Bumped back up. -Dan
As someone who was somewhat agnostic about what to do about the Doc-Dicker-Farnese First District race, I am stunned by this:
THE TOP TWO aides to state Senate candidate Anne Dicker left her campaign over the weekend, following several days of intrigue over the possibility that she or attorney Larry Farnese would get out of the race.
Dicker said yesterday that she'd fired her campaign manager, Karim Olaechea, after a series of disagreements on the direction of her campaign - and a conversation with political consultant Larry Ceisler, an adviser to the third candidate in the Senate race, union leader John Dougherty.
Dicker's finance director, Matt Goldfine, decided on his own to follow Olaechea out the door.
First, it is widely understood that a 3 person race benefits John Dougherty. The idea that Anne is getting campaign advice from Larry Ceisler- who has long worked for Doc- is totally bizarre. We can all agree that that is not particularly normal campaign behavior, right? Good.
And what was that advice that Anne got from the Dougherty campaign that she bought into? Apparently, it was... to go hard after the votes of Larry Farnese. Huh?
Now, we can all understand why Doc would want Anne to go after Farnese, and therefore seal a Doc win. But, for someone like me, who generally understood that with no Fumo, the least desirable outcome was a Doc win, this raises serious questions about the judgment of Anne Dicker.
Let's remember, she got a lot of crap from the progressive community when she supported Tom Knox in the Mayoral election. Now, with a whole host of progressive groups endorsing her, she is trying to help John effin' Dougherty? I doubt she told PfC et. al. that was going to be her fallback strategy. (I would say this calls into judgment the whole Dicker campaign, but her campaign staff appears to have quit in protest that her new goal has shifted to cutting down Farnese. Now, because they have principles, they are in the newspaper as being 'fired.' Hey guys, keep your head up.)
This campaign has gone from a mess, to a total joke.
Anne has really
ridiculously bad judgment.
Dicker/Dougherty Campaign
It's really not that hard to figure out. Dicker and Dougherty have a deal. I guess that's not what her staff signed up for...
mindboggling
For the life of me, I don't understand why she would call Ceisler - unless there were dark motives. I wish she would drop out to stop Doc from buying (or worse) this election.
Also mind-boggling
is Dougherty getting away with this:
Let's take a deep breath
I do not believe that Anne Dicker is capable of making a deal with Doc. Anne is a true-blue idealist.
I do believe, however, that Anne Dicker is capable of making a strategic error and compounding it by firing her campaign staff, thus calling attention to the disarray in her campaign and leading people to question her motives.
And I believe that Anne's hatred of Vince Fumo might lead her to accept a very risky course of action that might make a Doc victory more likely.
Of course, whether it is a strategic error to fight with Larry Farnese over Center City votes is not clear. Doesn't she need those votes to win? So she might make this move as an attempt to win the race, not as an attempt to help Doc. But if her campaign focuses entirely on those votes, and ignores other possible swing voters, that won't work either.
Larry Ceisler is a much more complicated figure than most folks realize. He has worked for Doc, but he is not just Doc's guy. And he has a long term relationship with progressives in the city including Anne.
The larger strategic error Anne may be making is in not considering the advice to drop out and endorse Larry Farnese. With Larry Farnese so much better funded; with his ties in South Philly that she can't match; and with the Inquirer endorsement, that might have been the best way for Anne to serve the progressive cause. And that is especially true if, as I suggested above, going after Farnese’s base with a hard attack on him is the only way to win because it is also a way that runs a very big risk of helping Doc win.
Larry Farnese is a genuine progressive and decent and smart guy who has also campaigned in a way respectful of Anne and all she has accomplished. If he has the support of Fumo and friends, so what? That might just mean that with Larry we will get the progressive side of Fumo--which has brought about many good things--without the negative.
At any rate, the spin on the race is probably going to dominate the truth of the race. And it sure looks like the Dicker campaign is all but dead and Farnese is the best progressive choice.
