by | Nov 13, 2012
In case anyone hasn’t seen this yet the article below is well worth giving a read. It has been making the rounds recently (first saw on John Deethe’s blog), and is a stunning first-hand account of a Mitt Romney volunteers unfortunate experience on Election Tuesday. I don’t have any reason to doubt this story, and perhaps some of the turnout failure for the Republican nominee can be explained by situations like this occuring across the country…
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(Via Website – Ace of Spades HQ)
November 08, 2012
The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA
What is Project Orca? Well, this is what they told us:
Project ORCA is a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election.
Pretty much everything in that sentence is false. The “massive undertaking” is true, however. It would take a lot of planning, training and coordination to be done successfully (oh, we’ll get to that in a second). This wasn’t really the GOP’s effort, it was Team Romney’s. And perhaps “unprecedented” would fit if we’re discussing failure.
The entire purpose of this project was to digitize the decades-old practice of strike lists. The old way was to sit with your paper and mark off people that have voted and every hour or so, someone from the campaign would come get your list and take it back to local headquarters. Then, they’d begin contacting people that hadn’t voted yet and encourage them to head to the polls. It’s worked for years.
From the very start there were warning signs. After signing up, you were invited to take part in nightly conference calls. The calls were more of the slick marketing speech type than helpful training sessions. There was a lot of “rah-rahs” and lofty talk about how this would change the ballgame.
Working primarily as a web developer, I had some serious questions. Things like “Has this been stress tested?”, “Is there redundancy in place?” and “What steps have been taken to combat a coordinated DDOS attack or the like?”, among others. These types of questions were brushed aside (truth be told, they never took one of my questions). They assured us that the system had been relentlessly tested and would be a tremendous success.
On one of the last conference calls (I believe it was on Saturday night), they told us that our packets would be arriving shortly. Now, there seemed to be a fair amount of confusion about what they meant by “packet”. Some people on Twitter were wondering if that meant a packet in the mail or a pdf or what. Finally, my packet arrived at 4PM on Monday afternoon as an emailed 60 page pdf. Nothing came in the mail. Because I was out most of the day, I only got around to seeing it at around 10PM Monday night. So, I sat down and cursed as I would have to print out 60+ pages of instructions and voter rolls on my home printer. Naturally, for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, my printer would not print in black and white with an empty magenta cartridge (No HP, I will never buy another one of your products ever again). So, at this point I became panicked. I was expected to be at the polls at 6:45AM and nothing was open. I was thankfully able to find a Kinko’s open until 11PM that was able to print it out and bind it for me, but this is not something I should have had to do. They expected 75-80 year old veteran volunteers to print out 60+ pages on their home computers? The night before election day? From what I hear, other people had similar experiences. In fact, many volunteers never received their packets at all.
At 6:30AM on Tuesday, I went to the polls. I was immediately turned away because I didn’t have my poll watcher certificate. Many, many people had this problem. The impression I got was this was taken care of because they had “registered me”. Others were as well. But apparently, I was supposed to go on my own to a Victory Center to pick it up, but that was never communicated properly. Outside of the technical problems, this was the single biggest failure of the operation. They simply didn’t inform people that this was a requirement. In fact, check out my “checklist” from my ORCA packet:
Notice anything missing? My guess is the second “Chair (if allowed)” was supposed to be “poll watcher certificate” but they put chair twice. This was an instruction packet that went out to 30,000+ people. Did no one proof-read it?
So, I headed back home to see if I could get my certificate. I called their official help line. It went unanswered. I tried their legal line. Same thing. I emailed them. No response. I continued to do this for six straight hours and never got a response. I even tried to call three local victory centers. All went straight to voicemail.
While I was home, I took to Twitter and the web to try to find some answers. From what I saw, these problems were widespread. People had been kicked from poll watching for having no certificate. Others never received their pdf packets. Some were sent the wrong packets from a different area. Some received their packet, but their usernames and passwords didn’t work.
Now a note about the technology itself. For starters, this was billed as an “app” when it was actually a mobile-optimized website (or “web app”). For days I saw people on Twitter saying they couldn’t find the app on the Android Market or iTunes and couldn’t download it. Well, that’s because it didn’t exist. It was a website. This created a ton of confusion. Not to mention that they didn’t even “turn it on” until 6AM in the morning, so people couldn’t properly familiarize themselves with how it worked on their personal phone beforehand.
