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First, said FitzGerald,
the campaign will focus on putting resources into a
grassroots campaign that will start in May, rather than
waiting for the traditional late summer/early fall launch.
“We will invest in a grass roots campaign, we will identify
our voters and we will contact them repeatedly,” he said.
Secondly, “we will
articulate a message that motivates them to vote” focusing
on economic issues and civil rights issues, he pointed out.
In this climate of
repeated Republican attempts, in both the legislative and
the executive branches, to push for voter ID’s, shrink the
access by absentee voters to ballot and decrease the time
that polls are open, FitzGerald noted that he has, by
contrast, always “been very supportive of voters’ rights all
my career.”
“We have a legislature
that is shameless in its efforts to take away those rights,”
he said of the Republican-dominated Ohio General Assembly.
Typically, a in a
non-presidential election year, Democratic core constituency
groups – particularly the poor, minorities and the young –
stay home in greater numbers than does the general
population. FitzGerald thinks that this year might well
prove an exception to that norm based upon the prospect of a
backlash at Republican efforts to tamp down the vote among
those constituencies. “I believe that people sometimes
exercise their rights more when people threaten those
rights.”
FitzGerald’s optimism that
his party can turn tradition on its head is rooted partly in
the results of last year’s statewide elections in Virginia,
in which Democratic candidates for governor, lieutenant
governor and attorney general all prevailed led by Terry
McAullife at the top of the ticket. “Democratic groups voted
in the same percentages as in presidential elections,” said
FitzGerald as he praised the very effective get-out-the-vote
effort of that campaign. Anticipating that there might be
much to learn from Virginia, FitzGerald dispatched his chief
campaign staff to Virginia to observe. After that election
some of the Virginia staffers headed to the Buckeye State to
lend a hand including the director of coordinated campaigns,
said FitzGerald.
The November election
features candidates for all of the statewide offices. The
Democrats are Nina Turner for secretary of state, Connie
Pillich for treasurer, David Pepper for attorney general and
John Patrick Carney for auditor. Fitzgerald is enthusiastic
about the rest of the ticket.
“We have the strongest
slate we might have ever fielded,” he said. “Not because of
statewide appeal, necessarily, but this is a talented,
energetic, motivated young group of campaigners. We’re all
on the same page. I’ve seen times when Democrats have had to
recruit statewide candidates.”
Of course the main
challenge for Ohio’s Democrats in getting the message across
early and often to voters is their effort to match the
dollars from outside the state that will end up in GOP
coffers. Needless to say, Ohio is prime battleground among
swing states and Republican donors will be pouring money
into this race led by the Koch brothers.
On the other hand, while
the Democrats may fall a bit short to the Republicans in
out-of-state financial resources, they will have a clear
advantage in outside star power. Topping the list of stars
will be the Obamas and the Clintons. President Obama was
more than a bit reluctant in the 2010 elections to put his
prestige on the line in races around the nation but that
shouldn’t be a problem this time around. The president has
run his last race and the feeling in the FitzGerald camp is
that he will be giving his all for national Democratic
candidates.
And just try to keep
President Clinton, a serial campaigner, off the trail.
Hillary Clinton will be curious to test the campaign waters
as she decides whether or not to run in 2016 and Michelle
Obama may well be the most popular of this group of four.
“They can balance out
other national interference,” says FitzGerald.
So far, the polls show an
even race at the top of the Democratic ticket, an
encouraging sign in FitzGerald’s race against the incumbent,
Governor Kasich.
“If people hear both sides
of the story, we win,” said FitzGerald. |
