RNC hires Digital Director

The Republican National Committee hired Eric DeFeo as Digital Director as part of its “Growth and Opportunity Project” to catch up with the Democrats.

He managed the digital effort for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, where voter contact tools were pioneered during an era when the GOP had the advantage.

Implementing recommendations of the Growth and Opportunity Task Force, the RNC already named Andy Barkett as the RNC’s first chief technology officer.

Party officials say they want to start integrating a more digital, data and technology-focused approach into how every department operates.

“Digital media is fundamentally about grassroots engagement and empowerment,” said DeFeo. “As we build out our digital capabilities, our focus will be on enabling our grassroots activists to help us win elections.”

At the RNC during the 2002 cycle, DeFeo made the first online advertising buy that used voter and consumer data to target online advertising. After Bush’s reelection, he was general manager for TownHall.com — the conservative online website — and eventually editor-in-chief of Townhall Magazine.

Democrats aren’t impressed with GOP digital efforts, however. One group of Republican consultants will roll out a digital toolkit designed to integrate advanced data tools for campaigns.

MGA’s signature online tool is called COR, for Central Organizing Responder, and like Obama’s Narwhal, it can merge different campaign spreadsheets on one data platform. That means canvassing lists, phone banks, fundraising reports, event sign-in sheets and social networks are all integrated with outside data for highly detailed profiles of voters and supporters.

One key difference between COR and Obama’s digital strategy: it’s for sale. Possibly as soon as next month, Musser and Skatell envision a Netflix-like sharing arrangement in which campaigns pay a monthly fee for software that even an old-school political consultant can navigate.

“The Obama campaign built a death star for one campaign,” said Skatell, an online fundraising and social media guru who worked at the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican Governors Association. “COR is a system built to work with multiple campaigns with different systems and budget limitations providing real-time data insights.”

The technology can help a campaign send e-mails that are tailored to a voter’s interests and past responses; rank supporters based on their fundraising ability and online influence; and track responses to e-mails and online attack ads. MGA’s investors and advisory board members include former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno, former Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos, Republican strategist Sara Fagen, Republican donor John Jordan and ex-Google executive Brandon Paine.

Writing in the Washington Post, Jamelle Bouie says the results attributable to Obama’s digital campaign are often overstated.

 Yes, the Obama campaign built an impressive digital infrastructure that played an important role in its voter outreach efforts. But unlike the Death Star, which — as an actual game-changer — could destroy planets with a single blast, the success of the Obama campaign’s digital strategy was a function of broader fundamentals. If economic growth had taken a dip, President Obama would have lost reelection, regardless of how much his campaign invested in data collection and modeling. With higher unemployment and slower growth, Mitt Romney would have won last year, even with all of his mistakes, flubs and gaffes.

Now, none of this is to say campaigns don’t matter; if Republicans were to give up on matching Democratic efforts, it would yield a meaningful advantage for Democrats. But when campaigns are evenly matched, it’s the fundamentals that drive outcomes, and in the 2012 election, they were on Obama’s side.

In other words, there’s no need to change the message or approach of the GOP.

Brandon Howell writes in Campaigns & Elections that a comparison between the stumbling rollout of Kentucky Senate candidate Allison Lundergan Grimes against the online rollout for Michelle Nunn shows one way online campaigning may trump real-life efforts.

[T]he contrasting success of another Democrat’s announcement for Senate, Georgia’s Michelle Nunn, further calls into question the need for the traditional-style announcement in the digital age.

Rather than announce with a sign-laden rally, topped with flesh-pressing photo ops, she instead offered a low-key heads up via interview, issued a press release, and then blanketed the social media waves the to launch her campaign, bookended by an interview with a metro-Atlanta news outlet.

Nunn’s calculated social media launch, buoyed by a barrage of digital ads unmatched by candidates on either side of the aisle in Georgia’s Senate contest, was met with near-universal praise and garnered several thousand “likes” and “follows” within days.

Those numbers don’t win elections, but do give an aura of immediate support that simply can’t be achieved through traditional means.

Last week a group of alumni from the 2004 Howard Dean Presidential campaign met at Manuel’s; Dean is widely regarded as among the first politicians to use online organizing effectively.

