So, Kerry Healey’s campaign now views Chris Gabrieli’s campaign as the biggest challenge, and it’s not hard to see why — he’s dumped a jaw-dropping $7.5 million into his campaign. His TV ads are ubiquitous, he’s on the radio, he’s got glossy flyers flying everywhere, robocalls, life-size cardboard cutouts, guys in sandwich boards, leafletting, blimps, skywriting, parades, circuses … Well, I don’t know about the last few, but it’s a lot.
And yet, he’s not running away with it. There are Reilly and Patrick, hanging around. Is Gabrieli is spending anything on Get-Out-The-Vote operations? In other words, it’s one thing to expose yourself to people (I mean that in the nicest possible way); it’s another thing to motivate them to act. For all the money flying around, will the percentage of folks who make up the difference between him and the others actually show up on September 19th?
Gabrieli has spent much of his money cultivating a genial, wonkish, independent, can-do image. It’s not bad, but there’s not much emotion there. Reilly’s campaign is running duly inflammatory comparison ads that hit Romney and Healey; Patrick’s campaign certainly makes an emotional appeal. Is there any romance to the Gabrieli campaign? Are cute kids in the commercials enough? I really have to wonder.
In many ways, he’s taken a pretty standard New-Dem tack: With language of moderation and reasonableness, place yourself in the middle of the largest clump of voters and make it comfortable for moderates and independents to vote for you. That’s why he talks tough on immigration; he favors a gradual income tax rollback to 5.0%; he favors Cape Wind, which is popular everywhere but in certain Hyannis compounds. But this approach favors comfort over motivation — and in a primary, motivated voters may well carry the day.
Healey’s ads will move her numbers, if they haven’t already. Her introductory ads are flawed, but the focus is effective: real kitchen-table stuff like gas prices and taxes. She is likely to be seen as colorless but safe, and the “blah” factor will work in her favor in many quarters. It’s actually fairly similar to Gabrieli’s strategy, and suitable for a general election in a year that favors complacency.
But I have to think that especially after Romney’s absenteeism, the Big Dig disaster and an unchecked Big Dig culture, voters are going to want a hands-on governor, who’s willing to be tough and piss people off. “Blah” may not get it done this year.
What do you think, Gabs supporters? Is it money well spent? Is he “getting results”?
Please, folks, don’t screw up the margins for everyone else. The long link problem has been fixed, but if you write a single long word with dashes, you can still kill the screen.
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It Will Get Results (5.00 / 1)
This is just one aspect of why Gabrieli is the Dems’ best candidate against Kerry Healey.
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1) He can deliver the shpiel on taxes that we know is progressive but sounds comfortable to independents and moderates who could otherwise flock to Kerry Healey’s two-dimensional “No New Taxes” re-tread. This is a Deval weakness for people that won’t get the well-he-wants-to-keep-property-taxes-down- through-local-aid-but-wait-is-he-comfortable- raising-our-income-taxes-huh inevitable Healey spin.
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2) Gabrieli opponents like to call him the money candidate, as though it was his only feature. It’s not his only feature, but it is an important one. His wealth and willingness to put it on the line in order to get the Corner Office back from the GOP will cancel out Healey’s massive wealth advantage. We will be money-equal with Gabrieli as the nominee.
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3) Gabrieli has no skeletons. He was fully vetted as the Lt. Gov. candidate. If there were any real skeletons in his business dealings in the past, they certainly would have come out. This is another comparative weakness for Deval. Expect Kerry Healey to throw every Ameriquest, Killer Coke, Board of Director, Sweetheart Deal, Labor Abuse line in the book at him. Most will be completely bogus. But, in the minds of voters who only slightly tune in, some will no doubt stick and it will create a public persona that some independent and less-informed voters will be concerned about.
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4) Gabrieli has debated Kerry Healey before and whomped her in the 2002 Lt. Gov. race. He is best suited to take her on behind a podium.
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5) Gabrieli can compare his years of creating jobs against Kerry Healey’s four years of losing jobs in the Commonwealth – that’s a powerful comparison.
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6) Gabrieli can point to other achievements in Massachusetts to create the starkest comparison against Healey (while offering the most comfort to the key moderates and independents), talking about his leading the charge on stem cell research (forcing Kerry Healey to adopt an “Oh, yeah, I support that, too approach) and his work over the last several years leading Mass2020, the state’s top education policy analysis think tank, working to improve school and after-school hours for kids.
