Jim Neal, the North Carolina Senate race and HRC
A couple of days ago,I received an instant message from Brad Luna, media relations guy for the Human Rights Campaign, with a link to a Daily Kos post referencing a poll showing State Senator Kay Hagan opening up a big lead over openly gay Jim Neal in the Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina. Luna seemed to be saying "gotcha," or something like that, by sending me the post, though I honestly wasn't quite sure of what the point truly was. I do think it showed what HRC's priorities are: being right and going with the status quo, rather than actually creating change in the long term. But I'll come back, further down, to the instant message and what it meant.
Last night Jim Neal, who we've had on the show a bunch of times, did not in fact pull out a win in his bid for the Democratic nomination. Latest results have him getting about 19% against Kay Hagan, who will now run against Republican incumbent Elizabeth Dole.
As many of you know, I had quite a passionate discussion with David Smith, vp for policy and programs at the Human Rights Campaign, last week about the group's refusal to endorse Neal in the race, and thus give him much-needed resources. Smith came on to respond to criticism by blogger and former record company honcho Howie Klein.
Smith explained that the group doesn't usually endorse in a primary, so they were sitting it out, even though this was an openly gay candidate who was great on the issues and who was viable, polling well against Dole and even though he had much better command on LGBT issues (including on a televised debate) than Kay Hagan.
One particularly heated exchange came when Smith quoted a poll showing Hagan leading Neal by a wide margin after I noted polls showing a dead heat. Several polls in fact from the last few weeks had it at a dead heat but with a huge undecided, amounting to about half or more of the electorate; the latest poll Smith quoted had her in the lead but still with a huge undecided -- 58%. He scoffed at my reference to the polls showing a dead heat, relying on that one poll (a PPP automated poll, which some consider less than reliable) but the truth is that, even if reliable, with such a huge undecided that late in the race -- it was only a week ago that we spoke and when that poll was released -- the race could have gone to either candidate, depending on the visibility and money the candidates had from other sources.
With the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee giving money to Hagan, along with local political groups, and then HRC refusing to endorse Neal, it was no surprise that Hagan had more visibility, more TV ads and thus swayed that huge undecided block who knew little about either candidate and certainly much less about Neal. In the couple of days before the election ,one of the latest polls -- the one Luna IM'd me -- thus not surprisingly showed Hagan taking the lead and the undecideds shrinking. And I'm not sure what Luna's instant message with a reference to that poll was meant to tell me, beyond the "I told you so," which was irrelevant: had his group actually given money to Neal and helped him organize, Neal would have had more visibility, would have done better in the polls and could have had a stronger showing in the primary or even could have won it.
Showing me the poll, as I said, seemed to be was a way of saying, "I told you so," as if the goal is to be correct and back the winner and go with the status quo, rather than try to actually change the outcome. HRC was part of creating the outcome, and then uses that as a reason for why it was right to do nothing. Rather than buck the national Democratic Party -- which snubbed Neal from the beginning, urging Hagan to run, clearly believing a gay candidate could not win -- HRC once again did as they were told.
And really, it's not like Elizabeth Dole's seat is on any list of incumbents whom the DNC, DSCC, or independent strategists see as highly vulnerable. It's certainly not one they're expecting to take. So, why not back Neal, an openly gay candidate, help to build him as a candidate, even if he loses, and thus help organize the grass roots in a red state where we are making a lot of progress? Instead, HRC does what the Democrats want, not to mention that Hagan apparently has ties to at least one person on their board, and then does all of this spin on shows like mine, trying against all hope to once again explain the unexplainable.
Pam Spaulding, who was at Neal's headquarters, has a lot more on this, including his concession speech, and she takes HRC on about its strategy:
...[A]s we've discussed so many times before here, Jim Neal didn't receive any kind of nod from the Beltway LGBT orgs (oh, say HRC, for an example) -- as you've seen, they focus heavily on viability, and less on advocacy. There is an imbalance when there cannot be room for supporting progress regardless of outcome in Red states -- going for the sure win (or just-miss) becomes more important. We're not talking about writing a check, but supporting candidacies that are groundbreaking. To say you've got to start off with enough $cratch to win out of the box (as in "come talk to us when you've raised a $1 million"), that's a viability issue, not an indication that it's worth moving the ball forward. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you know there are folks in the ivory tower in DC gloating over the margin of victory, full of bravado of the "I told you so" -- well guess what -- that attitude is part of the problem you have with the grassroots. Get out of the sterile, self-stroking environment; it's not becoming.
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