Down Ticket #14: How Bernie Sanders’ ‘political revolution’ could still succeed, why Kelly Ayotte is ahead in N.H. (and more!)

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Bernie Sanders won’t be president. Can he still spark a down-ballot ‘revolution’?

Remember the political revolution?

It’s been a while now — at least 70 days, which is like an eternity in the Snapchat era — but during this year’s Democratic primary campaign, barely an hour went by without underdog candidate Bernie Sanders boasting, in his cantankerous Brooklyn yawp, that he and his supporters were on the verge of ushering one in.

“We need a political revolution of millions of people in this country who are prepared to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough,’” the Vermont senator declared at rally after rally.

Ostensibly the political revolution would have been triggered by (first) Sanders’ nomination in Philadelphia and (later) the successful election of the only self-declared democratic socialist ever to run for president as a major-party candidate. Galvanized by Sanders’ demands for a single-payer health care system and free public college, tens of millions of Americans would have realized that deep down, they’d actually been closet European-style liberals all along — and as such they’d flood the polls and send a Democratic Congress to Washington to enact President Sanders’ proposals as well.

As you may have heard, this particular political revolution didn’t really pan out. Sure, Sanders’ unexpectedly potent candidacy had its effect, pushing the conversation, the platform and even eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to the left on the minimum wage, free trade and a variety of other issues. But he didn’t win the nomination in Philly, and he definitely isn’t going to be America’s next president.

The CW is that Sanders’ Cinderella story — and all attendant hopes for political revolution — will pretty much end there. But Sanders and his most devoted fans beg to differ. On Aug. 24, Sanders launched Our Revolution, an advocacy group designed not to get Sanders elected president but to get a lot of like-minded progressives elected to various local, state and federal offices — and thus to spark a political revolution from the bottom up, rather than the top down.

Is the plan working? Is Our Revolution making any progress? And what are its prospects? We here at Down Ticket figured that 30 days after launch — with another 45 or so to go before Election Day — was as good a time as any to check in for a status update.

First thing to note: Our Revolution means business. After Barack Obama won the 2008 election, his official campaign apparatus, Obama for America, metamorphosed into Organizing for America. Not only did this save OFA the trouble of coming up with a new acronym, but it also allowed the group to pursue its own political goals with the same email list, the same talent and the same technological innovations that propelled Obama to the presidency.

Our Revolution follows in OFA’s footsteps. It controls Sanders’ estimated 5.2 million-name email list — aka “the most coveted and valuable catalog of potential voters and donors in the Democratic Party at the moment.” It can instantly tap into the small-donor pool that sent a staggering $228 million to Sanders during the 2016 cycle. It’s run by Jeff Weaver, the longtime staffer who managed Sanders’ presidential campaign. And, like the latest iteration of OFA, Organizing for Action, it has been incorporated as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group, which means it can raise unlimited amounts of money without disclosing the identity of its donors.

The 501(c)(4) bit is key, because it determines what Our Revolution can and can’t do — and therefore, what it is and what it isn’t. As a social welfare nonprofit, Our Revolution is allowed to spend only half its money on electoral politics; the rest must be spent on causes. Also, the group isn’t allowed to work directly with Sanders — or the candidates he endorses.

In short, instead of transforming his campaign operation into a platform that would let Sanders himself influence down-ballot races, the senator has deliberately chosen to create a group that advocates for his agenda — just this week, for instance, Our Revolution kicked off a grassroots campaign to topple Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact — while relying on long-distance endorsements and big-money advertising blitzes for its electoral clout.

This choice has caused some consternation in Sanders Land. On the eve of the official Our Revolution rollout, eight of the group’s 15 staffers resigned, citing related objections: the fact that Our Revolution would be drawing from the pool of “dark money” that Sanders has long condemned for lacking transparency; a focus by Weaver on traditional television advertising that would fail to reach many of Sanders’ young, online supporters; Sanders’ lack of direct involvement; and even the presence of Weaver himself, whom they accused of “mismanaging” the campaign.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the only way to know if Weaver’s approach is working is to watch what’s happening on the ground.

