In what can only be described as en epic defeat, Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader in the House of Representatives was defeated by a little know economics professor from Randolph Macon College named David Brat. Yeah, I’ve never heard of it either.
The naval gazing by many has already started. “The Tea Party is alive and well!”, “This is what happens when you support amnesty!”, “This is a wake up call to all House member!”, “This is what happens when you put pineapple on pizza!”
I made the last one up. However, all of the pontificating about the real reason Cantor lost, ignores the reason he really lost:
He ran a half-assed campaign convinced that his war-chest would be enough to do in his nobody opponent and he obviously became very disconnected from his constituents.
Sound familiar? Remember the campaign war chest Mitt Romney built up in 2012? All the talk of “flooding the zone” with a barrage of ads in the early fall and use that to waltz into the White House? Remember how that worked out.
Eric Cantor raised nearly $5.5 million. Brat raised a little over $200,000.
Cantor lost by 11 percentage points.
Unlike so many other races around the country, there were really no outside groups like FreedomWorks pouring money into this race. This was an example of a true grassroots effort combined with a candidate so out of touch with his constituents and so assured of his own victory that on the day of the election, he was attending a fundraiser in Washington DC. His disconnect was obvious as Cantor lost 6 of the 10 counties in his district.
Meanwhile, Brat kept things simple: He knocked on doors, talked to people and did the kind of dirty work that is necessary to win a campaign – even a primary.
Know what else he had? Access to the right data. Brat’s campaign utilized a firm called rVotes. If you haven’t heard of them, you should. The founder, Steve Adler was one of the founders of the product now known as VoteBuilder. The tool the Obama campaign and Democrats have been utilizing.
Adler wrote about it:
Known as rVotes, it’s the system my company deploys for candidates, and it’s essentially the same campaign system Democrats know as VoteBuilder, which is used by virtually every Democrat and liberal organization in the United States. I know because I was one of the original inventors of VoteBuilder, along with Mark Sullivan. In 2005, I sold my half of Voter Activation Network (VAN), which is now NGP VAN. I now license rVotes only to center-right political organizations, candidates, and parties—at least the ones who will have me.
So how exactly did Brat use our technology? First, he harnessed the free political muscle found in his volunteer base. Second, campaigns and organizations that already had data stored in rVotes were able to instantly “share” any portions of their precious, hand-cultivated constituent data with the Brat campaign. Several Tea Party groups chose to do so, and that helped him further microtarget the campaign’s universe.
We all know the smaller and more accurate a candidate can make their targeted universe, the less time and resources will be wasted on wooing constituents who will likely not affect the outcome of the election. In a relatively low turnout Republican primary, knowing who to target to turn out additional supporters was even more important for a candidate like Brat. In extreme cases, a razor sharp grassroots effort can make $200,000 more powerful on Election Day than an opponent’s $5 million.
The more I read about Brat, the more I like the guy. Here is what he had to say last night:
“I do want to add that the press – and I’ve heard there’s already some senior Democratic officials trying to spin this as a matter of right or left – and I just reject those categories. I’m running on free markets, constitutional principles. I don’t think free markets are either right or left. I don’t think the rule of law is either right or left. So through the duration of the last six months the press has been trying to pigeonhole me. Some people call me a liberal professor, other people call me a tea party candidate.”
When asked if he is a tea partier, Brat said, “I just say what I say — I’m running on the Republican principles, the creed. I’ve given stump speech after stump speech on those six principles that I believe in and I have huge grassroots and tea party support, and I owe those people the election. I owe Republicans, tea party, grassroots — they all came together and helped me win tonight. Utter thanks, but the press is trying to do this sound bite stuff and put you in a little hole, and peg you in one way or the other.
Other candidates, particular incumbents should look at what happened here and pay attention.