Schumer ‘exploded’ after DNC post-election claims

Hopes that victory in the midterm election might thaw relations between the Democratic National Committee and the party’s congressional campaign committees have suffered a setback following a clash over who should get the credit for the Nov. 7 result.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) boiled over in frustration at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) recently for touting its role in defeating former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).

{mosads}Schumer’s clash with a DNC official came during a recent closed-door policy retreat held in New York by the Senate Democratic Caucus. A DNC representative, who has not been identified, had just given a presentation to senators about the national committee’s success in identifying and mobilizing Democratic voters in Montana and had failed to give credit to the DSCC.

“Schumer exploded,” said one senior Democrat familiar with the exchange. Another Democrat who provided a more restrained version of events said the dressing down delivered by Schumer merely amounted to making it clear that the DNC should have given his committee proper credit.  

Schumer told the DNC that his committee put $500,000 into building a voter file in Montana, about 10 times what the national committee had invested in voter registration and identification.

“He said, ‘What are you talking about? We put in half a million into voter registration and you put in 50,000 [dollars],’” one source said.

A DNC source said what angered Schumer was “a basic presentation on our overall technology efforts” that “was not at all specific to Montana.”   

When questioned, Schumer declined to discuss the Senate Democrats’ retreat, which he said was “off the record.”

The senator said many people deserved credit for Democrats’ winning a Senate majority.

“I think there’s plenty of victory and a thousand fathers and mothers,” he said.

DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said, “The important thing is that working together, from field staff to committee chairs, we won a Democratic majority and now can work hard for the American people.”

The effectiveness of the DNC has remained a contentious subject among Democrats in the wake of their sweeping victories in last year’s election. Some Democrats say the success of the DNC’s 50-State Strategy has been exaggerated. Others say the
DNC has overstated its contribution to the midterm congressional victories.

After the election, Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg and James Carville said Democrats could have won an additional 10 to 20 seats in the House had DNC Chairman Howard Dean put more money into congressional races. Carville called for Dean to step down as chairman.

The DNC responded to Carville by claiming that it had spent $30 million on the midterm elections. Senate and House sources said that the national party put nowhere near that amount into Senate and House races. They say the DNC spent less than $12 million on congressional contests.

The DNC spent between $7 million and $9 million on Senate races and between $2 million and $3 million on House races, according to congressional Democratic estimates. Senate leaders were satisfied with the amount given by the DNC, but House leaders were not.

Most of the DNC’s spending went toward building party infrastructure in traditionally Republican states and helping Democrats to win state and local offices.  

By touting its activities in Montana, the DNC stepped on Schumer’s pride.

Schumer considers the voter file his committee built in Montana last year one of its biggest accomplishments. He extolled the effort in the days before Democrats captured the Senate: “We’ve created a voter file, for instance, for the first time in
Montana and Missouri,” Schumer told Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday.” “We spent $25 million. Our voter turnout is going to equal the Republicans for the first time in a long time, come this election.”

Sen. Jon Tester’s (D) defeat of the incumbent Burns was especially sweet for Democrats because President Bush carried Montana by 20 and 25 points in the last two presidential elections.

A DNC source familiar with the skirmish with Schumer said the DNC had only tried to explain its use of technology to senators. It had highlighted its work in Montana as an example of successful micro-targeting, the source said.

“The person was giving an overall presentation on technology,” the DNC official said. “He talked about what we had done this cycle in micro-targeting. He was talking about Montana as an example of where we did a test of micro-targeting and he said our methods were effective.”

The DNC neglected to mention that its voter outreach program in Montana had used the voter database built by the senatorial committee.

The executive director of the Montana Democratic Party, Jim Ferrell, said the DSCC poured resources into the state last year to identify Democratic voters. The task was crucial, he said, because in Montana voters do not list party affiliation when they register to vote. As a result, party operatives have had difficulty in past elections turning out supporters to the polls.

“The DSCC’s involvement in the state last year allowed us to put a lot of bodies on the ground and people on the phones to improve the voter file,” Ferrell said. “The DNC put in a smaller amount in terms of cash. But, very significantly, what the DNC did was to pay for party staff.”

Ferrell said the Service Employees International Union also provided volunteers and a sophisticated mobile-phone bank to build the list of Democratic voters.

 “The DSCC was a major contributor, but there were many offers to our improved voter file,” he said.
A review of DNC spending records for the five months preceding the election shows that it paid the salaries of three Democratic operatives in Montana each month. During that time it gave $130,000 in contributions to the state Democratic Party.

A Democrat familiar with DNC finances said the committee spent a total of $371,000 in Montana in 2005 and 2006 combined.

The DNC source said that in addition to spending money on House and Senate races, the national party spent $2 million to mobilize African-American and Hispanic voters around the country and $8 million to build a national voter database.