Next, and this part I find mind-boggingly absurd, the web address was located at “https://www.whateveritwas.com/orca“. Notice the “s” after http. This denotes it’s a secure connection, something that’s used for e-commerce and web-based email. So far, so good. The problem is that they didn’t auto-forward the regular “http” to “https” and as a result, many people got a blank page and thought the system was down. Setting up forwarding is the simplest thing in the world and only takes seconds, but they failed to do it. This is compounded by the fact that mobile browsers default to “http” when you just start with “www” (as 95% of the world does).
By 2PM, I had completely given up. I finally got ahold of someone at around 1PM and I never heard back. From what I understand, the entire system crashed at around 4PM. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I decided to wait for my wife to get home from work to vote, which meant going very late (around 6:15PM). Here’s the kicker, I never got a call to go out and vote. So, who the hell knows if that end of it was working either.
So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity’s sake.
The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that.
I’m on Twitter at @JohnEkdahl if you have any questions.
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by | Nov 12, 2012
The way TCR: Iowa set the table for the Iowa Senate’s 22 contested races was as follows: 9 races we predicted heavily favored one Party or the other, 8 races we predicted as leaning one way or the other, and 5 were deemed toss-ups.
The reason I was personally so bullish on a Senate takeover by Republicans was that if these predictions held Democrats would have had to run the table of the 5 toss-up races to keep control of the chamber. In the end, and impressively I might add, this is pretty much what they did. While most of my prognosticating here was accurate, they won victories in 4 of the 5 I deemed toss-ups and managed to flip one seat I had leaning Republican, the end result was not.
Looking For Answers
The best way to fix the problem the GOP had on Tuesday is to dissect what happened. We will have much more on this next week, when I will post a data chart, but for now let’s take the birds-eye view of the facts in the 4 toss-up contests Republicans lost and the one race where a “lean†Republican incumbent was upset.
The spending numbers below represent the cumulative amounts of money that were spent in each race by each side in the last 3 ½ months of the campaigns (July 19 to November 2nd). This includes the money the candidate raised and spent added to the number the Party spent for each ‘in-kindâ€. Since it is common practice for both sides to have the candidate donate large portions of their funds to their Parties, to spend both on their individual behalf and on other candidates the leadership feels could use it, I have gone through all the reports to subtract out this number. The result gives an accurate view of the actual dollars spent on the race (trust me it wasn’t a barrel of fun). Looking at the dollar amounts and the timing of ad buys for each side is very telling and we will break this down further later this week. For now here is the general overview.
SD 49— Naeve (R) defeated by Hart (D)
This race was an open seat due to no incumbent residing in the newly drawn district. It was a very tough district for Republicans but they had a great candidate who ran strong and should be commended.
Bottom Line= Naeve (R) was outspent by $84,000, faced a (D+3,721) registration deficit, and lost by 2,907 votes. Despite being outspent he cut into the registration advantage by 800—he was the only Republican in this list to beat the numbers.
SD 46— Hamerlinck (R) defeated by Chris Brase (D)
This was an incumbent Republican seat that I wrongly had projected to lean Republican. Republican Hamerlinck’s final report was not filed for some reason, but in the first filing he showed spending $30,000 on his own while the Party spent $30,000 for him. On the other side Brase (D) spent $330,000 on the effort. Very telling here is that of this total $259,000 in assistance came directly from the Democrat Party.
Bottom Line= It’s hard to say much on the Republican side without the last report filed, but on the Democrat side the story is a lot of money poured in to facilitate this upset. Between July 19th and October 19th Democrats spent $167,000 before throwing in an additional $157,000 in the final few weeks. The result in ballots cast ended up being a D+409 advantage turned into a 1,954 Democratic victory. Something tells me this ends up being a story of an incumbent hugely outspent and not being backed up with enough dollars from the Party.
SD 36— Jech (R) defeated by Sodders (D)
This was an uphill fight from the jump for Republicans, which many say started when Jech defeated former Senator Larry McKibben in the primary. The conventional wisdom was the Tea Party candidate Jech, who had already lost two runs at a House seat, was a far less formidable candidate than the Branstad backed McKibben. In the final 3 ½ months Jech impressively raised over a $100,000, but the GOP only threw in $46,000 total, including a miniscule $14,000 for the final push. Conversely, Democrats did not take Jech lightly, giving Sodders $358,000 in the final months.
