The Long Walk
Was Doug Hoffman’s candidacy a renaissance for the Conservative Party or the beginning of the end?
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:20:00
Mike Long was sitting in his office at Conservative Party headquarters, a converted one-bedroom apartment above a Greek diner in Bay Ridge, when Mitt Romney’s people called.
The former Massachusetts governor and want-to-be-darling of the right was offering to record a robocall for Doug Hoffman, the Conservative candidate for Congress in upstate New York.
Long said no.
The line of Republican stars waiting to voice support for Hoffman was already too long. And besides, Long had reached out to Romney back when Dede Scozzafava, the GOP standard-bearer, was still in the race. Romney, unlike other marquee Republicans such as Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin, had demurred.
Now, with Hoffman’s loss, it is Romney’s aides who are sniffing.
“I don’t think the rallying cry going forward to 2010 or 2012 is going to be, ‘Remember 23,’” one Romney adviser chortled.
With the wreckage of Hoffman’s campaign still smoldering, many Republicans have begun to question the political acumen of the 69-year-old Long and the relevance of his conservative foot soldiers, who just a few weeks ago seemed on the verge of seizing control of the state Republican Party.
“I think there’s going to be a backlash right now against the Conservatives,” said former Nassau State Sen. Michael Balboni, a moderate Republican who supports same-sex marriage. “If they continue to make it difficult for candidates to get on the ballot, the Republican leadership might sit there and say, ‘Moderates need not apply, because we can’t get them elected.’”
Some have even celebrated Hoffman’s defeat.
“It’s good for the party, because it sticks it to Mike Long and those guys,” said a Republican allied with Rudy Giuliani, whose relationship with Long has been rocky. “They have an important role to play, but they can’t overplay their hand. And I think they did overplay their hand. They got really cute, and it backfired on them really big.”
If the race was a referendum on the ideological soul of the Republican Party, it was also a referendum on the power and influence of the Conservative Party, and an indication of the role Long and his band of agitators will play in next year’s elections. The small-c conservative uprising is real, most Republicans agree. But the big-c Conservative insurrection, and Long’s ability to handpick or veto Republican candidates of his choosing, is now in doubt.
As evidence of the brewing conflict, Republican and Conservative leaders have interpreted Hoffman’s loss in different and contradictory ways.
Republicans feel their defeat in the North Country demonstrates the need to select candidates with cross-party appeal—the very motivation for choosing Scozzafava in the first place. Without winning the votes of blue-collar workers and union members, for example, Republicans say their grasp on upstate New York may continue to slip.
“The lesson of this, in the end, is that you do have to reach out to the other side,” said Ed Cox, the new state Republican chairman. “If you’re going to win a majority, you have to be able to appeal beyond just the base of the party.”
The Conservatives, by contrast, have been emboldened by the chaos they stirred in the North Country, which they take as proof that the Republicans cannot afford to nominate a candidate who does not satisfy their ideological litmus tests. The Conservative Party, they say, should be the institutional arbiter of who is sufficiently conservative and who is not.
“The Conservative Party becomes a big player inside the Republican nominating process,” said John McLaughlin, Hoffman’s pollster and a longtime Conservative operative. “When they make their endorsement, they pick the primary winner.”
Whatever the other lessons from the North Country congressional race, the campaign reaffirmed Long’s sole and imperious rule over his ballot line, which may give him virtual veto power over Republican candidates for statewide office in 2010.
For hopefuls who are Long antagonists, this could prove problematic.
“If Mike Long said to me, ‘Ed, I don’t like Giuliani,’ my answer would be, ‘I’m with you, boss,’” said Ed Walsh, one of the party’s vice-chairs.
Long’s candidate preferences are, to some degree, inscrutable, as they come down in many cases to his personal likes and dislikes. Hoffman, for example, won Long’s blessing because he paid due deference to the chairman, requesting a meeting and subsequently inviting him into internal campaign talks before deciding outright whether to run. Scozzafava, by contrast, lost the Conservative ballot line years ago because she no longer put any stock in the party’s litmus tests, ranking lower even than some Democrats on Long’s annual legislative scorecard.
At the same time, Long does not go out of his way to recruit candidates.
