Several months ago I outlined the strategy that Senator Richard Burr has used successfully in both of his campaigns. One of the key planks of the strategy is scaring off potential challengers. While there’s still two months to go before the filing deadline, right now it looks like in that regard his campaign has been successful.
There’s a couple reasons for this. Burr is underrated as a retail politician, he can raise a ton of money, and his role as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is an asset with North Carolina voters. There’s also the fact that state Democrats are more pumped up about taking the governorship. Whoever the Democrats nominate for Senate is going to have to compete for donors with Roy Cooper and many of them don’t want to do that.
The result? While Burr’s approval numbers aren’t very strong, he’s left with a bunch of potential opponents who aren’t A-list candidates. That’s not to say they can’t win, but it’s going to be tough for them to raise money and convince national groups that investing in North Carolina is worth it. The eventual Democratic nominee is going to have to hope for either a blue wave or for Burr to get entangled by scandal.
Burr’s situation is all the more impressive because the DSCC pretty much ran the table in Senate recruiting this cycle. North Carolina sticks out like a sore thumb, after the organization failed to recruit who many considered to be Burr’s strongest opponents: former U.S. Senator Kay Hagan and Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. My guess is that while Burr appears weak to the casual observer, the top-tier Democrats all have a better grasp of the his various strengths as a candidate and that’s why they’re staying out.
There are a couple steps left in the Burr strategy – consolidating the GOP vote in the primary (averting an appearance of weakness with his own party), continuing to raise money, and showering the state with ads to boost the senator’s profile after Labor Day.
Those will all be important components in what Burr’s campaign hopes will result in victory. But the most crucial component of the strategy is already near completion. Most of the time, elections aren’t won on Election Day, or even in the early voting period. They’re won before the filing deadline. While there’s still two months left to go, the Democrats’ strongest potential candidates have all backed down, giving Burr a good chance to be the first U.S. Senator from North Carolina to be elected to a third term since Jesse Helms.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Always love it when a political observer states how well a candidate’s campaign is planned and is working out. Why?
Well, because that campaign can then only go one of two ways. One, the observer is right, and the candidate wins easily. Or, as Jeb! says, “stufff happens”, and the candidate loses (or sweats out a narrow win in the wee hours of the morning after election day).
If that first scenario happens, fine; one can ignore watching the tedium of that race altogether. If it unfolds along the second scenario’s lines, however, one can have much more fun following an exciting election finish.
Here’s hoping that “stuff happens” and Burr finds that he’s sweating heavily (in his empty banker’s suit) come election day…………
For you wish to happen, the Democrats will have to find a viable candidate to oppose Sen. Burr. So far, no credible takers.
Democrats could easily take out the Republican incumbents by simply looking at the voting records and see which ones signed the Clean CR’s — not a single republican will vote for them.
Well, maybe—but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that.
I appreciate this article very much. I resigned my little seat of the Democratic Party because I can lose on my own. What a piece of wreckage John Edwards was. Imagining his being anywhere near intelligence was fearful. I’d really like to know what it is that the “Intelligence” Committee gets to know, or doesn’t. If it was me I’d have the CIA and NSA eliminated, since their history of secret agendas is fraught with failure and that corruption of mission driven by drug dealers and weapons smuggling ends up creating enemies and fronts that fund whatever they want regardless of benefits to our civilization.
Instances when they have done good work as what NSM 200 was for Nixon then squelched in favor of Vatican policies can’t have encouraged the institution to bother trying. Great position for the easily manipulated who can say trust me, you’re not supposed to even know. Of course I regard all that signed a pledge to Norquist Nation to be C.S.A., not USA. It really is about the corporatists and the nationalists. Great to have a C.S.A. corporatists with access to secrets, if ever they actually do get at any truth.
I am going to concentrate on my own Transcendia Party Arm of Transcendia which is of a whole. Wonder if I can see the file on me, and am overdue for a Freedom of Information filing. No hope of forcing the Zionists State to insure the Palestinians and and Palestinians to insure the Israelis as a disincentive for death and destruction.
Unless the Econ War against Russia is settled and the transit overland to Sevastopol at the very least offered for sale to them, they have every motive to sabotage our USA rockets, like wrecks of the Antares and Galactic and any Falcon competition for the big cash going somewhere corrupt in crony cash accounts the FSB shares out for whatever they want. -Or sell nukes to Iran.
You know the GRU never stops and sales of old rocket engines was a real boon. Screw our own.
The rise so high of the Market State means front company after another till any national interests disappear and all is anarchy of benefit to arms sellers with missiles on the shelves going bad.
It was the FBI in Monrovia, not the CIA, or NSA. That is meaningful. Interpol and the Post office and the FBI? Be happy and cheery for whatever you can get that actually does protect the country, or what is left of a nation.
I’d give the US Navy to the Coast Guard myself. Their mission still makes sense.
What difference the Presidency makes anymore while all the institutions are either corrupted, stupid, or rudderless in a nation doing exactly what the British Empire did because of its “Liberalism” and its “Free Traders” to destroy its wealth and turn it into a beggar nation is some horror to watch on television day in and day out as fear sells better than sex ever thought about.