The Victory Lab (51 page)
Authors: Sasha Issenberg
A young writer could not have better champions than my agent Larry
Weissman and his partner, Sascha Alper. I knew Larry had led me into the right hands for this project when at one of our early meetings my new editor, Zachary Wagman, asked me—more than eighteen months before election day—what I thought of Martin Heinrich’s chances in New Mexico’s Democratic Senate primary. He was responsible for publishing an ebook preview from this work,
Rick Perry and His Eggheads
, a remarkable midsummer feat of improvisation and nimbleness. For its success I owe thanks to the rest of the team at Crown: Annsley Rosner, Dyana Messina, Rachel Rokicki, Julie Cepler, Michael Gentile, and Molly Stern. I am fortunate to have as talented a journalist as Dan Fromson fact-checking my manuscript (along with timely research assistance from Claire Kim) and as creative a tactician as Mary Krause making sure the final product finds an audience. Thanks to David Fields for once again agreeing to briefly unretire from photography to take my portrait for the book’s jacket, to Dan Shepelavy for his aesthetic guardianship, and to Tom Kennedy and Dan Seng at Tom Kennedy Design for their work on the book’s website.
My family let me knock on strangers’ doors and spend school nights at phone banks as I dabbled in political campaigns beginning at the age of twelve and similarly encouraged me when I settled into another line of work that polls show to be one of the country’s least admired. For that support and love I thank my grandmothers, Olga Issenberg and Pola Brodzki; my late grandfathers, David Issenberg and Ludwik Brodzki; my aunt Gayle Brodzki; my sister, Sarina; and my parents, to whom this book is dedicated.
PROLOGUE1
at the time the polls opened: Lisa Rein, “Election 2010: Bennet-Buck Outcome in Colorado a Tossup,”
Washington Post
, November 2, 2010,
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110201571.html
.
2
“The Bennet thing was pretty instructive”: Axelrod quoted in Ron Brownstein, “In 2012, Obama May Need a New Coalition,”
National Journal
, January 7, 2011.
3
$6-billion-per-year: Patricia Zengerle, “U.S. Vote in 2012 Will Be Record, $6 billion Election,” Reuters, August 30, 2011,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/us-usa-campaign-spending-idUSTRE77T3ZX20110830
.
4
Franken’s lawyers watched their adversary: Jay Weiner,
This Is Not Florida
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 133.
5
a 477-vote deficit on election day: “Recounting of Minnesota’s Senate Race,” timeline by
Minneapolis Star Tribune
,
ww2.startribune.com/projects/timeline/recount.html
.
6
“A campaign rally is three people”: Shrum quoted in Frank I. Luntz,
Candidates, Consultants, and Campaigns: The Style and Substance of American Electioneering
(New York: Blackwell, 1988), 22.
7
“The current crop are like”: Morris quoted in Susan B. Glasser, “Consultants Pursue Promising Web of New Business,”
Washington Post
, May 3, 2000.
BLINDED BY POLITICAL SCIENCE1
The university had opened its doors: Richard J. Storr,
Harper’s University: The Beginnings, a History of the University of Chicago
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 86.
2
one of the first schools: Martin Bulmer,
The Chicago School of Sociology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 7.
3
still new to American academia: Lori Thurgood, Mary J. Golladay, and Susan T. Hill,
U.S. Doctorates in the 20th Century: Special Report NSF 06-319
(Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, 2006), 4.
4
terse memos: Barry D. Karl,
Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 46.
5
keeping the Union intact: Ibid., 4.
6
Charles and his brother teased: Ibid., 5.
7
Oregon became the first state: “Direct Election of Senators,” U.S. Senate website,
www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm
.
8
sent a questionnaire: Karl,
Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics
, 56.
9
hoped to use the university: Charles E. Merriam, “The Present State of the Study of Politics,”
American Political Science Review
15, no. 2 (May 1921): 173–85.
10
twice as many women: Harold F. Gosnell, “The Marriage of Math and Young Poli Sci: Some Early Uses of Quantitative Methods,”
Political Methodologist
, newsletter of the Political Methodology section of American Political Science Association, 3, no. 1 (Winter 1990).
11
“general indifference”: Charles E. Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell,
Non-Voting: Causes and Methods of Control
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924).
12
first major political science study: Karl,
Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics
, 148.
13
“If scientific methods seem”: A. N. Holcombe, review of
Non-Voting: Causes and Methods of Control
, by Charles E. Merriam and Harold F. Gosnell,
American Political Science Review
19, no. 1 (February 1925): 202–3.
14
likely the first field experiment: Gabriel A. Almond,
Harold Dwight Lasswell, 1902–1978: A Biographical Memoir
(Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1987).
15
“has the high merit”: George E. G. Catlin, “Harold F. Gosnell’s Experiments in the Stimulation of Voting,”
Methods in Social Science: A Case Book
, ed. Stuart Arthur Rice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 705.
