Dem Leadership Nix Hackett Campaign

[Monte Smith]

I know members of the Democrat faithful post on this board and some must have been enthusiastic about this Ohio candidate, Paul Hackett, the antiwar Iraq vet who was narrowly defeated in a House race by Jean Schmidt and who until yesterday was preparing to face off with DeWine for the Senate. For a year now, my Dem friends have been saying "Paul Hackett is going to clean the GOP clock." Single-handedly, you woulda believed.

I was shocked when I read yesterday that he had dropped his campaign. So I gotta ask....

How do you feel about a star boy like this getting his cord pulled by the Democrat leadership? Hackett himself has singled out senators Reid and Schumer as being active in a campaign to sideline his candidacy in favor of the leadership's anointed, Congressman Sherrod Brown. Hackett says Schumer made calls to his donor base telling them not to support Hackett. He said Reid betrayed him.

This is insider baseball, but I know a lot of passion existed in the Dem's over-excited base about Hackett leading an Iraq vet "insurgency."

Opinions?

[Scott Dolan]

Opinions?

*crickets*





End of thread.

[RedJazz]

Here's my take:

I can't think of a better example of how the DP really works than the case of Hackett. Note that Hackett "said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving." Pressure of this kind shows that party leaders are willing and able to operate outside party processes to get their way. It also suggests that any progressive candidate or faction that pressed their case and got a nomination would find themselves abandoned by their own party leadership and big donors in the general election. That, of course, is my general conclusion. The case of Ohio candidate, Paul Hackett, is a bit of evidence, a kind of laboratory experiment.

This is by no means an isolated phenomenon. Three weeks ago, PDA complained bitterly about a similar betrayal over a Congressional seat in a Chicago suburban district (Henry Hyde, arch conservative congressman, was pushed into retirement by the 2004 grassroots campaign of Christine Cegelis. Cegelis came closer to defeating Hyde than anyone in his 32 years in Congress, earning 44.2% of the vote in this traditionally Republican district. She is now the front runner for his open seat, against a former staff aide to Tom Delay, Peter Roskam. Roskam's positions are farther to the right than Hyde's.


You might expect Beltway Democrats to be lining up enthusiastically behind Cegelis in this great opportunity to capture a Chicago suburban area Congressional seat. Instead, the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee (DCCC) has recruited a candidate to oppose Cegelis for the Democratic nomination.

The reason Party bosses are opposing Cegelis is they fear another independent progressive in Congress. Cegelis is a progressive Democrat: she’s anti-war, pro-choice, pro-renewable energy and opposes NAFTA-like
trade deals. She supports a definite timetable for the quick and safe withdrawal of troops. The DCCC prefers candidates who are centrist and pro-business, and they want their recruits to be veterans who are moderate
on the war.... Some people will look at these examples and argue -- dare I
say it -- for staying the course. The same course that has politically neutered the labor movement and liberals for half a century, and led to the current situation. I say again, consider the results, not just the intentions.

Another response that I sometimes get is a straw man argument, based on the indisputable fact that two of us sitting in a small room are in no position to create a new party overnight. The situation in America is much more backward than that; the disarray of the liberal and labor left is extreme. What is needed now is not a four lane highway out of the swamp, but a compass, a sense of direction, a bit of light, and determination rather than
acquiescence and ultimately -- defeatism.

[Gary Sisco]

They canned him because he refused to kow-tow to the leadership's line on the 2nd Amendment and so we see that the dimicrat party would rather lose than embrace a man who embraces the Constitution (rather than seeing it as a menu of possible choices, some of which to embrace and some of which to ignore or violate) and who has actually fought in the gummint's wars, unlike almost all of the admin and nearly all of the leadership of both frak, er, "parties." Someone in short who might have put some new teeth into an old dog but they don't want anyone learning any new tricks. If he bites, he'll bite them as well when they deserve it and they won't have that. Once he made it clear to them that he won't back down on the Second Amendment, they were done with him, period.

They have the power to make and break and they often choose to break. So be it, but they also assign to themselves their own political fate by doing so.

I personally think the whole deal is disgusting, but that party's put itself out of my even passive support, decades ago, for similar reasons.

