Do Endorsements Matter in Today’s Presidential Races?

By Stuart Rothenberg

"Score another big name endorsement for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign,” crowed CNN.com on July 5, the day the Clinton campaign announced that former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (Mo.) would serve as an economic adviser and co-chairman of the presidential hopeful’s campaign.

That was the same day I received an e-mail from the Edwards for President folks, bragging that the former North Carolina Senator had “picked up the support of several prominent Ohio leaders.”

“Fourteen Ohio Democrats are endorsing Edwards as the strongest candidate to put a Democrat back in the White House and the candidate with the boldest plans to build One America, where every person has the chance to work hard and get ahead,” continued the news release.

John Edwards’ Ohio endorsements followed earlier releases about “prominent Latinos” and “African American Leaders” who were endorsing him. Both lists included state and local elected officials, as well as a number of community “activists” and “leaders,” a catch-all that could mean pretty much anything.

A few days earlier, the campaign of Sen. Joseph Biden had sent out a news release about three Iowa state Representatives who were endorsing the Delaware Democrat.

And then there are all those celebrity endorsements, from Susan Sarandon to Paul Newman to Laurie David to a bunch of other public figures who fall under the general heading of “personalities.”

Yes, endorsements are a big deal ... except that 99 percent of them — at least 99 percent — don’t matter.

Thank goodness for Gephardt, who self-deprecatingly joked about his endorsement of Clinton: “I’m a has-been politician, so I don’t know that I can do anything more than bring my own vote, but maybe I can get my family to vote the right way.”

The New York Daily News headlined his comment as “Gep’s gaffe,” proving once again that reporters don’t really want politicians to tell the truth, and when they do say something that resembles reality, those reporters criticize them for it.

But, of course, Gephardt, who is still widely liked in the nation’s capital, is correct. His endorsement will get Clinton exactly one vote. Where he was wrong was implying that the endorsements of current political figures (or celebrities) matter. As a rule, endorsements almost never matter.

Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean on Dec. 9, 2003, a day after New Hampshire’s largest teachers union backed Dean and just about a month after two huge, influential labor unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, jointly endorsed him.

At that time, of course, Dean was far and away the leading Democratic presidential hopeful in fundraising, cash on hand and most polling. If those endorsements had enhanced Dean’s appeal, they should have shut the door on the rest of the Democratic field.

But Dean fell to third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire, so they proved as influential as then-Gov. John Engler’s endorsement of George W. Bush in the 2000 Michigan GOP primary.

Michigan, we were told repeatedly back then, was the Bush campaign’s “firewall,” an absolutely impenetrable barrier that would stop anyone not named Bush from winning the state’s Republican primary. The firewall certainly looked ominous, given the enthusiastic support of Bush by Engler, a politically powerful governor who was both a top strategist and booster of the Texan.

Bush lost Michigan (garnering 43 percent to Sen. John McCain’s [R-Ariz.] 51 percent), in part because some state voters wanted to embarrass Engler, reflecting the limits of an endorsement.

The reason that endorsements don’t matter much is that presidential contests are such high-profile, visible fights that voters can draw their own opinions of the candidates. You either like Clinton or you don’t. You can make your own mind up about it. You don’t need some celebrity or politician telling you what to do.

The endorsements are intended, of course, to create an impression of support, either among key subgroups of the electorate —blacks, evangelicals, Hispanics, party insiders, home-schoolers, environmentalists, conservatives, labor unions, etc. — or in the electorate at large. It’s the classic effort to create a bandwagon, to establish the inevitability of your victory.

But the truth of the matter is that only a few people are persuaded by endorsements in White House contests. And sometimes endorsements can backfire, undercutting a candidate’s core appeal and message, or creating another target for the candidates’ opponents. (Those Thomas Ravenel and Sen. David Vitter [R-La.] endorsements for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani don’t look quite as good as they once did, huh?)