“I didn’t say, ‘Doug Hoffman is the guy,’” he explained.
Had Hoffman, who already had connections to GOP operatives in the North Country, not come along, the Conservative candidate would likely have been Jim Kelly, a brash party operative who ran John Spencer’s 2006 Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton and promised to “trash” the GOP for nominating Scozzafava. A Kelly campaign would not have gained the kind of traction Hoffman’s campaign did, Long admits.
Those pressures are likely to come to a head in the coming months, as the Republican Party sets about choosing candidates for everything from State Senate to governor. In the aftermath of the North Country race, Long has promised a sweeping review of the Republican Party’s legislative candidates, arguing that some GOP lawmakers have only maintained the Conservative line out of apathy or convenience, not an adherence to principle.
“They take our endorsement and do what they want to do. And this race up here is going to help me bring them back,” he said.
As a result, Conservatives are already gearing up to influence policy by playing hardball with their line. The first item on the party’s agenda: gay marriage.
“You go voting for gay marriage, and you’re one of these state senators up for re-election down by me, you’re done,” said Walsh, the Suffolk chairman, ticking off the names of vulnerable Republicans, such as Owen Johnson. “There’s no gray area.”
That all-or-nothing ethos now permeates the highest ranks of the Conservative Party’s leadership. Senior party officials have hinted at retribution for the GOP candidates that did not endorse Hoffman, such as Rick Lazio, who was pressured to make a decision weeks before the election. As one of Long’s lieutenants has put it: “Lazio was asked to endorse Hoffman weeks ago. He didn’t. He’s going to pay a price for that.”
The price, most likely, will be a show of deference to Long and his agenda, perhaps a statement opposing same-sex marriage, if a bill reaches Gov. David Paterson’s desk.
But many say that the immediate future of the Conservative Party is inexorably tied to the fate of one man who has been a thorn in the side of Mike Long for years.
The real question for the Conservative Party, as one longtime GOP operative put it, is this: “What happens if it’s Rudy Giuliani?”
If Giuliani runs for governor—a prospect most Republicans regard as less likely by the day—the Conservatives may decide to employ a bruising tactic they deployed in the Hoffman campaign, to great effect: muscling candidates out of the race. The party could award its line early to a candidate Long prefers, maybe Lazio, as a way of discouraging Giuliani from running, or galvanizing a conservative insurrection against him. In 2006, for example, the Conservatives essentially torpedoed Bill Weld by coming out early for John Faso.
Long would also not rule out running a third-party candidate against the GOP nominee. “If the Republicans pick a liberal candidate for governor, a Democratic-like candidate, I submit to you that we will run our own candidate, and we will do very well,” he said. “We may not win the election, but we will do very well.”
Giuliani’s lieutenants insist that they would not be muscled out of the race by Long.
“At the end of the day they can do whatever they want to do, but people that are conservatives in New York will vote for Giuliani anyway,” one said.
Nonetheless, Giuliani supporters warn the GOP would have to be willing to lose the Conservative line.
“If the Conservatives came up and said, ‘We’re not going to endorse Rudy,’ and Rudy said, ‘I want to run,’ I think what the Republicans would have to say is, ‘How many votes will we lose?’” said Assembly Member Bill Reilich, the Monroe Republican chairman and an enthusiastic Giuliani booster. “Somebody who is far to the right is still going to have a hard time winning the governor’s mansion.”
Such a split would likely pit two hardcore factions of the Republican Party—Rudy boosters and Tea Party diehards—against one another in a potentially crippling intramural battle.
It would also put Long in serious jeopardy of losing his statewide ballot line, especially if Giuliani proved popular enough to rally the bulk of conservative voters to the GOP line. By giving his line to Giuliani, Long would undoubtedly win more votes than he has in at least eight years, possibly vaulting him over the Independence Party and back to Row C (the Conservative line is currently Row D on the ballot). But doing so would de-legitimize the conservative agenda he used to rally GOP celebrities to his cause in upstate New York.
The question would be one of pragmatism versus principle.
In deciding that question, Long said he would continue to use his Conservative imprimatur as a wedge to force candidates to the right, while keeping in mind a longstanding maxim: “I don’t want to be the Republican Party.”
