The 3rd quarter fundraising numbers are out for Maryland’s 1st District, and it’s good news for Democrat Frank Kratovil and bad news for Club for Growth troll Andy Harris. According to Salisbury’s The Daily Times:
The Queen Anne's County state's attorney and political upstart took in $43,935 more than Harris, raising $596,843 between July and Sept. 30, according to Federal Election Commission returns released Wednesday.
While Kratovil's campaign manager, Kevin Lawlor, said it represents a momentum shift in the race, Harris still came out with an extra $231,458 stocked in his war chest and a fundraising total his campaign manager, Chris Meekins, called "very strong."
That money has turned a race that was expected to be a walk for a Republican into a dogfight, and the Dem dog is winning. Harris is responding just like John McCain - with lies, some incredible stupid campaign tactics, and seeing Republicans run away from him like he had the plague. More after this break...
Democrats were hopeful that the numbers would be good. The race had a game-changer when incumbent Republican Rep. Wayne Gilchrest decided to endorse Kratovil instead of Harris. Harris’ camp chalked it up to sour grapes, but Gilchrest didn’t just do a press conference: he’s doing ads and lending his name to Frank’s campaign literature as well. And the hope was he’d inspire moderate Republicans to support Kratovil, especially after they actually heard what Harris had to say. With the release of Q3 numbers, it’s obvious that’s happening. The DCCC has stepped up to meet the threat from Club for Growth, and citizens of MD-01 are meeting the challenge, too.
Gilchrest is not the only Republican helping Kratovil. The widow of Republican Congressman from MD-01 also hosted a fundraiser for Kratovil. She sounded a familiar refrain in her remarks – disdain for Harris and the campaign he runs.
Republican Anne Kimberly hosted her first fundraiser for a Democrat on Friday. It was for Congressional candidate Frank Kratovil (D-Stevensville).
Kimberly's first husband was former U.S. Rep. Rogers Morton (R-Talbot County), who represented Maryland's 1st Congressional District in the 1960s and early 1970s.
She said Kratovil's stump speech "was very nice" and free of sound bites.
"Andy Harris totally turned me off during the primary when he was running against Gilchrest," said Kimberly in an interview with PolitickerMD.com. "I think Gilchrest is one of the very best members of Congress I've ever known."
And Kratovil is using that money for good use (same as above Daily Times link).
Kratovil outspent Harris $533,694 to $419,633 in the past three months, according to the FEC filing results.
In past filings, Kratovil did not have that spending liberty because he has trailed Harris in fundraising. Overall, SEC filings indicate Harris has raised about $2.5 million compared to Kratovil's $1.4 million.
Harris has also outspent Kratovil by about $933,000, according to overall SEC filings.
Frank has cut into Harris’ lead – once down by double digits, Kratovil’s internal poll has him slightly ahead, while Harris’ staff refuses to release their numbers, except to say Kratovil’s are wrong.
An internal poll released by Kratovil this week put him slightly ahead of Harris, 43 percent to 41 percent, with 16 percent of voters still undecided. The poll by the Democratic-oriented Garin Hart Yang Research Group in Washington surveyed 400 registered voters Oct. 7-8.
Internal polls by the Harris campaign show the opposite, Meekins said, who added poll results aren't being released because it would be a strategic mistake with the election so close.
In the Harris campaign's most recent poll, released July 17, he held a 16-point lead over Kratovil, with 27 percent of voters still remaining undecided. Conducted by the Republican-oriented Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates in Irvington, N.Y., the telephone poll surveyed 300 registered voters July 15. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.65 percent.
I’m guessing the Harris campaign wouldn’t be saying it’s a strategic mistake to release polls if those polls had him actually leading. Harris is also starting to copy the John McCain playbook by using outright lies in his ads. And he’s getting caught, too. The Daily Times noticed some familiar faces in Harris’ ads against Kratovil:
In the race for Maryland's 1st District, a TV spot Harris launched last week uses the same man and woman that appeared in part of his attack ad against Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest before the Republican primary. Now calling Queen Anne's County State's Attorney Frank Kratovil a "big spender" and "just too liberal," the two people, wearing the same clothing in each ad, speak at the same location and take on the same tone as the first ad.