[tristano's ghost]

Mixed feelings--I like Hackett, a lot. He's gutsy, speaks his mind, etc. OTOH, if he's running against the political establishment in general, why kowtow to the Dem leadership? Why not stick it out and fight? Also, Sherrod Brown's no progressive saint, but from my understanding, he's more liberal than Hackett--and polls show him beating Dewine as well. The Ohio GOP is in a mess right now; their best bet is the sicko "Patriot Pastors" movement, but they're likely to lose a lot of crossover/moderate votes this year. I wish Hackett had run in the 2nd District again, and I hope he reconsiders his decision to quit politics.

Re: Iraq vets, the overwhelming majority that are entering politics are doing so as Democrats. Hmmm....

[Darryl G. Thomas]

The same thing's going on in Pennsylvania. Left of center Democrats are starting to call Santorum's opponent "Santorum-lite" because of his pro-life stance and support of Scalito.

Here's the Democratic Party's problem: they got their asses handed to them in '94 and they've been running scared ever since. Thanks to the Clintons and the DLC the party's become Republican-lite. And as the cliche goes, why vote for a suedo Republican when you can vote for a real one.

Oh yeah, note to Monte and Scott: just because one considers themselves a liberal, progressive, leftist or whatever doesn't mean you drink the Democratic Party's Kool-Aid.

Also, the disarray of the Democratic Party may be a sign that the party doesn't goose-step in the same direction like the Republicans have been doing since Reagan.

Notice how everyone's bitching about Congressional oversight these days? Even some (gasp!) Republicans? Ask your boy Bob Barr who became persona non grata at the last GOPAC fun fest. Maybe Coingressional oversight's disappeared because you've got a Republican Congress and a Republican president. I read a stat somewhere where the Clinton White House had Congressional investigations that numbered over 1,000. Bush? I think a handfull, at best.

But I guess that's because the Clintonites were such corrupt liars and the current crew is as clean as the driven snow.

[Gary Sisco]

They can't grasp the concept of a pro-2nd Amendment, pro-abortion rights vet who's opposed to the war and the admin. They're entirely plentiful where I live.

But clearly, that "party" can't grasp a lot of concepts "ordinary people" can understand with ease. And in any case, they'd rather lose than embrace someone with his views. Which surprises me not at all. It's a party that seems like it insists on losing on purpose. They routinely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It's their major M.O.

Funny thing to me is that they embrace one who's already in power and will soon be a Senator -- Bernard Sanders, who won his seat in Congress originally because the NRA put the nix to his predecessor. Sanders remembers, if no one else. He may and likely certainly does personally support gun control (I call it constitutional civil-rights violation myself) but he'll never come out politically in any loud way about it. It would be political suicide, here, even though VT is considered one of the most liberal places in the US. But it's also one of the most misunderstood places in the US by people who don't live here. It's the most armed place I've ever lived except Nicaragua and El Salvador.

[Monte Smith]

This is by David Goodman, Amy's brother, in Mother Jones:

Economic sabotage, whisper campaigns, and threats: How the Democrats took Paul Hackett out.

By David Goodman

February 16, 2006



Democratic Senate candidate and Marine Corps Major Paul Hackett is accustomed to waging quixotic battles and taking his hits. He just didn’t expect the lowest—and fatal—blows to come from his own party.

In an announcement that stunned many in Washington and even some in his campaign staff, Hackett declared on February 13, 2006, that he was dropping his bid for U.S. Senate in Ohio, ending his 11 month political career. “I made this decision reluctantly, only after repeated requests by party leaders, as well as behind-the-scenes machinations, that were intended to hurt my campaign,” he said, only hinting at what had gone down. The day after his withdrawal from the race, he told me about the backroom battles that forced him out.

Hackett was running against seven-term Akron Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown in a May primary, with the winner going on to face two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine in November (assuming DeWine wins his own primary against a longshot Republican challenger). DeWine is considered one of the most vulnerable incumbent Republicans, and the national Democratic Party is pulling out the stops to defeat him.

