Gary Peters, showing up.
Ouch. This is
not the kind of post-Labor Day press any candidate wants to be getting.
Terri Lynn Land’s no-show strategy for a U.S. Senate seat is a weird dare to Michigan voters: She’s gambling you won’t notice her near total disappearance from the campaign trail.
While both Land and her opponent, U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, are bombarding the airwaves with commercials, it’s Land who’s trying to stay out of sight. Her campaign doesn’t advertise public appearances — if there are any — and ignores or postpones interview requests from journalists.
Want to see flesh-and-blood Terri?
“I’ll let you know if Terri has availability,” her press secretary, Heather Swift, emailed me last week, after repeated requests for an interview or notice of upcoming appearances with the former Michigan Secretary of State.
One local station in Grand Rapids has had to indefinitely postpone a debate because they apparently can't get her to show. The Michigan State University newspaper has editorialized about her unwillingness to face Democrat Gary Peters in a debate. But it isn't just debates she's refusing. She's not in public, at all.
So, what exactly is she doing? Maybe she's holed up, dialing for dollars to pay for that ad bombardment. It's possible, since the Kochs cut-off their spending spree in the state last month. One Republican strategist, pollster Steve Mitchell, is spinning Land's disappearing act as savvy strategy.
"I would guess that the number of people who know that she's not out there is very few," he says. He contends that the "war of the airwaves" combined with Land's statewide name recognition can still propel her to victory.
Counting on the airwaves
might not be such a great strategy, given how the millions spent so far aren't seeming to make a dent with the public. But Land's also counting on the fact that Republican voters reliably show up in November, the challenge for Democrat Peters. He's taking a different approach—showing up to talk to voters and to debates. Even if he has to
face an empty chair.
What Peters needs to do is turn that contact with voters into actual turnout in November. Land's disappearing act should help, but it's going to take work and an awful lot of Peter's time spent not raising money, but out with the voters giving them a compelling reason to go the polls.
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