Honestly curious
This whole affair feels too sloppy and poorly executed to be a 'calculated' move by any of the camps. So here's my question(s):
Why hasn't Olaechea been more vocal about the nature of his dispute with Dicker?
Are we really to believe he doesn't offer a parting quote, walking out on a candidate he believes has sold out?
Seriously... what do you think this 'philosophical difference' was actually about?
Nathan Foley
Dougherty for Senate
Maybe Karim hasn't been vocal because
Karim is an honorable man who wouldn't turn on the campaign he worked for even if his relationship to the candidate had such a bad end?
Lets step it back a bit
I do think the rash action in this was Anne's in terms of deciding to fire her entire staff but I think it was just that - rash. I personally don't think Anne is colluding with Dougherty. (She of course isn't colluding with you guys right, Nathan?) I think as the campaign as a whole was faced with tough choices about what could be done with limited finacial resources there was differences of opinions about how to "distribute the pain" to the other candidates in terms of the secondary impact of Anne's campaign on her two opponents.
Karim I think (and I agree) felt that politics in this town has been dominated by the Hatfields vs. the McCoys for far too long. Karim I think emphatically believed in Anne's campaign as being at a certain level explicitly about building a truly independent vision of progressive politics in this city - win, lose, or draw. And for Karim that meant a strategy that by design would indirectly "hurt" both opponents campaigns equally and also that specifically would go emphatically after new registrants coming into the process for the first time because of the impact of the Obama presidential campaign.
Anne I am told felt differently on both counts in that for her Farnese is too much a continuation of Fumo's empire and therefore to her more deserving of "pain" at a certain level than Dougherty is. I disagree in that analysis but thats certainly her decision to make.
The Daily News story is quite specific. Anne approved specifically of the terms Karim offered to Abernathy for a proposed high-stakes winner-take-all debate.
If you pitch a challenge that you think is fair to an opponent, its a logical bargaining tactic if they balk at the proposal and you are serious to escalate and call them out. I feel like Anne made her commitment when she agreed to the challenge in the first place and at the very least is guilty of poor management if she did not specify that the high-stakes debate she was proposing in front of the Inquirer Editorial Board was not supposed to become known to that board itself. I for one don't really see how you exert pressure on your opponent to accept the terms of such a debate if you don't at some point inform the proposed judges of that debate that they might be included in such a plan.
So if Anne after talking to Larry Ceisler had a sudden case of buyer's remorse about the proposed debate it was exactly that - buyer's remorse - and noone else's responsibility but her own. Its absurd to blame your campaign manager for executing the plan you explicitly signed off on.
On the same token if after consulting with Ceisler, Anne suddenly also felt the need to make some drastic changes to the entire strategic direction of where the campaign was putting its limited fiscal resources, its not unreasonable for the staff ask questions. It was after all they who had worked with her over many months helping to develop that strategy and whose hard work had helped in part to put her in her poll position (in whoever's poll you decide to take as most accurate) in the first place. As an aspiring legislator there is probably a pretty strong case to be made that an aspect of "leadership" in this instance means not dealing with the problem as a case of "do it the way I say now or get the hell out". That said its Anne's name on the ballot and its ultimately her campaign to do what she wants with it.
I hope that these words are taken in the spirit they are intended - out of respect for some the "great ideas" and issues that Anne Dicker and her campaign team have brought to the forefront of this race and not to trash anyone involved for an all-to-human squabble about sudden short-notice change of strategy.
I, for one, think this race has already been about way too many of those sudden last minute changes in strategy (on several candidate's part) and at a certain level I'm left wishing the whole thing were already over.
Edit- I am course speaking here as myself, as someone who vollunteered a bit around the campaign and who has sometimes been known to have a beer or two with Karim on occassion. I do not purport to have any "special insight" on exactly how anybody involved exactly feels about how this went down or how any of them are likely to feel about it 48 hours from now. Please take my post with all appropriate grains of salt necessary.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
These are all good questions.
