NYMag.com
The Maryland Governor’s Race Was a Rematch of Romney and Obama Consultants — With a Very Different Outcome
November 7, 2014
By Reid Cherlin
The ads were devastating: “They’re implementing just ridiculous taxes — a tax on rain,” a woman named Kandie says in one, staring straight at the camera in front of a black background. Her speech is unpolished and clearly unrehearsed. Kandie is African-American and female, a paradigmatic Democratic voter in a solidly blue state like Maryland. But this year, Kandie says, she’s going to vote Republican for the first time ever. “What makes things crazy is when you keep voting in the same party and there is no change; actually, they call it insanity.” In the companion spot, a woman named Heather, freckled and blue-eyed, is almost seething as she says, “I don’t think it’s believable when Anthony Brown says he’s not going to raise taxes again. It’s what he knows.” She adds: “They’ve done it like 40 times.”
The two commercials are the creation of a Republican media team led by a consultant named Russ Schriefer. Women both white and black, Schriefer had seen from polling data, would be among those very likely to feel like Maryland’s Democratic Establishment wasn’t doing anything to help them. “It was all about finding soft Democrats,” he said, “and giving them that permission to vote Republican.” (“Soft” here is campaign-speak for “persuadable.”) Schriefer had signed on to the governor’s race a year prior, when no one gave GOP challenger Larry Hogan the faintest chance at beating Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, an African-American and former Army officer. On Tuesday night, Hogan beat Brown by five points, perhaps the most surprising result in a night full of long-expected Republican triumphs.
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