How Democratic fund-raiser scored Dean knockout
Lynn Sweet, Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun Times and Spring Fellow within the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (KSG), held an interesting workshop on Feb. 19th about how a Democratic political operative, David Jones, waged a small ad campaign to "take down" Howard Dean.
Here's the background piece that was passed out at the beginning of the session.
[ I recorded the session which lasted approx. 90 minutes. Here's the MP3. The paper shuffling you hear at the beginning of the meeting dies down after the meeting got started. ]
Jones, the featured speaker, used a "527 organization" to raise $663,000 to finance his campaign. Per Sweet's background piece...
"527" relates to the section of the Internal Revenue Code under which these groups operate. According to the rules, 527 groups cannot coordinate with campaigns, and they cannot advocate for a specific candidate.
Sweet kicked off the meeting by showing three different 30 second ads that Jones ran during the Dec. 2003 timeframe. [link here to the actual .avi's when and if I can get them]. The central message(s) of the ads were that Howard Dean:
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was endorsed 7 times by the NRA
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supported legislation that "cut" medicare
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as a governor of a small New England state, did not have the foreign relations experience to lead the United States in a battle against Osama Bin Laden.
Jones developed his ad strategy after conducting interviews with approximately 800 likely Iowa caucus attendees, 77% of whom self identified as "liberals." He wanted to present "facts" in his anti Dean ads which would cause these "liberal" caucus goers not to vote for Dean.
Jones' stated motivation behind the Dean attacks was that he "firmly believed that Dean would be a disaster for the Democratic Party.
Most of the comments and questions from the attendees centered on the fact that while the ads may have been factual, they were simplistic and in some cases used inflammatory images like a guy firing off an AK47 while the "voice over" states that Howard Dean was endorsed by the NRA.
Jones made no apologies for the campaign. His objective was to "take out" Dean and he did. Lynn Sweet's position was "Hey, you might like the tactics, but this is real politics." Steve Jardin, another IOP fellow and long time Democratic campaign manager, seemed to echo Sweet's position. Gary Flowers, yet another IOP fellow and Director of Operations for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition, did the mini rant about how the Republicans stole the 2000 election and that these evil people must be stopped.
Next week's "Real Politics" session will feature Steve McMahon as guest speaker. McMahon is Joe Trippi's partner in the media consulting firm of Trippi McMahon. Trippi was Dean's campaign manager up until just after the NH primary. Trippi and McMahon were the targets of an expose article in the Washington Post which highlighted the unusual arrangement whereby Trippi's media consulting firm received agency fees for the placement of most of "Dean for America" TV spots.
Should be an interesting session.
8:17:18 PM 
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