Presidential primary brief: 491 days until Election Day
Welcome to the Monday presidential primary brief provided by Alabama Today. Every week you can find your latest headlines on the presidential primary races as we count down the days until Election Day. 237 days until AL Presidential Primary 491 days until Election Day Convention Dates: Republican July 18-21, 2016; Democratic July 25-28, 2016 Weekly Headlines: Chris Christie launches 2016 presidential bid Jim Webb announces 2016 presidential run Scott Walker formally enters 2016 presidential election Press Clips: What Jim Webb would need to do to win (NY Times 7/3/15) Mr. Webb’s voters may look a lot like him: ideologically idiosyncratic white men moved more by economic fairness and a noninterventionist foreign policy than cultural liberalism. His opposition to the Iraq war, among other foreign engagements, could offer Mr. Webb an attentive audience among some Democrats in dovish Iowa. And there may be a small band of populists and veterans in South Carolina who will Eind his background and message appealing. New Hampshire Democrats puzzled by Lincoln Chaffee (ABC News 7/3/15) Presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee stands before a few dozen people at a meeting of New Hampshire’s Belknap County Democrats. The Republican-‐turned-‐independent-‐turned-‐ Democrat gets nods of approval when he tells them he was the only Republican senator to vote against authorizing the war in Iraq. Then smiles turn to laughter when he pitches another idea: The U.S. should switch to the metric system. Scott Walker calls for respect on same-sex marriage ruling (CNN 6/28/15) Scott Walker said same-sex marriage proponents should respect the religious opinions of those who disapprove of same-sex couples having the right to legally wed. Speaking in Denver at the Western Conservatives Summit on Saturday, the Wisconsin governor spelled out his criteria for judges and weighed in on the religious liberty debate. “To me, it is not freedom from religion, it is freedom of religion, which ultimately means we have the right to practice our religious beliefs and not have others interfere,” he said in an onstage interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Report: Joe Biden’s son told him to run in 2016 (Politico 6/29/15) Vice President Joe Biden’s sons reportedly urged him to run for the White House in 2016, according to The Wall Street Journal. Biden’s son Beau, who died last month of brain cancer at the age of 46, wanted his father to get into the race, according to the report. “It’s no secret that Beau wanted him to run,” Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of South Carolina’s Democratic Party and a longtime Biden supporter, told the Journal. “If he does what Beau wanted him to do, he’ll run.” As left wins culture battles, GOP gains opportunity to pivot for 2016 (NY Times 6/27/15) A cascade of events suggests that 2015 could be remembered as a Liberal Spring: the moment when deeply divisive and consuming questions of race, sexuality and broadened access to health care were settled in quick succession, and social tolerance was cemented as a cornerstone of American public life. Yet what appears, in headlines and celebrations across the country, to represent an unalloyed victory for Democrats, in which lawmakers and judges alike seemed to give in to the leftward shift of public opinion, may contain an opening for the Republican Party to move beyond losing battles and seemingly lost causes. Rick Perry: Republicans must reach out to black voters (CBS News 7/2/15) Former Texas Governor Rick Perry said Thursday that Republicans have lost their “moral legitimacy as the party of Lincoln” after having given up on trying to win the support of African-‐Americans. Perry, who declared his presidential bid at the beginning of June, told an audience at the National Press Club that it’s time for Republicans to “reclaim our heritage as the only party in our country founded on the principle of freedom for African-‐ Americans.” He said Republicans have been “content to lose the black vote,” because they could win elections without African-‐American support. Poll: Bush, Trump rising nationally for GOP, but both trail Clinton (CNN 7/1/15) With nearly all of the expected 2016 presidential candidates formally in the race, a new CNN/ORC national poll Einds two recent entrants to the GOP Eield on the rise, while Hillary Clinton maintains her position atop the Democratic Eield, though holding a slightly slimmer lead. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and businessman Donald Trump top the list of GOP presidential contenders following their back-‐to-‐back campaign launches in mid-‐June, and are the only two Republican candidates holding double-‐digit support among Republicans and Republican-‐leaning independents. Lindsey Graham tells Iowan: I don’t want you to vote for me (CBS News 7/3/15) Conservative Sen. Lindsey Graham has made it clear he’s extremely concerned about the threat of Islamic terrorism, but he isn’t willing to outlaw a whole religion over it. When a voter in Iowa suggested barring Islam in the U.S. in response to ISIS, Graham quickly shut him down, the Des Moines Register reports. “You know what, I’m not your candidate,” Graham said, cutting him off. “I don’t want you to vote for me. I couldn’t disagree with you more.” Romney to host Christie, Rubio in New Hampshire (Politico 7/3/15) Mitt Romney is opening up his sprawling New Hampshire vacation home to 2016 rivals Marco Rubio and Chris Christie this weekend. Christie and his wife Pat are planning to have dinner with the former GOP presidential candidate on Friday night at his home near Lake Winnipesaukee and spend the night, according to a report in The Washington Post. On Saturday they plan to walk in the town’s Fourth of July parade, which is a tradition for the Romney family.