According to Kimberly Krautter, one of the first handful of Dean supporters in the state, Georgians for Dean was the first presidential campaign group to create and use online fundraising, the first to utilize Yahoo Groups to build their support, the first to use Meetups as political campaign gatherings, and the first to use viral videos. It developed new systems for teaching grassroots groups how to get their message out and respond rapidly to attacks. Grassroots politics being what it is, there may be some debate among all those firsts, but this was without question a campaign which pioneered in the new, technology-driven politics of the 21st Century.

“It was amazing that we were able to create those things from the raw technology of the time,” said Tim Cairl, another ground-floor Deaniac.

Among those in that kernel group of Dean’s first supporters was Clay Johnson, a young programmer who gets much of the credit for the grassroots campaign’s technological savvy. Johnson went on that year to become the lead programmer for the Dean campaign. Later he was a co-founder of Blue State Digital, which played a big role in both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, and is currently involved in a project to make it easier for small companies to bid on government work. Johnson was in Washington for meetings and didn’t get to the weekend reunion until the following day, but later he spoke of what he considers its lasting legacy.

“The barriers for entry, for getting to be involved in politics, have gotten dramatically lower,” he said.

Congratulations to Fulton County’s newest State Court Judge

Governor Nathan Deal appointed Eric A. Richardson, who served as Deputy City Attorney for Atlanta, to a vacancy on the Fulton County State Court. His wife, Karen Richardson, serves on Johns Creek City Council.

Tom Price for Speaker?

Roll Call lists Georgia Congressman Tom Price (R-6) as one of ten members who could be Speaker when John Boehner is overthrown or retires.

Tom Price has the conservative credentials to attract a lot of support, hails from the vote-rich South and maintains an outsider’s appeal, even if he’s on the inside of most policy discussions. Like Hensarling, he opposed the Wall Street bailout and once led the Republican Study Committee. An orthopedic surgeon, he also led the Republican Policy Committee in the 112th and has wonk cred. He now serves as a senior member on Ways and Means.

In the 113th Congress, he ran for chairman of the House Republican Conference, the No. 4 position in GOP leadership, but was defeated by the more moderate Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington.

But Price remains in the loop. He was named vice chairman of the Budget Committee and vice chairman for policy at the NRCC.

Voting Rights Act as Democratic Campaign Tool

The National Journal writes that the Obama Administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder and campaign arm Organizing for Action will use the Voting Rights Act and litigation as a campaign tool in next year’s elections.

Party strategists acknowledge there’s as much of a political component to the activism in addition to the concerns over GOP-backed legislation.

“I think you’ll see Democrats in state parties, in campaigns, in political action groups and in civil rights groups use every tool in their arsenal to fight for voting rights and extending the electorate in 2014,” said Jeremy Bird, Obama’s national field director in 2012, whose “Battleground Texas” project aims to boost the conservative state’s minority voting rolls. “What you’re seeing is a continued, systematic effort by Republicans to make it more difficult for people to vote.”

Black turnout will be pivotal to the re-election of vulnerable Senate Democrats in the South, including Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, as well as to Democratic hopes of picking up an open Senate seat in Georgia. Those states could be decisive in determining whether the Democratic Party maintains control of Senate in 2014. The heated Virginia governor’s race in November will serve as a test run for the party’s ability to mobilize black voters without the first African-American president at the top of the ticket.

In Georgia, where nearly one-third of the population is black, the Democratic Party sees one of its only opportunities to expand its narrow Senate majority. Democratic hopes are riding on Michelle Nunn, who has never held elected office but has a familiar surname as the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn. Among the Republican contenders to replace the retiring Saxby Chambliss are two conservative congressmen who have expressed skepticism about voter discrimination.
Before the Supreme Court ruling, Rep. Paul Broun touted an amendment to cut funding to enforce part of the Voting Rights Act. His action drew a sharp rebuke from Democratic Rep. John Lewis, a leading figure in the civil rights movement who called the amendment “shameful.” Another Republican Senate candidate, Rep. Phil Gingrey, is sponsoring a bill that would allow states to limit enrollment in a federal voter registration program.
While Nunn isn’t expected to put voting rights at the center of her fledgling campaign in a Republican-friendly state, she’s more likely to raise the issue when campaigning in black communities. And she’ll be reliant on African-American awareness of the issue as a motivational force to show up at the polls.
“Michelle has been vocal about her commitment to guaranteeing the continued protection of voters and the importance of the Voting Rights Act,” said Nunn’s deputy campaign manager, Zac Petkanas. “Congress has an obligation to reexamine how communities and states are currently engaging minority voters and to take appropriate action to ensure the hard fought right to vote is secure for all Americans.”

