Net Roots Rising

Kelly Fero is a leading Texas Democratic political strategist, as well as an award-winning journalist and author. Fero has three decades of experience in developing political and public policy strategy at the state, national and international levels. The following interview was conducted with Nate Wilcox in the spring of 2007.

Wilcox: What was the thinking? How did Tony Sanchez become the Democratic nominee for Governor?

Fero: The thinking was, in 1998 John Sharp barely lost to Rick Perry in the Lt. Governor’s race by a little over 1%. The thinking was that Gary Mauro at the top of the ticket had been too weak and that George W. Bush had big coattails. Mauro lost by 19 points at the top of the ticket and the next race down was essentially a tie, showing that Perry wouldn’t have won without Bush’s big coattails. The thinking was in ‘02 who could we get at the top of the ticket who could fix that problem because Sharp wanted to run for Lt. Governor again. So after looking at demographics we thought how bout a well-funded Hispanic.

So we thought of Henry Cisneros. I’ll never forget that meeting. After the long pitch, Cisneros looked at Sharp and said, “Sharp, could I win?” and Sharp goes, “No, but I could” only partly tongue in cheek.

March of 2000, I first met with Tony Sanchez. I was in my office in Austin and I get a call from Sharp whose office was a block away, saying that he was coming up to my office with Tony Sanchez. So I go to the bathroom real quick before they get there, and I step into the hallway and I bump into Tony Sanchez who was wandering around looking for my office. Then Sharp shows up and we go in a conference room and Sharp goes “Kelly, I want you to tell Tony here why he’s going to be the next governor.” Totally out of the blue.

So I spent the next 15 or 20 minutes bullshitting, totally pulling it out of the air, about how Sanchez would be the next Governor. I knew enough from the Cisneros meeting and I knew Sharp’s thinking. The thinking was let’s get a well-funded Hispanic candidate at the top of the ticket to take advantage of this demographic wave — the “sleeping giant” of 900,000 registered but non-voting Hispanics in Texas. If we could just turn them on, we’d sweep in, including Sharp as Lt Governor.

Tony Sanchez just sort of looked at me like a deer in the headlights.

A week later I get another call from Sharp and he and Tony Sanchez came over again. And I told Sharp later, his eyes had gone from “Why me?” to “Why not me?” He was obviously talking to other people whom he thought were encouraging him including Nick Kralj, Ben Barnes and Jack Martin.

We talked about recruiting other people for the ticket including Ron Kirk for Senate, Kirk Watson for AG, etc. What were we smoking!?

All of this seemed for some reason entirely plausible to them. I never really thought about it because my head was in the Mexican presidential race. On paper this all seemed like a good idea.

On June 28, 2000 Sanchez called me and said, ok I’m going to do this thing but only if you leave PSI and come over and run this thing. In Feb 2001, I brought in Glenn Smith, a long-time political reporter who had run Ann Richards’ campaign in 1990 against me, I was running Jim Mattox’ campaign in the primary.

Glenn was brought in originally to run the database and technology side of the campaign. Not long after I was called home by Sharp to run his Lt. Governor’s campaign and left the Sanchez campaign.

The thinking was we’d appeal to all the various demographic groups in the state, with Sanchez appealing to Hispanics, Kirk appealing to African-Americans, Sharp with his appeal to the business community and rural voters. It all sounded very logical and plausible at the time. What we found out, of course, separate and apart from how well and how imperfectly all the campaigns were run. What we found was that Texans in 2002 were not all that prepared to vote for a Hispanic, or at least that Hispanic.

We also found out after the fact that Republican interests were pouring $5.5 million of illegal corporate money into the race. Yeah we got beat but the other side was cheating.

Wilcox: How much did 9/11 impact the campaign?

Fero: In the Sanchez campaign, I do remember that he was in New York during the attacks and couldn’t get back because the flights were grounded. He was stuck in NYC for six days. Later I realized that was symbolic, the campaign never got off the ground, it was just stuck in this post 9/11 limbo. All the best laid communications strategies of the campaign went out the window.

Wilcox: One of the strategic decisions the Sanchez campaign made was to attack Perry early, to hit him on Insurance rates and utility rates. And the campaign was basically ended as a competitive proposition early — in August — when Perry fired back with attacks linking Sanchez to drug dealing and money laundering.

