Grinding out the clock

By Dave Anderson:

I have been keeping a quarter of an eye on the Massachusetts Senate special election race mainly because I like playing in the Inkling markets for the chuckle factor.  Martha Coakley won the Democratic Primary and is the odds-on favorite to win the special election in January.  State Sen. Scott Brown is the Republican candidate. 

At this time, Martha Coakley has raised $4.1 million dollars through the primary and had $2.2 million dollars cash on hand.  Scott Brown raised slightly less than $500,000 before the primary.  He has about a quarter million dollars cash on hand.  Neither candidate has filed their year end reports, but I expect Coakley to continue to raise and spend more money than Brown. 

The way that a decent candidate can close the money gap is by some combination of  grass-roots fundraising, the rubber chicken circuit (although that is tough on such a compressed schedule), or by having the national party committees come to the rescue. As of the last filing, Coakley has not seen any DSCC or DNC money.  Nor has Scott Brown seen any NRSC cash. 

Ed Morrissay at Hot Air voices the right-roots frustration:

Normally, when a special election occurs to fill a seat in Congress or especially the Senate, the national parties throw resources and attention onto the race.  The lack of competition for attention allows the national parties to transform the elections into national referendums of sorts, and the party out of power usually has an opportunity to exploit the lower turnout to steal a march on the governing party.  So why have the national GOP and party leaders gone AWOL in Massachusetts,...

Fifty thousand dollars?  The RNC rather famously gave Dede Scozzafava almost a million dollars in her special-election bid earlier this year in New York�s 23rd Congressional district.  Michael Steele came under tremendous criticism for that decision later, when Scozzafava�s liberal political positions became more well known, but in this case, the GOP doesn�t have any other candidate running in the race. 

The simplest answer is that the RSCC is behind the DSCC in fundraising.  The Republicans have several viable take-over targets in Connecicutt, Colorado, Arkansas, Nevada and Delaware.  They also have tough defenses in Ohio, New Hampshire and Missouri, as well as a need to take out insurance in North Carolina and potentially Florida and Kentucky.  After that there are several second tier races in Pennsylvania, California, Texas and Louisiana.  All of those seats, in my opinion, have a higher probability to flip parties than the Massachusetts Senate seat. 

The Democrats are making the bet in Massachusetts that their home field advantage plus a massive cash advantage along with a decent candidate can grind out a win even if the play-book is an iteration of "three yards and a cloud of dust."  The national GOP does not have the money to put behind a long-shot candidate as they would need to throw at least a third of the NRSC's current cash on hand to only avoid getting outspent 2:1.

This scenario will play out in several Senate races as the Democrats have a significant national committee cash on hand advantage as well as a significant receipt and cash on hand advantage for all declared and filed candidates.  The bet is that quite a few seats can be won on the basis of a net financial and resource advantage as the machinery grinds out a series of tough wins in Democratic base and leaning seats while the marginal seats get more attention from Democrats than Republicans.