A Consultant Fires Back

Amy Sullivan's article in Washington Monthly sure did rile up a hornets nest. While she went into a lengthy bit of detail on Joe Hansen, she did have this to say about pollster Mark Mellman:

Hansen is part of a clique of Washington consultants who, through their insider ties, continue to get rewarded with business even after losing continually. Pollster Mark Mellman is popular among Democrats because he tells them what they so desperately want to hear: Their policies are sound, Americans really agree with them more than with Republicans, and if they just repeat their mantras loud enough, voters will eventually embrace the party. As Noam Scheiber pointed out in a New Republic article following the great Democratic debacle of '02, Mellman was, perhaps more than anyone else, the architect of that defeat. As the DSCC's recommended pollster, he advised congressional Democrats to ignore national security and Iraq in favor of an endless campaign about prescription drugs and education. After the party got its clock cleaned based on his advice, Mellman should have been exiled but was instead...promoted. He became the lead pollster for John Kerry's presidential campaign, where he proffered eerily similar advice?stress domestic policy, stay away from attacking Bush?to much the same effect.

Well, guess what ... Mellman responds:

Examples of highly selective reporting abound. Ms. Sullivan praises one of my fine ?winning? colleagues for helping to take back the Oregon state legislature, but fails to mention our role in recapturing the North Carolina House. She recommends another of my distinguished competitors for defeating a Republican Member of the US House, but fails to mention our client, John Barrow of Georgia, who was the only other Democrat to beat a Republican House incumbent last year. Nor does she note our work for Brian Schweitzer who won the Governor?s chair in Montana, a state that usually oozes red. Nor does Ms. Sullivan report our third winning effort as part of Barbara Boxer?s team, this time assisting her in garnering more votes than any other Senate candidate in history.

Indeed, it would be instructive to know precisely what Ms. Sullivan?s criteria are for labeling someone a ?loser?. We?ve helped clients win 34 general elections for U.S. Senate and Governor, while losing a total of 7 such races. I don?t put much stock in win-loss statistics, but I find it hard to characterize that as a losing record. Frankly though, the candidates are vastly more important in winning those campaigns than are the consultants.

Perhaps some people hire us because we have helped take away at least one Republican seat in every election cycle but one for over 20 years. Perhaps others hire us because we are the only polling firm never to have lost an incumbent race for Senate or Governor. But I have a business only because people who have far more at stake than Ms. Sullivan, spend a lot more time, effort, energy and care thoroughly assessing our strengths and weaknesses.

To be sure I have made mistakes and suffered some painful loses. Ms. Sullivan?s careful reporting and thoughtful analysis no doubt placed blame for John Kerry?s loss squarely on my shoulders.

As distressing as those mistakes and losses are to me, I?ve tried to learn from each.

Mellman's entire response is worth a read and I think he makes some more-than-fair points in his defense. For my own two cents, I'm still kinda torn. I mean, Bob Shrum, for instance, was a great consultant to Senators and other high-level candidates. But he could not put together a modern-day Presidential win. Perhaps - just perhaps - there's a bit of dissonance in terms of what the party needs to compete and rehabilitate itself on a national stage compared to what it takes to win at the state level. I think that's one of the points we've been missing lately. It may or may not be fair to label Mellman as the goat here. But obviously, when you lose two tough Presidential campaigns, and the 2002 campaigns went as badly as one could have imagined, there's going to be some fingers pointed (*). Not surprisingly, nobody wants to take the blame for the latest round of losses - hell, even Kerry is blaming it on Osama bin Laden.

* - Ed. note - Mellman himself is not associated with the 2000 campaign. But the point is that after a string of such losses, accusatory blame only seems to boil over to the point that we've obviously seen after this latest season