Word: districters
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Some time after I fell asleep on a table and had to be carried to a couch, things changed. As the more conservative areas of the district began reporting, our lead slipped. By the end of the night, we were losing. By the next morning, we were out of the race...
Carnahan’s strategy was to run a “district-wide campaign.” In a nutshell, this means you say what you know people want to hear, and you make sure never to take a position that might alienate somebody. In practice, this meant that Carnahan came out in favor of gay rights when he was in front of a gay group, but he didn’t put his position on gay rights anywhere where a conservative voter might be able to find it. He told a questioner at a forum that he supported...
Carnahan’s “district-wide campaign” also fastidiously avoided grassroots organizing. Jeff, who had no institutional support, had made grassroots organizing a central tenet of his strategy, and we expected that the Third District race would be largely a test of whether a grassroots campaign could beat a traditional Democratic campaign—a campaign that focused on television and endorsements over personal contact...
...commitment to grassroots action didn’t stop with Jeff. My job was to manage a team of 12-14 full-time organizers who were each responsible for a portion of the district. These organizers were mostly Jeff’s former students, and the average age of the organizing team was about 21. The organizers were responsible for finding supporters in their areas and turning those supporters into activists. By election day, they were managing a team of over 200 activists and responsible for finding more than 20,000 votes. They developed relationships with community leaders and neighborhood...
...quick glance at the Third District election results would seem to vindicate Russ Carnahan’s “district-wide campaign” and his mealie-mouthed message. Carnahan, who focused his resources on television ads that would hit the entire district, was no area’s top choice. He finished second in the St. Louis City, second in St. Louis County and second in Jefferson County. Press reports from the campaign’s aftermath hint at a simple thesis: By avoiding stands that would alienate either liberals or conservatives, Carnahan became the consensus candidate; nobody...