Bottom Line= In the end Jech was outspent by $206,000 in an R+121 district, and she lost by 2,263 votes. There is a ton of interesting stuff going on here. At first glance you could explain away the GOP only giving Jech $46,000 by assuming she was polling poorly. The only problem with that is if she was there’s no way Democrats pump $224,000 to Sodders in the final two weeks. Clearly one Party had a bad read on this race, and it’s likely it was the Democrats. Since Sodders won by 2,263 votes it’s hard to believe he needed the near quarter-million dollars at the end. I tend to agree with the establishment that this race became too heavy of a lift with Jech as a candidate—even though she was badly outspent, it is still pretty amazing to have a 121 voter registration advantage going in and lose the election by well over 2000 votes.
Part 2 Upcoming
Later this week we will look at the other two painful Senate loses (SD 30 and SD 26), document some trends occurring in these five races, and then, finally, make some judgements on what could have been done differently  The ultimate goal here is not to call any particular person or organization out—the goal here is to identify the shortcomings so they can be corrected. Ironically it appears that two years from now Senate Republicans will be in the exact same spot of needing to flip two seats for control.
If a better effort and strategy are not employed—the brutal result will surely be the same.
((To Go Straight To Part 2 Click Here))
by | Nov 6, 2012
Final Thoughts
Setting The Senate Table– Here is the link to our Iowa Senate overview. Remember that as tonight starts Democrats already have 13 seats to the Republicans 11. Factoring in uncontested races and races heavily favored to one party or the other the tally is R’s-19 and D’s 18. Further adding in the 8 seats I see leaning one way or another leaves the count at R’s-24 and D’s21–with 5 seats as complete toss-ups.
A Blown Opportunity—The Republican Party of Iowa has done a great job this cycle by getting a candidate on the ballot in every Senate district statewide. That said, regardless of how things turn out tonight, if they fail to take the majority a big lost opportunity will be in Senate District 34. It is fair to note the Party really had nothing to do with this debacle and nobody could have predicted Randi Shannon’s melt down, which was the most embarassing episode in Iowa politcs in the last 10 years. However you feel about the Ron Paul movement afoot here in Iowa, the Liberty PAC endorsed and supported Shannon and must take a ton of blame here. This type of scenario playing out is absolutely unacceptable—if Republicans fall one seat short…this will prove haunting.
Differing Campaign Strategies—As we have discussed here before, one of the interesting things about the hotly contested Iowa Senate races is the opposite ways in which the two Parties have distributed money and resources.
While the Republican Party chose to spread their money around relatively evenly, the Democrats have staked out three races that they deem unacceptable to lose. In these three races, combining the October 19th and the just released November 2nd reports, the Democrats have spent $1.01 million dollars. The numbers are $381,000 in SD 26, $358,000 in SD 36, and $277,000 in SD 48.
If they don’t win these three seats, and lose a few other close ones they chose not to invest heavily in, this strategy will have been a disaster.
Time For RPI To Deliver—With the changing face of the RPI and the well documented upheavals along the way, perhaps no one has more on the line here in Iowa than the new leadership. Many of these new folks have heavy Ron Paul ties and have impressive political accomplishments in the past—these include Ron Paul finishing a very close 3rd in the Iowa Caucuses and winning numerous Straw Polls in several states. Winning elections is far different.
If Republican candidates do well this group can cement themselves, if they do not the battle to remove them will begin in earnest. I for one am pulling for them to succeed—a leadership that knows how to win elections is never a bad thing. If it turns out they can win elections, something tells me that compromising on both sides and co-existing is a real possibility.
What To Watch For
• If Ben Lange beats Bruce Braley or even runs within a few points of him, I believe there is over an 80% chance Republicans take the majority in the Iowa Senate.
• If Tom Latham is able to carry Polk County—and Romney is able to put up a good showing here—even if Romney loses Iowa I predict he will win the Presidency.
• If Tom Latham carries Polk County, 90% chance Dan Charleston is the new sheriff in town.
• Any of the following candidates winning will be the sign of a major Republican wave in Iowa—and likely nationally. The following are all great candidates and good people who are running in heavily Democratic districts: Dave Edwards (SD 16), Vicki Stogdill (SD 18), and Patti Branco (HD 34).
Predictions
President— Mitt Romney wins. Besides the enthusiam advantage, this prediction is based on the fact that no president in the history of our Country has been re-elected with economic numbers this bad and a set of “accomplishments” this unpopular. If he wins tonight then a shift has occured in America where results and actual achievements do not matter–I am cynical in general…but don’t believe we’ve reached this point yet.