Fero: That triggers another memory, when I was first talking to Tony, very early, still in 2000. Sanchez and I were at the Four Seasons and he told me he wanted to run the most negative campaign ever. It registered with me later, after he ran one of the most negative campaigns in history. You will recall that the last ad of the campaign was a positive ad. It was the best ad of the campaign, it was hopeful and aspirational and everything I had hoped the campaign would be. But it was too late and I guess Tony never really had any interest in running the kind of positive campaign that I had hoped we would.

And on the Perry side of the equation you have to remember that he had tried to run a negative campaign against Sharp in 1998 but Rove who was running Bush’s campaign would not allow it. In fact we got at least two ads that were never aired on purpose but were shipped to stations and we got a copy of them because Perry just had to take a shot.

I think the combination of Tony running a negative campaign from inclinations inside of him and Perry with the brakes taken off resulted in an amazingly negative campaign.

Wilcox: It strikes me that the fundamental strategic paradox that destroyed the Sanchez campaign was that in order to win they had to “wake the sleeping giant” and inspire Hispanics who don’t normally vote to get involved and yet they ran a campaign that was almost systematically designed to dampen turnout — a very negative broadcast media campaign.

One other thing, Dan Morales, the former Attorney General, who was already under a cloud of federal investigation, filed at the last minute, at 5 minutes to 5 on the day of the filing deadline. Then Sanchez and Morales debated each other in Spanish.

Fero: The decision to debate Morales in Spanish was one of the worst decisions of the campaign because it sent a message to white voters that this was a primary campaign that was taking place outside the realm of white voters in a language they didn’t understand.

One other aspect of the Morales campaign that’s become clear since then was that Perry’s people pretty much convinced Morales to get into the race. They insinuated that if he curried favor with them by damaging Sanchez then they would arrange for lighter treatment for him in his legal issues. Morales ended up endorsing Perry after the primaries and serving on some sort of law enforcement commission. Somehow it was not hypocritical of Perry to appoint a guy to a special law enforcement committee that was under a shadow of indictment for breaking the law.

There was only one night of debates in the campaign, with all the candidates, Governor, Senate, Lt. Gov, AG debating in Dallas the night before the OU/UT game. I was walking down a hallway backstage and Rick Perry and Anita Perry and their bodyguards came around a corner and I had to greet them, the hallway was too small to ignore them. And who was with them? Dan Morales, desperately sucking up and trying to curry favor.

Wilcox: Glenn Smith took over the campaign promising to run the first aggressive, modern field campaign in Texas political history, palm pilots, databases, etc An endeavor that had basically been abandoned with Ralph Yarborough’s loss in 1970.

Fero: Early on, Sanchez, who had a background in high-tech as an investor was talking about using technology to impact the campaign. He was talking very early on about command and control centers and computer banks and people blockwalking with palm pilots and HQ using the technology to get early reports and reallocate resources. etc. It was all very exciting and promising but from what I could tell none of it was every really implemented.

I was no longer with the campaign but because I had been involved early on people would vent to me.

I got the impression that his vision had not been implemented. I got a call from Hidalgo county in the final days before the election saying that the field program that we were hearing about for months amounted to kids standing in medians holding up Sanchez signs. Another person working for the Sanchez campaign told me that the day after the election he tried to return $80,000 in cash to the campaign and they wouldn’t take it. So he bought a new car.

In the end the NASA like command and control center turned out to be a typical street money in south Texas operation. We could’ve run a campaign like that for slightly less than $87 million.

Wilcox: You mentioned the $87 million figure but earlier you were saying that the $5 million in illegal corporate money made a huge impact. How come the Republicans money made such a bigger impact.

Fero: I think you’re right in your assessment that 9/11 was a wet blanket in the 2002 elections. So it’s an excellent question, but I think it’s apples and oranges. The money wasn’t going head to head. The $5.5 million was going into state rep races to pull out republican voters in close races where the $87 million was just being pissed into the wind.

Wilcox: When did it become apparent that DeLay and the GOP were going to use their ill-bought majority in the Texas legislature to re-draw the congressional districts? He had installed his friend Tom Craddick as speaker of the house…

Fero: The very day after the election in 2002, where Craddick announced he had the votes to be speaker. The media advisory that went to the press about that conference was sent out on TRMPAC stationary. That was the first time many of us who had been involved in other races became aware of TRMPAC. The day after the election was the first day I heard some rumor about possible redistricting.

