Emanuel Wins
Fascinating article from the Chicago Tribune about the intense, forceful, and foul-mouthed Chicago congressman, Rahm Emanuel, who ran the campaign that has just won the Democrats control of congress.
Anyone who has been involved in the running of an election campaign will find some of the stories told in this article all too familiar.
Two things from the article worth highlighting are;
- The deliberate organised recruiting of tough, credible, and non-traditional candidates to fight key swing seats, such as the Iraq war veterans, often pushing out more traditional and long-standing candidates.
- The conflict between the ruthless targetting strategy employed by Emanuel and the activist-based party development “50 State” strategy of Howard Dean. (See also)
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This content was originally posted on my old Process Guy blog.
4 Comments
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I think the ‘conflict’ between Dean’s 50-state strategy and Rahm’s targeting is overstated.
Dean’s strategy is about re-building the Democratic Party from the bottom up after years of Democratic retreat.
Rahm’s targeting was about ensuring enough gains in this one round of elections to win control of the House.
The result of the first stage of Dean’s long term strategy
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Maybe I mistook conflict between the individuals with conflict between the strategies.
I wanted to highlight that particular aspect of the story because it seemed to be a good example of the tension between the demands of targetting and the need to build an organisation capable of generating broad based support. Something Lib Dems should be coming very familar with. Ofcourse the answer
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I’m sure Rahm did believe there was a conflict between the strategies at the point that argument took place.
As it turned out Dean’s strategy helped Rahm win more seats in the House. If the political circumstances had been different it might not have done, but then quite a few od Rahm’s targets would have failed too.
And yes, you are right, it does highlight the tricky balance
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Ah, now there’s the rub. That’s the challenge as a campaign manager, isn’t it?
Neil’s one of the best at this, of course.