Campaign Diaries

2008 was filled with almost weekly election days, from the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd to Louisiana’s general election on December 6th. Here’s a ranking of the most entertaining races of the 2008 cycle - those that saw the most drama, those that kept us on edge.

1) Clinton vs. Obama: The endless race

No three paragraph write-up can do justice to the all-out war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Their battle was launched in January 2007, a full year before the first ballots were cast. It ended 18 months later, after 54 contests in every single state (and more), two dozen debates, upset victories, and acrimonious charges of fraud, sexism and racism.

Any posts touching the Clinton-Obama battle invariably sparked dozens of comments. By the spring of 2008, we were all familiar with the profiles of all superdelegates, understood the confusing mechanisms of caucuses, could
justify Texas’s incomprehensible voting system and could explain the importance of a congressional district having an odd or an even number of delegates.

Sure, their contest didn’t look like much of a race until October 2007, and it was difficult to find Hillary Clinton a path to victory after she lost the Wisconsin primary on February 20th; but this was a polarizing battle that obsessed the entire country for more than a year - much longer than the comparatively tame general election. .

2) The GOP primaries: A year with five front-runners

It is easy to forget how much more delightfully suspenseful the Republican primaries were until the very end of 2007. While Hillary Clinton looked like the inevitable Democratic nominee, the GOP’s nomination could have gone to any of five candidates: Rudy Giuliani, whose front-runner status in the media looked comically artificial to anyone who carefully followed presidential politics; Mitt Romney, who led in Iowa and New Hampshire for most of the fall; Fred Thompson the savior; Mike Huckabee, who took everyone by surprise in November; and John McCain, who no one was paying much attention to anymore.

In fact, the race was so open at the end of December 2007 that McCain, Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee had equally plausible paths to the nomination. As I explained then, “all these scenarios look stunningly unlikely, though one of them will come to pass. The question then is which of them is the least far-fetched at this point?” This complex question led to countless calculations throughout the fall: Could Giuliani wait until Florida to get his first win? Could Romney’s rivals stop him if he won Iowa? Could Romney get the nomination if he lost Iowa? What would be McCain’s next step if he prevailed in New Hampshire? Would Huckabee’s rise help Giuliani? Would Giuliani’s fall help McCain? What about Thompson’s?

The 26-day period between the Iowa caucuses and the Florida primary saw so many ups-and-downs as to barely leave us time to process all of these questions, and John McCain’s unlikely emergence gave Democrats plenty to agonize over since McCain looked (by far) like the most electable of the Republican candidates.

3) McCain vs. Obama: Entertaining but lacking suspense

The stakes were high in the general election, and there was plenty of drama to keep us all hooked - most of it provided by the McCain campaign: The celebrity ads, the Sarah Palin pick, the campaign suspension, the raucous town halls, the Ayers card and McCain’s condescending debate persona instantaneously roused up partisans from both parties. A daily deluge of polls and statistics kept everyone on edge, even when all we were watching was whether Obama’s 15% Pennsylvania lead would collapse to 14%, and a seemingly endless stream of parodies and of YouTube videos  kept us all entertained.

That said, it is hard to ignore the fact that this race lacked suspense - except for a brief period in early September that saw McCain storm into a lead in the immediate aftermath of the Republican convention. The election was Barack Obama’s to lose from the first days of the general election, and that is obvious from some of my posts back in June. The factors that made the election somewhat suspenseful were McCain’s willingness to gamble, the (unrealized) fear of a Bradley effect, and the Democrats’ paranoia that they might snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - just as in 1988, 2000 or 2004.

4) California’s Proposition 8

Liberal groups did not take Proposition 8 seriously enough until it was already too late, and the No’s fundraising did not pick-up quickly enough to defeat the huge war chest amassed by the Mormon Church. But the referendum became the center of attention just as the presidential race seemed settled for Barack Obama, allowing us all to devote more time to following the multi-million California campaign and its painfully brutal ad campaign.

Conservatives frustrated that they were making no progress in the presidential race sought revenge in the Golden State, further increasing the vote’s already high stakes: A “no” victory would have meant that voters had directly approved gay marriage for the first time and would have made it very difficult for social conservatives to stop same-sex marriages across blue America, starting in New York. Instead, Prop 8’s narrow passage halted California’s gay marriages and prolonged the battle, as a counter-proposal is sure to spring us some time in the next few years (if Prop 8 even survives a court challenge).

5) Minnesota: Coleman vs. Franken vs. Barkley vs. Ventura

Norm Coleman and Al Franken waged the most vicious campaign of the cycle, airing increasingly brutal ads that made both men look unattractive. The hardest hitting spot was undoubtedly this late October NRSC ad that compiled all of the GOP’s attacks: Franken “lashes out at those who disagree,” “humiliates minorities,” “demeans women,” “makes child abuse a joke” and “laughs at the disabled.”

Ouch. The race also featured Coleman’s “Angry Al” ads; the Democrats’ colorful responses (for instance the “running man” ad); Coleman’s own ethics problems, culminating in the October suit scandal; the last-minute lawsuits that the two camps hurled at each other and Jesse Ventura’s flirtations with a run. Perhaps most significant was Dean Barkley’s third party candidacy: Polls showed Barkley hovering around 20%, making it very plausible that he could pull off an upset if Coleman and Franken continued hammering each other.