A couple months after the election, Perry was asked and denied there would be redistricting. Lt Gov Dewhurst said he was against it. Called it a bad idea.

In March I began picking up whispers that there was redistricting afoot and that DeLay was behind it. Everyone I think was slow to adapt to the new roles and rules that people had to play in that first session under GOP leadership. There was a lot of adjustment that session, the adjustments are still going on.

DeLay had redistricting in mind this whole time we now know. Then in May, of course, Ardmore happened. I was aware that weekend that it was afoot but I was sceptical that it would actually happen. But it did. Amazing. 50 state legislators organizing themselves to secretly get to Oklahoma.

Wilcox: Around that time you and I started putting together plans to put together a web site to oppose the redistricting.

Fero: It was obviously a good idea and it was something that was not being done. This effort to steamroller redistricting was happening in a vacuum. We were slow to adjust to the opposition role. The other side, Craddick, DeLay, Perry had been working on this strategy for months and we were caught flat footed. It was you and a handful of others who tried to kickstart the opposition to this redistricting into gear.

It was outside the ability of the Democratic officials to imagine that this was really going to happen and number two it was impossible to imagine that there was anything they could do to stop it.

A few people came together to do something about it — Chris Bell’s office, Martin Frost’s office, Dem minority leader Jim Dunnam, George Shipley, Alfred Stanley, Chris Feldman.

There was a huge rally at the capitol. 22,000 people had signed the petition to oppose redistricting online. Then there was a big rally to show support for the quorum breakers. All the pieces of the Democratic machine came together — Frost and the unions sent buses around the state to bring in volunteers, Glen Maxey and the Dean campaign put their organization muscle into the rally, south Texas came through. We put on an enormous rally….and the steamroller kept coming and redistricting happened anyway.

Jon Henke was George Allen’s netroots coordinator and currently is a manager at New Media Strategies in Arlington, Virginia. This interview was completed on April 25, 2007.

Feld: What do you think were the most significant elements that came together to produce such a strong grassroots/netroots movement for Jim Webb?

Henke: I believe the dominant factor in the strong netroots performance on the left was the fact that Democrats have been out of power for so long. The base was able to put aside ideological differences because they had a single, unifying frustration: Republicans. And the solution to that frustration was more practical than ideological: get Democrats of any stripe elected.

When Democrats have held power for awhile, ideological differences will become more important to the Democratic base; in the meantime, the Netroots are more worried about how to storm the castle than how to govern it.

Feld: How would you describe the grassroots/netroots movement for George Allen?

Henke: George Allen had a small cadre of supportive bloggers, but there was not a “grassroots/netroots movement”. The campaign didn’t do anything to develop a movement in advance, and by the time the importance of the new media became apparent – mid-to-late August — the only option left was to hire somebody to engage bloggers and spread the campaign message within the new media. That is when and where I came in.

Feld: What do you think were the greatest successes and greatest failures of the “Draft” and the grassroots/netroots Webb movement in general?

Henke: I believe that Webb netroots team did a very good job selling Jim Webb as an electable candidate with a real chance of winning. Rallying the national netroots around his campaign did a great deal to enhance his stature in the media and with potential donors. The LeftRoots was also very successful at surrogating the Webb campaign and DNC oppo research to the media.

Feld: How valuable/effective do you believe the pro-Webb blogs and online groups were.

Henke: I’ll just quote something I wrote at QandO.net:

Make no mistake, without the netroots, Webb would not have won. He may not even have been close. It was a long-cultivated activism/outreach/media-hounding New Media campaign that brought Webb to the attention of the institutional Democrats, sold him to the activists and shaped the narratives of both Webb and Allen for the media.

Feld: Same question for the Allen campaign.

Henke: The Allen campaign had only done minimal outreach to the blogosphere and had never really integrated blogs into its messaging, communications and strategy before late August. In the final couple months, I believe we were much more aware of the problems and better capable of addressing them within the same medium….but by that point, the narrative was set and we were forced to play defense until the end.

Feld: Do you believe that the Democrats “got” the power of the netroots better than the Republicans in 2006? Or not?