“I don’t have to appeal to 51 percent of the voters all the time. I just want to have an effect on policy,” he said. “The best way to have that effect is using the political pressure that I have.”
--
photo by Daniel S. Burnstein
The former Massachusetts governor and want-to-be-darling of the right was offering to record a robocall for Doug Hoffman, the Conservative candidate for Congress in upstate New York.
Long said no.
The line of Republican stars waiting to voice support for Hoffman was already too long. And besides, Long had reached out to Romney back when Dede Scozzafava, the GOP standard-bearer, was still in the race. Romney, unlike other marquee Republicans such as Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin, had demurred.
Now, with Hoffman’s loss, it is Romney’s aides who are sniffing.“I don’t think the rallying cry going forward to 2010 or 2012 is going to be, ‘Remember 23,’” one Romney adviser chortled.
With the wreckage of Hoffman’s campaign still smoldering, many Republicans have begun to question the political acumen of the 69-year-old Long and the relevance of his conservative foot soldiers, who just a few weeks ago seemed on the verge of seizing control of the state Republican Party.
“I think there’s going to be a backlash right now against the Conservatives,” said former Nassau State Sen. Michael Balboni, a moderate Republican who supports same-sex marriage. “If they continue to make it difficult for candidates to get on the ballot, the Republican leadership might sit there and say, ‘Moderates need not apply, because we can’t get them elected.’”
Some have even celebrated Hoffman’s defeat.
“It’s good for the party, because it sticks it to Mike Long and those guys,” said a Republican allied with Rudy Giuliani, whose relationship with Long has been rocky. “They have an important role to play, but they can’t overplay their hand. And I think they did overplay their hand. They got really cute, and it backfired on them really big.”
If the race was a referendum on the ideological soul of the Republican Party, it was also a referendum on the power and influence of the Conservative Party, and an indication of the role Long and his band of agitators will play in next year’s elections. The small-c conservative uprising is real, most Republicans agree. But the big-c Conservative insurrection, and Long’s ability to handpick or veto Republican candidates of his choosing, is now in doubt.
As evidence of the brewing conflict, Republican and Conservative leaders have interpreted Hoffman’s loss in different and contradictory ways.
Republicans feel their defeat in the North Country demonstrates the need to select candidates with cross-party appeal—the very motivation for choosing Scozzafava in the first place. Without winning the votes of blue-collar workers and union members, for example, Republicans say their grasp on upstate New York may continue to slip.
“The lesson of this, in the end, is that you do have to reach out to the other side,” said Ed Cox, the new state Republican chairman. “If you’re going to win a majority, you have to be able to appeal beyond just the base of the party.”
The Conservatives, by contrast, have been emboldened by the chaos they stirred in the North Country, which they take as proof that the Republicans cannot afford to nominate a candidate who does not satisfy their ideological litmus tests. The Conservative Party, they say, should be the institutional arbiter of who is sufficiently conservative and who is not.
“The Conservative Party becomes a big player inside the Republican nominating process,” said John McLaughlin, Hoffman’s pollster and a longtime Conservative operative. “When they make their endorsement, they pick the primary winner.”
Whatever the other lessons from the North Country congressional race, the campaign reaffirmed Long’s sole and imperious rule over his ballot line, which may give him virtual veto power over Republican candidates for statewide office in 2010.
For hopefuls who are Long antagonists, this could prove problematic.
“If Mike Long said to me, ‘Ed, I don’t like Giuliani,’ my answer would be, ‘I’m with you, boss,’” said Ed Walsh, one of the party’s vice-chairs.
Long’s candidate preferences are, to some degree, inscrutable, as they come down in many cases to his personal likes and dislikes. Hoffman, for example, won Long’s blessing because he paid due deference to the chairman, requesting a meeting and subsequently inviting him into internal campaign talks before deciding outright whether to run. Scozzafava, by contrast, lost the Conservative ballot line years ago because she no longer put any stock in the party’s litmus tests, ranking lower even than some Democrats on Long’s annual legislative scorecard.
At the same time, Long does not go out of his way to recruit candidates.
“I didn’t say, ‘Doug Hoffman is the guy,’” he explained.
