for the Virginia governorship. His opponent, Bob McDonnell is sitting on a comfortable lead so Deeds could use the help. The Virginia GOP however has used the endorsement against the candidate
Republican Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial candidates decline Palin’s offer to campaign for them but at least one blogger see’s no ulterior motive in the move:
Romney, Huckabee, Jindal, and Pawlenty have all been to Virginia on McDonnell’s behalf. Proof of a Gillespie vendetta against Palin? Or just basic no-brainer politics in not wanting to “benefit” from a cameo by someone whose favorable rating among independents is 33/59? McDonnell’s sitting on a nine-point lead in a state that broke for Obama last year by six points; why on earth would he risk the upheaval of a Palin appearance, particularly when the Democrats have been trying to caricature him as the same sort of rabid social con that the media caricatured her as?
The hard fact of the matter is that Sarahcuda’s only a clear asset on the trail in a red district where the base isn’t turning out. That’s why she was a good bet in Saxby Chambliss’s run-off in Georgia last year: The GOP knew it had the votes to win the election, they just needed to give dispirited grassroots conservatives a reason to go out and vote. Enter Palin. In purplish states like Virginia (and blue states like New Jersey, needless to say), having her out there becomes a crapshoot because it risks goosing turnout among liberals more than conservatives. In fact, assuming that conservatives stay motivated to send The One a message next year in the midterms, demand for her will probably be low since turnout will be high even without her help. What am I missing here?
The billionaire co-founder of the Black Entertainment Television mocked Democrat Creigh Deeds’ occasional stuttering at a fundraiser she held for Deeds’ Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Bob McDonnell.
In a YouTube video, Sheila Johnson says Virginia needs a governor “who can really communicate, and Bob McDonnell can communicate.”
Then she tells a small crowd of wealthy donors, “The other people I talk to, especially his op-op-op-o-opponent, di-di-did this all through my interview with him.”
After muted laughter among the guests, she adds, “He could not articulate what needed to be done.”
Jared Leopold, Creigh Deeds’ press secretary, said a YouTube video depicting BET co-founder Sheila Johnson criticizing the candidate on his communication skills was a “divisive personal attack.”
“This is a cheap shot and a new low for this race,” Leopold told FOX 5 in a statement. “Virginians deserve better than personal attacks like this.
“Creigh Deeds isn’t the smoothest speaker in the race, but when he speaks he is authentic and means what he says. That’s what people will respond to, not divisive personal attacks.”
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