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7) Poll after poll, whether it’s independent, Rasmussen Reports, or Kerry Healey’s internals, over and over again have Gabrieli ahead by the largest margin. You can say it is simply the TV ads – but that means the TV ads create a persona that makes him the most preferred to Healey. If it has to degrade to a battle of TV ads (which it easily could with Healey’s millions), Gabrieli gives the best counter. And if it’s a battle of issues, Gabrieli is strong and presents as well as Deval on the nitty-gritty (and Gabrieli and Deval are pretty identical ideologically anyway). And if it is a battle of debates, like I mentioned in point 4, Gabrieli is the best suited to take Healey on.
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So, overally, ideologically, experiencially, substantively, financially, poll-wise, etc., Chris Gabrieli is our best chance to both BEAT Kerry Healey AND have a strong progressive Governor in Massachusetts.
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Again, let’s all work for whoever the Dem nominee is because we have to take it back from Healey and the GOP, but Gabrieli is our best bet.
by: BrightonGuy @ Tue Aug 22, 2006 at 10:16:32 AM EDT
David, I thought you had reconsidered your DP endorsement and were voting for Gabs! Then I realized it was really Brighton Guy’s post.
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1. I think BG makes a good Gabs case – most likely to win against Healey.
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Still, that doesn’t sway many primary voters unless the Republican candidate is perceived as very strong. KH is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as weak, someone any of the 3 Dems will knock off.
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2. Small note to BG: Mass2020 isn’t really an education policy think tank. It focuses on a single issue, after-school programs.
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3. I think the $7.5 has been fairly well spent: a steady stream of singles. Probably the biggest direct mail buy per capita in any state. The “Yankees suck, vote Gabs in September!” blimp was good, for example, though sadly inaccurate. Also, the beefy-Gabrieli-with-mole-sauce burrito at Qdoba was tasty.
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4. I suspect that the most important $20k spent by each camp will be on the salaries of each campaign strategist over the next month.
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First question: play it safe or be aggressive? Aggressive could mean either go negative or simply TV ads that get more attention (which cuts 2 ways – either people like ’em or hate ’em).
What I know about Mr. Patrick I have learned on this website. Since we generally don’t post photographs, I still could not pick Mr. Patrick out of a crowd of two. We have gotten mail from Gabrieli, seen the ads, recieved phone calls; seen Relliy ads and gotten mailers, and been plugged at the grocery store by someone enthusiastic about Reilly; seen Healy ads and received phone calls plugging her candidacy. Patrick seems to be maintaining radio silence. My wife, whose work prevents her from wasting time on the internet and thus does not read this blog, thinks that he is doomed to the fate of Tolman and Reich.
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Time will tell, but it sure seems to me that Patrick;s strategy is to keep the powder dry for sometime later. But the election is in three weeks. When is later?
He’s been on TV since Thursday.
But we haven’t seen it yet.
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gabrieli’s appeal to pragmatism is appealing, if only one could have any confidence that the legislature would ever allow such a thing as pragmatism.
He’s been putting just about as many ads as both Reilly and Gabs have on now.
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Once voters have seen ads more than once or twice, they lose their effect… so Gabs repeating the same ad over and over again isn’t going to gain him too much from a marketing perspective. It’s good in that it won’t make him lose any though.
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In any event, if you and your wife watch TV regularly, you’ll see Deval’s ads. Tell your wife to remember that whoever gets 35-40% of the vote on the primary day wins the election… so if 35-40% of the population is tuned in, I have a lot of confidence Deval will win. Polls have been bearing that reality out.
To oversimplify a bit, TV is to Gabrielli as grassroots is to Patrick. It’s how he translates his strength, all 15.37 million of it, into recognition and results.
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It’s appropriate for him. Not for Patrick. Different strengths use different strategies and tactics.
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TV works (no surprises there)–but gosh that is a ton of money and I have to wonder if and when he starts to see diminishing returns on future media investment.
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Certainly Patrick’s first million $ of TV spots ought to have a greater impact than Gabrielli’s next million $. (Thing is, Gabrielli has seven more million after that.)
Grass roots connotes a fringe candidacy, appealing mostly to those struggling with the decision of whether to vote Green Rainbow or Democrat. Patrick doen’t fit that mold from what I can discern.
The term “grassroots” has been unfortunately hijacked by small groups — clubs, really — of activists who don’t reflect any broad popular sentiment. Chris talked about this with regard to the Dean campaign once upon a time. I think that Patrick’s campaign is quite aware of that, as are some of the other New Prog groups, MoveOn, DFA, PDM, etc. We’ll see if it gets beyond the activist feedback loop. So far, I’ve been impressed by their approach.
… is Chris Cagle of Left Center Left, not The Candidate.
“Grass roots” seems pretty straightforward to me as a description of the sort of outsider, strength-on-the-ground campaign that Patrick is running. I did not mean to jerk anybody’s chain with it.