Henke: I believe the Democrats “got” the Netroots in 2006, while Republicans did not get it at all. In 2007, Republicans are just now at the same place Democrats were in late 2002/early 2003: they know this whole “new media” thing is important and they know they should try to figure it out, but it’s still a bit of a mystery to most of them. It will take some time for the establishment to grow comfortable with the new communications medium.

Feld: The Allen campaign got a relatively late start on its blogging/netroots strategy. Why do you think this was the case, and do you think it hurt the Allen campaign?

Henke: Why? I’m really not sure why the Allen campaign didn’t have a blog/netroots strategy prior to September of ’06. Perhaps they thought it wasn’t necessary. The problem was not that they missed the opportunity to develop a pro-Allen netroots movement; the problem was that they missed the events occurring in the Leftosphere – the developing narrative — which would have tipped them to the coming storm and how to deal with it.

Feld: All in all, despite the fact that Virginia continues to be a Republican-leaning state, the number of pro-Democratic blogs is greater than the number of pro-Republican blogs. Why do you think this is the case? Also, how would you describe the quality and effectiveness of each side’s blogging efforts in both 2005 and 2006?

Henke: I think pro-Democratic blogs outnumber pro-Republican blogs almost everywhere, regardless of the hue of the State. Democrats have a much more developed new media operation, and the liberal/progressive movement throws more resources at their new media effort. However, in Virginia, as in much of the country, it’s simply a matter of Democrats being out of power, frustrated and in search of new venues for their voice. Democrats gravitated to blogs for the same reason that Republicans gravitated to talk radio and Free Republic in the 90s. It gave them a place to shout – a place to get involved.

Feld: Do you believe that senior Allen strategists like Dick Wadhams were surprised at the intensity of the Virginia blogosphere? Did anyone ever say to Wadhams, “Dick, I don’t think we’re in South Dakota anymore!”

Henke: I think virtually all Republicans were surprised at the effectiveness of the Democrats internet media machine. I suspect that a few years of apparent impotence had lulled them into the belief that the LeftRoots movement was just the “fringe crazies”. That misses the real power and influence of the liberal blogs, in my opinion, which is much more in narrative development and messaging to the influentials than about fundraising and GOTV.

Feld: Do you feel that the pro-Allen blogs on balance helped the Allen campaign, hurt it, or had no effect? Same question for the pro-Webb blogs.

Henke:I think the campaign blog (AllenHQ) was relatively effective in the short time it existed at drawing attention from the national Rightosphere and at pushing some issues to the attention of journalists. Most of our new media successes were behind the scenes, or things nobody would ever really know about.

I believe that, on balance, the pro-Webb blogs were successful. By the time we were able to push back, criticize and draw attention to some of the pro-Webb blog excesses and inaccuracies, the damage had been done. And as ‘feeder blogs’ working information up to the national blogs, they were always successful because the Democrats have a relatively coherent activist new media operation.

Feld: What were you guys thinking after the “Macaca” video started going viral? Did you know that this would be a huge story that could do great damage to the Allen candidacy?

ANSWER: I didn’t enter the campaign until a bit more than 2 weeks after that happened. I don’t think they thought the incident would be as big as it was – again, understandably, they missed the narrative being developed in the blogosphere – and were genuinely surprised that people thought it was somehow racial in nature. The “racism” angle played up by Democrats was very much at odds with the man they knew, so I think they were surprised that people believed that.

However, since the ‘macaca’ interpretation was consistent with the narrative that the Leftosphere had worked to develop over a long period, it was easier for the Leftosphere to frame it as they did.

Feld: The relationship between campaign bloggers’ past writings has come up numerous times, including most recently with Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan on the Edwards campaign. Do you think that bloggers will be able to operate effectively within political campaigns given the constraints on saying anything “controversial?” Also, do campaign bloggers need to share the candidates’ views and style of expression in order for the relationship to work? In your case, for instance, your libertarian beliefs appeared to conflict at times with George Allen’s stances on several issues.

Henke: In many respects, bloggers will be viewed just like any other campaign employee, and campaigns should be just as careful with the blogger they hire as they are with, for example, the deputy spokesman they hire.

Bloggers should be able to operate effectively within campaigns, so long as both the campaigns and the bloggers understand the both the limitations and proper role of a campaign blogger and/or netroots coordinator. Obviously, restrictions on the ability to be overtly snarky and controversial will limit the effectiveness of the blogger qua blogger. However, unlike regular bloggers, the role of a campaign blogger is not really to be an opinion leader.

