Paul Hackett

I haven’t chimed in on this story until today, but the election is tomorrow, and I think this guy is going to win in one of the most GOP-controlled districts known to man. He was there. He fought in Iraq and has an opinion that doesn’t match up with what every conservative talker in the country insists the ‘troops’ really think about the war and politics in general. Being a former ‘troop’ who didn’t vote for President Bush, I’m paying close attention to how this unfolds.

His opponent has told voters that, ‘if we don’t keep our eye on the ball, the ball with destroy us’. From everything I’ve seen she appears to be mildly insane. But the twins are running me ragged, so I’m going to hand it off to a series of linked articles/blogs on the topic (right & left wing included).

GOP Says It Will ‘Bury’ Name-Calling Candidate
By Dan Balz Sunday, July 31, 2005; Page A05

Paul Hackett doesn’t fit conventional political profiles. He is a Marine Reservist and an Iraq war veteran who opposed the war before the U.S. invasion and remains a harsh critic of President Bush’s policy there. He is also a Democrat battling to win a special House election in Ohio in a district that has been in Republican hands for more than three decades.

On Tuesday, voters in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District will elect a successor to former representative Rob Portman, who quit Congress to become U.S. trade representative. Hackett hopes to beat the long odds by defeating Republican nominee Jean Schmidt, a former state representative, by stressing his military service and independence.

A lawyer and a major in the Marine Reserves, Hackett volunteered last year to serve in Iraq and spent seven months there in a civilian affairs job, including service around Ramadi and Fallujah. He returned to Ohio in March and decided to jump into the race for Portman’s seat, seeking to become the first Iraq war veteran elected to Congress.

His campaign has drawn support from Democrats across the country. Liberal blogs have defended him from GOP attacks. Former Ohio senator John Glenn, another former Marine, sent a message to online supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) asking them to pitch in financially. Democracy for America, the organization founded by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, says it has raised $80,000 for Hackett.

Schmidt, who won a crowded GOP primary, has charged that Hackett’s views don’t fit with those of voters in conservative southwest Ohio, where Bush won 64 percent of the vote last November. But the outspoken Democratic nominee hasn’t been shy about bad-mouthing the president.

Hackett told USA Today that Bush’s taunting line, “Bring ’em on!” was “the most incredibly stupid comment I’ve ever heard a president of the United States make.” He also told the newspaper that, while he was willing to put his life on the line for the president, “I’ve said that I don’t like the son-of-a-[expletive] that lives in the White House.”

Both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have bought TV time for commercials over the weekend. “He called the commander in chief a son-of-a-[expletive],” said NRCC spokesman Carl Forti. “We decided to bury him.”

Hackett, hoping to capitalize on the widespread disarray in the scandal-plagued Ohio GOP, remains unapologetic about his characterization of the president. “I said it. I meant it. I stand by it,” he said in a phone interview. “In this district, we need more straight-talking, straight-shooting politicians.”

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Right wing commentary:

Jabber All You Want, You Left-Wing Bloggers, Paul Hackett Is Still Going To Lose

There’s a special congressional election in Ohio that is getting all the lefty bloggers hyped up. In this election, Republican Jean Schmidt is going toe-to-toe with loud mouthed Iraqi war vet, Paul Hackett. Hackett has called Bush a “chickenhawk,” has said that W. is the biggest threat facing the United States and has generally made a…well, made a donkey of himself. Of course, lefty bloggers are all excited about Hackett because they love brash and obnoxious candidates, so they just can’t shut up about this race.

In fact, Chris Bowers over at the liberal blog MyDD has actually tabulated the number of posts about this election on the left and right side of the blogosphere and is crowing about the publicity the lib bloggers are showering on Hackett:

“In the midst of a full-out progressive blogswarm on Paul Hackett’s behalf, conservative blogs, who love to boast of their ability to swarm, have done nothing to help out Schmidt in OH-02. In fact, they aren’t even writing about it.

…Even when the news aggregators are removed, progressives blogs have written roughly ten times as much about this election as conservative blogs. What’s more, since Blogopshere Day, the advantage in liberal blog posts has been around 20-1. Even further, the vast majority of conservative blog posts on Hackett over the past two weeks have been from a fairly unknown website, Weapons of Mass Discussion, which averages a whopping 130 page views per day (less than 1,000 per week). By contrast, I believe that literally every single blog in the Liberal Advertising Network, all of which have vastly more traffic than Weapons of Mass Discussion, has discussed Hackett.

