Sen. Gillibrand Rattled By Junior

By Kleinheider Posted on January 12, 2010 at 10:51 am

The appointed Senator is scrambling to prevent Ford from gaining traction in a campaign against her:

The last-minute appearance of the senator in Albany was a tacit acknowledgement that she perhaps needs to work a little harder to lock down support among rank-and-file members like Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, who told me Sunday that she hasn’t endorsed Gillibrand in part because the senator had never contacted her.

It was also yet another sign that Team Gillibrand has indeed been rattled by Ford, although Gillibrand insisted to me last night that she is completely unconcerned about a possible primary challenge from the former Tennessee congressman.

“Every candidate decides whether or not to run and my job is to be the best senator I can be,” Gillibrand said. “So I’ve been focused on traveling the state, getting to all the 62 counties. I’ve also been really focused on the economy. It’s the biggest issue wherever I go.”

Gillibrand said she’s also focused on helping New Yorkers “get to know me”. I pointed out that she has been in office for nearly an entire year now, and more than 40 percent of voters still say they don’t know enough about her to have an opinion.

“First of all, we have 20 million people in our state,” Gillibrand replied. “If you haven’t run an election - I was appointed, I wasn’t elected - you didn’t have the benefit of a statewide media campaign. It just takes time.”

“…I’ve really been listening to what constituents need, and I think the work I’m doing in the Senate will really make a difference on those issues.”

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Tags: abortion, African American, black, Chuck Schumer, gay marriage, Harold Ford, Harold Ford Jr., Harry Reid, Immigration, independent, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, New York, New York Democratic Party, pro-choice, pro-life, Tennessee, West Tennessee  

Difficult, Not Impossible: Junior Can Win In New York

By Kleinheider Posted on January 11, 2010 at 8:01 pm

Whether or not Harold Ford Jr. pulls the trigger on a Democratic primary challenge to U.S. Senator Kristen Gillibrand, one thing is certain: Harold Ford Jr. can’t go home again.

While carpetbagging can work in New York, a failed carpetbagger returning home with a tail between his legs wouldn’t go over well.

By changing his voter registration, declaring himself pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, Ford Jr. has effectively disqualified himself from Tennessee politics.

The fact that Ford has given up on Tennessee is certainly understandable. Congressmen John Tanner’s and Bart Gordon’s retirements said a lot about the state of Democratic politics in Tennessee. Harold Ford’s decision to become a New Yorker says even more.

The statewide landscape for Democrats hasn’t really been good in quite sometime, Gov. Phil Bredesen’s two victories notwithstanding, and they’re about to get a whole lot worse.

While the national political journalists will always blame Ford’s 2006 defeat on the infamous “racist” Playboy “Call Me” ad, the truth was the prospect of a Memphis Ford winning statewide was always a daunting one. His family name is toxic. His father is remembered as having beaten federal charges rather than being found not guilty of them, his uncle is in federal prison and his aunt is seen as a joke in the state legislature. No matter how charismatic or ethically spotless his record or how tame his personal life, Ford’s family was always campaign baggage in Tennessee.

In New York, those problems all go away. The Ford name just doesn’t have the institutional and historical stink in New York that it has in Tennessee. And while opponents certainly will try to tie him to his family’s hijinks “back home,” the very fact that he has in fact left home will speak both literally and figuratively to the distance he has put between himself and Family Ford.

The pundits say that Ford can’t ignore issues and just run on the basis of being a fascinating personality, but those who think that should take a long look at the election results of 2008 and think again. Yes, Obama discussed issues and put together a program, but his victory was more about personality and campaign strategy than it was about position papers and policy.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza has said that Ford is “one of the most talented politicians in the Democratic Party, but he was simply born and raised in the wrong state for such a figure to thrive.”

By declaring himself a New Yorker, Ford has taken the first step toward “correcting” the circumstances of his birth.

It’s true that after constructing his whole political persona around winning statewide in Tennessee, Ford has some work to do in fashioning himself as a believable New York political figure. Some say it is impossible for Ford to backtrack, massage and apologize for all his conservative positions in time to beat the appointed incumbent in 2010.

Maybe that’s true. The timing isn’t perfect, but for Ford this may be as “open” a Senate race as he may see in New York for a while. People are questioning his judgment in pursuing the course he has chosen, but for a politically ambitious young man like Ford who lives to be in the game, he has to consider this possibility.

The chattering classes say that Ford is simply too conservative to win in New York and that the necessary transformation will be too difficult. But is Ford really as conservative as his record indicates or can he make the case that he was just shading his politics for his state’s body politic? New Yorkers like to think they’re better than everyone else anyway, so it should be easy for Ford to subtly make the case that he was just placating redneck Tennesseans with conservative red meat.

Politics is, in the end, very much a personality contest. While we might like to fool ourselves into believing politics is about ideology and policy, far more often it’s about image, identity, personality and connections.

The national experts say Ford is trapped politically because he’s too liberal for Tennessee and too conservative for the New York Democratic Party. But that’s exactly why he can win — if he runs as an Independent.

Most everyone who isn’t a true activist, even if they lean one way or another, likes to think of themselves as independent. No one could exploit this easier than an expert political chameleon like Ford Jr.

Ford is so charismatic he got West Tennessee rednecks to believe that he, Harold Ford Jr., son of an inflammatory black congressman, was just a good ol’ boy who loved guns, God and huntin’. I have to believe that he can convince a more progressive electorate that he is one of them, too. Successful politicians are ones who can appeal to the most people at the same time. Politics is about winking and nodding at one constituency while telling the other one what they want to hear.