"I think it's disingenuous or deceptive to have people answer questions about Wayne Gilchrest and apply their answers to Frank Kratovil," said the Democrat's campaign manager, Kevin Lawlor. "Not only are they retreading the same strategy, they are pulling up the same old clips."
Yup, using the same "reaction" quotes that supposedly were drawn from "real voters" concerning Gilchrest, and re-use the same footage against a totally different candidate. And don't expect anyone to notice. Leave to a pundit to sum it up clearly. From the same article:
It is unclear what effect, if any, questions of recycling old campaign ads will have, but it won't help Harris' campaign, said Trevor Perry-Giles, associate professor of political communications at the University of Maryland.
"Strategically, it's probably stupid," he said.
And Harris is also using a quote in his TV ads from The Daily Times that the paper admits it screwed up – so badly that it issued a correction. Here’s what Kratovil’s campaign has to say on the matter: (warning, PDF file)
The most recent ad, which debuted this morning, deliberately and knowingly misquotes an article from the Salisbury Daily Times discussing Frank Kratovil's comments about the financial crisis during a visit last Monday to Salisbury University. An initial report on the event quoted Frank Kratovil as saying, "We solved the crisis," but the paper issued a correction after an audio recording of the event indicated that Kratovil hadn't said those words. The corrected article now quotes Kratovil as saying, "The bigger issue is, what do we do now. As I mentioned in my talk, in this country we often times deal with a crisis, we solve a crisis but we don't always deal with the long term issues that led to the crisis." Harris' ad presents the original quote as a matter of record, deliberately ignoring the fact that the Daily Times has issued a correction and that Frank Kratovil never said the words Harris is now quoting in his ad.
Eastern Shore Republicans are running away from Harris as fast as they can. He’s lost two county officials on the Shore, and even a Republican conservation groups has refused to offer him money.
Two other Eastern Shore Republicans, Roy Crow and Jack Cole, the respective presidents of the Kent and Caroline County boards of commissioners, endorsed Kratovil the week before Gilchrest, saying he was on the right side of environmental issues and understood the "Eastern Shore philosophy."
Harris, who lives on the Western Shore, has made the environmentally friendly choice in only 9 percent of his votes in the Maryland legislature, according to the League of Conservation Voters.
Skepticism about the stewardship Harris would bring to this peninsular society, surrounded by endangered waters and quilted in working farmland, if elected to Congress is cemented by big supporters, like the Club for Growth, which gave his campaign $246,940 during the primaries.
"The Club for Growth is constantly pushing for -- exactly what their title says -- growth," said Jay Falstad, the president of Republican Environmental Alliance, a political action committee that will not fund a Democrat, but wants to make explicit its lack of support for Harris. "One of the things that always aggravated me was that Harris entered this race saying he was the only conservative in this race.
"Embedded in that is the word 'conserve,' and I don't think Harris has an understanding of what that word means," he said.
Andy Harris is desperate, reaching out to Club for Growth for an infusion of cash. And they have responded with a $200,000 ad buy in Baltimore and Salisbury:
Today, the Club for Growth released two new ads in Maryland’s First Congressional District. The $200,000 ad buy will run on broadcast television in the Baltimore and Salisbury markets.
Now, that money will go a long way in Salisbury, but I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do in Baltimore, with the much-higher cost of advertising. But Andy Harris is grabbing at any solution he can find.
Like John McCain, he’s being out-funded. Like John McCain, he’s being outspent. Like John McCain, he faces a better ground game than he possesses. Like John McCain, he’s down in the polls. And like John McCain, he deserves the defeat he has to face Nov. 4.
Let’s throw Andy Harris an anchor. Let's show the Club For Growth they can't just buy a Congressional seat. Here’s Frank Kratovil’s Red to Blue page. You know what to do.