I would like to help dispell all these rumors as soon as I can, and I will try to post tomorrow.
The most important thing I want to say is that this 'Anne cut a deal with Dougherty' rumor is the beginning of some negative campaigning against Anne that is going to come down in the next week.
According to a poll run in South Philly (you guys might have gotten it), here are the negative messages folks are testing against Anne. I just want to get this out of the way.
Here we go...
1. Anne Dicker is prolife. (Truth: Anne is a liberal Democratic prochoice woman, but it was used very successfullly in this district before.)
2. Anne supported Tom Knox for mayor. (She did, and of course I very strenously disagreed, but it was because of his stance on casinos, which Nutter stayed out of at the time.)
3. Anne has Republican donors. (This is true, she has a few David Oh fish in a sea of Democrats). However, unlike Dougherty, she doesn't do a damn thing to help Republicans get elected.
More later...
Thanks.
Hannah
Negative campaigning against Anne Dicker
Who do you think is testing those themes or push-polling them? The Farnese campaign has said little negative about Anne except to question her ability to win the race. So is it the Dougherty campaign?
Why would you think that those possible lines of attack have anything to do with the notion that Anne cut a deal with Dougherty? That idea--which I rejected above--came from Anne's relationship with Larry Ceisler and her campaign staff's opposition to the new campaign strategy Anne seems to have gotten from Ceisler. And no one would be talking about this if Anne had not fired her campaign team and brought all this into the public realm.
So the question you should really be answering is why is Anne creating negative press against Anne?
And while you are at it, perhap you can explain Anne's strategy for winning this election.
Bingo!
1. If you are running to win, you run against the front runner (in this case the guy ahead in everybody's polls, with the biggest war chest, with the ward support - John Dougherty on all 3 counts)
2. If you are pretending to run to win but really running to build yourself for another office, or to build the progressive movement generally you run primarily against the biggest target (John Dougherty)
3. If you are running as the "good government" candidate you primarily run against the guy directly marred by a Federal investigation that says he took kickbacks to let a longtime friend rip off his union's benefit package to the tune of $900K, who is suing to overturn campaign finance law, who just took a questionable gift from a developer and casino investor, against the guy allegedly behind the the still unsettled voter fraud case against David Oh. On all 4 counts, John Dougherty.
4. If you are running as the "real anti-casino candidate" in the race, you run primarily against the guy who refuses to take any meaningful stand whatsoever on the issue (Dougherty) as opposed to the somewhat uninspiring "vapor" (as Hannah has characterized Farnese elsewhere) who at points seems to parrot your own stances on the issue and goes on the record with it - so at least later on you can bash him for not living up to his campaign promises.
5. If you are running to take down the distortion that a decade of the Fumo-Doc blood feud has had on city politics, you at least consider making sure none of the primary players are in office themselves. A maleable, 2nd choice stand-in for one camp (which even I admit is a bit of an unfair exaggeration of Farnese's shortcomings) that repeatedly picks up/appropriates your own stands on the issues is still preferable to one of the "bosses" further consolidating their power without making meaningful promises of what they will actually do.
I've been trying out of respect to hold back on this but in a word I just can't see any strategy that appears to give Doc a pass as anything but boneheaded.
Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Please see the Daily News' endorsement today.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20080415_ANNE_DICKER_FOR_STATE_S...
The newspaper that published this article endorsed her.
And from the same issue
Dougherty's forces allegedly fielding illegal anonymous anti-Nutter flyers last primary season and then hiding the money they put into it.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/17728359.html
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Why is anyone surprised by this?
