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Laesch improves, but not enough

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Illinois

* Congressional candidate John Laesch was an embarrassment to many Democrats last year during his race against Republican Denny Hastert. Laesch had a problem with his often goofy antics and silly statements. He hasn’t shown any real improvement this year, either.

But while his fundraising has improved over his less than stellar showing last year, he’s in a heap of trouble, as Hiram accurately points out…

John Laesch’s race this time, however, is much different than last primary cycle’s race against Ruben Zamora, who in his end of year filing for 2005 had $4,535 in contributions (Ruben did not file an October 2005 quarterly report). While Laesch’s total numbers have improved by almost $52,000 compared to 2005, he is now in a four-way race with two competitors who have more money than him. One of those candidates is Bill Foster, who raised almost four times Laesch’s total contributions in just this quarter - before Bill doubled that number through a personal donation to his campaign.

Jotham Stein, the first Democrat to announce his candidacy in the 14th District race, has almost certainly also raised more money than John Laesch. By Jotham’s second quarter report he had raised a total of $44,040, although most of it, like John Laesch’s, was burned through in operating expenses and debt. The Stein campaign has not yet filed its third quarter report.

In a physically large congressional district with expensive media money will count a lot. The John Laesch campaign has to ramp up fundraising dramatically this quarter if they’re going to have a shot at winning the primary. We should know the status of Jotham Stein’s campaign finances soon.

* You can see Laesch’s quarterly fundraising report here. Below is a screen cap of the summary…

Foster, who has considerable personal wealth, will probably spend whatever it takes to win this primary, so Laesch is the decided underdog.

* Meanwhile, as you may recall, I took a bit of a whack at Marguerite Murer the other day for a silly resume inflation. She writes…

Great blog. Thanks for writing about my pondering the 11th District race yesterday. I grew up in the district and am proud of its rich history of strong values, strong families, and a commitment to helping each other. It was a great place to grow up and I would like to give back and serve the community that has positively shaped so many lives. It has been exciting to come home and see the growth and development throughout the area and I would like to be a part of the team of the forward thinking leaders.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 9:05 am

Comments

Great, just what the 11th District needs is another Bush Apologist. General Murer should step aside for someone who really cares about the district. Just when you think the district couldn’t do worse than Jerry Weller, along comes General Murer.

Comment by Joe in the Know Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 10:17 am
“Great blog. Thanks for writing about my pondering the 11th District race yesterday. I grew up in the district and am proud of its rich history of strong values, strong families, and a commitment to helping each other. It was a great place to grow up and I would like to give back and serve the community that has positively shaped so many lives. It has been exciting to come home and see the growth and development throughout the area and I would like to be a part of the team of the forward thinking leaders.”

She forgot to write, “have a nice day”, or “together we can make a difference”, or “I stand with the real working people in this district” - you know, that kind of stuff.

Did she ever write for Hallmark?

Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 10:30 am
I feel so happy now; I think I’ll sign on to the Murer campaign. I’ll bet the Kool-Aid is delicious!

Comment by Pot calling kettle Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 10:54 am
Arch said this of Giannoulis when commenting on Laesh’s response about not getting the G’s endorsement,

Right now he is the best face of the Democratic Party in Illinois…,

That’s a sorry comment on Illinois Democrats, and maybe Laesch’s best bet is to come out hard from the left about the disaster the party’s leadership has created.

There was a time when independent radical Democrats would attack the Regular Democrats without alienating people in a conservative district.

If Laesch tried that, he might have a chance, but he’s defintily going to need to get beyond dKos speak to manage that.

Comment by Bill Baar Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 11:14 am
Bill-

Name one “radical” Democrat who won in a conservative downstate/exurban district by attacking the “regular” Democratic Party. Wouldn’t a quiet “distancing” be more in order? Besides, that would kinda be stealing Lauzen’s strategy, which is to be a “radical” Republican attacking the “regular” Republican Party. Most everyone running in the 14th seems to be portraying themselves as an “outsider”, so which of these “outsiders” is more worthy?.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 11:36 am
A sample hierarchy of effective voter contact:

1. Meeting the candidate.
2. Meeting the candidate’s representative.
3. Call from the candidate.
4. Call from the candidate’s representative.
5. Letter from the candidate.
6. Letter from the candidate’s representative.
7. Television advertisement.
8. Radio advertisement.
9. Newspaper advertisement.

I think that more money is only going to help a candidate do those things that are further down on the effective voter contact hierarchy. In other words, a bottom-up, grassroots, people-powered, volunteer campaign can be a lot more effective.

Comment by Squideshi Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 11:44 am
Laesch gave us “distancing” and I don’t think it works for him.

If “Giannoulis” the “best face” of Illinois Democrats, well then I think Laesch has an opportunity to score some points he should have availed himself of.

Pat Quinn in his pre-Lt Gov life an example of a progressive sort of Democrat with broad appeal.

Paul Douglas of old the classic case of the Radical who managed wide appeal.

I just remember a time when it was not at all unusual to see Liberal Democrats and the GOP in the suburb have more common ground. I remember the open housing debates in Oak Park in the 60s.

As for Lauzen being the outsider… I guess your right everyone is an outsider in Il-14… it’s true…

Comment by Bill Baar Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 12:03 pm
Squid-

One other thing:

If a candidate is a current officeholder, “constituent services” will go a long way in persuading voters to give them a chance at higher office. In the 11th and 14th, “if” Deb Halvorson and Chris Lauzen have run tremendous constituent operations with their staffs, it will go a long way in giving them a leg up that others will not have, regardless of ideology or whatever. Not being familiar with their operations, I don’t have an opinion on how much this will help either one.