Campaigns

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee brushes off suggestions that Georgia Democrats are actually holding a Primary Election for United States Senate next year.

[Colorado Senator and DSCC Chair Michael] Bennet claimed that there’s no real Democratic primary in Georgia — sorry, Dr. Rad — and said the party will be working to identify and register Democrat-leaning voters for the next year. Bennet was asked what Nunn did to convince him of her viability as a first-time candidate and what she needs to do in her early weeks and months.

An article in The Economist discusses why Democrats can’t count on an Akin-esque gaffe to win the Senate race next year.

As Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, explains, “A Democrat is only going to win in Georgia like they did in Indiana or Missouri, when the Republicans really screw up. And they could.” Mr Broun’s full-throated social conservatism may play well in the primaries, but they could cost Republicans an easy Senate seat, as Mr Akin’s did in Missouri and Richard Mourdock’s in Indiana.

Yet Messrs Akin and Mourdock lost to veteran politicians; Ms Nunn is untested, and so far running on little more than a familiar surname. Like Kay Hagan, the incumbent senator in North Carolina, and Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state challenging Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, she faces peril on all sides: too liberal, she risks alienating moderates; too centrist, she risks appearing bland, inauthentic and shifty; too conservative, she risks further depressing Democratic turnout—not to mention angering the national party, on whom she will no doubt depend for networking and money.

Ivey Hines is running for reelection to the Albany City Commission for Ward 2.

Voters in Alabama’s First Congressional District will head to the polls September 24th for a Special Primary Election to replace Rep. Jo Bonner, who is retiring tomorrow.

Nuke deal in the works?

Ray Henry of the Associated Press writes that a tentative deal has been reached to defer consideration of a rate increase based on higher costs in construction of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.

Southern Co. has agreed to drop its request to raise its construction budget for Plant Vogtle and will instead seek permission to recover that money as it spends on the massive project, utility CEO Tom Fanning said Wednesday.

If approved, the agreement would raise the financial risk on Southern Co. as it tries to control the costs of building two more nuclear reactors at the plant.

Regulators in Georgia review construction spending in six-month intervals and decide whether those costs can be passed along to utility customers. Under the preliminary deal, Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power would drop its request to raise the total project budget by $737 million to a total of $6.85 billion.

Instead, the utility would only seek approval right now for $209 million it spent on the project for the six-month period ending in December. Going forward, the utility would seek approval of its costs on a similar schedule.

The financial backdrop to this is lower earnings for parent Southern Company due in large part to construction overruns on a Mississippi coal-fired plant.

The utility, based in Atlanta, reported earnings of $297 million, or 34 cents per share, from $623 million, or 71 cents per share, a year ago. Earnings would have risen to 66 cents with one-time costs removed. That’s still several cents shy of Wall Street projections, and company shares dipped in premarket trading.

Company officials announced Tuesday that its shareholders would absorb an estimated $278 million in after-tax losses incurred while building a goal gasification plant in Mississippi’s Kemper County. That project has cost the power company $611 million in after-tax charges this year.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the connection many see between the Mississippi and Georgia projects.

Problems with cost controls in Mississippi are focusing attention on an even larger project in Georgia, where Southern subsidiary Georgia Power Co. is building two nuclear reactors at its existing Vogtle power site.

The subsidiary recently asked the Georgia Public Service Commission for permission to collect an extra $381 million from customers to help cover the rising costs of the Vogtle nuclear project, bringing the total amount it was seeking from Georgia ratepayers to about $6.5 billion. It also added that costs likely would go higher. On Wednesday, it said it would withdraw that request and file a new request early next year that also would include costs for 2013.

Georgia regulators in turn said they are studying an approach being taken in Mississippi that involves sharing the extra costs between utility customers and shareholders.

“It’s understandable why we would want to explore something similar,” said Stan Wise, a member of the Georgia Public Service Commission. He added: “I don’t know anybody who’s not concerned” about rising costs for the two new reactors, whose combined cost now exceeds $13 billion.