McAuliffe Takes A Chapter From Obama Playbook In Governor Bid

By Tim Craig

Monday, April 6, 2009

RICHMOND — Terry McAuliffe was stung when Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, which he oversaw, fell to Barack Obama last year. But over the course of the campaign, it appears he took careful notes.

Now, as McAuliffe finds himself in a hard-fought race for governor of Virginia, he is employing many of the same tactics that his opponent used successfully just a year earlier. He is reaching out to new voters, exploiting new technology and casting himself as a fresh-faced outsider. He is not taking any region for granted, is targeting African Americans and is swarming communities with paid organizers. It all bears a surprising likeness to the strategies Obama used so effectively in 2008.

In his matchup against Brian Moran and Sen. R. Creigh Deeds for the Democratic nomination, McAuliffe is even replicating Obama's use of a one-word campaign theme. For Obama, it was "change." McAuliffe's mantra is "jobs," a word he says over and over.

To some degree, what McAuliffe is doing is what any modern campaign does: adopting and expanding on the latest innovations.

"All the social media, organizing and Internet fundraising that Obama did is becoming standard in campaigns, and I think in the Virginia race, McAuliffe has probably done it better than anybody," said Jennifer E. Duffy, editor of the Cook Political report.

But McAuliffe's use of the tools that undid the Clinton campaign carries a special irony, given that it was only weeks between when he fell prey to these tactics and adopted them himself.

"I would think if anybody could learn what Hillary did wrong, it's Terry," said Michael Mohler, president of the Virginia Professional Fire Fighters Association, which recently endorsed McAuliffe.

McAuliffe has been reluctant to acknowledge the similarities between his effort and Obama's. When asked about it in a recent interview, McAuliffe initially said he didn't learn anything from the Obama campaign. Then he clarified his response by noting that he has worked on Democratic campaigns since his early 20s.

"I have a unique perspective, because I have been at the highest levels of campaigns for a lot of years," the former Democratic National Committee chairman explained. "I've learned from winning campaigns. I've learned from losing campaigns."

From the earliest hours of his unexpected bid for Virginia's highest office, McAuliffe began adopting the ideas of his former rival. He had his supporters sign up so they would be "the first to know" by text message when he officially entered the race in January. Obama employed the same device last summer to collect hundreds of thousands of cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses by having supporters sign up to be alerted about his choice of a running mate.

During the Democratic primaries in February 2008, Obama made headlines by airing an ad during the Super Bowl in more than a dozen states. McAuliffe followed suit during this year's Super Bowl, buying a 30-second spot in the Hampton Roads market at the end of the third quarter.

There's even an echo of Obama's iconic logo in the one selected by McAuliffe. Obama used a rising sun. McAuliffe's is the shape of Virginia filled with sunshinelike rays.

Herb Smith, an Obama organizer from Falls Church who volunteers for Moran, said he found the echoes in McAuliffe's campaign "peculiar," given how McAuliffe "campaigned against the guy so hard for two years."

"It makes you sit back and laugh," Smith said.

Duffy said successful national presidential campaigns are incubators for political techniques. It just so happens, she said, that Virginia's governor's race is the first big contest in which candidates have the opportunity to emulate the Obama campaign.

"I think this is the future, and I think McAuliffe and the people around him had a lot of exposure to it last year," Duffy said.

McAuliffe wasn't the only one who had exposure to Obama's tactics. Mike Henry, McAuliffe's campaign manager, served as Clinton's deputy campaign manager during the first half of last year's primaries and caucuses.

"The thing I took away from '08 is: You've got to bring new people into the process," said Henry, who managed Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner's campaign after he left the Clinton campaign in February 2008 amid a staff shake-up. "You've got to make sure you build an organization that can compete for votes in every region."

During the fall general election, Obama helped secure a win in Virginia by opening 50 offices and deploying more than 200 staffers throughout the state. This year, McAuliffe is the candidate with the most offices and the largest staff. He has opened 10 offices and hired almost 100 paid staffers, including several dozen former Obama staffers.

Mo Elleithee, a senior strategist for McAuliffe who served as one of Clinton's chief spokesmen during last year's presidential campaign, said all good campaigns borrow ideas. But he and Henry stress that a candidate has to have his own message and his own strategy.

"Tactically, you want to learn the lesson of what went right and what went wrong when it comes to building a campaign . . . and then determine how do you marry that with Terry and his background and his vision and his message," Elleithee said.

The merging of the old with the new is evident in McAuliffe's campaign message.

Last year, Obama pledged not to accept campaign contributions from political action committees or lobbyists. McAuliffe is not making a blanket pledge to refuse money from lobbyists or PACs. But he has said he won't accept corporate campaign contributions from any company receiving federal bailout money.

The promise fits into McAuliffe's strategy of running as a Richmond outsider, despite his reputation for being a Washington insider. And it mirrors Obama's efforts to position himself as the Washington outsider, even though he was a sitting U.S. senator.

McAuliffe also appears to have learned from Obama's demeanor on the campaign trail. During most of the primaries, Obama vowed not to go negative against Clinton. This year, that vow belongs to McAuliffe, who has pledged to run a relentlessly positive campaign.

Tagged: elections, politics, State news

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