But first, the Democrats had to get Hackett out of the way. The weapons used in the rubout included economic sabotage, whisper campaigns, and threats.

Hackett, an Iraq War combat veteran, was hailed last summer as just the kind of “fighting Democrat” the party needed to reinvigorate its base and end its years in the congressional wilderness. After narrowly losing a race for Congress in a lopsidedly Republican district outside Cincinnati last August, the telegenic veteran—famous for dissing President Bush as a “chickenhawk” and “sonuvabitch” while on the stump—was courted heavily by Democratic leaders, including Sens. Charles Schumer and Harry Reid, to take on DeWine. But no sooner did Hackett enter the Senate race last October than Brown announced his candidacy for Senate, reversing an earlier decision he had made to stay out of the race.

With Brown, a party insider, on board, the Democratic establishment quickly began pulling away from the fiery Hackett. Schumer, after having wooed him in August, called again in October. “Schumer didn’t tell me anything definitive,” Hackett told me at the time. “But I’m not a dumb ass, and I know what he wanted me to do.” Hackett, a maverick who relishes the fight, decided to buck the Beltway insiders, and stay in the race.

Hackett’s scorching rhetoric earned him notoriety and cash on the campaign trail. He declared that people who opposed gay marriage were “un-American.” He said the Republican party had been hijacked by religious extremists who he said “aren’t a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden.” Bloggers loved him, donors ponied up, while Democratic Party insiders grumbled that he wasn’t "senatorial."

Swift boats soon appeared on the horizon. A whisper campaign started: Hackett committed war crimes in Iraq—and there were photos. “The first rumor that I heard was probably a month and a half ago,” Dave Lane, chair of the Clermont County Democratic Party, told me the day after Hackett pulled out of the race. “I heard it more than once that someone was distributing photos of Paul in Iraq with Iraqi war casualties with captions or suggestions that Paul had committed some sort of atrocities. Who did it? I have no idea. It sounds like a Republican M.O. to me, but I have no proof of that. But if it was someone on my side of the fence, I have a real problem with that. I have a hard time believing that a Democrat would do that to another Democrat.”

In late November, Hackett got a call from Sen. Harry Reid. “I hear there’s a photo of you mistreating bodies in Iraq. Is it true?” demanded the Senate minority leader. “No sir,” replied Hackett. To drive home his point, Hackett traveled to Washington to show Reid’s staff the photo in question. Hackett declined to send me the photo, but he insists that it shows another Marine—not Hackett—unloading a sealed body bag from a truck. “There was nothing disrespectful or unprofessional,” he insists. “That was a photo of a Marine doing his job. If you don’t like what they’re doing, don’t send Marines into war.”

A staffer in Reid’s office confirmed that Hackett had showed them several photos. “The ones I saw were part of a diary he kept while serving in Iraq and were in no way compromising. The one picture in question depicted Marines doing their work on what looked like a scorching day in Iraq,” said the aide.

But the whispering continued, and Hackett was troubled. “It creates doubt and suspicion,” Hackett told me, saying his close supporters were asking him privately about the rumors. “It tarnishes my very strength as a candidate, my military service. It’s like you take a handful of seeds, throw them up in the wind, and they blow all around and start growing. It really bothered me.”

Hackett backers suspected the smear was being floated by Sherrod Brown’s campaign. A senior Brown staffer angrily dismissed the charge this week as “ridiculous.”

Brown campaign spokesperson Joanna Kuebler declined to respond to the rumors. She offered this prepared statement: “This campaign has never been about Paul Hackett or about Sherrod Brown. This campaign is about the hard working people of Ohio, and what Republican corruption has done to them.”

Hackett wanted to fight to the finish. He raised nearly a half-million dollars in the last quarter of 2005, matching Brown’s fundraising. But Brown entered the Senate race with $2 million in the bank, a strategic cushion. Early polls show both Brown and Hackett running in a dead heat against DeWine. An internal poll done in February for the Hackett campaign that was obtained by the Cleveland Plain Dealer showed Brown leading Hackett by 20 points, but Hackett took the lead if voters simply heard both candidates' bios. The analysis concluded, “If Paul Hackett can raise the funds necessary to communicate his message to the voters of Ohio, he will present Sherrod Brown with a formidable challenge in May.”

