DownWithTyranny!: Matt Miller's Narcissistic Look Back Into His Pointless Congressional Campaign

Centrism

Last week, a professional L.A.-based Beltway centrist, Matt Miller, wrote a self-pitying retrospective of his unmemorable vanity campaign for Congress. Obviously, for the Beltway publication virtually no one in L.A. reads or has even heard of, Politico. The FEC reported that Miller raised $848,440-- much of it from his Inside the Beltway cronies-- before coming in 5th with 12% of the vote, behind 2 Democrats, a Republican and a progressive independent. Coming from a DC-insider and a radio background, Miller ran a relatively nasty campaign, calling other candidates names and promoting GOP scare tactics about national security to promote the unconstitutional Surveillance State he worships mindlessly. [Always self-pitying, Miller whined: "this primary might have been the only one in the country where a candidate got so beat up for daring to criticize National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. In forum after forum, my rivals gave the party activists what they wanted-- Snowden was a hero, the NSA was evil, take it from there. Maybe they even believed that."] He didn't spend much time on it-- or any of his other right-of-center positions-- in his Politico memoir, which is a sad mediation on not taking responsibility for his loss, blaming it instead on how people hate all politicians and other factors outside of his own control. Contrast Miller's sob-story with the OpEd Iowa congressional candidate Steve Sovern wrote for the Washington Post in 1991 that we looked at Sunday morning.

As soon as Miller heard about Waxman retiring, he wanted to jump into the race, not knowing much about elections but being pretty aware that it would be a crowded contest. Each of the early entrants he worried about beat him.

The most prominent likely Democratic contender was Wendy Greuel, a former city controller who had i>lost the recent Los Angeles mayoral race to Eric Garcetti. The millions of dollars she and outside groups had spent on TV during the campaign gave her high name recognition, a huge asset. Then again, she did live outside the congressional district, so at least she would face carpetbagger charges. An author and lecturer named Marianne Williamson had announced the previous fall that she was running as an independent against Waxman-- she was decidedly unconventional, a kind of “spiritual guru,” but her devoted following could make her a factor. Then there was Democratic state Senator Ted Lieu, whose district overlapped with Waxman’s. And who knew who else might jump in?

The filing deadline wasn’t until March 7, but if I was going to run, people I trusted told me, I would need to move fast, because donors would coalesce around the serious contenders who got in early. The primary was June 3. Under California’s open primary system, the top two finishers, regardless of party, would go on to the general election in November. Oh, and there was one more thing.

“You’ll need to raise around a million dollars,” Sean Clegg, one of the state’s top political consultants, told me. To be spent mostly on cable TV ads and direct mail.

A million dollars? I tried to process what this meant. It was almost February 1. I counted off February, March, April and May on my fingers. Four months until June 3. About 120 days. More than $8,000 a day, more than $11,000 if you didn’t count weekends. I had never raised a political penny in my life. My likely opponents had been doing this for years.

...For starters, I was told, I would need a media strategist, a direct mail consultant, a fundraising consultant, an election lawyer, a campaign treasurer and some day-to-day campaign staff. The career politicians I would be facing just had to flip a switch-- they had such teams on tap and ready to go. That left me hunting for advisers who weren’t already spoken for, and who were prepared to resist pressure from rival camps not to take me on. One fundraising consultant on my list took a meeting, for example, and said she would be available if a longtime client decided against entering the race himself. Yet when he stayed out, she wouldn’t even return my calls.

...Others were more welcoming, if concerned for my sanity. A law school friend said he would happily support me, but added, “It sounds like a pretty extreme way to deal with empty nest syndrome.” One business leader in L.A. thought I had lost my mind. “Why do you want this job?” he said. “You have more impact and a much better life doing what you’re doing.” Former [very conservative and corporatist] Senator Bob Kerrey was ready to endorse me if that was useful; his one word of caution was, “Do NOT spend your own money-- no matter what the consultants tell you in the last week of the campaign-- it’s not fair to your family.” A consultant who hadn’t known I am Jewish said that was important in my district. “You may need to change your name to Millerstein,” he joked. (That seemed a bit much, but pictures of our daughter’s bat mitzvah became the dog whistle in our materials.)

Jay Carson, a former Hillary Clinton aide and deputy mayor in L.A. who was now running Mike Bloomberg’s climate change initiative, said I should figure 85 to 90 percent of my time would be spent fundraising.