Iowa Senate— Republicans win majority. Final count R’s-27 and D’s-23 (Note=this is counting Pat Ward’s Senate 22 seat as a Republican eventuality)
Iowa House— Republicans hold majority. R’s-57 and D’s-43
Iowa Congressional Delegation— Victors= King, Latham, Loebsack, and in an upset Lange just beats Braley in the state’s closest contest. Lange has a 25,000 voter registration deficit to make up here, but the district has seen him run both now and in 2010 and I think this history gets him over the hump this time. 25,000 is a big number to make up for sure, but keep in mind that he has a pool of 187,000 active Non-party voters to make it up in.
Thanks for following us in the lead-up to tonight, and be sure to check back in the following days for the breakdown of what happened here in Iowa and what it all means for the future of our great state!
by Art Smith | Nov 5, 2012
On October 24, I had the opportunity to sit in on my district’s House Candidate Forum held at the Windsor Heights Community Center.  The event was well attended and the audience was very cordial and appreciative of the candidates.  Chris Hagenow (website), a Republican lawyer who currently represents the district, and Susan Judkins (website), a Democrat who currently works as a Community Development Specialist for MSA Professional Services.
Both candidates were very gracious to each other, and seemed well informed on issues that were important to those in the audience. Â The format of the evening was to simply give each candidate 2 minutes to respond to questions provided by the audience.
The candidates were given an opportunity to provide opening comments. Â Both provided background and expressed an interest in working with members of the House on both sides of the aisle. Â Susan was a Republican until 2003, and considers herself a fiscal conservative. Â Chris shared his satisfaction over this past session’s success in providing a balanced budget.
I won’t cover the whole session blow-by-blow, but note a few key thoughts.
Both candidates tended to provide answers that were similar in nature around priorities and needs in the state. Â It was clear that they both understood what is on the minds of the voters in District 43. Â The cordiality was both pleasant after watching the presidential debates, and a bit discouraging as finding real differences was a challenge. Â Chris and Susan both were quick to say clearly that they agreed with each other on many topics. Â They both see the Economy, Education and Property Tax Reform as key areas to work with members of both parties for success. Â Small Business growth is clearly a focus of success in both candidates’ minds.
One of the best ways to see their differences can be found in how they each want to deal with Property Tax Reform. Â Chris wants to roll back rates. Â Susan wants to maintain the rates but provide an income tax credit up to a certain value. Â As a result, the spending at the local level continues as before, but now being subsidized by the State. Â If local taxes are too high, then Susan’s solution just pushes the problem up a level of government, but doesn’t really solve the problem, especially if it is felt everywhere in Iowa. Â (I personally disagree with the State stepping in and telling local communities how much tax they can collect, and more-so having the state subsidize the local community. Â The local leaders should be directly accountable to their taxpayers, period.). Â I’m impressed that Susan is considering an idea to try to compromise on this issue.
Another example, also related to taxes, is when asked about the Gas Tax, Susan also expressed an interest in raising it, and Chris said “No”.
When asked about funding for libraries, the self-proclaimed fiscal conservative expressed an interest in using the existing surplus in the State Treasury to provide additional money for libraries. Â This is a type of comment to watch for. Â We’re talking about funding something that is slowly becoming less and less important to society, and will likely never recover because everything is going digital. Â Yes, even in the digital age we are seeing ways to continue using the community lending model, which I applaud, but I don’t see the need for state funding to subsidize libraries any longer. Â If a community wants to provide this service, they can raise the money locally. Â The surplus (this is money beyond the Rainy-day Fund) needs to be returned to the tax payers, not be thrown at non-existent problems.
Unfortunately, this thinking exists across both parties.  Just because the revenue has been gathered doesn’t make it the property of the State leaders to squander frivolously.  It belongs to the people, and should be returned to the people as soon as possible.
