How Democrats Keep Winning Elections, Part 3

If Melisa López Franzen did not already exist, it would be necessary for the Democrat Party to invent her.  A young, ultra-liberal corporate attorney, she entered politics as a candidate for state senate in 2012 with no voting record or public career to scrutinize.

Hand-picked for her gender, ethnicity, and photogenic qualities as the Democrat candidate for a wealthy suburban district seat held by a Republican (SD49, Edina), Franzen’s 2012 campaign provides a case study in modern, Big-Data-driven Democrat politics.

Once in office, Franzen managed the trick of voting for record state government spending, but against the tax increases to pay for it.  She ranks among the most liberal Minnesota state senators, holding a lifetime rating of 11 (out of 100) from the Taxpayers League.  All of this, despite running as a pro-business moderate.

Her campaign launched in February 2012, and she hit the ground running.  In her first filing with the state Campaign Finance Board (July 23^rd), she listed a total of 95 individual donors, 35 (almost 40 percent) of those located out of state.

Of Franzen’s early campaign donors, five were from New York City, four from Los Angeles and three from San Francisco.  Other liberal enclaves—such as Boston, Malibu, Philadelphia, Seattle, and West Hollywood—were also heard from.  Her initial fundraising represents an extraordinary level of national interest in a first-time, no-name candidate in a flyover state.

As the campaign rolled along, the out-of-state money kept flowing.  Franzen ended the year with 63 out-of-state donors contributing a significant share of the $100,313 raised for her campaign.

Franzen took contributions from 18 political action committees, including 14 separate unions.

Her opponent, then state Rep. Keith Downey (and now chair of the state Republican Party) was no slouch in the fundraising department.  He raised $116,805 for his 2012 campaign, his third run for public office.  Of Downey’s itemized donors from his combined 2012 House and Senate campaigns, only 9 listed out-of-state addresses.  Of these nine, most were either former business partners or part-time Minnesota residents.  No money came from California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, or Washington state or Washington, DC.

Downey’s success in fundraising as an individual candidate is indicative of the individualistic, entrepreneurial spirit within the conservative and Republican movements.  Donors on the right eagerly give to those men (and women) “in the arena,” the candidates who are personally taking the fight to the other side.

Conservatives and Republicans are less willing to give money to party units or independent groups, worried that the funds be wasted on “overhead” or “consultants.”  Democrats and liberals have fewer such qualms.

Those preferences show in the “independent money” that flowed into the Downey v. Franzen 2012 state senate race.  According to figures compiled by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, spending on the race totaled a staggering $870,000.  As the Star Tribune reports, the Republican Downey slightly outspent the Democrat Franzen. 

Independent expenditures were a different matter.  Money spent to help Franzen totaled $408,962, nearly twice the $238,836 spent to help Downey.  Most of the outside money was spent on an effort to discourage Republican voting in the district.

Case in point was this series of advertisements put out by the shadowy group Public Safety Matters.  The ads, funded in large part by union money, were aimed at Republican voters and slandered Downey as anti-police and pro-crime.

Franzen was one of the 13 candidates participating in 2012’s PhotoGate, where the state Democrat party had to pay a $100,000 fine for cheating during that year’s election.

Franzen’s positioning as a pro-business moderate with no track record made her the dream Democrat suburban candidate, on paper.  And on paper was where the candidate herself could usually be found.

Franzen appeared on the campaign trail only during off hours from her corporate gig.  Door-to-door campaigning on her behalf was outsourced to the SEIU labor union.  In 2012, SEIU reports spending $3,489.65 in staff expense for “voter contact” on her behalf.

For her part, Franzen boasted in the Eden Prairie News that she personally “knocked on over 5,000 doors.”  For such a densely populated district, a 5,000 doors total is laughably small.  But the laughter quickly stops when you realize that—thanks to Democrat data-driven micro-targeting—those 5,000 doors were the ones most critical to her campaign.

Otherwise, she was mostly kept out of sight and under wraps in 2012.  She was frequently absent at district public forums, sending surrogates in some cases.

Franzen’s out-of-state financed, union-staffed, law-breaking campaign nevertheless triumphed on election day, with her winning almost 53 percent of the vote.  Franzen’s was the ultimate in pre-fabricated campaigns: the donors were pre-arranged, the staff already hired, the outside groups primed to intervene, the political strategy set, all that was needed was a candidate, any candidate.

Look kids, it’s the new politics!

In Part 1, I introduce the data-driven strategy Democrats are using to win elections.

In Part 2, I document the Democrats’ success in finding previously disengaged voters.

In Part 4, I will show how the Franzen campaign plugged into the larger Democrat Big Data machine.