So let the candidates roll out their list of state legislators, city council officials, dogcatchers and “activists” who support them. Just remember that only those few people who have a campaign treasury under their control or real fundraising clout, a near-unique ability to motivate and mobilize real people, or unusual influence in Iowa are truly important supporters.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on July 16, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

There’s Still Plenty of Uncertainty After McCain’s Shake-up

By Stuart Rothenberg

First there were four, and now there are three — three top-tier GOP presidential candidates, at least if you count a guy who still isn’t officially a candidate. Sen. John McCain now has the second tier all to himself.

The shake-up at the McCain presidential campaign isn’t as much an answer to the Arizona Senator’s problems as a reflection of the campaign’s multiple difficulties. Let’s be clear: The McCain campaign’s burn rate on funds was too high, but that’s not why the Arizona Republican’s prospects have slipped.

Given McCain’s cash, his poll numbers and the state of his campaign, he has few options, according to one veteran political strategist with whom I talked, except to “park himself in New Hampshire, shut down his operations elsewhere and try to make a comeback in a state that he won eight years ago.”

Regardless of whether you agree with that assessment, it’s quite clear that McCain doesn’t have any appealing options to choose from now. Still, if you are the Arizonan, making your second bid for the GOP nomination and beginning this race as the early favorite, why not hope that Republican voters — much as Democratic voters did in 2004 — reassess the candidates early next year and give the initial frontrunner a second shot?

McCain’s problems should benefit former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who becomes the sole top-tier moderate in the race. McCain, of course, never called himself a moderate or campaigned as one, but he has been viewed that way by many conservative Republicans, primarily because of his work with Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold (Wis.) and Edward Kennedy (Mass.) on high-profile issues.

“Moderates constitute no more than a third of the party, and I’m being generous, but now you have two conservatives [former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson] fighting over two-thirds of the party, and Giuliani all alone with moderates,” one neutral GOP insider told me recently.

Thompson, of course, is not yet officially in the race, and nobody is quite sure what he’s waiting for. He’s raising millions of dollars, and allies of the former Tennessee Senator are reaching out to prospective hires for the campaign.

Yet while other candidates are filing Federal Election Commission reports and responding to media questions, Thompson’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, refuses to discuss the shadow candidate’s fundraising except to say that the campaign’s goal, if Thompson runs, “is to raise enough money to win.”

Well that really clarifies things. At least we can now rule out that Thompson is trying to raise enough money to lose.

Thompson doesn’t have to get in now, but his delay does make one wonder whether he is trying to avoid something. Given the recent criticism of his lobbying efforts on abortion, it isn’t as if he’s avoiding scrutiny by not having announced his candidacy.

Thompson isn’t forced to compete in the Ames, Iowa, straw vote if he doesn’t want to. He could have announced weeks ago that he was entering the race too late to put together the organizational effort needed for a strong showing in the Aug. 11 event. Maybe he’s delaying to see whether a last-minute effort at Ames might vault him to second place in Iowa even though he has little or no organization on the ground.

Anyway, it’s hard not to conclude that Thompson is trying to run out the clock — even before he has suited up and entered the game — so that he doesn’t even have to campaign.

Clearly, Thompson starts off as a major player in the GOP contest. A number of Republican insiders told me they believe he will vault to the front of national GOP polling when he enters the race, and the real question is how quickly and how far his numbers slide after they spike on his entry.

“People don’t know anything about Fred Thompson,” acknowledged one Republican strategist who is at least sympathetic to the Tennessean, adding, “Conservatives are seeing in him what they want to see in him. They are projecting their views onto him.”

“Can he hold the strength that he now has? It’s a close call,” noted the thoughtful observer, adding that “while he’s obviously a skilled performer, outside of a formal setting, like when he is made up for ‘Meet the Press,’ he doesn’t look that good, and he isn’t that sharp on policy.”

Thompson could either turn out to be just what conservative Republicans are looking for, in which case he could well end up being the GOP nominee, or an absolute dud who disappoints grass-roots Republicans looking to him to save the party.

The McCain fall from the top tier creates an interesting calendar dynamic, since after Romney, McCain had invested most heavily in the Iowa caucuses. With Giuliani not doing much in Iowa — rival campaigns go so far as to say that he apparently is conceding the state — and Thompson still not in the race or organized in the Hawkeye State, the burden is on Romney to blow away the field in state contests, both in Ames and in January.