The race would have made the cut even if the election had been resolved on November 4th, but that only proved to be the prelude to a controversial recount, sea-sawing leads, confusing courtroom drama, and days of political porn live ballot counting by the state canvassing board!

6) Alaska: Ted Stevens vs. Ted Stevens

Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich’s candidacy in early 2008 ensured that the Alaska Senate race would be competitive, but it took Ted Stevens’s best effort to make the race one of the most entertaining of the cycle. Stevens’s indictment upended the race and forced us to take the candidacy of Vic Vickers (a complete unknown and non-Alaskan - but wealthy enough to mount a bizarre run) in the Republican primary.

Later, Stevens obtained an expedited trial, tying his electoral fate to an October trial that getting us hooked to the legal minutiae of a DC courtroom - and there was a lot of drama to follow there as well, from the prosecution’s gross misconduct to the jury deliberations that featured a violent juror and a disappearing one. And how can we not rate include on this list a race that saw an incumbent Senator become a convicted felon one week from Election Day?

As if all of this was not enough, the race was decided long after ballots were cast, giving us two extra weeks of drama and suspense.

7) North Carolina: Elizabeth Dole vs. DSCC

Chuck Schumer was determined to bring down Elizabeth Dole, and he did not rest until Election Night returns showed the incumbent Senator trailing by a wide margin. The first clear sign that the DSCC was serious about North Carolina came in mid-July, when the committee reserved an impressive $6 million worth of advertising for the fall; we were soon treated to a long series of Democratic ads blasting Dole’s ineffectiveness, conservativeness, absenteeism and age. Dole’s responses were disproportionately brutal, from her “fibber Kay” dog comparison to her Godless American attack.

Combine all of this brutality with Dole’s status as a political celebrity, with the high stakes of the election (and the Democrats’ quest for 60 seats) and with our continued disbelief at witnessing North Carolina’s swing to the left, and this race certainly ranks as one of the year’s most entertaining.

8) NY-13: GOP sabotages itself in bizarre soap opera

Staten Island has always been a Republican stronghold, and there was no suggestion that Democrats had any chance to pick-up NY-13 until Rep. Vito Fossella was arrested for a DUI in Northern Virginia. The soap opera that followed is worthy of being made into a movie someday. First came revelations that Fossella had fathered a child in an extramarital affair and that he had taken his mistress on taxpayer-funded congressional trips; Fossella soon announced he would not seek re-election. Then, we witnessed a stunning series of Republicans refusing to run in what should have been a reliably red district.

The Staten Island GOP ended up endorsing a largely unknown candidate, Francis Powers - the island’s representative on the MTA board. But the election threatened to degenerate in a family farce when Powers’s son announced he would run against his father as a third-party candidate, leading Francis to express his disapproval of his son’s “lifestyle.” The farce soon became a tragedy when Powers passed away mid-June, and the GOP was back where it started: After more contenders passed away, the Republican Party and Conservative Party publicly split and the GOP endorsed a candidate despised by most of the party’s establishment, leading a number of Republican officials to endorse the Democratic nominee. And as if all of this was not enough, Vito Fossella attempted a comeback a few weeks from Election Day!

The result: Democratic candidate Mike McMahon won by 28% in a district that had voted for Bush by 10% in 2004.

9) Oregon: Gordon Smith weighted down by George Bush

For much of 2008, Oregon’s Senate race looked like the ultimate toss-up: There was no obvious reason for Gordon Smith to be vulnerable but his party’s unpopularity, making his re-election campaign the bellwether of national trends. Smith waged a particularly shrewd campaign, and what made the race particularly entertaining was the fact that he went to both extremes of campaigning.

On the one hand, he went unexpectedly far in portraying himself as a non-partisan, centrist Senator (His ads featured endorsements by Democratic state lawmakers and touted his relationship to Democratic Senators John Kerry, Barack Obama and Ron Wyden), so much so that it might have cost him votes on the Right. On the other hand, Smith never hesitated to air brutal ads against his challenger Jeff Merkley; in fact, his spots attacking Merkley on rape issues might very well be the low points of the 2008 Senate battle.

10) LA-06: Democratic miracle, Democratic disaster

Louisiana’s 6th district kept us entertained throughout the year. First came a springtime special election, which Democrats weren’t supposed to even try contesting given the district’s conservative nature. But Democratic candidate Don Cazayoux proved competitive, and the DCCC and NRCC waged an entertaining expenditure wars that culminated in Cazayoux’s upset victory in one of the year’s most roller-coaster election nights.

But this Democratic miracle soon gave way to a nightmare, as state Rep. Michael Jackson filed as a independent candidate in the November election. Jackson threatened to take African-American voters away from Cazayoux and thus fatally splinter his electoral coalition. That is exactly what happened in November: Despite polls showing Cazayoux ahead, Republican Bill Cassidy defeated him 48% to 40%.

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Honorable mentions go to MN-06, which beame the highest profile House race after Michelle Bachmann’s mid-October “anti-American” rant; Mississippi’s Senate race, in which former roommates hammered each other in a brutal ad war; CO-04, swarmed by outside groups; PA-11, where colorful Republican Lou Barletta led an incumbent Democrat throughout the year before falling short on Election Day; and NY-26, since any race with a stunningly bloody primary and extended courtroom drama should be on this list.