I think bloggers will want to share the political views of their candidate in a very general sense, but it’s absurd to think that any campaign employee would agree 100% with the candidate on all issues.

In my case, I believed that George Allen was good on many issues that were important to me, and that he was orders of magnitude more acceptable than Jim Webb whose economic tendencies – e.g., opposition to free trade, gross misunderstanding of income issues – were diametrically opposed to my political priorities.

Feld: In general, how do you see the role of the netroots, the blogosphere, and “new media” evolving in coming years? How do you see this impacting the traditional media, consultant-dominated, top-down campaign structure?

Henke: The New Media will grow more professionalized and coordinated in coming years. That will disappoint some fans of the early “amateurs in the new frontier” atmosphere, and I sympathize with that. I also sympathize with people who miss the days of small-town Mom and Pop stores, but evolutions take place because people find better ways of doing things. In the blogosphere, as on Main Street, some will develop more effective ways to find and deliver content.

Of course, there will always be a place for the amateur blogger who can get good information and write with a unique voice. For the political world, this represents a new battlefield for the minds of voters and Influentials, and they’ll need to figure out how to engage it both in the short term (campaigns, political offices) and in the long term (Parties, interest groups and movements). The New Media won’t eliminate the traditional media, political consultants or the top-down campaign structure…but it does help democratize the game.

Feld: Maybe the blogosphere will evolve on two tracks?

Henke: Actually, that’s a good point. I think the “professionalized” track will take over a lot of the muckraking, gotcha, aggregation and information-dispersion, while punditry will be split between hobbyists and professional journalists/pundits/etc. There will probably never be a professionalization of the “cranky independent” or “nonpartisan” punditry zone – who profits? – so you’ll end up with a lot of good, indy/hobbyist bloggers there.

Feld: I remain puzzled at the lack of urgency and seriousness on the part of the Allen campaign with regard to the blogosphere.

Henke: …They probably didn’t realize the political winds were shifting, and underestimated the Leftosphere. My impression is that the early failure of the Leftosphere to win races, combined with the over-the-top rhetoric had made the establishment believe that the Leftosphere was more of a “far left fringe” that was (a) generally incapable of turning out voters, and (b) making the Party look bad.

I think the first assumption is correct – the blogosphere doesn’t really GOTV. That’s not its function, though. The latter assumption was probably incorrect, because the vast majority of the public didn’t know/care about the overheated rhetoric that sometimes occurred/occurs in the ‘sphere. However, they failed to understand that blogs are very effective at framing things for the Influentials, and that’s where they lost track of progress being made in the Leftosphere.

Right after the “Confederate Prick” story came out, I sent an email to somebody at the Allen campaign, suggesting they think about how to deal with that narrative and fast, because it was very clear that the Left/Webb/DNC people were busy building a ‘racism’ narrative against Allen and if the Allen camp didn’t address it soon, it would be too late when they had it built. It was a bit depressing to see them ignore what seemed so apparent to somebody who paid attention to the blogosphere, understood how the “progressive infrastructure” worked and how it saw narrative development/framing/etc.

Feld: As to the pro-Allen blogs, I’d actually say they hurt Allen’s campaign rather than having no effect.

Henke: Perhaps. I try to distinguish between the tiny pro-Allen bloggers and the AllenHQ blog. I agree that they were, er, inexpert.

Feld: I think their attacks at the end on Jim Webb’s writings backfired badly.

Henke: That entire episode was a relentless embarrassment. I don’t know if you noticed at the time, but I never criticized Webb for writing what he did. I had zero problem with it, and thought it should have been a total non-issue. What I DID write was that (a) it’s not “unfair” to reproduce work Webb has published and cited as part of his resume as a politician, and (b) a lot of Democrats previously argued that such sex-fiction was bad. (I referenced the criticisms made of Scooter Libby, Olbermann saying a Democrat would have their head on a pike if they wrote something similar, Shakespeare’s Sister arguing that Libby’s book indicated how sickness he really was, etc)

I’ll stand by those two, narrow statements. However, I don’t agree in the least that his writings were ‘bad’ or relevant to the campaign. And the over-the-top way some people argued that, I agree, may have been detrimental.