“Government Gone Wild” – Senate Democrat Leadership Fund
Some pieces are just plain fun. This Pollie Award-winner ended a campaign practically before it started. The campaign in question was between incumbent Democratic State Senator Peter Courtney and an opponent, Randy Franke, who was seen as the most serious threat to his long tenure.
This race was immediately after a redistricting that meant much of Courtney’s district was new to him. More challenging was the fact that Franke, a longtime County Commissioner, had appeared successfully on the ballot throughout the district for years. While Courtney was popular, Franke was a real threat – moderate Republican, name ID and running against Courtney as a typical tax and spend liberal Democrat. This shaped up as one of the Republican caucus’ top target races.
While Franke had a great profile, opposition research showed he also had a record that was at odds with the fiscal conservative/guardian of taxpayers theme he planned to use. The goal of this piece was not to undermine this perception, but shatter it. We were not only sending a message to the voters, but to the caucus: we’ve got the goods, and clearly we will use them. Take this one off your target list.
This piece made a tremendous splash – Mr. Franke drove it into the major daily newspaper in the district demanding that they editorialize against it. The paper investigated our thoroughly researched claims, and ran a story validating each and every one of them. Meanwhile, Franke dropped off the target list and never regained traction. He lost by over 10 points. Today, Peter Courtney is the Senate President. Incidentally, this race is not the only reason that Peter is Senate President: when Winning Mark began working with the Oregon Senate Democrats, there were 10 Democrats and 20 Republicans. Three cycles later, there is an 18-12 Democratic majority. Over that period of time, Winning Mark provided the mail for all but 2 targeted Senate campaigns.
June 2, 2006 | Filed Under: Direct Mail | Permalink