If McCain downsizes in Iowa, will the Giuliani campaign seek to upgrade its effort in the state, hoping to take advantage of a crowd of conservative candidates who fracture the right-of-center electorate?

If Romney is able to win the caucuses decisively, he would have a chance at a one-two punch with a win in New Hampshire, a quirky open primary where Romney’s Mormonism isn’t regarded as nearly as big a problem as in the South and rural Midwest.

And will Giuliani really be able to wait until Florida, in late January, to compete full throttle in a GOP contest, as some think he hopes to do?

McCain’s slide answers some questions but raises others. Meanwhile, many GOPers are waiting for Fred ... which, increasingly, seems a bit like waiting for Godot.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on July 12, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

New Print Edition: Oregon Senate & Wisconsin 8

The July 13, 2007 print edition of the Rothenberg Political Report is on its way to subscribers. The print edition comes out every two weeks and the content is not available online. Subscribers get in-depth analysis of the most competitive races in the country, as well as quarterly House and Senate ratings, and coverage of the gubernatorial races nationwide. To subscribe, simply click on the Google checkout button on the website or send a check. Here is a brief sample of what's in this edition...

Oregon Senate: The Meaning of the Letter “R”
By Nathan L. Gonzales

It all comes down to one letter – R. In fifteen months, Oregonians will decide whether the letter behind Sen. Gordon Smith’s name ties him to the national party led by President George W. Bush or, rather, to the maverick style of former Oregon GOP senators Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood.

By the time the campaign is over, voters in the Beaver State may be wondering if each party is talking about the same Gordon Smith, who is the only Republican elected statewide in Oregon and the only Republican U.S. Senator on the West Coast.

In similar fashion to 2006, Democrats are attempting to portray Smith as just another national Republican, out-of-step with the state. The senator will rely on twelve years in statewide office, and he points to the war in Iraq and hate crimes legislation as key differences with his party.

With all of the energy and message surrounding the campaign to oust Smith, Democrats have struggled to find a candidate. Attorney/activist Steve Novick (D) is in the race, but national Democrats won’t give him the time of day. According to Democratic insiders, the party should have a stronger candidate soon – very soon.

Of course, party insiders really wanted former Gov. John Kitzhaber or Cong. Peter DeFazio, but they’re most likely to get new state House Speaker Jeff Merkley. He won’t necessarily have the field to himself, but he should enjoy the support from party insiders, possibly even the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Based on recent polling numbers, national Democrats view Smith as a top target, even above some of his vulnerable colleagues such as Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Susan Collins (R-ME). But the numbers may not be the whole story, and it’s going to be difficult to beat the Oregon Republican. For the whole story, you must subscribe...

Wisconsin 8: From Green to Blue to Red?

While suffering heavy losses nationally last year, Republicans came up one seat short of holding a trio of competitive open seats in the upper Midwest. Peter Roskam (IL 6) and Michelle Bachmann (MN 6) successfully kept open seats in the GOP column, but Wisconsin Assembly Speaker John Gard couldn’t follow suit in Wisconsin’s 8th CD.

Now, Republicans have their sights set on freshman Cong. Steve Kagen (D), a wealthy doctor who won the hard fought, bitter and expensive race. Within just a few days of winning, Kagen started to ruffle feathers in D.C., which resulted in some unflattering stories back home. And it further fueled Republican efforts to target the seat in 2008.

Gard has kept an extremely low profile after his loss, but GOP insiders believe he will run again, and is most likely to get in sometime this fall. While the race was very close, Gard’s campaign performance won’t automatically deter other Republicans. Subscribe now for the rest of the story...

In the next issue: 2008 Senate Overview.

Historical Perspective on Second-Quarter Fundraising Numbers

By Stuart Rothenberg

I can’t understand why so many political observers, including those who do observing for a living, seem to ignore history, even recent history, as they offer quick analysis and assessments of presidential candidate fundraising numbers.

One political blogger recently cited Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) impressive second-quarter fundraising numbers (including his number of contributors) and asserted, “we need to figure out why the ‘national’ frontrunner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), isn’t generating as much excitement as her chief competitor.”

