Congressional Campaigns Make Big Shift

The race for the First Congressional District is officially in the home stretch. There are so many commercials running on TV and radio that voters in SC1 probably notice the ones that aren’t related to the election more than the ones that are.

But for the campaigns, particularly on the Republican side, the race has shifted into a different gear.

For the past seven weeks they have been using their resources to introduce themselves and inform voters about their positions. Now, they are using those same resources—made up mostly of volunteers—to make sure every single supporter gets to the polls next Tuesday. In the trade, it’s referred to as GOTV (Get Out The Vote).

Understandably, the campaigns were reluctant to speak on the record about their GOTV strategies. A statement from Joel Sawyer of Mark Sanford’s campaign about sums things up:

"We're not going to comment with regard to specific strategy or methods, but we have set some very aggressive GOTV goals, all of which have been exceeded thus far because of our remarkable volunteer engagement."

Ray Nash, whose campaign appears to be surging in recent weeks, told Patch, “In a special election the grassroots is more of a factor and a motivated voter is even more important.”

Nash has a fraction of the money than that of Sanford, Larry Grooms, Teddy Turner, John Kuhn or Chip Limehouse. But he's undeterred, ”We want to show you can’t buy an election in the First District of South Carolina.”

However, the money does help, according to E. O’Brien Murray, a GOP consultant based in New York who briefly considered working on Limehouse’s campaign in SC1. Murray got his start in politics working on Rudolph Giuliani’s mayoral campaign in New York City.

Murray rose to national prominence when he guided Republican Bob Turner to a win in a special election New York’s Ninth Congressional District after the Anthony Weiner scandal in 2011.

That race was 65 days long, the SC1 race is even shorter with 50 days. Still, there is plenty that can be gleaned from that race, according to Murray.

“At this point in the election what it comes to down is turning out the voters who have already identified themselves as supporters. You make sure you contact them on Monday or Tuesday and remind them to go to the polls,” he said.

Murray said those calls to voters will remind them of the issues at stake in the race and where the polling place is. The caller might say something like, “Remember if you want job growth, vote for ‘candidate X.’”

But this type of strategy takes place in any campaign.

Murray said special elections aren’t different just because they’re shorter.

“It’s even more difficult to motivate people to vote because there is usually nothing else on the ballot, so you have to convince people to vote for their candidate and their candidate only,” he explained.

That was the case for Murray’s race in NY9 and it’s the case in SC1.

Figures from The Traz Group demonstrate the challenge of turnout.

In the GOP primaries of 2006, 2008 and 2010 only 19,094 people voted all three times in SC1. For those who voted twice, the number more than doubles to 44,172. And it doubles again for the people who’ve voted at least once: 93,622.

So, rather than looking at total registered voters, the campaigns are likely looking at people who have shown a likelihood that they’ll vote, which is represented by the last figure—93,622.

Murray expects turnout to be between 50 and 60,000 on Tuesday. And given the number of candidates, a second place finisher could make a run-off with as few as 8,000 votes, or between 12 and 14 percent of the vote.

At this stage of the campaign Murray said there is very little prospecting for votes. Candidates aren’t going to be spending the last weekend trying to convince people to vote for them.

“There are three types of voters from a candidate’s perspective,” Murray said.

The first kind is “sleeping dogs.” Those voters are either apathetic or antagonistic to a specific candidate. There is no point in contacting them.

The second type is the people who have pledged their support. They don’t need to see the candidate on the last weekend of the race, although, as mentioned above, the candidate’s staff will place a call to those people.

The final type is the people who are planning to vote but are legitimately undecided. That can be a large group of people, especially in a short race with a lot of candidates where information about each is difficult to digest.

This is where candidates with existing networks have a huge advantage. People who’ve run for office before have a built-in list of volunteers. “Even if you have 10 or 20 (volunteers) they can touch a lot of voters in person and on the phone,” Murray said.

Those same volunteers can disperse on Election Day and check polling places to see who has and has not yet voted. And if they haven’t, volunteers can place a friendly reminder call.

Murray notes these plans are not being made now. They were made weeks, if not months, ago.

“The winning campaigns develop a strategy at the start and stick to it through the bumps in the road which will happen in any election.”

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