Money-Starved SRCC Forces Republicans Into Early Triage In State Senate Fight
Challenges in battlegrounds like Westchester, Nassau and Queens could fizzle
Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:06:00
Senate Republicans were brimming with optimism in the days after the 2009 elections. GOP candidates had stunned Democratic incumbents in battleground suburbs, setting the stage for a potentially historic comeback in 2010, including a possible takeover of the State Senate.Then the cold reality set in: the state Republican Party is broke.
According to campaign finance records, the Senate Republicans’ Campaign Committee reported just under $1 million on hand at the end of January—less than a fifth of what it had at the same point in the 2008 cycle, when Democrats fought to the finish to win their fragile one-vote majority. The GOP raised about $1.6 million in the last half of 2009, but burned through more than a third of that on early attack ads in perceived swing districts, hoping to soften the ground for potential candidates and donors.
Now, party strategists who once boldly predicted that as many as a dozen Democratic Senate seats would be in play have narrowed their sights considerably, suggesting the all-important battle for control of the Senate—and the power to redistrict in 2011—will come down to as few as three or four competitive races.
“They seem to be a little more realistic about where they’re going to be putting their resources,” said a senior Republican operative familiar with the SRCC’s thinking. “It’s a new world now, and they’ve got to understand that they’ve got the resources really only to play in upstate and a couple of very key areas.”
That outlook stands in stark contrast to the GOP’s strategy in 2008, when Senate Republicans spent hundreds of thousands of dollars nurturing long-shot candidates in firmly Democratic districts.
Senate Republicans offered as much financial support in 2008 to Larchmont Mayor Liz Feld, who mounted a failed challenge to State Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, as they did to some 20-year incumbents who were fighting for re-election. And Senate strategists even sent a $50,000 check to a former firefighter who was challenging Sen. Liz Krueger on the Upper East Side, which in recent years has drifted far beyond the GOP’s reach.
Now Senate Republicans say they are performing triage. They are likely to support only a handful of candidates with proven electoral track records and the means to raise their own cash.
The new strategy may mean that as many as half a dozen Senate Democrats once seen as vulnerable could escape the GOP crosshairs.
In Nassau, for example, Republicans have grown increasingly skeptical of their chances in the North Hempstead district currently held by Sen. Craig Johnson. The seat was held by a Republican until 2007, and GOP leaders have poured millions into two failed efforts to beat Johnson. Even with a credible challenger, Mineola Mayor Jack Martins, now in the race, Republicans are likely focus more intensively on Democratic seats upstate and in Suffolk.
And in Queens, freshman State Sen. Joseph Addabbo, who was once viewed as one of the Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbents, may also get by without a serious Republican challenge. Eric Ulrich, who won Addabbo’s old seat on the City Council, has declined to run despite being courted by Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos. Former City Council Member Anthony Como, who briefly represented a neighboring district, is the only GOP candidate who could make the race competitive, Republicans say, but he is waiting on a promised job offer from the Bloomberg administration that has been in limbo for months.
If Como chooses not to run, Senate Republicans are unlikely to spend much money bolstering a second-tier candidate in his place.
Senate Republicans have whittled away at their political operation considerably since 2008, when the committee was often bloated with outside consultants and redundant in-house staffers. The cull has left a bare-bones SRCC with no executive director, no communications director and no outside fundraiser, forcing Skelos to collect most of the money from major donors himself.
“That’s what happens when you have an organization that’s existed for a long time—it builds up layers and it loses its nimbleness,” said Bill O’Reilly, a Republican consultant who oversaw Feld’s State Senate campaign. “I suspect it’ll be a leaner and faster organization this year.”
The task of raising money and shaping the Senate Republicans’ electoral strategy has fallen largely to two old SRCC hands: Claude Lavigna, the deputy executive director, and Judy Crane, the finance director. The committee has no field directors, and has not laid the groundwork for canvassing operations in key battleground regions.
The Democrats, by contrast, have had all of those positions filled since shortly after the 2008 elections, and have sent field organizers to proxy fights across the state, including a bellwether Council race in Addabbo’s Senate district last year to protect a Democratic incumbent.
The scarcity of resources has left Republicans with few options in districts that would have otherwise received considerable attention. In Westchester, for example, Republicans have attempted to lure Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone into a race against two-term State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, because Amicone would not have to rely on the SRCC for help fundraising. If Amicone declines, Republicans admit they will likely have no choice but to cede the district to the Democrats.
“If Amicone doesn’t run, I don’t think they’re likely to put a lot of money up,” said a Republican familiar with the Senate leadership’s thinking.
The bare-bones staff has also left fledgling Republican candidates challenging seasoned Democratic incumbents to fend largely for themselves. That outcome may be especially troubling, GOP strategists say, because rookie candidates often require handholding from veteran SRCC officials.
Lee Zeldin, a 29-year-old Iraq War veteran who is challenging freshman senator and former two-term town supervisor Brian Foley, has raised a $100,000 war chest largely on his own, his campaign said. And the SRCC is unlikely to provide much help in the next several months.
“The fundraising effort that we put together was an in-house effort,” said Michael Johnson, Zeldin’s campaign manager. “We’ll try to do as much as possible to win this race and be successful in-house.”
