Nothing like having a seemingly bloodless bit of tactics turned in to a multi-day story.
Laura Moser
Democratic congressional candidate Laura Moser packed her Saturday with campaign events: spinning in the morning, drinking mimosas shortly after, block walking in the afternoon and hosting a “Vote Your Values” rally to finish things off. And at each stop, she did not shy away from the elephant in the room.
Raising her voice to be heard above cheers and applause from her supporters, Moser announced that since national Democrats came out against her on Thursday, she raised more than $60,000 — as well as received flowers and eight free meals.
“I would rather not have been attacked by my own party and have not had the money, any day,” she said. “But I’m glad to see that people are tired of politics as usual. People are tired of bringing down a candidate who has run a totally positive campaign. And there are more of us than there are of them.”
[…]
On Thursday, Moser’s campaign announced it had raised nearly $150,000 in the first 45 days of the year, a number that has been growing after the DCCC’s posting. The candidate said on Saturday that she has received more than 15,000 unique contributions and more than 1,000 volunteers have signed on to her campaign. Moser has also amassed a massive online following for a first-time congressional candidate. Many of her supporters are also fans of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who unsuccessfully sought the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
I feel pretty confident saying that had the DCCC sat on its research for now pending the outcome of the primary, neither the Texas Tribune nor Chron columnist Erica Greider would have devoted a weekend-of-early-voting story to this race, or to this candidate in particular. Maybe next time y’all come up with a brilliant piece of strategy regarding a contested primary, you run it by a few locals first, to gauge their reaction? Just a suggestion. Again, whatever you think of Laura Moser and her merits as a candidate, it’s impossible to imagine that staying mum and seeing if she made it to the runoff and then deciding how to proceed would have produced a worse outcome for the DCCC.
As far as the fundraising goes, consider this:
Name Thru 12/31 Thru 2/14 In 2018
===============================================
Triantaphyllis 927,023 1,050,395 123,372
Fletcher 751,352 860,147 108,795
Moser 616,643 765,646 149,003
Westin 389,941 500,389 110,448
Cargas 63,123 85,904 22,781
Butler 41,474 55,762 14,288
Sanchez ? 18,025 ?
All numbers represent cash raised. The “through 12/31” totals can be found here, while the numbers for this year so far are in the current FEC reports. Moser remains in third place by this metric, though she has gained ground on Lizzie Fletcher and Alex Triantaphyllis. All of this took place before the DCCC hit job, and her campaign claims to have raised another $60K in the three or four days after. You can look at this as a justification for acting now – if you believe Moser is an inferior candidate, as the DCCC apparently does – or you can see it as stepping on a rake and then falling backwards into a mud puddle. I’ll leave it to you to decide.
Let’s be very clear about one thing: Nobody knows who is going to make it to the runoff in this race. The top four candidates all have a core group of supporters, but so too does James Cargas, who has a lot of residual good will – and name recognition – from having run against Culberson three times. I guarantee you, the candidates themselves have no idea who is winning, in part because a significant share of the people who have voted so far are people with limited to no recent history of voting in Democratic primaries. That’s awesome news from an enthusiasm point of view, but it means that a lot of voters are getting multiple mailers from the campaigns, while many others may have had no direct contact. I have no idea what the less-engaged voters who have yet to make it to the polls will think of this – I’m sure some will be mad at the DCCC, but some will also see what they had to say about Moser and may base their vote on that. I don’t have any more of a sense who may make it to overtime now than I did in December. I just suspect we’ll still be talking about it well past the point of where anything could be learned from it.
I’ll put $1 on the result being that DCCC just gift-wrapped the nomination for Moser. Still up to her team and vols to convert the chip on their shoulder into votes from people that don’t follow stuff like this very much. But I’d rather be in her situation than any other competitor right now.
Disclosure: I voted for one of the other candidates.
Both Westin and Fletcher are going all out on social media and web marketing for their campaigns. I have yet to see a Moser ad on social media. If Fletcher and Westin are reaching the new voters with their strategy, they may be in ones in the run off.
Yesterday while I was home at lunch a Westin supporter appeared at my door to seek support for her candidate.
She drove specifically to my house to solicit the support. Westin’s campaign must be micro-targeting folks who vote in every election like me. I voted Dem in the last primary, but I sometimes vote in the Rep primary. My precinct normally votes +80% Republican.
I told her Westin is probably a 4-way race right now and that I would consider her candidate if I vote in the Dem primary.
Currently I am now considering not voting in the Rep primary (Patterson is my sole reason to vote there) and instead vote in the CD-7 Dem primary.