My critics (and there are far more of them today than just a week ago) have probably been expecting me to jump on the bandwagon and start bashing Ken Cuccinelli. They’ve probably been bracing for a big old “I told you so” from me, and that would be very easy for me to write.
But I’m not going to write that. Too much ink has been spilt already in the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth about all the things Republicans did wrong in the last campaign. Instead, I want to take a look at the things I think Ken did right – and there are plenty of them. We can learn as much, if not more, about what Ken did right than we can about what went wrong.
He had a message and it was the right message – The #1 argument that my colleagues at Bearing Drift and others have made is that Ken had no message. Really? Because that’s not what I saw. Having heard Ken speak a dozen times in person through the course of the campaign and watching his performance in the debates, I think Ken’s message was clear: He was an experienced legislator and executive who understands government and its proper role, knows how Virginia government works and can make Virginia’s government work for all of us. That was absolutely the right message to run against Terry McAuliffe, who is probably as shocked as anybody that he actually won and now has no idea what to do next. Terry is in completely uncharted waters right now, and we’ll see how fast he can learn to swim. But the message that Ken knew how to do the job and Terry didn’t was at the core of his campaign, and it was absolutely the right message to run against Terry.
That’s why the Obamacare issue at the end of the race helped close however big the gap between Ken and Terry was (more on that later) – it played into Ken’s message that when government does too much, it doesn’t do it well and you need somebody who knows what he’s doing in charge to fix things. That message resonated and was working, but we ran out of time.
He didn’t pander – It would have been very easy for him to back off some of his positions in order to pander to the business community, or pander to other groups to try to get more funds flowing into his campaign. He never did that. The business community knew where he stood, and he effectively told them they could go with the guy who made them promises but had no idea how to implement any of them, or they could stick with somebody who knew what he was doing, even if they didn’t always agree. That was exactly the right approach and it helped knock Terry off his game for a few weeks in September.
He ignored the polls – I haven’t heard much about this yet, other than what Norm wrote the day after, but one of the real stories of this election is how godawful all of the polling was. Our Bearing Drift poll – which was ignored by RealClearPolitics and other sites – was closer in regards to the final margin than any of the big WaPo, PPP and other recognized pollsters numbers were. Looking only at the polls gave the impression that Ken was going to lose in a landslide, and that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, the polls helped drive a false narrative, and by the time we got to election day, much of our base was demoralized in the belief that a victory was next to impossible. Reality was far different. Polling races like this one, when nobody knows what turnout will look like, is exceedingly hard and Ken was smart in not spending too much time obsessing over them.
He stayed loyal to his staff and to himself – When you are losing, or when the perception is that you’re losing, it’s easy to want to shake things up by firing everybody and starting over. But that’s a bad move for actually winning, and it destroys the kind of internal unity and desire to win that a candidate needs from the people around him in order to push through until election. Outside people, not wanting to be seen attacking the candidate, will easily turn on staff members or outside consultants who many consider disposable. They aren’t. They are really what makes the difference between a winning and a losing campaign. So when armchair strategists start whining about how “the campaign” isn’t “letting Ken be Ken” I’m glad he ignored their clueless blathering. Ken had a solid, loyal and hardworking staff and he stuck by them, even when he could have done something different. He also didn’t try to reinvent himself into something he wasn’t, ala Mitt Romney or John McCain (which goes to my pandering point). I admire that.
He never forgot the grassroots – Ken made his name as a grassroots politician, and that was what his campaign was all about. I have rarely seen more volunteers out knocking doors and making phone calls in a non-presidential year than I did this year. He kept focusing on the basics and he did a very good job of turning the base out. Looking at the turnout numbers – which were far, far higher than anybody predicted before the election – it’s clear that both sides brought their A ground games.
So I’m sure you’re ready to ask me why, if Ken got so much right, he still lost. My answer to that is simple: I don’t think anybody on our side could have won this year. Not Bolling, not McDonnell, not George Allen, not anybody else we could have nominated. Think about it this way – the Democrats nominated their weakest gubernatorial candidate in pretty much forever and he still won. There was something more than just campaign tactics at work here against us.
This election was on its way to ending in a loss last General Assembly session when we started hearing about transvaginal ultrasounds and minting our own currency. It was headed in the wrong direction when the Star Scientific scandal cut down one of our greatest assets – a popular sitting Governor – and kept him on the sidelines the whole time. It was headed in the wrong direction when the junior Senator from Texas decided he wasn’t getting enough press and shut the government down for almost two weeks less than a month before the election for no real reason.
I hope this election gets the Republican Party to refocus on our past successes. When we were the party that could make government work, we won. When we became the party that wanted to shut government down, we lost. Ken Cuccinelli is a good man and a smart man, and I don’t think he’s done with politics yet. It’s important that in all the post mortem hand-wringing, we don’t ignore how he got a lot of things right in this campaign.
Time to learn from this loss and use it as the springboard to victory, because the next elections will be here before we know it.
That’s why Republicans don’t retreat in Virginia – we advance.
