The Chaotic Campaign Of Steve Rowe

All campaigns are not created equal, and I have been seeing some very odd things coming from the Steve Rowe for Governor camp.

Right from the get go, the man who was considered the early front runner at the beginning of the race seemed to have a haphazard, slapped together campaign that didn’t exactly know what it wanted to do.  It had an amateurish website (the new one isn’t that much better), no coherent message, and seemed almost passive and unsure of itself.

Recently I have been hearing some buzz that reinforces those same concerns.

Regarding his communications strategy, it is becoming apparent that the candidate and his campaign simply do not know exactly what they want to say, or how they want to say it.  When they do figure it out, they often do so in ways that actually hurt them, make them look bad, or outright promote opponents.

Take Rowe and taxes, for example.

Late last month, Rowe responded to the proposed cuts in Maine’s budget, and promptly said that he would be open to raising taxes on tobacco as a (very gimmicky) plug for the hole.

Yes, you heard it right, he proposed a tax increase.  Not only that, but he posted the article calling for the tax increase on his own website.  So if you go to Rowe’s newsroom and look through his articles, you are greeted with a heading that says “Rowe backs cigarette tax increase”.  Check out the article, and you get this quote:

Rowe said raising the tax will not only help fill the budget gap, but will help reduce youth smoking. He then took a mild shot at Baldacci.

“Putting tobacco interests above the interests of Maine people is wrong,” he wrote. “It’s time for leadership that protects what is most sacred, and that addresses Maine’s most urgent needs.”

Now I realize that the Democratic Party is more accepting of raising taxes than the Republicans, but this is hardly the year to walk around promoting yourself as a tax raiser.  The Democratic Governor of Maine has spent years fighting tax increases, and has gotten begrudging respect for it from both his own party and opposition Republicans.  Do you really want to tag yourself with the tax raiser label, in this of all years?  Why would he post this to his website?

But not only that, the tax he proposed raising is a regressive tax, which disproportionally hurts the poor and working class families in the state who are already getting hosed and having trouble making ends meet.  His premise is based on the same faulty nonsense of “sin taxing” – or proposing taxes on products viewed as “bad for you”, that only a small percentage of the electorate consumes, thus limiting backlash and allowing you to couch yourself as a champion of the public good.

The reality, of course, is that the increased tax will do one of two things – increase revenue as the people who smoke – which again are disproportionally poor – grumble about cost but buy anyway, thus hurting their wallets, or it will lead to people smoking less and quitting, which will not increase revenue at all.

All of this would be all well and good, and very standard for a politician to advocate (aside from the very odd “I’m a tax raiser” promotion on his website) – but he can’t even remain consistent on the issue.

In today’s Bangor Daily News, reporter Christopher Cousins talks about the opening of Steve Rowe’s new Bangor office, and manages to get a quote from Rowe:

“I have no plans to increase revenues,” he said when asked whether he supports tax increases to pay for some of his ideas.

This just makes he and his communication team look like they have no idea what they even want to say.  Last week they themselves trumpet a hike in the tobacco tax to fill the budget hole – by its very nature an increase in revenues – and now he says “I have no plans to increase revenues”.

Which brings me to the AGC forum that I wrote about previously.

Missed in all the fuss about Bruce Poliquin’s answer on background checks was a stumbling Rowe, who was the last candidate to answer and had plenty of time to decide if he wanted to say yes or no (none of the other candidates had any trouble) – yet still fumbled for an answer that was at the very best a hedge.  You could literally see the difficulty he had coming up with an answer, as he presumably mulled over what answer would be best to give.

And speaking of Rowe’s take on guns, that brings us to another puzzling article on his website.

Augusta Insider wrote on Rosa Scarcelli‘s challenge to Democrats on the issue, and offered to post statements from each of the campaigns in response.  Rowe took AI up on the offer, and issued a statement.  That isn’t the weird part.

The fact that it is currently posted on his website in the news section, is.

The article is itself about Scarcelli, and gives the bulk of attention to her challenge, and her statement on guns.  If anything, it is something the Scarcelli campaign should post on their website, because it makes her look like a leader who is driving the issue, defining the conversation, and forcing people to respond to her.  Why Steve Rowe’s communications team thinks it is a good idea to promote one of his rivals like that is beyond me.

All of which reinforces that idea that the campaign doesn’t have a message, doesn’t know what it wants to say, and doesn’t know how to go about crafting a communications strategy for the candidate.  I don’t say this to slander anyone working for him, but this is seriously Communications 101 type lessons we are talking about here.

But if that was just it, I would not be writing this article.  John McCain’s communications team was also famously chaotic, lacking in direction, and he managed to capture his party’s nomination and was leading in the polls in August of 2008.  There is plenty of time for them to course correct that and really start the wheels turning to define the race.