With the very real prospect of a smear against him going public late in the campaign—a la the Swift Boating of John Kerry—Hackett knew that dollars would be especially important for him. “If I don’t have the $2 million or $3 million it would take to respond in the final weeks, to influence the battlefield with my message, then I would just be reacting and I’ll get trounced,” said Hackett.

Hackett had demonstrated his ability to shake money from donors during a January fundraising roadshow in California and New York. But he soon discovered that top Democrats were attempting to cut off his money. The hosts of a Beverly Hills fundraiser for Hackett received an e-mail from the political action committee of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that concluded, “I hope you will re-consider your efforts on behalf of Hackett and give your support to Sherrod.” Waxman’s chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, said the e-mail was only sent to a handful of people and that “it probably came from a suggestion from the Sherrod Brown campaign.”

Michael Fleming, who manages Internet millionaire David Bohnett’s political and charitable giving, was one of the recipients of the Waxman email. Bohnett has given to hundreds of progressive candidates, but Fleming says, “This was the first time I had ever gotten an email or communication like that. I find it discouraging and disheartening. It’s unfortunate that the powers that be didn’t let the people of Ohio figure this out. We should be in the business of encouraging people like Paul Hackett and viable progressive candidates like him to run. The message instead is don’t bother, it’s not worth your time.”

Sen. Schumer was also reported to be trying to turn off Hackett’s cash spigots. No one would confirm this to me on the record. But veteran political activist David Mixner, who described himself as “a fanatically strong supporter” of Hackett and who helped sponsor a New York fundraiser, confirmed that he “received calls from a couple people in Congress urging Paul Hackett to withdraw or not to contribute money to his campaign. The reasons ranged from he can’t win, to he’s too controversial, Brown has more money, is more centrist, and more appealing. It was that inner beltway circle crap,” said Mixner. “They are people who have no idea what’s going on in the country but believe they know everything.”

Mixner added, “I don’t think it’s inappropriate to call me. What’s inappropriate is that the people calling me were the same people who asked him to run, and now they wanted to push him out. That's what made this unique.”

Hackett was infuriated by the subterfuge. “I felt like I got fucked by the Democratic Party because they enticed me in and then they pulled the rug out from beneath me. It sounds eerily familiar to sending in the military to Iraq, which was a misuse of the military, and then not giving them what they need to fight.”

In what is being called the Valentine’s Day Massacre, Paul Hackett threw in the towel, and insisted he would not be running for elected office anytime soon. He declined requests to switch races and run again in the Ohio Second Congressional District against Rep. Jean Schmidt, saying he had promised the candidates currently in that race that he wouldn’t run. “My word is my bond and I will take it to my grave,” he declared.

As word spread about the intra-party intrigue that helped bring down Hackett, supporters have reacted angrily. “If the Democratic Party continues with these suicidal decisions, we will continue to defeat ourselves,” declared Yolanda Parker, who recently attended a California fundraiser for Hackett. “The only strategy the Republicans need to stay in power is patience. They just need to wait while our party self-implodes through idiotic decisions such as the one to pressure an articulate Iraqi war veteran to pull out of the race.”

Party officials have tried to tamp down the anger. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) spokesman Phil Singer stated, “Neither the DSCC nor Senator Schumer reached out to donors to ask them to take sides in this race. Paul Hackett’s statesman-like decision will help us win one of the most important Senate races in the nation.”

Hackett, who says he would still like to help “retool” the Democratic Party, ends his meteoric political career with some advice for other maverick candidates. “They simply can’t rely on any of the party infrastructure to help them, and they must assume that people at high levels will work against them. These guys,” he says of the party insiders, “view the Senate as a club. They’re not gonna welcome you if one day they turn the key on the clubhouse door and you are sitting there with your feet on the table flippin’ them the middle finger. I understand that from their perspective. It works for them, but not for the rest of us out here.”


David Goodman is a Mother Jones contributing writer and co-author of The Exception to the Rulers.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Hmmmm... sounds like McCain vs. Bush in South Carolina.