...“If you want to run a 1950s campaign in the 21st century,” my newly anointed lead consultant, media strategist Mattis Goldman, barked one morning, “suit yourself.” Our team was on the phone not long after I’d announced my bid on February 14, and it was a more than credible group we’d managed to pull together despite my outsider status: Mattis as top strategist, partnering with direct-mail guru Andrew Acosta; my friend Stan Greenberg and his partner Drew Lieberman on the polling; Tracy Austin, one of California’s top Democratic fundraisers; and Lyn Utrecht, a Washington fixture, as counsel. But already it was clear I would need to wage a different kind of race. I couldn’t compete for endorsements from the local Democratic clubs and interest groups; Wendy and Ted had been mining those fields for years. And we knew I would start way behind in name recognition and that only money could close the gap. The basic plan was straightforward: Raise the money, hope to be competitive for the L.A. Times endorsement and build on the Westside NPR listeners who would be my base. A threshold strategic question was whether there was any good use of my time besides raising money, since cable TV and direct mail were the only way to reach enough voters in a district that end to end spans more than 50 traffic-snarled miles... [M]oney was the main mission.

...First order of business is introducing you to the bizarre rites and rituals associated with reaching out to the 1/20th of 1 percent of Americans who fund campaigns, and I soon learned consultants have studied dialing for dollars with anthropological precision. One consultant’s motto is, “Shorter calls means more calls!”-- i.e., more money. So stop all the chitchat. When you make the “ask,” another told me-- and that’s typically for the max of $2,600 per person, $5,200 per couple-- just say the number and pause: Don’t keep talking. And above all, don’t leave L.A. for an out-of-town fundraiser unless you’re guaranteed to rake in at least $50,000, and preferably 100 large. Anything less and it’s not worth the hassle... Campaign fundraising is a bizarre, soul-warping endeavor. You spend your time endlessly adding to lists of people who might be in a position to help. You enter them on a spreadsheet (dubbed “The Tracker”) and sort the names from high to low in terms of their giving potential. You start to think of every human being in your orbit as having a number attached to them. You book breakfasts, lunches, coffees and drinks at which you make the case for your candidacy … and ask for money. Always money. You call dozens of people a day … and ask for money. When people ask how they can help, you mostly ask them for the names of folks you can … ask for money.

...Tracy Austin, my fundraising guru, shows up midday for three hours of supervised “call time.” She’s a smiling drill sergeant. She forces me to go faster. She listens to my patter and suggests tweaks. When folks agree to give, I hand her the phone to take their information while I pick up another line and dial the next victim. I leave my third or even fifth message with assistants-- “you’re not doing yourself any good by this drumbeat of messages,” one of those I’m stalking emails, saying they’re “the surest way to turn me off.” But I remain persistent, always telling folks who come through generously that I’d be happy to make the case to their wife or husband as well. “Take no spouse for granted … and leave no spouse behind!” has become my motto, I explain.

One donor asks if I’m taking PAC money. I say I’d love to: Wendy and Ted have long funded their campaigns with cash from the business and labor groups that have a stake in City Hall or Sacramento business. It’s an obvious conflict of interest, but it’s how American politics works. As a newbie, however, I don’t get PAC overtures. I end up with just a handful. [Slimy corporate whore and fellow-"centrist"] Senator Michael Bennet’s leadership PAC gives us $5,000; a local law firm does $1,000; also, a friend of a friend is the CEO of Avis, so I get $2,600 from Avis’s PAC. (“I just want to put my cards on the table,” I tell audiences when they ask where my funding comes from. “You send me to Washington, I’m under the thumb of the rental car industry. I’m not sure what that means, but there it is.”)

...As the filing deadline approaches, I feel like I’ve become a machine designed to collect cash from high net worth Americans and turn it into cheesy mailers that will stuff voters’ mailboxes in May. March 31 itself marks the apotheosis of my transformation. With everything riding on the numbers we have to report by midnight, I find myself in a fever, a hustler in full, a caffeinated candidate who will not be denied. I make call after call at a frantic clip, coaxing and cajoling prospects with the power only a deadline can provide. I’ve learned my lessons well: I hear myself thanking 20 people sincerely for being “the one” who puts us over our half-a-million-dollar goal. Tracy looks at me like I’m a different person. She’s seen this wild-eyed species before. She wasn’t sure I’d get there. “It’s a little scary,” she admits. But she approves.

When the dust clears, we’ve raised more than $517,000 in 46 days. That’s $11,257 a day-- as fast a daily rate as Wendy and Ted. We put out a press release. Politicos around town are buzzing about the size of our haul. It’s the only metric that matters-- the equivalent of plopping your political manhood on the table for all to admire. Antonio Villaraigosa, the former L.A. mayor, leaves me a voicemail. “That’s a BIG NUMBER, man!” he says. It’s a weird thing to feel proud of. But I do.

...I had caught the bug, and I kept on raising money right up until the end, even with our cable TV and mail program fully paid up. One day, as I was sitting on our patio, it occurred to me why. We had stereo speakers high on the wall outside, and birds had built nests wedged between the speakers and the house. I had seen birds bringing twigs to the nests and wondered, “How do they know how to do that?” I supposed they were just hard-wired that way. I realized I knew the feeling. When I had a spare hour in those closing days, I instinctively pulled up The Tracker and called or emailed donors. It was second nature now. Like the birds. I raise money, I thought. It’s what I do.