Are we finally building a district-wide ground opperation?

Feb 2007;

The WFP GOTV effort has shown us that the old rhetoric that a seat is not winnable or is too conservative no longer rings true. How scalable and influential can this be in a congressional district in a Presidential year, well that remains to be seen. However we have learned one thing, that here in New York City, where incumbents and party machines seem to rule, good old canvassing and volunteer armies can shake things up from time to time.

March 2007;

And Innamorato, an Eltingville resident, said he will continue to fly the Democratic flag on the South Shore no matter what.

"I'm committed to building the party, enrolling voters and delivering good candidates to them," he said.

This week via the Advance;

In 2007, the McMahon forces worked the district on behalf of Manny Innamorato, who lost a City Council special election to Republican Vinny Ignizio.

At the time, McMahon and his supporters were looking down the road toward a possible 2009 run for Borough Hall.

As it turns out, the experience has come in handy a little sooner than expected.

"We're trying to get into every area of Staten Island, and into Brooklyn, every day," McMahon said of his overall campaign strategy. "And we're trying to spread our events around. That's an important message to send."

Getting out the vote

Yesterday I talked about the PVI of this district being D+1 and the trouble that puts Rep. Vito Fossella in (he has the 12th least Republican district of any Republican in Congress). While this does not necessarily mean the Congressional candidate should trend towards a 1% advantage or even a 1% increase simply because it is a Presidential election year, it does provide yet another hurdle Fossella will face.

Revisiting some analysis from back in December 2005, I pointed out this bit of information;

If the Kerry/Edwards voters continued to vote down the ballot, last year's results would have been 55%-45% for Fossella (vs. Barbaro), instead of 59%-41%. Fossella and Bush had nearly indentical vote totals in each Assembly District, there was about a 6% drop off for the Democratic challenger Barbaro from Kerry's numbers in each Assembly District.

With a strong ground game (see WFP's efforts in the Craig Johnson race), and some basic voter awareness, we have the potential to be starting off at 55-45%, although the district has been trending more Democratic since 2004 and those numbers in reality are probably a percentage closer. Remember this is a district that went for Gore in 2000, so it is not improbable that a strong Democratic effort paired with a non exciting Republican (anyone other than Giuliani) and this Congressional race could be at 55-45 if not 54-46 before we account for the dynamics of the Vito's corruption and the Democratic nominees strength.

Competing everywhere

The Democratic Party on the national level has a '50 State Strategy' which basically says they are a national party, and they can not win back control of the country unless they act like one and compete in every election from school board on up, in every district, in every state. One moral of the story is that you can not win races you don't run in. The second and more relevant to this post, is that the infrastructure that is built by running in races where Democrats have never fared well benefits the party down the road and across the ticket.

It is interesting that throughout my oh so long journey of blogging about politics in this district that a common misconception and excuse thrown out by Democrats is that the district is too conservative for Democrats to win. Party faithfuls can get excited about running a Democrat in Wyoming, but look at a borough of New York City as unwinnable.

There was a recent post by Tom Wrobleski that I didn't know how to incorporate the context into coverage earlier, that basically goes something like this... Manny Innamorato after losing his bid for Lanza's old city council seat, is continuing to promote the Democrat message and is trying to effect
change in an otherwise hostile area for Democrats.

And Innamorato, an Eltingville resident, said he will continue to fly the Democratic flag on the South Shore no matter what.

"I'm committed to building the party, enrolling voters and delivering good candidates to them," he said.

This is wonderful and long overdue. Should it be more than one man on a mission, we are starting to see small pieces of a future Democratic victory taking shape. Back during Manny's campaign I posted a piece called 'Winning the ground game' discussing the Innamorato/McMahon plan to ramp up support and leave no voter uncontacted through an aggressive canvassing operation. While his opponent quickly gathered ballot signatures and moved on, Manny was taking the Democratic message to the residents, one door at a time and starting a conversation. Clearly his optimism did not garner the results he was looking for, but the ball is rolling.

There are many recent stories of party resurgence that owe a bit of their success to rethinking politics and the importance of involving everyone in governance once again. You can go just north of the city and see the results of John Hall winning some what of an improbable primary, where many had crowned a Republican convert, in many ways due in part to the strength of his volunteer base and the combined voter outreach efforts. In Long Island, Craig Johnson's special election state senate victory is partially due to the ground game and voter outreach that was organized by the Working Families Party on his behalf.

A telling sign will be the two upcoming special elections, in terms of understanding how far the party has come. While many may see the south shore as unwinnable, it is those that see competing there this March as the first step in competing there in November 08 that really have an understanding about how they will win in the long term. For too long the party has started from scratch with every election, instead of competing in races as a way to start an on going ground game operation for all races that follow.

Every new voter that Titone's campaign registers, is a likely voter for the Democratic Congressional nominee. Every door that Innamorato knocks on is someone new being introduced to the party's platform.