16
“This study is not only a model”: Review from August 14, 1927, quoted in unpublished Gosnell autobiography, apparently written in 1981, Harold F. Gosnell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
17
“Perhaps Mencken is right”: Quoted in Douglas Bukowski,
Big Bill Thompson, Chicago, and the Politics of Image
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 3.
18
used new statistical methods: Samuel J. Eldersveld, “Experimental Propaganda Techniques and Voting Behavior,”
American Political Science Review
50, no. 1 (March 1956): 154–65.
19
entire decades would pass: Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber, “Under-provision of Experiments in Political Science,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
589 (September 2003): 94–112.
20
One of the pollsters: Clyde H. Coombs,
Angus Campbell, 1910–1980: A Biographical Memoir
(Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1987), 46.
21
His 1952 survey: From Gosnell’s speech to 1959 conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Harold F. Gosnell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
22
Campbell’s questionnaire: American National Election Study, 1952 codebook, University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies, Ann Arbor.
23
In 1972, Popkin had: Joe Klein,
Politics Lost
(New York: Doubleday, 2006), 42.
24
McGovern hadn’t lost: Samuel Popkin, John W. Gorman, Charles Phillips, and Jeffrey A. Smith, “Comment: What Have You Done for Me Lately? Toward an Investment Theory of Voting,”
American Political Science Review
70, no. 3 (September 1976): 779–805.
25
“These contests are commonly”: Samuel L. Popkin,
The Reasoning Voter
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 8.
A GAME OF MARGINS1
Bob Squier had happily abandoned: Bart Barnes, “Robert Squier, Leading Political Consultant, Dies at 65,”
Washington Post
, January 25, 2000.
2
Peter Hart launched: “There and Back,”
Campaigns & Elections
, June 2009.
3
only full-time employee: Theodore White,
The Making of the President, 1960
(New York: Atheneum, 1961), 60.
4
Reese worked to get the Democratic party: “The Political Campaign Industry: Joe Napolitan, Matt Reese, Brad O’Leary and Tom Edwards Talk About the Ups and Downs, the Highs and Lows, of Being Political Consultants,”
Campaigns & Elections
, December–January 1993–1994.
5
He effectively rewrote: Ron Faucheux, “Final Advice from Matt Reese,”
Campaigns & Elections
, February 1999.
6
“You go where the cherries is”: Quoted in David Lee Rosenbloom,
The Election Men
(New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973), 37.
7
“I wish God gave”: David Chagall,
Kingmakers
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 331.
8
“If the 1964 election”: Rosenbloom,
The Election Men
, 77.
9
landing jobs as an administrative assistant: Ibid.
10
“Consultants have become possible”: Larry J. Sabato,
The Rise of Political Consultants
(New York: Basic Books, 1981), 267.
11
the AMA struggled to sustain: “Medicine: Sore Throat Attacks,”
Time
, August 18, 1975.
12
As part of its post-Watergate reinvention: James M. Perry, “The GOP: Dying for Real?,”
National Observer
, November 27, 1976.
13
hard at work trying to modernize: Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, “Education Transforms the Mississippi Legislature,
Journal of Mississippi History
, Fall 2006.
14
When legislators blocked: Jere Nash and Andy Taggart,
Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 138.
15
Even before the election in 1982: Wendell Rawls Jr., “Mississippi Governor Is Big Winner on Education,”
New York Times
, December 27, 1982.
16
“To me, a political consultant”: Joseph Napolitan,
The Election Game and How to Win It
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), 2.
17
candidates spent $100 million: Bill Peterson, “Direct Mail Writes New Chapter in How to Run a Political Campaign,”
Washington Post
, November 17, 1982.
18
nearly ten for each person: Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa,
The Almanac of American Politics 1986
(Washington, DC: National Journal, 1985), 1398.
19
group Census data in twenty-five categories: Dennis W. Johnson,
No Place for Amateurs
(New York: Routledge, 2007), 149.
20
Smith dismissed his Democratic opponent: David Reinhard, “Voters’ Guide to Senate-Race Broadsides,”
Oregonian
, December 9, 1995.
21
populist DeFazio had attacked Wyden: Benjamin Sheffner,
Roll Call
, December 4, 1995.
22
Wyden carried the Portland metro: Ashbel S. Green and Jeff Mapes, “Hot Topics: Democrat Naito Joins Exodus from House,”
Oregonian
, December 10, 1995.
23
The Wyden campaign reached: Hal Malchow, “The Targeting Revolution in Political Direct Contact,”
Campaigns & Elections
, June 1997.
24
the Democrat won on January 30: Certified results from Oregon secretary of state, January 30, 1996.
25
late tactical shift from attacks: Ronald D. Elving,
PS: Political Science and Politics
29, no. 3 (September 1996): 440–46.
26
with whom the vice president enjoyed discussing: Remarks by Bill Clinton, March 9, 1998,
http://clinton4.nara.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/19980309-22774.html
.
