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March 21, 2011 09:33 PM UTC

Campaign "March Madness" and Romer's New Ad

  • 15 Comments
  • by: nancycronk

Some of us are excited about the Denver Mayoral Candidates, and some of us just love to watch the campaigns themselves. For us, this is the real March Madness. We want to look at each team’s rosters, remember how they each performed on other teams, and compare what we know about each staffer with what we’ve seen them accomplish before. Is Romer putting all his eggs in the field basket or in outreach? Is Hancock sticking mostly with his base and their friends, or is he maximizing the education angle as much as possible?

We want to know which company is marketing each candidate, what is their message, who they are going after, and what they are doing with their money. Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers to the left side of Denver Pols. We even compare  odds on this stuff.

Regardless of the qualities of a candidate, the managers and staff can make or break their chances of winning any office. If you want to know who is going to run the city of Denver next year, watch the candidates. If you want to know who will run the state in ten to twenty years, get to know their campaign staffs.

I just received a new ad from the Romer campaign by email. Kudos to Manager Adam Dunstone (former Field Director to Michael Bennet in 2010) for a great ad. Focusing on jobs was the right thing to do. (I’d bet my house keys Dunstone’s next gig will be the Obama re-election. His ground game was historic in Romanoff vs. Buck.)

Romanoff’s former Deputy campaign manager is heading up the Mejia campaign and doing a pretty great job, as well. Loyal Pols readers will note I (and others) raked the Romanoff Senate campaign over the coals for all kinds of blunders (hiring Pat Caddell, going too negative too early, hiring someone with a potential conflict of interest, etc.). Berrick Abramson seems to have learned a lesson or two from the earlier campaign, and has hired lots of top-notch staff including Bennet’s Arapahoe County point-man Peter Schottenfels, Ryann Dubiel, Brittany Petterson and others. He’s also stayed focused on the positive and once again reached out to free media like AM760 radio. Because of a series of good campaign decisions, Mejia has come up from behind and is now a serious contender for the seat.

On the Boigon race, rising star and campaign manager to State Reps Rhonda Fields and Angela Williams, Jovan Melton (one of the people I aggressively recruited for Center for Progressive Leadership, by the way!) helped Boigon capture the airwaves, and put herself out there as Hickenlooper’s successor first. Young talent Elliot Goldbaum is also a big boon to her campaign.

Hancock snagged Joe Rice’s manager John B. Scott and experienced strategist Matt Carberry. Despite a national Republican sweep resulting in a loss for the Dems in a seat we probably never should have had anyway, Scott has earned his stripes and then some.

I would love to see more aggressive campaigning from Team Linkhart and Team Spahn. Linkhart is the candidate who seems to be the most warmly embraced by the farthest left end of the Democratic spectrum, and his followers see him as a “true progressive”. I hope his staff will jump in the comments and update us on what’s going on there.

Several notable young talents who are missing from the lists I see, and I am not sure why they have not been snatched up by any of these campaigns, are Bennet’s Chris Rork, Colorado Young Dems Chair Gena Ozols, Change That Works Leader Nate McNeil, and ProgressNow’s Mike Ditto. These people are great at what they do — I’ve worked with them all in one way or another.

Because of space limitations, my apologies to all of the other young (and older) people working on these campaigns who deserve credit, whom I did not mention. I hope someone will add your name to the list in the comments.

Who’s winning this Mayoral race? I’d say a top-notch list of talented campaign workers.  

Comments

15 thoughts on “Campaign “March Madness” and Romer’s New Ad

  1. about John Scott.  He was great and absolutely not his fault that Joe lost. The amount of money spent taking that little old house seat back for the GOP was truly stunning. Also a very nice person. Great to all the volunteers. But my Denver friends seem to prefer Mejia at this point so, even though I’m not a Denver voter, he’s becoming my rooting interest.

