Over the weekend, The New York Times published a story claiming that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was set to bail on a number of House colleagues who seemed likely to lose their seats to Republican challengers. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the committee chairman, quickly denied that any sort of retrenchment was under way. Still the story wasn’t a happy one for Democratic campaign workers, facing down an already brutal fall election season.
“There are good days and bad days,” Will Brown, campaign manager for Rep. John Spratt, the long-serving South Carolina Democrat, said about hearing the news. “I feel better now than when I first saw it.”
“We are going to fight like hell to win—with or without the national Democrats,” Barba says.
Spratt, who heads the House Budget Committee, wasn’t the only high-profile Democrat said to be in danger of losing national party love. North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy, running for his 10th term, could also see a softening in support. A handful of freshman Democrats—Rep. Betsy Markey of Colorado, Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia, Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, and Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland—were also seen as likely candidates for abandonment. The calculus is pretty simple. With so many tight races, there’s only so much money to go around. Even though the DCCC had $36 million on hand in July (almost $14 million more than the National Republican Congressional Committee), there’s an abundance of needy candidates. All signs point that group growing over the coming weeks.
Despite the scare put into him by the story in the Times, Brown, Spratt’s campaign manager, says that he’s since been told not to worry.
“I’ve got assurances from folks at the DCCC,” Brown says. “Everyone I’ve talked to says that it is completely untrue.”
What assurances?
Brown says the DCCC has reserved airtime in the three major media markets in Spratt’s 5th District. If there are any other signs of good feelings, Brown wouldn’t let on. “The other stuff is inside baseball that I don’t really want to talk about,” Brown says.
• Sandra McElwaine: The First Husbands of 2010It must be particularly tough for Spratt to find himself mentioned on the endangered species list and at risk of losing Washington’s largesse, since he’s been such a loyal soldier: While other Democrats in tight races have chosen to run against the White House, or against Washington, Spratt has welcomed Vice President Biden to his district and praised controversial pieces of Obama’s agenda. Tea Party favorite Mick Mulvaney is dead even with Spratt in the polls, while Spratt has a significant fundraising advantage. Last week, Mulvaney released the first ad of the campaign—an attack on health-care reform.
Spratt will need all his money—and then some. His district spans four media markets. When it comes down to it, the DCCC may be happier to spend its money on a lower-profile candidate at a smaller cost, than to stack its chips behind the committee chairman who could eat up tons of cash and still lose.
Perhaps hoping to signal that it wasn’t cutting and running from the Perreillo campaign, the DSCC released an internal poll Tuesday showing that the Virginia Democrat is down only two points to Republican businessman Robert Hurt, within the survey’s margin of error. But Hurt isn’t letting the moment pass. At a rally on Monday, the Hurt campaign said reporters should ask the incumbent, "How does Congressman Perriello feel about being abandoned by Democrat leadership after being a loyal foot soldier for their agenda over the past two years?"
When asked on Tuesday how the DCCC was helping the Perreillo campaign, communications director Jessica Barba wouldn’t offer anything specific, saying “They are providing support in our campaign operations in general.”
But she says her camp isn’t spooked by the possibility that Washington could abandon them.
“We are going to fight like hell to win—with or without the national Democrats,” Barba says.
At the moment, many Democratic campaigns are likely scrambling to prove to the committee that they are worthy of the attention. But as Democratic strategist Tad Devine sees it, scaring off other national groups may not be the worst thing for embattled Democrats. Devine remembers when independent groups spent thousands attacking George W. Bush during the 2004 campaign, only to wind up hurting his candidate John Kerry.
“The best way for Democrats to win is to localize the races and make them about the candidate, keeping races as local and fixed as possible. Not having a lot of outside interference can help that,” Devine says.
So perhaps there’s a silver lining for the candidates on the bubble. Having the national party give up on you means not having anyone else get in your way.
For Perreillo, who was the target of relentless negative advertising from the time he was sworn in, losing the national spotlight might not be a bad thing.
“It’s not about the big ads that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Barba says. “It’s the fact that in the Brunswick Times-Gazette you see a picture of Tom every week meeting with county officials. That’s the kind of stuff that people remember.”
Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
