Arizona Republican Party dirty tricks can backfire

The GOP Ratfuckers at the Arizona Republican Party have been busy in the closing hours of this campaign, pulling out their bag of dirty tricks that they think are oh so clever, but history shows can backfire on them in spectacular fashion.

Remember 2012? The GOP had a systematic plan to suppress African-American voters in key swing states like Ohio and Florida. African-American voters in those swing states said, “Oh hell no you don’t! I will stand in line to vote all day come hell or high water. Deprive me of my vote, will you? I’ll show you!” And they did. African-American voters stood in line to vote in Florida hours after the media consortium had already called the election for Barack Obama. “I’m voting!”

The Arizona Republican Party appears to have sent a mass mailing to all registered Democratic voters in CD 2 this past week of a “scary” Halloween mask of Congressman Ron Barber. See Vox.com.  The Arizona GOP is attacking a Democrat by tying him to Paul Ryan.

Now those of you who work on campaigns know that you do not waste scarce resources late in the campaign mailing to voters who are (1) not likely to vote for your candidate, and (2) who have already voted (half the Democratic vote is already in by the time these mailers were received).

This clearly was not an effort by the Arizona Republican Party to reach persuadable voters. This was a childish prank to tweak Democrats. Feel better now?

But the Arizona Republican Party was too clever by half. The mailer claims that Ron Barber voted for “the terrifying Ryan budget” — as in Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2012 and a candidate for president in 2016. That’s right, these geniuses threw their own candidate under the bus in an attempt to attack Ron Barber, who never voted for either “Ryan Budget,” i.e., the House GOP budget.

In small print that no one ever reads, the mailer attempts to explain that the “Ryan Budget” is actually the Paul Ryan – Patty Murray budget deal — you know, the one that followed the GOP shutdown of the federal government a year ago. It established budget guidelines that relieved the GOP of having to vote on another Ryan Budget this year in an election year.

This mailer only draws attention to the fact that Martha McSally supported the draconian “Ryan Budget” in 2012 but has since flip-flopped and now tries to deny it in 2014. McSally continues to refuse to say whether she would have supported the GOP shutdown of the government last October at risk of default on the national debt. This is a critical issue, because Congress will have to vote on the debt ceiling again next Spring.  Voters in CD 2 have the right to know what she will do now.

Another dirty trick in the Arizona Republican Party’s bag is “voter shaming” mailers sent to select voters. Bill Maki from Green Valley sent this email which he has asked to share:

AZ Republican Party gives my mother-in-law a “D.” Why?

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Today my mother-in-law received a “voter report card,” “paid for by the Arizona Republican Party.” It says she is receiving the communication because of “low expected voter turnout in your area.” “What if your neighbors knew whether you voted?” it trumpets. “Your individual voting history [is] … public record … [your neighbors] can now see yours.” They assigned her a grade of “D.” Then came the threat: “A follow-up report may be issued to detail who in your neighborhood does and does not vote …”

Here is my response to the AZ Republican Party. My mother-in-law’s “neighborhood” is an assisted living community. She has suffered multiple strokes and cannot communicate her voting desires. She cannot speak nor can she write. And you presume to give her a grade?

Please, fellow Arizonans, vote these scoundrels out of office – every single one of them. They have no respect for you, your parents, or your children. They do not deserve your vote.

This “voter shaming” tactic has been making the news quite a bit this past week. Philip Bump of the Washington Post writes today, Do those ‘we know that you voted’ warnings actually work? An expert weighs in.

The favorite distinction of the political hack is between the privacy of your vote and privacy that you vote. Modern politics is heavily dependent on knowing how often you make it to the polls, driving polling, ad targeting, and — in increasingly direct ways — efforts to get you to the polls.

Earlier this week, we looked at the trend toward using social pressure to get people to turn out. Since then, more examples have cropped up, spurring an often-negative response.

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But clearly, there’s a reason this is being done. To evaluate the utility of those letters and similar efforts, we reached out to Dr. Donald Green of Columbia University, who has been researching turnout techniques, including social pressure, for years.

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So does it work? “The one in Alaska is patterned after the work of Mark Grebner, who is the one who developed this kind of tactic more than 10 years ago,” Green said when we spoke by phone Friday morning. “He’s the brains behind that whole idea of basically reminding people that voting is a public record and dramatizing it by presenting them with that record. … His idea was that people would vote if we were to sort of return to the days of open, village-level elections and people showed up to be counted.” The Oregon experiment, which is similar to other experiments in other states, tries to leverage Facebook in a non-confrontational way to do the same thing.

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Green actually warns campaigns about using the tactic. “In our ‘Get Out the Vote’ book, we warn readers not to use these tactics, lest they encounter a wave of angry responses.” In an effort to find a balance, “we’ve seen quite a lot of research on softening these tactics to make them somewhat more palatable.” Some outreach praises voters, some thanks voters for having voted, and some are direct. “The more heavy-handed your approach, the more negative press you’re likely to get,” he says. “That’s why you see the range of postcards and mailings” we’ve seen over the past few cycles. Experimentation.

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If you’re one of those who is frustrated by such mailings, Green offers a possible bit of good news: He hasn’t seen research tracking the cumulative effect of such reminders over time, and suspects that it might be diminishing. The desperation of groups in the low-turnout midterm election of 2014, in other words, might be peak we’re-watching-you, if turnout, as it turns out, didn’t see much of a boost.

So the takeaway is that this “voter shaming” mailer is indicative that the Arizona Republican Party believes their voter turnout  will be low for their candidate in CD 2, and they are desperate. The use of such “voter shaming” mailers may very well result in a backlash against Martha McSally.