Let’s start with the big races. So far, Our Revolution has endorsed 85 candidates for elected office. Only three of them are running for the U.S. Senate. One, Misty Snow of Utah, has little chance of winning: A new poll shows her trailing incumbent GOP Sen. Mike Lee by 37 percentage points in a battle for a seat that no Democrat has held since 1951. Even so, the endorsement is notable for its symbolism: Snow is the first openly transgender major-party nominee for the Senate.

Our Revolution’s other Senate endorsements have come in more winnable contests. In Wisconsin — a prime Democratic pickup target — the group has backed former Sen. Russ Feingold, a longtime progressive. The polls show Feingold with a consistent lead over incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson. And on Tuesday, Our Revolution added former North Carolina State Sen. Deborah Ross to its endorsement list. Ross is challenging Sen. Richard Burr in what is shaping up to be one of the tightest races in the country. Meanwhile, Sanders himself recently blasted out a fundraising plea on behalf of four Democratic Senate challengers — Pennsylvania’s Katie McGinty, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, Ohio’s Ted Strickland and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto — but none has yet received the official Our Revolution seal of approval.

If we had to guess, Our Revolution’s impact on the next Senate will be minimal. Sanders didn’t endorse anyone in any key Senate primaries, when he might have boosted progressive candidates over more moderate Democrats, and now so much money and attention are being lavished on these contests that his proxy endorsements will probably get lost in the flood. At best, they might persuade a few scattered young Bernie fans to vote in Senate races they would have otherwise skipped.

The U.S. House lineup is more intriguing.

All told, Our Revolution is backing 14 congressional candidates. Four of them are incumbents in safely Democratic seats: Raul Grijalva (AZ-3), Tulsi Gabbard (HI-2), Keith Ellison (MN-5) and Marcy Kaptur (OH-9). No real impact there.

In other instances, it’s too early to tell. There are at least three swing-seat House races where Our Revolution has endorsed and could conceivably exert some influence: CO-6, where state Sen. Morgan Carroll is challenging incumbent Republican Mike Coffman; WI-8, where Outagamie County Executive Thomas Nelson is competing against Republican Mike Gallagher for a GOP-held open seat; and MN-8, where incumbent Democrat Rick Nolan is trying to fend off perennial GOP rival Stewart Mills III. All will be close in November.

Which isn’t to say Sanders hasn’t had any influence so far: Several of his House primary endorsements, in fact, have already had their desired effect. With the senator’s early backing, human rights activist Pramila Jayapal defeated three challengers in August’s Seattle-area primary, virtually guaranteeing her a seat in Congress. Civil rights champion Jamie Raskin — another Sanders primary pick — is the clear frontrunner to win an open seat in Maryland. And in New York’s 19th Congressional District, which was previously held by the GOP, liberal favorite Zephyr Teachout is leading Republican John Faso in the latest polls.

And yet Sanders’ House track record isn’t perfect. In June, the senator backed three candidates in Nevada’s Democratic primaries, and all three were routed — including Lucy Flores, 36, the first Latina member of Nevada’s legislature. In New York, Eric Kingson, a professor whom Sanders not only endorsed but also stumped for, lost his primary as well. And perhaps Sanders’ most spectacular failure was in Florida’s 23rd Congressional District, where he directed millions of dollars in donations to law professor Tim Canova in a high-profile attempt to unseat former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz — only to bail on Canova in the homestretch. Wasserman Schultz eventually won by more than 13 percentage points.

Former Our Revolution staffers blamed Canova’s loss on the group’s 501(c)(4) status — as did (indirectly) Canova himself.

“The rule against me and my campaign having contact with Our Revolution and Senator Sanders did indeed make it more difficult to work with the group, and perhaps impeded our efforts to solicit assistance for my campaign,” Canova told the Atlantic. “We were in the middle of selecting dates for Senator Sanders to campaign for me in South Florida when the 501(c)(4) status of Our Revolution prevented any meaningful communication, and the plans went nowhere.”

Ultimately, Our Revolution’s impact on federal races might be limited for this very reason: The bigger the race, the more coordination it requires — and the less influence a proxy endorsement will have.

It may be, then, that Our Revolution will only really gain traction, at least at first, on the lower rungs of the electoral ladder. When Sanders began to wind down his presidential campaign, he called on supporters to run “for school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures.” The idea was to recruit a new generation of progressive leaders who could move the needle on the local level first — where the GOP currently dominates — then maybe vie for higher office later (which is exactly what the religious right did in the 1980s).