Had Hoffman, who already had connections to GOP operatives in the North Country, not come along, the Conservative candidate would likely have been Jim Kelly, a brash party operative who ran John Spencer’s 2006 Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton and promised to “trash” the GOP for nominating Scozzafava. A Kelly campaign would not have gained the kind of traction Hoffman’s campaign did, Long admits.
Those pressures are likely to come to a head in the coming months, as the Republican Party sets about choosing candidates for everything from State Senate to governor. In the aftermath of the North Country race, Long has promised a sweeping review of the Republican Party’s legislative candidates, arguing that some GOP lawmakers have only maintained the Conservative line out of apathy or convenience, not an adherence to principle.
“They take our endorsement and do what they want to do. And this race up here is going to help me bring them back,” he said.
As a result, Conservatives are already gearing up to influence policy by playing hardball with their line. The first item on the party’s agenda: gay marriage.
“You go voting for gay marriage, and you’re one of these state senators up for re-election down by me, you’re done,” said Walsh, the Suffolk chairman, ticking off the names of vulnerable Republicans, such as Owen Johnson. “There’s no gray area.”
That all-or-nothing ethos now permeates the highest ranks of the Conservative Party’s leadership. Senior party officials have hinted at retribution for the GOP candidates that did not endorse Hoffman, such as Rick Lazio, who was pressured to make a decision weeks before the election. As one of Long’s lieutenants has put it: “Lazio was asked to endorse Hoffman weeks ago. He didn’t. He’s going to pay a price for that.”
The price, most likely, will be a show of deference to Long and his agenda, perhaps a statement opposing same-sex marriage, if a bill reaches Gov. David Paterson’s desk.
But many say that the immediate future of the Conservative Party is inexorably tied to the fate of one man who has been a thorn in the side of Mike Long for years.
The real question for the Conservative Party, as one longtime GOP operative put it, is this: “What happens if it’s Rudy Giuliani?”
If Giuliani runs for governor—a prospect most Republicans regard as less likely by the day—the Conservatives may decide to employ a bruising tactic they deployed in the Hoffman campaign, to great effect: muscling candidates out of the race. The party could award its line early to a candidate Long prefers, maybe Lazio, as a way of discouraging Giuliani from running, or galvanizing a conservative insurrection against him. In 2006, for example, the Conservatives essentially torpedoed Bill Weld by coming out early for John Faso.
Long would also not rule out running a third-party candidate against the GOP nominee. “If the Republicans pick a liberal candidate for governor, a Democratic-like candidate, I submit to you that we will run our own candidate, and we will do very well,” he said. “We may not win the election, but we will do very well.”
Giuliani’s lieutenants insist that they would not be muscled out of the race by Long.
“At the end of the day they can do whatever they want to do, but people that are conservatives in New York will vote for Giuliani anyway,” one said.
Nonetheless, Giuliani supporters warn the GOP would have to be willing to lose the Conservative line.
“If the Conservatives came up and said, ‘We’re not going to endorse Rudy,’ and Rudy said, ‘I want to run,’ I think what the Republicans would have to say is, ‘How many votes will we lose?’” said Assembly Member Bill Reilich, the Monroe Republican chairman and an enthusiastic Giuliani booster. “Somebody who is far to the right is still going to have a hard time winning the governor’s mansion.”
Such a split would likely pit two hardcore factions of the Republican Party—Rudy boosters and Tea Party diehards—against one another in a potentially crippling intramural battle.
It would also put Long in serious jeopardy of losing his statewide ballot line, especially if Giuliani proved popular enough to rally the bulk of conservative voters to the GOP line. By giving his line to Giuliani, Long would undoubtedly win more votes than he has in at least eight years, possibly vaulting him over the Independence Party and back to Row C (the Conservative line is currently Row D on the ballot). But doing so would de-legitimize the conservative agenda he used to rally GOP celebrities to his cause in upstate New York.
The question would be one of pragmatism versus principle.
In deciding that question, Long said he would continue to use his Conservative imprimatur as a wedge to force candidates to the right, while keeping in mind a longstanding maxim: “I don’t want to be the Republican Party.”
“I don’t have to appeal to 51 percent of the voters all the time. I just want to have an effect on policy,” he said. “The best way to have that effect is using the political pressure that I have.”
--
photo by Daniel S. Burnstein