  2. I realize that Chris Romer’s above video is on TV so this argument is a little diluted, however, it always strikes me as interesting to see campaigns spend money on commercials (especially ones that don’t have the resources for television) for the purpose of putting them on youtube.

    Then, when the campaign does post, they get a paltry number of views. Even Romer’s campaign, which one has to assume is one of the more robust mayoral campaigns only manages to scrounge up 448 views.

    So maybe this is directed towards more of the smaller campaigns that aren’t on TV but still pay for campaign commercials but I always wonder, if only your friends and family are watching your youtube campaign commercial, it is worth having one?

    Heck, I could put up a youtube video of a cat in a tutu and get more hits. I suppose that says a lot for America but I don’t want to go down that road of apathetic voters.

    I suppose the number of hits Romer’s commercial has says a lot about how hard it is to break through the youtube “noise” as much as it does about how much people are paying attention.

    1. Keep in mind that this is not directed at the current election at all, rather a more general thought on internet commercials.

      First I would suggest that it’s better to have something that can be done with volunteer time and not as much cash as you’d think than nothing at all. What’s the alternative? Mailers? Who looks besides political junkies? Canvassing is free. Robocalls are a joke except for political junkies.

      It is more reasonable, imo, to think if you post on Facebook, a junkie follows you and reposts, then their non-junkie friends may see it. I always watch Nancy Cronk’s videos because they may have firemen. I’m not the only one. If one happens to be schools, fine. One is political, fine.

      The last municipal election saw about 80,794 voters. Boigon’s “Jump” ad is at 1,278 views. That’s only 1.5%, but it doesn’t cost. All they have to do is repost to move it up in rank, every time there’s a story it will get more attention, the people watching it are probably incredibly likely to vote (why else would you be there? Of course, I don’t know how many of those are from Denver and not on her campaign staff), and it’s been about a week.

      I think if there’s a vague chance that you’ll need the video for something else (like Romanoff’s popular introduction video he used at Assembly), you do it. It can’t hurt.

      FWIW, in this particular race, I believe every candidate with an ad is planning on TV time as well as YouTube. That’s why Mejia’s ad was ten seconds. Cheap to air and a nice introduction. Boigon is on the air and Romer’s starts airing today.

      Frustration in “leave Britney alone!” videos aside, do you really care if some moron in Seattle sees your ad?

      Just a rather long thought on it…

      1. I agree with you that WHO sees the commercial (politicos, news agencies, bloggers, etc.,) are important. However, I still think it is important that many people view it, specifically voters. I know that is difficult to do considering anybody can view anything on youtube but still it’s important.

        Using Chris Romer’s site as an example, (not picking on him, but his video is up there so its easy to find) he only has 2,013 views on all 8 of his videos. That’s only an average of 251 per video.

        And I see your point about Carol Boigan’s 1.5% however, that’s a big leap in assuming those are all unique views (they’re not) and that they are even Denver voters (maybe half to 2/3 are – just my guess) then you have to ask how many of them were not already supporters.

        I like your points of course and I agree, putting a video up doesn’t hurt. But in the end, does it really even help or rather, how many votes does it bring in? My guess is not many. Unless you can build a huge online presence it seems as if these videos (from majority of local campaigns) are barely registering with local voters.

        I’m just acknowledging how hard it is to get to the average voter even when using new media.

        1. Better to at least try to start now instead of being utterly clueless in five years.

          I don’t have TV service at all anymore (too much expense – too little enjoyment). So I’m ONLY seeing online videos. It changes your perspective. The online component is going to getting bigger, not smaller.

          Very quickly; I did want to clarify about the who instead of how many remark. Obviously you want as many people seeing it as possible. I just don’t think that comparing it to other online videos is quite right. If it had 250K hits, but none were Denver voters… well, who cares?

  3. “I always watch Nancy Cronk’s videos because they may have firemen.”

    Thanks, I spit coffee all over myself laughing. Where do I send the dry cleaning bill?

    And yes, I do love firefighters.

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