(cross-posted on the
BetterCA blog)
Many analysts today are ascribing the huge defeat for Schwarzenegger on the decision he made to even have this campaign and what measures he placed on the ballot. They almost describe his loss as inevitable in that frame. Arnold and his team made some significant blunders. Let's take a look at how the Alliance for a Better California and the Nurses Association was able to take advantage of them.
We have to go back to 2004 and the early part of this year to understand the animosity that developed on both sides. In December of '04 at of all places, the annual Conference on Women and Families, Arnold was discussing the battle he was having with the nurses over patient teacher ratio. He called them "special interests" and said that they didn't like him because he "was always kicking their butts." This pissed off the nurses and they have been dogging him around the state ever since. The governor has had to come late to events, or show up early, and sneak in the back. The confrontation with a bunch of women in scrubs was bad TV, so he did damage control by avoiding them.
The "special interests" came up as a theme throughout the year and election. It and "thug union bosses" were ways to dismiss what the union leaders had to say. They were used to create the perception that they were dominating the state and leading to the gridlock in Sacramento that the voters hated. However, it provided us with the opportunity to prove that what he was calling "special interests" were the teachers, nurses, firefighters and cops that everyone knows in their community. We flooded the airwaves with ads portraying average working Californians in professions they admire and respect, talking about how the governor was attacking them. They tied Arnold directly to the propositions and spoke about how he let them down and was not the governor he said he would be. The more the ads ran, the more his approval rating fell.
The large and respected California Teachers Association ended up spending about $56 million on this race. Why did they care so much? Well, the governor made another large mistake when he made a deal with the CTA to cut several billion in education funding during the budget promised. He promised to pay it back, but never did. That broken promise kick-started the CTA's involvement, which was further cemented by the ballot measures he chose to put forward.
Speaking of this $54 million boondoggle of an election...
From the SacBee:
As Republicans came to grips with Tuesday's results, some consultants suggested the governor's team should have known better than to take on all of the state's employee unions at once. They said the effort damaged the governor's standing with California voters without accomplishing any of his goals. Some critics went so far as to suggest the consultants were more interested in staying employed in a non-election year than in the governor's agenda.
In the end it was the governor's decision to move forward with this election. He failed to follow George Skelton's wisdom today of avoiding major changes in the middle of your term.
Lesson No. 2: The time to make big changes is right after you're first elected, when you've got a public mandate and trust. Schwarzenegger, with bipartisan support, sold voters on a $15-billion deficit reduction bond and a minor balanced-budget requirement. Big borrowing, little spending control. That was the moment to have negotiated a real spending cap -- a moderate version of the rejected Proposition 76 -- and sell it to voters.
And this perhaps was his biggest downfall of all:
Lesson No. 8: When politicking statewide in California, run in the middle. Particularly avoid the right. Schwarzenegger's agenda tilted right and that's where he mostly stumped for votes, although the GOP represents only 35% of the electorate.
"The governor's reform package emphasized only half of his political persona," says GOP consultant Dan Schnur. "He got elected as a centrist. He governed as a centrist. But his initiative package emphasized only the more conservative aspects of his agenda."
When you are calling an election in California that is suffering from serious election fatigue you damn well better have a reason for the average California to drag themselves to the polls and vote your way. California is a solidly blue state that elected Arnold when they were under the impression he would be a moderate governor. Taking a seriously right turn with his ballot initiatives left him with a much smaller audience to talk to.
This was most clearly evident at his campaign events. The vast majority of them were in front of Republican partisans who were already on his side. You cannot win in California if you just pander to that base. Arnold's strategy was to hope for a small turnout and fire up his base. Turnout ended up at 42.6% well above the 35% that would have been good for Arnold.
Our field campaign did a tremendous job. There were 15,000 volunteers on Election Day tromping in thousands of precincts. All organizations piled in to one coordinated campaign sharing voter IDs. All of labor, including the split AFL-CIO and SEIU worked together. Organizations like DfA pitched in. The legislature and their staff were out walking as well. The CA Democratic Party coordinated closely with us. It was pretty easy since their offices were literally two floors below us.
We decided early on to have field operations all over the state and had 35 offices in city and rural areas alike. The results show that our strategy paid off, with many rural counties having strong results for our side. There are a number of factors for that, one of which is that even in rural counties we have plenty of public employees. Take for example Lassen County, which went overwhelmingly for Bush in 04. All of Arnold's measures went down. What is one of the biggest employers there? A large prison, which employs many members of the CCPOA. They have been among the most vocal anti-Arnold unions with their Screw Arnold campaign.
A good field campaign will perhaps get you about 3% points in a given race. Our victory was much larger than that. Even 75, which we were sweating late into the night, had a 7 point margin. Well, let's go back and look at our media strategy.
We decided to take on each of his propositions on an individual basis. We wanted to expose them nothing more as attacks and power grabs rather than real reforms. We talked about how 74 would hurt our ability to attract new teachers. Silencing our voices was the theme of 75. Prop 76 was the clearest power grab, allowing us to portray an already damaged Schwarzenegger as trying to become king of California. 77 was left to the party, who formulated their own concepts.
The strategy paid off. We respected the voters' ability to determine for themselves how they would vote on each individual proposition. If you look at the county breakdowns you can see they varied from proposition to proposition. Just saying no only worked if they saw the propositions as being bad on the merits. Tying Arnold to each of them was crucial.
California's voters were clear. They did not like this election in the first place and they did not believe Arnold was offering the panaceas to California's problems. Now Arnold has to govern, be a uniter instead of calling names. He needs to work to repair the relationships with the Assembly and with the unions, not to mention the people. Most importantly, he actually has to achieve something. He has to do the hard work and run this state or else he will find himself without a job next November.