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On this same evening, I happened to run into Desmond Adams (along with Michael Libbie, whom I’ve known for a couple of years now) for the first time.  Desmond is on the ballot in my district for the Senate seat that was held by Pat Ward, but for which a special election is now planned due to Pat’s death.  I’ve heard this from others, but meeting Desmond convinced me that he will be a formidable candidate and would have made Pat’s campaign a challenge if she had not passed.  Desmond gave me his door-knocking speech, and we had a brief discussion about fiscal matters of the State.  He, similarly to Susan, would like to see the State’s surplus put to some use, but he definitely comes across as a moderate Democrat with a desire to see the State address opportunities for efficiency while meeting the needs of individuals.  I’m very impressed with his demeanor and some of his ideas, which brings me back to the fact he is a compelling candidate.  This will be a short campaign (Republicans select their candidate this Thursday evening, and the election is on December 11).  Whomever is selected to run against Desmond will need to be ready to make an equally compelling case.  This may be a more heavily Republican district, but I expect Desmond will make this a hard battle.
by | Nov 5, 2012
The Candidates
Merlin Bartz (R)Â vs. Mary Jo Wilhelm (D)
Two sitting senators square off here. Sen. Merlin Bartz is in his second stint in the Iowa Legislature. He served one term in the Iowa House, moved up to the Iowa Senate, resigned after 8 years to join the Department of Agriculture, and finally got elected back to the senate in 2008.
Sen. Mary Jo Wilhelm formerly served on the Howard County Board of Supervisors, started her own residential appraisal business, and was first elected to the Senate in 2008.
The District
Our final race takes us to Northern Iowa’s Senate District 26, where five whole counties (Worth, Chickasaw, Floyd, Mitchell, and Howard), as well as parts of Winneshiek and Cerro Gordo, make up the territory. Not much of a built-in advantage for either candidate here as the November numbers for voter registrations are: (D-12,741) (R-12,094) (NP-17,808) (D+647).
The Race
This is without question one of the top 3 high profile legislative races in the state. Beyond being an incumbent vs. incumbent match-up, there is a lot of committee assignments and seniority on the line for each Party. Bartz serves on the Appropriations, Local Government, Rules and Administration, and Ways and Means committees. Meanwhile Wilhelm serves on the Commerce, Economic Growth, Education, Human Resources, and Local Government committees.
With the following factors in play: two incumbents, a swing district, and political control of the state likely in the balance, you would expect big money to follow—and sure enough that’s exactly what we have here. Bartz raised $150,000 on his own, while the GOP chipped in $35,000. This pales in comparison though to Sen. Wilhelm who raised $105,000 on her own but had the Democrat Senate Majority fund throw in a mind- boggling $224,000 on her behalf.
These totals make this legislative contest the one with the highest cumulative dollars spent in Iowa this year ($514,000), and the near quarter million dollar donation from the Democrat Party made Wilhelm the second biggest recipient of help from their Party of all the legislative candidates (trailing only the $237,000 Democrats gave Nate Willems in SD 48).
Disregarding for a moment the balance of power and looking at only these two candidates, I think both sides may even agree that Bartz would be a bigger loss to Republicans than Wilhelm would be to the Democrats. I do not know how specifically Wilhelm is involved on her side with policy and the moving parts of legislation, but I do know that Bartz has a world of both local and federal experience that Republicans often rely on. Put simply, besides replacing him on the four committees he serves on, it’s doubtful Republicans will be able to fully replace his intellectual assets anytime soon—that is without taking it from another area.
Two quick thoughts–one for each side
If Bartz and the Republicans lose this seat by a few hundred votes or less, which is very possible, they may look back and blame a public dispute that Bartz entered into with his neighbors in Grafton over $1,100 dollars worth of fencing. Click the link to read about this head-scratcher, but it’s safe to say this did not earn him any votes and it certainly cost him some. Especially for a guy out raising $150,000 to keep his seat, it sure seems like paying the $1,100 on his own would have been worth it.
It’s safe to say that if Wilhelm and the Democrats are unable to pull out this race…somebody in strategic leadership will be in hot water. The reason for this is that the spending strategy employed by Democrats has been to create a firewall by dumping huge money into a few races that they saw as unthinkable to lose, meanwhile the GOP has spread it’s money much more evenly. Consider this, in just three senate races (48, 36, and 26) the Democrat Party chose to invest $595,000. If on Tuesday they don’t win these races or they find themselves on the losing end of some other close races that they short-armed resources to, this strategy will shoulder a large portion of the blame.
Further Information
Merlin Bartz -Â MerlinBartz.com
Mary Jo Wilhelm -Â WilhelmForSenate.com
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In case anyone hasn’t seen this yet the article below is well worth giving a read. It has been making the rounds recently (first saw on John Deethe’s blog), and is a stunning first-hand account of a Mitt Romney volunteers unfortunate experience on Election Tuesday. I don’t have any reason to doubt this story, and perhaps some of the turnout failure for the Republican nominee can be explained by situations like this occuring across the country…