Inboxes overflow as 2016-ers amp up email appeals for cash
Hillary Clinton has a dinner invite for you. Jeb Bush is out to make a big splash. Rick Santorum wants to scare the heck out of you. Ted Cruz is looking for a sacrifice. Lincoln Chaffee wants to be your pal. Oh, and all of them want your money — and preferably before midnight on Tuesday night, please. Danger: The 2016 presidential candidates are emailing Americans such a flurry of appeals for money and support that the risk of inbox internal combustion is high. With each candidate making his or her own come-on, they’ve been offering voters all sorts of reasons to open their wallets before the quarterly reporting period for raising cash ends on Tuesday. Marco Rubio dangled the chance to win a trip to his Las Vegas birthday party with host Rick Harrison of TV’s “Pawn Stars.” “Official Hillary car magnet — plus free shipping!” reads one Clinton email. “Chip in $10 or more.” Cruz’s recent appeals for cash have included a plea for supporters to make a sacrifice on his behalf. He’s already made his own sacrifices, he tells them, and lists a few, such as the loss of family time and sleep, personal financial strain and the dreaded “pizza diet” on the campaign trail. Never mind the pizza, people: Santorum headlined one donation pitch with this chilling subject line: “ISIS is here.” Bush put his son Jeb Jr. to work trying to line up “5,000 Day One supporters by midnight to prove we’re serious about taking back the White House.” Lincoln Chafee went the let’s-be-pals route, using the subject line “hey” to try to lure voters to click on his email. The Republican candidates, in particular, are playing up the quarterly deadline as a reason to donate NOW and make a statement about their viability in a big pack of rivals. With no one casting votes yet, contributions from legions of grassroots donors can be read as a proxy measure of support, they reason. To be sure, there’s no other big reason to pony up now instead of later. Breathless appeals for cash won’t end Wednesday. But to hear them tell it, the looming reporting deadline is nothing less than the apocalypse. Cruz is running a “One Million Dollar Money Bomb Challenge.” Rubio has a “Let Freedom Ring” money bomb going. And Rand Paul wants $20.16 for his “End of Quarter Money Bomb.” Cruz’s latest emails have helpfully included an “FEC Deadline Countdown” clock showing the days, hours, minutes and seconds left until the Federal Election Commission‘s midnight deadline. “If there is still time on the clock below, then make an IMMEDIATE secure contribution by following this link,” he writes. Scott Walker, who has yet to enter the race, keeps asking supporters whether he should run — and to say so with cold cash. “Your gift today will show me your answer,” he writes. If words alone won’t close the deal, maybe different fonts, italics, bold-faced words, underlined phrases, CAPITAL LETTERS, stripes of color and exclamation points will reel in donations!!! With an oversized Paul vs. Obama photo and giant lettering that evoked a promo for a boxing prizefight, Rand Paul last month turned his opposition to government surveillance programs into a flurry of emails about a “NSA SPYING SHOWDOWN.” No, a simple “donate now” button will not suffice when candidates are lucky if even 20 percent of readers bother to open an email appeal. Campaigns rely on both research and hunches to try to figure out what will work — and there’s a lot happening on both sides of that equation. Cornell University political scientist Adam Seth Levine says campaigns can easily test what messages, words, colors, fonts and formats work best by sending out variations on the same fundraising pitch. “A lot of people don’t realize they are constantly being experimented upon,” says Levine. Campaigns may send out hundreds of variations to figure out what’s most effective, Levine says, analyzing who opens the emails, who clicks on links, what they do next and who ultimately donates. “The one thing they can’t do, which would be extremely Big Brother-ish, is see exactly where your eyes go,” Levine says. For all of those solid metrics, “intuition is going to play a large role because at the end of the day, no campaign is going to be the same as another campaign,” says Ryan Lyk, who runs email marketing for Alexandria, Va.-based IMGE, which works for companies, associations and GOP campaigns. “You’ve got to be creative and innovative with it.” Who’s at the forefront this year? Lyk gives good marks to Rubio for creativity and colorful content, and Carly Fiorina for casual wording that’s easy to relate to yet creates a sense of urgency. He credits Walker with aggressively bulking up his email list. And Clinton, Lyk says, “has all the bells and whistles.” Blue State Digital founder Joe Rospars, chief digital strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns, cautions that there’s a lot more to a winning strategy than simply cutting and pasting what’s worked before. “It really comes down to the relationship you’re building with the people on the other end of the email,” says Rospars. One of the Obama campaign’s most successful pitches to small givers — donate to try to win a meal with him — started as an experiment in 2007 when other candidates were holding fancy dinners with big-dollar contributors, Rospars recalls. Now, Clinton is urging her donors to sign up for a chance to win dinner “with the future President of the United States (knock on wood).” There’s no “donate” button. But you can bet those who sign up will be hearing more from Clinton — and getting the ask. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
