Essay: Lost Opprotunity - 10/16/06

If Sharon Renier somehow manages to get elected to Congress next month, she won’t owe her Democratic Party a thing. And if she loses, they have only themselves to blame.

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean says he wants to commit his party to a strategy of trying to win at every level in every state of the country. That’s nice talk, but they certainly aren’t doing it.

A few days ago, the New York Times had a front-page story about Jim Marcinkowski, a Democrat who is challenging Congressman Mike Rogers in the neighboring Eighth District. Marcinkowski said the national party had enthusiastically wooed him to get into the race.

But he said once he did, they didn’t follow through on their promises to get him money, and wouldn’t even return his calls.  He felt he had been left to sink or swim on his own.

To be sure, Marcinkowski is running against a popular incumbent who normally runs ahead of the rest of the Republican ticket.

The situation is entirely different, however, in the Seventh District, where Sharon Renier is running. There, the incumbent Republican congressman was ousted in the primary by Tim Walberg, whose views  are generally seen as far to the right of most citizens.

While in the Michigan Legislature, Walberg was famous for voting “no” the vast majority of the time. He opposed raising the minimum wage. He voted against establishing a Rosa Parks Day, against a seat belt law, against a tax credit for donations to the Michigan Vietnam Veterans Memorial, against expelling kids who physically assault teachers and against tougher laws on tobacco sales to minors.      

When the primary election was over, the incumbent said this was the first time in his life he couldn’t congratulate and work with an opponent. Joe Schwarz called his fellow Republican a liar.

He said Tim Walberg wasn’t intellectually or morally fit to serve, filed unfair campaign practice complaints against him, and said he wouldn’t vote for him.  Republican Schwarz then said that Sharon Renier, who he defeated two years ago, is “a very credible candidate.” He said “she is pretty bright and has a good grasp of a lot of issues - not all issues, but a lot of them.”

You don’t have to be Karl Rove to figure out that this would appear to signal a considerable opening for the Democrats.

But apparently, the national Democrats can’t see it. They haven’t given Renier a dime, though she has asked. “We also asked them if they’d do some research for us, and they haven’t gotten back to us” she told me. 

Democrats say they want to win back the House of Representatives. But here’s a race where the Republican candidate is against virtually everything Democrats stand for. The Republican Party is deeply split, and the Democrats have a candidate who is running fairly well in the polls, and wants very much to win.

And yet the national party won’t lift a finger to help her. If you can explain the logic of that, you are much smarter than me.

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Comments

[Aaron Oesterle]

Jack,
I would argue that this is more the fault of the DCCC, which is headed by Rahm Emmanuel, who did not embrace Dean's 50 state strategy, until fairly recently. Word is he is the one who wrote off the entire state. There was a recent diary posting over at dailykos discussing just this thing.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/14/14753/159

[Brian DeConinck]

National Democrats might have missed the race, but locals recognize the potential. Despite a district party that has been neglected for years, there's considerable hope.

Even the bloggers are involved: http://www.michiganliberal.com/ and http://walbergwatch.blogspot.com/ have all had coverage.

[Dan Smith]

Nice theory Jack, but I wouldn't lift a finger to help Sharon Renier either. As someone who has dabbled in the political consultant game, in districts like this one, it's usually a good idea to recruit a candidate that has either won an election at the local level or at least has some strong name id. While Walberg may be to the right of...well everyone on earth, Sharon Renier may be in over her head. Let's face it she's never won a race, lost pretty bad before and quite frankly her assertion in your interview that she is "smart" I could only speculate. In two years though don't be surprised to see a very talented politican state Sen. Mark Schauer run for this seat...and win. The DCCC only has limited resources and with more than 50 seats up for grabs I think that there are probably more important races to look at than this one...in fact I know there is.

[Fred]

Jack,

The Democrats looked at this race and determined that Schwarz could not be beaten by a moderate democrat. They did not bother to recruit a candidate based on that decision.

What the Democrats need to do is not find one candidate for this race - they need to develop leaders at every level across the state (and the nation). That is a difficult and time consuming task, one with few pecuniary rewards to those who undertake it. Howard Dean is correct in starting that task - yet finding 100 young, gung ho operatives is far easier than building relationships across the varied interest groups that form the backbone of the active membership of the Democratic party.