Maybe Ford is too conservative for a closed New York Democratic primary. But with a weak or token Republican opponent in the race, there is plenty of room for Ford to battle for the center and the independent portion of both the left and the right.

The best part of this strategy will be that by the time this exploratory phase is over, Ford won’t have to “abandon” the Democratic Party. Gilibrand partisans like Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and the White House will have trashed him so much that he will be able to say that the party fathers have abandoned him and that he has no choice but to go around the Democratic machine.

And the simple fact is that Ford doesn’t need the Democratic Party to win this.

Ford is an African American candidate and while we might like to view ours as a “post-racial” society, the fact remains that black voters like to vote for black candidates. A Memphis Ford can figure out how to get the black clergy, even in a foreign state, behind his candidacy. One way or another, Ford would have a sizable black turnout for him on election day.

That’s a pretty good baseline. From there he can reach out to centrists, independents and Democrats uncomfortable with the incumbent. And as an Independent, Ford can appeal to Republicans. Hell, even in Tennessee Ford probably got a few conservatives and Republicans to cast ballots for him. Just imagine what he could accomplish in New York. New York Republicans are a whole different breed of Republican and are far more in line with the kind of centrist Ford is at root.

Also, as an independent, Ford is freer to pick and choose which issues to evolve on to suit the general electorate and not bother with being completely dogmatic on litmus test Democratic primary electorate issues. The transformation from a Bible-toting, pro-gun, Christ-centric Blue Dog Tennessee Democrat to one palatable to the New York Democratic primary is an admittedly tall order — even for someone with the political skills of Harold Ford.

But as an independent he can tweak the specifics of his positions slightly and calibrate the rhetoric a notch or two to suit a mainstream New York audience.

And it’s already happening.

In Tennessee, he stretched his centrist position on abortion to sound pro-life. In New York, he can easily take the same record and couch it, as he has, as pro-choice. A majority of Americans, even New Yorkers, are moderates on the issue, as he is. And, as an independent, he won’t get single-issue voters anyway.

On gay marriage, his opponents can argue that he flipped — and indeed he has — but Ford does have a record supporting civil unions. In New York, he can emphasize that record and claim (and is) that he is following a long line of Democratic centrists in evolution on the issue, Bill Clinton among them.

Even on immigration, he can easily go from an a basher of “illegals” to a supporter of common sense reforms that protect workers and crack down on exploitative employers.

Ford has a demonstrated ability to raise money and to win votes on charisma alone. With the right team and a few well-connected New York benefactors, he could take the New York political world by storm, win the race as an independent and keep an African American in the Senate. Certainly, everything would have to fall just right — but it’s doable.

Opportunities like this don’t come around everyday. Ford has left Tennessee behind for good. Chuck Schumer is 59 years old. He’s not giving up his seat any time soon and Junior has never struck me as a patient man. Kristen Gillbrand is an incumbent, but an appointed one. This may be the closest the 39-year-old Harold Ford gets to an open Senate seat before his 60th birthday.

If he wants to be in the Senate, this is the last shot he’ll get for while. He should take it. Once he wins as an independent he can caucus with the Democrats and be brought back into the fold.

If he stays inside the Democratic primary, the machine will kill him. But outside, his personality, charisma and political skills can be used to grab up a coalition of Rockfeller Republicans, Blue Collar Dems, and African Americans.

It seems crazy, but it just might work.

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Tags: abortion, African American, black, Chris Cillizza, Chuck Schumer, gay marriage, Harold Ford, Harold Ford Jr., Harry Reid, Immigration, independent, Kirsten E. Gillibrand, New York, New York Democratic Party, pro-choice, pro-life, Tennessee, West Tennessee  

Lamar Alexander Isn’t Just The Man Who Makes The Deals

By Kleinheider Posted on May 23, 2008 at 9:10 am

He breaks them, too. Republican Senate Conference Committee Chair Lamar Alexander is a powerful man down in Washington and recently he has not been afraid to use that power to break bad with players on both sides of the aisle.

Not only did Alexander vote with Democrats and several Republicans to override a Presidential veto on the farm bill he also moved yesterday to block a deal struck by Democratic Leader Harry Reid and the administration to move several executive branch nominations forward.

Alexander stood in the way because of Reid’s refusal to approve William Graves for another term on the Tennessee Valley Authority Board:

Reid and the White House hatched a last-minute deal for the Senate to confirm Steve Preston as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, along with several nominees to the Institute of Peace, military officeholders, undersecretaries and ambassadors. The deal appeared to be headed for a unanimous consent agreement as the Senate prepared for the recess, but it fell apart after a Republican Senator objected to the deal.

Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) blocked the package of nominations from advancing because Reid continues to object to his pick for the Tennessee Valley Authority board. Alexander has pressed Reid to approve William Graves for another term on TVA, but the Majority Leader has said no, wanting Democratic representation on the board.

An Alexander spokesman said, “Senator Reid has been playing politics with nominees like Bishop Graves for far too long and that has got to stop. This is no small matter to Senator Alexander, and it’s astonishing that the Democratic Leader doesn’t recognize that fact after the conversations and letters exchanged by the two senators these past weeks and months.

“Reid has chosen an Institute of Peace nominee over the Secretary of Housing in the middle of a housing slump. That’s not the sort of leadership people expect from Congress,” the spokesman added.

SEE ALSO:
Jackson Baker
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Tags: Bishop Graves, Harry Reid, race card, Roll Call, Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA, William Graves