Nice article by Teachout/Wu
The Dems Need a Kick From the Left
By ZEPHYR TEACHOUT and TIM WU September 15, 2014
We went into our Democratic primary race against New York’s incumbent governor, Andrew Cuomo, and his running mate, Kathy Hochul, this summer with an idea of the challenges we faced: For one thing, incumbent governors, on average, score 90 percent or higher in their own party’s primaries. We also knew that Cuomo had more than $30 million on hand, and the ability to raise more. And given the power of the governor, we knew that institutional support and endorsements for our effort would be scarce.
These may have seemed like daunting obstacles, and many tried to talk us out of running. “You’d be a fool,” someone actually told one of us. “You’re crazy” was another refrain. But we ran nonetheless, and for an old-fashioned reason: We believed we would govern the state better than our opponents. We saw how the governor had too often abandoned and betrayed core Democratic principles, and seemed to do so with impunity. Outside party politics, he had also been accused of breaking core ethics rules, becoming part of a corrupt system he had promised to fix.
We began with little money, power or name recognition, yet we had other, less tangible advantages. Most importantly, we had the power of ideas on our side. We knew that, at this point in our state’s and our country’s history, many voters would respond to a message that said “no more” to a corrupt politics as usual and to the messages of corporatist Democrats. That gave us great confidence. We also believed that the nation was facing too much concentration of private power that few politicians were talking about.
Neither of us brought much fear. We knew we would be ignored and attacked, but we were ready for that. In part, because we lacked institutional support, we were free to say exactly what we wanted. We knew it would be hard for the governor to spend money attacking us without raising our profile. And we suspected, and hoped, that we would tap into a wellspring of dissatisfaction with Cuomo, based on things like his weakening of the public schools, his failure to take the corruption in Albany and a history of supporting Republican causes over Democratic ones.
Ultimately, while pretending to ignore our campaign, the governor did pull out just about every stop to attack and diminish us—including more than $10 million spent on blanket television ads, phone-banking, mailings and even personal attacks. But by the end of the race, we had sent our message: The governor emerged bruised and diminished, and we showed that a traditional, fearless, Democratic message has deep resonance.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/democrats-need-a-kick-from-the-left-110979.html#ixzz3DcYZge6B
