( – promoted by odum)
Ok, I said I’d talk more about the Washington County Senate race when it was over. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but as you know, the incumbents stayed in, Kim Cheney was 4th, Donny Osman was 5th. Republican businessman archetype Jim Parker was 6th (which became my joke du jour, as I was constantly lambasted for playing it safe in that one prediction I was sure of).
The Osman campaign was the first campaign I worked on. My job was basically to brainstorm, come up with various tactics to get the word out, and to craft the message. I also designed the bumper stickers and those blue signs some of you saw everywhere. And I learned quite a bit about campaigns and campaigning.
One of the most profound things I learned was that the poison that infects national politics, and to a lesser extent, our statewide races, was nonexistent in this campaign. Peter Young, the campaign manager, and Donny often tempered my instincts to go for the jugular. I’m not talking about dirty tricks or anything, just a bit more aggression in challenging the others on the issues. The idea of running a clean and more importantly, congenial campaign was going to be the way things were done.
We had some pretty good advice getting out the gate. Early on, we had dinner with Doug Racine who offered us some tips on campaign strategy. We also met with the Democracy For America people and a rather popular Barre politician.
Donny worked his ass off, knocking on over 6,000 doors in Washington County. He seemed to have a lot of support in Montpelier. My concerns were the other three big towns, none of which nearly as liberal as Montpelier. Northfield is a tough town for a liberal. Donny even noticed a difference in the demeanor of people in the different towns, depending on the political leanings of the town.
We had a great GOTV effort, with lots of enthusiastic supporters helping to write postcards, stuff envelopes and such. In dealing with the party apparatus (one that I am incredibly skeptical of), we listened to some advice and ignored some.
Donny went into the studio and cut a folksy radio ad with Colin McCaffrey. We went and then put together a short low-quality video on YouTube. When it was well received, we had a professional film another one, 10 minutes long, about the issues, which was available on Donny’s website as well as YouTube. Donny’s son Daniel set up a MySpace page for Donny as well. We were trying to think a bit outside of the box(at least for a local campaign).
The frustrating thing about working on a local campaign is that there are no polls, nothing to indicate how you’re actually doing. It really feels like a crapshoot. I did a fairly good job keeping my optimism in check. Throughout the race, right till the end, I had no idea if we’d win. I didn’t want to be like, let’s say, Orrin Hatch’s presidential campaign team where you have to suspend reality just to show up to work on the campaign.
On election night, it was decided pretty early. Donny came in 3rd in Montpelier, a big deal considering that all of the incumbents live in Montpelier. He came in first in his old rep district, Calais/Marshfield/Plainfield. We had put a lot of legwork into Barre, I was kind of surprised that our numbers weren’t higher there. Northfield was no surprise, nor was Waterbury. Even though it was somewhat somber at election headquarters that night, I still felt really good inside (and what was happening nationally helped keep my spirits up,as well). We ran a great campaign, and we worked our asses off. They say James Brown is the hardest working man in show business; Donny was definitely the hardest working man on the campaign trail. And we did get a lot of progressive-minded people very excited.
What went wrong? Well, I think we really underestimated the power of incumbency. We were running against three popular incumbents, in a somewhat benign environment (compared to the civil union days). Kim Cheney was also well known, for it was his 3rd run. Donny is well known in Montpelier and some of the outlying towns; many more people don’t know him (well, after this campaign, hopefully they do). My own personal miscalculation was the heightened optimism I felt when watching the debates. No disrespect intended to any of the other candidates, but I think Donny kicked some major ass, very engaged, impassioned, and personable. Where I screwed up was forgetting that 95% of the electorate didn’t see or hear those debates. If they did, we might have won.
I have my own personal feelings abut the other candidates. In the interest of having a future in political doings around here, I’m not going to let ‘er rip. Let’s just say that all of them are personable, decent people. Some of them have some pretty bad politics in various areas, and some of them have just been around too damn long.
Running for senate and winning the first time is an uphill battle. It’s important to keep that in mind when doing it, but not to let it demoralize yourself. What does the future hold for Donny Osman? We’ll see… it could be a very different race two or four years from now. I suspect we haven’t heard the last of him. At least I hope not.
You can read more JDRyan (why?) at Five Before Chaos