Those action-oriented conservative bloggers have completely ignored this race, while us divisive liberals have engaged in an all-out blogswarm that has gone a long way toward making this campaign close. While the MSM cannot help but fawn over the media scalps most often associated with conservative blog influence, the fact is that outside of a select (and admittedly very capable) few, such as Red State, Captain’s Quarters and Patrick Ruffini, conservative bloggers are straight up ineffective when it comes to actually influencing electoral politics. How many elections have gone by now where conservative bloggers offered almost nothing in the way of resource support to conservative candidates? If they had jumped into the OH-02 race (or SD-AL and KY-06 special elections for that matter) with the same force as the progressive blogosphere, Hackett would probably still be way, way behind.

They haven’t however, and Paul Hackett is now close. However, the same cannot be said of the current capabilities of the progressive and conservative blogospheres.”

Boy, he’s all jazzed up about what a great job the left side of the blogosphere’s doing “influencing electoral politics,” isn’t he?

Well, let’s put the left side of the blogosphere’s influence to the test, shall we? The special election is Tuesday and I, John Hawkins, here at Right Wing News, say that the great, big bad left-wing blogswarm is going to amount to diddly squat and Jean Schmidt is going to beat Paul Hackett.

I base that on the fact that Bush took 64% of the vote in that district last November and on this statement from Larry Sabato:

“It’s a totally safe district,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. “The only question you ever have is that special elections can be squirrelly in terms of turnout.”

So by late Tuesday, we should see who got it right: blogs like this one, that didn’t waste a lot of time on the race because it’s in a heavily Republican district, or the lefty bloggers who think they’re accomplishing something by incessantly talking up a guy who’s almost guaranteed to lose.

The smart money? It’s not on the side of the left-wing blogger who’s writing a triumphant post about what a huge impact liberal bloggers have had on an election that hasn’t even happened yet…

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More Hackett Notes
by Chris Bowers

This is so fun and exciting. Can’t wait for the CA-48th special election to start. All we need is for Sam Seaborn to be the candidate. It’s another longshot (58.3% Bush in 2004), but so were Chandler and Herseth’s seats. Let’s do it!
Anyway, more good news. First, on the paid media front, the DCCC is in:

As of deadline, both the NRCC and DCCC are now in with last minute six figure mail and TV buys.

I think the size of the DCCC buy is only about $115K, much less than the NRCC’s $500K+, but it is still helpful. Combine the DCCC’s money with the netroots money, the conservative anti-Schmidt group’s money, and the grassroots internet ad, and we are talking about a competitive, multi-faceted ad buy for Hackett here.

Moving on the free media, ever since the Cincinnati Post endorsement, Hackett has been crushing Schmidt in the free media battle. Looking at Google News stories on the two candidates over the past four days, it seems that almost every story on Schmidt is actually about Hackett. Sweeet–this doesn’t even count the nice free media from MSNBC (also here, here and here) and others (here and here). This certainly backs up kos’s point from earlier today:

While organizations like MoveOn and probably DFA can raise big money with a few emails, blogs really can’t. Remember, the OH-02 race is the only one on the calendar right now, so we’re better able to concentrate our efforts. Campaigns shouldn’t expect the same come 2006.

Blogs work best as a message machine, the seedlings of a liberal media machine. That we can raise some money should be seen as a bonus, not the reason we exist.

He’s right–but this is also vastly more money than we raised for any congressional candidate in 2004, including the two special elections. Also, we seem to be doing the free media thing pretty well too. How much of this media would have happened without blogs constantly buzzing about it, and raising money for it to give it a real sense of competitiveness? Probably not much.

On the endorsement front, Hackett has added the Dayton Daily News, and several Democratic groups. If you haven’t already seen it, read Jesus’ General’s hysterical endorsement of Jean Schmidt. If Hackett is endorsed by the Cincinnati Enquirer on Sunday or Monday, look out.

On the ground, Bob Brigham reports in, and DNC Vice Chair Susie Turnball has also arrived.

It’s all falling into place. Save 2012 and redistricting, if a Democrat is ever going to win in the OH-02, it is now. 442 blog posts on Hackett since last Tuesday. 176 blogs have linked to Hackett’s website. If we lose, at least we will know this is best we could have done. Even if we lose, we already have won.

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