To Bill Baar: I remember Peg Breslin as being a successful left of center state rep in a more conservative district. She didn’t necessarily run against the machine, but kept those ties quiet. Her office ran a great constituent services shop, and she was always electable because of it.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 12:15 pm
===That’s a sorry comment on Illinois Democrats, and maybe Laesch’s best bet is to come out hard from the left about the disaster the party’s leadership has created.

Why is it sorry? Alexi is doing a great job and building bridges instead of fighting. He’s a pleasant surprise.

Comment by archpundit Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 12:32 pm
Six Degrees of Separation wrote, “If a candidate is a current officeholder, ‘constituent services’ will go a long way in persuading voters to give them a chance at higher office.”

That’s a good point. I actually believe that this is a valid criteria by which to judge the tperformance of a elected official. “Customer” service is an important issue in government.

I believe, for example, that the State of Illinois should maintain a single, centralized contact center (phone, email, postal, and fax) charged with knowing what government entities exist in Illinois, who is responsible for doing what, and putting Illinois citizens into contact with the correct people when they call. Such a center should have a single toll-free phone number and should offer world-class “customer” service. A call to the Illinois State Contact Center / State of Illinois, might go something like this:

STATE: Thank you for calling the State of Illinois. My name is John. How may I help you?

CALLER: There’s a mistake on my property tax bill.

STATE: I can help you with that. One moment please… (Employee does a quick lookup on the issue in the constantly-improving and publicly web-accessible state knowledge base.)

STATE: Ok. It looks like X handles that type of issue. In what county is the property located?

CALLER: I live in Y county.

(Employee does a quick lookup in the knowledge base in order to determine the contact information for X in Y county.)

STATE: Thank you. Can I put you on hold for a moment while I connect you with X?

CALLER: Sure.

(Employee puts caller on hold and calls X.)

X: X.

STATE: Hello. This is John from the Illinois State Contact Center. I have a caller on the line who has a mistake on his property tax bill. Can I connect you?

X: Go ahead.

STATE: Ok. What is your name?

X: Jane.

STATE: Thank you. One moment please.

(Employee connects X to CALLER.)

STATE: Sir, I have Jane on the line from X. She is going to be able to help you with your problem.

CALLER: Thank you.

X: You have a mistake on your property tax bill?

CALLER: Yes, I looked at it and…

Comment by Squideshi Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 1:05 pm
Last I checked, Laesch had raised $33k over actblue (just this cycle, I believe). Since a lot of actblue money comes in from his DailyKos fanbase, he’s still having a heckuva hard time fundraising locally. If you compared his actblue donations this cycle to last, and backed them out, I’d guess that he’s not actually doing any better than last cycle in tems of local donations.

Oh, and Squid, not that that’s not a fine idea, but you know it wouldn’t work like that in real life. You’d call a centralized number, and you’d get a machine. You’d dance your way through menus, finally talking a real person. The real person would likely be as clueless as you are, and end up connecting you to the wrong person at the end. And that’s what happens when I call my bank. Now add government into the mix…I’d prefer it if they built a website that did all that. My bank’s website works wonderfully for 95% of my questions. It’s that remaining 5% that’s the problem…

Comment by jerry 101 Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 1:17 pm
jerry 101 wrote, “You’d call a centralized number, and you’d get a machine. You’d dance your way through menus, finally talking a real person. The real person would likely be as clueless as you are, and end up connecting you to the wrong person at the end.”

Nope, because the rules governing the operation of the Illinois State Contact Center would include an ongoing Performance Improvement / Quality Assurance component that would, for example, include regular training of employees on customer service, “mystery” callers and evaluations, and regular reporting that automatically triggered hiring / acquisition of additional resources when necessary.

The entire goal here would be to ensure that everyone is able to talk to a real live person when making that initial first contact with state government, just like having a receptionist at the front door to your office building.

In addition, the employees would not be “clueless” because they would have access to an ever-improving computerized knowledge base that contained the answers to questions being asked. The longer in existence, the more answers that the knowledge base would contain. The state would then eventually also be able to run statistics showing, for example, what questions are asked most frequently and be proactive about its educational efforts. Further, I see no reason that such a knowledge base could not ALSO be directly publicly accessible to citizens on the web in order to serve people like you who prefer that option.

Comment by Squideshi Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 1:26 pm
Squid-

Your intent here could not be more on the mark.

Before the computer age, state offices had live receptionists at each agency. The better agencies had “go to” people who the receptionist could trust to route the call to, and you’d have a good chance of getting someone who could answer the question or otherwise get you help.

Nowadays, the agencies are downsized, a lot of the institutional knowledge has retired or quit, and it is more of a hit or miss proposition than the good old days. True, with the advent of databases and other electronic retrieval and storage, the state *should* be able to compensate somewhat. But a downsized, less experienced workforce needs to be managed more effectively, and have “plug in and play” system capability to operate effectively.

It would be interesting to poll the non-state employees here to see which agencies are most, and least, responsive in the current environment.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, Oct 12, 07 @ 3:15 pm
I would just like to say in response to Jerry 101’s comment about ActBlue that the Laesch campaign uses ActBlue as the backend donation system for the website. (I know, I’m the webmaster.) And, with all fundraising calls made, we help people donate online using Actblue if they would prefer that method to sending a check.

As for the percentage of donors from DailyKos who contribute via ActBlue, I have no statistics on that since it is not my area.

Comment by Jared Lash Saturday, Oct 13, 07 @ 9:00 pm