I feel their pain

Via Kos, I find myself feeling a twinge of sympathy for the New York Republican Party.

Anticipating historic political losses in New York tomorrow, state Republican leaders are lashing out at the national party in Washington, saying it has exploited New York donors and blown opportunities against a prime target, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The depth of frustration is hard to overstate. The national Republican Party and its candidates from outside New York have raised tens of millions of dollars here this year, party officials say. But they have spent little money helping the nominees for governor and Senate, John Faso and John Spencer, respectively, and there have been no morale-and-money-boosting visits on their behalf by leaders like President Bush or Senator John McCain.

Despite pleas for help, New York Republicans say they have been consistently rebuffed or ignored in Washington. Mr. Spencer, the challenger to Mrs. Clinton, said he was bewildered that the national party did not help him pressure her this fall, and instead left Mrs. Clinton free to campaign extensively for Democrats in other states

[...]

Mr. Faso, the candidate for governor, said that Republicans in Washington treated New York like a political A.T.M. for campaign donations and offered little in return.

"The national party comes into New York, does significant fund-raising here, and then there's very little in the way of national support for statewide races," Mr. Faso said. "It's disappointing, and a serious mistake in terms of party building."

Been there, done that. I'm a fan of Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, and I'm pleased to see it start to bear fruit in places like Wyoming, Montana, and Nebraska, but I can't say that I've seen much of a difference here. I know the DNC is paying for four field operatives, but I at least have no idea what they're doing. Maybe that's by design, or maybe I'm just not paying sufficient attention, I don't know. All I can say is that I'm not seeing the effects, and I can sure think of a number of races that could have benefitted from some extra money and/or manpower.

Of course, it's not just the national party that has seen fit to ignore Texas Dems. The powers that be here decided it wasn't worth it to fund Democrats at the statewide level. (I don't include the TDP in that assessment, but the TDP isn't about funding, even if it wanted to be.) We all know how that has gone. I suppose one can look at the Chris Bell campaign and see failure. What I see is a campaign that despite all kinds of adversity is at the very least still on track to finish ahead of the multimillion-dollar candidate who got more votes than anybody else did in 2002 and the media whore celebrity who got vast quantities of fawning coverage before the press decided at long last to start treating him like a candidate instead of a novelty. That's assuming he doesn't win outright, of course. Bell accomplished that despite a nontrivial number of movers and shakers in the Democratic Party who decided that only a non-Democrat could beat Rick Perry. At least Mr. Faso only has to contend with apathy.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on November 07, 2006 to Show Business for Ugly People | TrackBack