There’s a reason, in other words, why 80 percent of Our Revolution’s current endorsees, many of them women or minorities, are running for state legislatures and the like: These are low-turnout races where a television ad, or an email blast, or vote of confidence from Sanders Land — in other words, the sort of stuff Our Revolution is designed to do — can actually make a difference.

In a new interview with the Nation, Sanders seemed to acknowledge as much.

“I don’t know if you know this, but Our Revolution candidates have already won a lot of primaries,” the senator said. “In Massachusetts, with the support of Our Revolution, a young attorney, a very progressive guy, beat a long-term incumbent. In Rhode Island, the majority leader in the House got knocked off.”

Sanders’ examples are telling. In 2012, Mike Connolly, the Massachusetts attorney, ran against a longtime state representative as “No Money Mike” — he refused to solicit or accept campaign donations — and lost. In 2016, with Our Revolution’s backing, Connolly defeated the same representative in the Democratic primary. Earlier this month in Rhode Island, Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, a Jamaican immigrant working as a special education teacher at Providence Career and Technical Academy, squeaked past John DeSimone, the highest-ranking Democrat in the state’s House, by a mere 17 votes.

“I think Our Revolution is beginning to do what its goal was, and that is to focus not only on high-profile races, but to get down into the state legislatures,” Sanders added. “That’s going to push those legislatures. A few people can make a significant impact.”

Every political revolution, in other words, has to start somewhere. We’ll find out in November if Bernie’s has any real force behind it.

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New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte was losing big in August. Now she’s ahead. What changed — and what will it take for her to win?

By Jon Ward

Since Labor Day, Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte has led Democratic challenger Maggie Hassan in the three polls that have been released.

Ayotte backers look at that dynamic and are encouraged, given the fact that during the summer Democrats pounded the Republican senator on the airwaves with attack ads tying her to Republican nominee Donald Trump. Democrats spent $12.1 million on TV from July 25 to Sept. 5, compared with just $6.2 million for Ayotte from Republicans, according to RealClearPolitics.

Democrats have “thrown everything they can at Kelly the last six months and she’s been able to withstand it,” said Manchester-based Republican consultant Jim Merrill.

Ayotte had “somewhat of a dip” during the summer because of the deluge of ads, said Ryan Williams, a Republican consultant with ties to the New Hampshire GOP and the Ayotte campaign.

As the campaign hits the homestretch, Ayotte is likely to have a slight edge in spending, as she has over the course of this race, going back to 2015. New Hampshire station WMUR estimated that $77 million has already been spent or reserved in TV airtime, with more to come.

Williams said Ayotte survived the summer because New Hampshire voters haven’t bought the line that the first-term senator is identical to Trump.

“She has her own brand that’s different than Trump,” he said, pointing out that Trump talked about Ayotte as if he were running against her — “I’m beating her in the polls by a lot,” he said — simply because she hasn’t wholeheartedly endorsed him, even while saying she’ll vote for him.

However, Ayotte’s lead remains slim, at 47.3 percent to Hassan’s 44.8 percent in the RCP average.

“The bottom line is that this race is tied,” said Hassan spokesman Aaron Jacobs.

The latest line of attack on Ayotte from Democrats is that she’s in the pocket of big donors like Koch Industries, and has voted for their priorities in Washington in return for political donations. However, RCP also reported that the Koch political operation is not spending any money in support of Ayotte out of frustration over her vote in support for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan.

Ayotte has also maintained that Republican Rep. Frank Guinta should resign over a fundraising violation, even after Guinta won his primary last week.

“She’s done a good job of proclaiming her independence,” Merrill said.

But Ayotte’s rising numbers are clearly linked to the tightening presidential race as well.

On Aug. 25, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton led Trump, 45 to 35 percent, in the Granite State, according to the RCP average, and Hassan led Ayotte, 45 to 41 percent.

Now Clinton’s lead has been cut in half, and she leads Trump in New Hampshire by only 43 to 38 percent. Ayotte is now ahead in the polling average by 2.5 points, having gained 6 points of support.

Trump’s fortunes will undoubtedly have an impact on Ayotte’s, Merrill said.

“If Trump is within 5, I think Kelly is going to win,” he said. “If it’s beyond that, it will be harder, though not impossible.”

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