This is almost exactly the scenario that played out in 2006 when Dougherty used Dicker to elect Mike O'Brien in his proxy fight with Fumo, who was helping Graboyes. Dicker stayed in that race (on Doc's advice, if I remember correctly), came in second and then - inexplicably - declared victory. The fact of the matter is, if Ceisler thought she had any shot at doing anything but siphoning off votes from Farnese and helping Dougherty win big, he would have told her to get out. If she doesn't know that, she is clueless. Calling your opponent's media consultant for campaign advice shows a stunning lack of judgment. Following that consultant's advice shows a complete lack of intelligence (I don't care what Ceisler's relationship is with anyone in the progressive community, he is well-paid by Dougherty).
Just like 2006, she is now a Dougherty shill. Whether she is cognizant of this fact, I don't know. Frankly, if she didn't get anything from Dougherty for staying in, I think I have less respect for her.
Anne wants to be a player but she just keeps on getting played
Anne is clueless. In fact that's probably the nicest term I could think of to describe her mental acumen. Anne seems to think that she can play "the game" and outsmart the rest of the progressive community in Philly, but she just doesn't have it in her.
Never mind her campaign, Anne is a total joke.
Giving Doc Too Much Credit
That old story about how Dougherty 'used' Anne Dicker to ensure Mike O'Brien would win in the proxy fight with Fumo's candidate strikes me as a bit overblown, given that Anne came within a couple hundred votes of knocking off O'Brien too. If that indeed was Johnny Doc's play in 2006, then he came damn close to losing his gamble.
Trying to game the triage in this race is even more dangerous in this election, given the large turnout and the many new voters who will be brought out by the presidential primary. Dougherty may find himself burned this time.
Sort of
In this instance, turnout will increase across the board but most amongst African Americans.
Dougherty, if you look at geographic breakdown of support has done a better job reaching out to voters around Point Breeze but its a shallow, name recognition kind of support. His media features a disproportionate level of one African American building trades worker saying "John Dougherty got me a job", he has mail pieces echoing the same idea and recently Doc has started heavily bombarding African American radio with the same general message.
In a city where our mayor refers to the lack of minority inclusion in most of the building trades as "economic apartheid" I think the case can be made for astrategy that included Anne making a specific attempt to reach out to the massive number of African American new registrants while simultaneously correcting the record a little on the building trades unions actual record in terms of minority inclusion.
Anne "fired" her entire in a fit of temper after constulting with Dougherty's media cnsultant because she had decided she was shutting down all efforts specfically aimed at reaching African American voters in the First in favor of a strategy of putting all her money into a Center City mail piece aimed primarily at Larry Farnese.
Anne in term of strategy has specfically thrown her full weight against Farnese and shut down all efforts aimed at reaching to the areas and demographics where voter registration records show registration has shot up. She's completely decided to turn her back on "the larger turnout and many new voters" in the areas where new registration is highest and Dougherty's support is softest.
On top of that in the course of the meltdown Anne apparently said to the effect that she personally prefered Dougherty winning over Farnese. Increasingly as an active Dicker volunteer and public supporter until this break and change in strategy, I don't think Anne is being "used" by Dougherty. I think she is voluntarily letting anger, spite and resentment at the Farnese campaign go after territory she perceived as "hers" lead her down a strategic path of failure.
Can I ask how you are registered to vote in this election, DebtorsPrison? Are you yourself registered Democratic at this time?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Perish the Thought!!!!
Oh yes indeed, I am most definitely registered Democrat. I get hives just imagining myself registered Republican. Although in my youth, I was. Like Farnese, I grew up in Delaware County, indoctrinated into the cult of the elephant. Unlike him, however, when I moved into the city at age 21, and stopped drinking the Kool-Aid, I changed my registration to Democrat pretty quickly.
I greatly appreciate your insightful thoughts on this race, Sean. Although I remain a Dicker supporter, and in fact have had my doubts about Farnese heightened (today's Inquirer article didn't help--I don't particularly want my state senator financially beholden to Fumo cronies from Westmoreland, Beaver and Allegheny counties, and I consider that about as far from 'grassroots' as you can get), at least it's nice to be debating the relative merits of two progressive candidates in one race.