National Republicans think they have found a way to help them rebuild their crumbling ground game: Democrat Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy:
The RNC’s 50-state project begins with putting new boots on the ground in the two states with gubernatorial elections this fall, Virginia and New Jersey, said party spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski. In both states, the RNC will be testing voter contact efforts with controlled experiments and fine-tuning their engagement efforts with African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic communities who are firmly entrenched in the Democratic camp.
In May, the RNC hired new staffers and opened offices in Virginia, which has a competitive governor’s race, and in New Jersey, the site of a less competitive gubernatorial contest and a special U.S. Senate election.
The committee has also placed “state directors,” who will work alongside existing state party organizations and candidates to coordinate with the national party, in 10 other states with competitive Senate, House and gubernatorial races in 2014.
Republican state directors have already been deployed to Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana, West Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio. There are currently 125 RNC operatives in the field as of this week, a staff footprint larger than the one at party headquarters on Capitol Hill.
In short, welcome to 2005.
But before we completely dismiss this as a back to the (other guy’s) future moment, there are also signs of a slight cultural shift within the national Republican apparatus:
Instead of taking rigid marching orders from Washington, RNC staffers in the states will be given a longer leash in order to understand local players and issues, and adapt accordingly. That may seem like an obvious strategy, but it marks a cultural sea change for Republican get-out-the-vote specialists.
“Our approach at the RNC is to try and be as granular and community-based as possible,” said Reince Priebus, the committee chairman.
We shall see. If the effort is sustained and allowed to grow over time, it could yield dividends.
Governing had this analysis, which showed Dean’s effort made some headway, particularly in the western states. After the program was abandoned, the Democrats went into a down ballot free fall. Would Dean’s strategy have mitigated those losses? Perhaps at the margins.
As a kind of corrective, Dean himself has switched his focus (becoming more “granular,” if you will) to flipping state legislative seats from Republican to Democrat. Dean has targeted a few Virginia races.