There is more, and it betrays either extreme pettiness, insecurity or fear.  You be the judge.

I have heard from a multitude of sources – all of which I consider extremely reliable – that the Rowe campaign is directing supporters not to sign other candidates’ nominating petitions as well as telling supporters not to give $5 MCEA contributions to other candidates who aren’t running traditionally financed.

A Democratic friend of mine described it thusly:

This is really disappointing and anti-democratic.

Now initially, this doesn’t sound all that unreasonable – why would Rowe want his supporters to sign petitions for other candidates or give them clean election donations?  Obviously, he doesn’t.

But taking the extra step to direct your team to lean on supporters asking them to stonewall the other candidates on things as meaningless as nominating petitions and clean elections dollars?  In such an early primary, supporters of a candidate are interested in more than one person and often lend their signatures around to several of them to help “the team”, and give support to the party – even if they don’t actually want to vote for them.

It helps to give the electorate a plethora of choices, and is just generally a good will venture that hundreds, if not thousands of party activists do.  And unless Rowe thinks his supporters not signing petitions or giving money will somehow amount to a candidate not making it on the ballot or getting clean election funds, this entire enterprise seems pointless, bitter and really bad form over all.

The reaction of the people on the ground to Rowe’s move has not been positive. This, from a supporter of another campaign:

Ran into some really rude Rowe supporters on caucus day. They absolutely refused to sign petitions of other candidates. One of our people even stood up and said ‘C’mon we’re all Democrats, what about party unity?’

One of the delegates yelled ‘Fuck party unity.’

And that’s not all. From a supporter of another Democratic campaign not affiliated with the previous comment:

“I’ve been involved in Democratic politics for a long time, including several gubernatorial primaries, and I have never in my life seen such a rude bunch of supporters acting so childishly. We all routinely sign each other’s petitions… we know we are all going to get the signatures anyway so there is really no point in being a dick about it. You’ll always find some people who won’t sign, but the universal stonewalling from Rowe’s supporters turned a LOT of people off.”

From a delegate supporting another candidate:

“…the Steven Rowe supporters almost universally refused to sign [redacted]‘s petition or any other petition for governor.”

And from another:

“I have personally signed the petitions for multiple candidates, and I was so offended at the behavior of Rowe’s supporters that he has officially crossed himself off my list of candidates to take interest in.”

I’m sure I can dig up more quotes, but I trust at this point I don’t have to.  What appears clear to me is that Rowe’s team has sent instructions for his people to not lend any support – no matter how minor and insignificant – to any other candidate.

For what purpose?  At this point, one can only guess – and my guess is some kind of misplaced sentiment.  I understand not wanting your supporters to go around to all the other candidates and help them out in any way, but actively pushing to block them from doing so en masse like this?  Seems very insecure to me, and a symptom of a larger tactical problem with his campaign.

Indeed, this small, seemingly insignificant act appears to be doing him more harm than good at this point, because tracking down these comments from Democratic activists (I bet you never though I was plugged into that network, huh?) was insultingly easy to do, and you could tell immediately there was a bad taste in their mouth.

Now, in the grand scheme of politics, this is no scandal.  It isn’t dirty, it isn’t controversial, and it isn’t wrong. He wasn’t sending around pamphlets about another candidate having illegitimate minority children, or engaging in phone jamming – so this is hardly something to get overly excited about.  It is just petty, and very small of his campaign – and probably very stupid politics in such a fractured primary election.

The larger point is that, along with a bizarre communications strategy and a candidate who himself doesn’t seem very sure of what he believes or why, this kind of thing points a very negative picture about the internal workings of the Rowe campaign.  From my admittedly outsider perspective (but one that has witnessed very strong, and very weak campaigns from the inside), I simply do not see any discipline, any strategic plan, or even any political competence.

Perhaps this is a symptom of Rowe never having run for any campaign larger than a Maine House of Representatives district (roughly 8,000 people) – he was elected AG by the legislature he had been previously voted Speaker in.  Maybe he lacks the political acumen to have built a tight political ship this early in the race.  Maybe he’s just starting slowly and will adapt and craft a campaign that rivals the best ever put together.

We will see.  I am not a Democrat and I don’t claim to know the innermost workings of the campaign.  It is possible that my observations are totally wrong (but I highly doubt it) and Rowe is really putting points on the board.

All I know is that for some time now, I’ve been hearing very unhappy things about his campaign from my rather extensive network of Democratic associates – a set of folks made up of High School students all the way to elderly party activists.  I have heard no such dis-satisfaction with any of the other campaigns to this point, and so until I do, I will consider Rowe’s campaign to be a rather disastrous work in progress compared to the others.