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Whatever you like to call it, the candidates are running fundamentally different campaigns. The correct metric for how well each strategy works is how well they do, not who is spending the most on television (which is one of the strategies).
Grass roots is the field component of a campaign – its recruiting volunteers, energizing them, and turning them into recruiters. You need them to hold signs, people phone banks, go door to door, put up signs, and make calls to talk radio. No Democrat in Massachusetts has replicated what Mike Dukakis did in terms of grass roots organizing in the 1980’s. There is nothing ideological about it at all. Those who can create a grass roots campaign do, those who can’t have to have a lot of money. Even Gabrieli now claims to have a large grass roots effort. We shall see.
I find this post, to use your word, “motivated,” by which I mean biased. No emotion or romance, “blah” etc. I suppose it doesn’t mean much for me to tell you how excited I am by his campaign and by him personally, because I’m just me. I can tell you he has been a big hit in every room full of people I’ve seen him speak before. But I can see how someone predisposed to Deval’s vision rhetoric would find a pragmatist, solutions-oriented candidate uninspiring.
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What does bother me is the claim to know Gabrieli’s motivations as being exclusively political:
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Every time I’ve seen Chris speak it is very clear that his positions come from personal beliefs. On immigration, he talks about his parents’ experience. Regarding tax rollback and alternative energy, he speaks about his lifelong experience as a businessman and problem-solver rather than a partisan. He has a passion for making things work and doing so in ways that are fair to all that comes across quite clearly to those listening in good faith.
However, I try to be fair. I was underwhelmed by Patrick’s first TV salvo, and said so. Blahs all around.
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Look, I think you’re right, that Gabrieli does indeed have a “passion for pragmatism”, as it were. But I suspect it’s hard to motivate voters on that basis, regardless of merit; and I’m not sure his ads actually show that real passion, as opposed to seeming like he’s strategically trying to split the difference. IOW, you and I may know he’s for real, but in spite of that he may seem like he’s pandering. Sounds peculiar, I know.
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I think people get motivated when they’re presented with a stark choice. For Chris, that might be, “You can go along with the same old talk from the Republicans, or you can go with a no-BS guy like me who gets results.” Then you channel a little anger, a little dissatisfaction, and bring up expectations that this guy will be really different. I’m not seeing that in the ads. Actually, I think Reilly and Healey are the only ones doing contrast ads at all — am I right?
True, Chris’s ads aren’t designed to tap into anger, but a few of them do speak to dissatisfaction. He speaks often (and I think in at least one ad) to Romney and Healey “not getting the job done.” And I agree his rhetoric is not intense nor his contrasts starkly drawn. I think if anything the ads speak to voters who are tired of big-talking, self-serving politicians, by presenting a guy who is reasonable and above the fray; to speak harshly would be out of character and would make him seem like just another wannabe.
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The “split the difference” perception only exists among partisans of other candidates who have been following the campaign since the caucuses. The vast majority of voters don’t know what Deval Patrick’s positions are, for example, because his major communications are thematic, not issue-oriented. So when Chris states a position, especially when it differs from Reilly’s, it plays as sincere and reasonable (which, IMO, it typically is).
and this is really sincere.
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isn’t there something kinda odious about how gabrieli is using his money in this campaign?
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i mean, aren’t progressives (and others!) usually bemoaning the influence of big money in the political process?
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healey is oft ridiculed as muffy bigbucks, but hasn’t gabrieli thus far layed out millions more than healey ever has? and it seems that when healeys money comes up, it’s treated as some kind of republican affectation. whereas, with gabs it’s; hey he’s a good guy with good ideas who just happens to be filthy rich, and well isn’t that the way the game is played anyway.
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it just seems like his post convention $15.6 mil spending cap announcement was a big middle finger to grassroots democracy.
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and i’m not so naive to not understand that the political world spins on a dime. but aren’t we just perpetuating that when we join with the conventional horserace mentality and start evaluating the credibility of a candidate by how many checks they’re writing?
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or is it okay to, in effect, buy an election so long as the candidate supports your own views?
And I hate the fact that MA campaign finance law is such that only incumbents and millionaires can afford to run.
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That said, the problem with “big money” and it’s influence doesn’t really apply to self-financed candidates. The problem is when someone else gives a candidate a ton of money and now the candidate is beholden to them.
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I don’t begrudge Gabrieli spending his money. He can do what he wants with it. Frankly, I think a lot of that money is being wasted (why am I getting phone calls and mailers?!) but that’s another story.
It should bother you that the Mass GOP is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of AMG more than it bothers me.
A lot of people were appalled by Gabrieli’s 15.36 million dollar “little” joke. I’ve blogged about it, as well as many of the other bay state blogs.