THEY CALL ME THE SQUANDERER:

Figures Detail Dean's Slide From Solvent to Struggling (GLEN JUSTICE and JODI WILGOREN, 2/02/04, NY Times)

While Howard Dean's campaign began as an insurgent effort reliant on grass-roots support, figures made public this weekend offer new details on how his successful fund-raising transformed the organization into a high-spending campaign with little worry about costs.

From Washington to Hollywood, the Dean campaign often provided valet parking at its events, spent heavily to bus outsiders in to speeches in Iowa and began pumping money into commercials seven months before the first vote was cast.

In all, the campaign rolled through more than $31 million last year and at least $10 million more this year, transforming Dr. Dean from the best-financed Democratic candidate to one scrambling to raise money and stay out of debt so he can keep his campaign moving.

"They spent it all in one huge strategic error — they completely squandered it," said Steve Murphy, campaign manager for Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who dropped out of the race and has not endorsed another candidate.

Democratic consultants and strategists at rival campaigns said the heavy spending resulted from a number of mistaken tactical decisions, including advertising too early, enlarging the organization too quickly and betting too heavily on the first contests.

Here's a handy tip: when the media starts writing about how Eugene McCarthy/Gary Hart/John McCain/Howard Dean/Phil N. Blank is "reinventing" the political campaign, stick a fork in them, they're done.

Truly revolutionary campaigns, like Jimmy Carter's, don't get noticed until they win. Or, like the following, not even then because they don't fiot the preconceived storylines, BUSH BUILDS GRASS-ROOTS MACHINE (Bill Sammon, 2/02/04, THE WASHINGTON TIMES) (via mc)

President Bush's re-election campaign, taking advantage of the protracted Democratic primary process, is assembling a massive grass-roots political machine months earlier than usual.

"If you think knocking on doors, getting absentee ballots done, registering voters, making phone calls doesn't make a difference," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told volunteers Saturday, "then you must have been asleep with Rip van Winkle in the year 2000."

He was referring to the Republicans' near-death experience in the Florida recount wars, which led to some serious soul-searching about the party's "ground game."

"The Democrats had been better organized, principally because of the AFL-CIO," Mr. Bush said in an interview with The Washington Times. "The unions are really good at identifying voters and getting them to the polls."

Having ceded this sort of grass-roots politicking to Democrats for years, Republicans resolved to radically ramp up their own get-out-the-vote efforts. After testing various techniques in the off-year elections of 2001, Republicans put them to full use the next year and scored historic victories in the midterm elections.

"The Republicans learned a lesson," Mr. Bush said.

Even former President Bill Clinton -- whose party took a shellacking in the midterms of 1994 ˜ conceded that for the first time in several elections, Republicans did a better job than Democrats of turning out the vote in 2002.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2004 10:50 AM