Has everyone simply decided to forget 2003-2004? Is there someone out there who really thinks second-quarter fundraising numbers — or even third-quarter numbers — have a great predictive value in guessing which candidates will win the presidential nomination?

Second-quarter presidential fundraising in 2003 showed Howard Dean hauling in $7.6 million, besting Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) $5.9 million, then-Sen. John Edwards’ (D-N.C.) $4.5 million and Rep. Richard Gephardt’s (D-Mo.) $3.8 million.

True, Kerry held a cash-on-hand advantage ($10.8 million to Edwards’ $8.1 million and Dean’s $6.4 million), but by the end of the third quarter that too would disappear, as the once and future Democratic favorite was easily overtaken by the surging Dean.

In the third quarter of 2003, just a bit more than three months before the actual delegate selection process was to begin in Iowa, Dean ($14.8 million) raised more money than Kerry ($4 million), Gephardt ($3.8 million), Edwards ($2.1 million) and Gen. Wesley Clark ($3.5 million) combined.

And in the last quarter of 2003, just days before Iowa, Dean outraised Kerry $14 million to $2.5 million. If those fundraising numbers also reflected excitement, then the Democratic race should have been over, with Dean coronated in Iowa, New Hampshire and, ultimately, in Boston, and Kerry kicked to the political curb even before the first caucuses.

That’s right. Even fourth-quarter fundraising numbers in 2003 proved to be a lousy indicator of who would win in Iowa and who would win the Democratic nomination.

But back to the question we all apparently are expected to answer: Why isn’t Clinton generating as much excitement as Obama?

This is a difficult question? He’s generating excitement because he is a fresh face; he’s got a great smile; he’s a poised, smart, articulate, personally appealing African-American in a political party that would love to make a statement about equality, opportunity and diversity. He’s playing to the hopes and dreams of Democrats, and he never has to apologize for Iraq. That’s why.

But as for measuring excitement, is excitement six months before the first caucus suddenly the standard we are now expected to use to figure out who will win the Democratic nomination? If it were, then Bill Bradley would have been nominated in 2000 and Dean would have been the Democratic standard-bearer in 2004. Neither happened.

And second, is candidate strength or “excitement” measured primarily by cash receipts or number of donors? Fundraising was a poor predictor in 2004 for the Democrats, and a late June CBS News poll found more Democratic primary voters “enthusiastic” about Clinton (28 percent) than about Obama (22 percent).

It’s true that Clinton raised “only” $21 million in primary funds compared with Obama’s $31 million. But all that means is both candidates will have enough resources to mount top-shelf campaigns in the early caucus and primary states.

It’s amusing that many of those who write about the race noted with apparent approval that Edwards “met” his $9 million goal for the quarter at the same time that they were pronouncing Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) quarter a “disappointment” because he raised only $11 million. But then again, they did the same thing when the first-quarter numbers came out.

Second-quarter fundraising numbers haven’t done anything to clarify the GOP contest.

Yes, McCain’s fundraising is far weaker than expected, and his $2 million in the bank is both a problem and a reflection of his surprisingly limited appeal to Republican givers. But it isn’t as if anyone is blowing the rest of the field away with cash, and this is still a field where everyone has appeal and everyone also has big liabilities.

You know a race is up for grabs when the hottest candidate is a guy who isn’t in the race.

Anyway, where do the races now stand?

Clinton and Obama constitute the Democrats’ top tier, with Edwards still worth watching and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson showing a spark. Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.) and Joseph Biden (Del.) are serious people, which means they deserve serious attention.

On the GOP side, McCain seems to have fallen back to about where Edwards is now, worth monitoring but definitely a step behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the noncandidacy of former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.). Thompson has been doing so well as a noncandidate that he just might consider never entering the race officially, or at least until after he wraps up the Republican nomination.

But much of this is of little importance. Frankly, I’ve had enough of arbitrary expectations, including my own. The voters of Iowa — or at least those who participate in the caucuses — will decide who’s real and who isn’t.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on July 9, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.