What "moves the needle" in an election campaign?
Do meet-and-greet fundraisers? Does knocking on doors? Do TV and social media ads? Do lawn signs?
You never know, so you try them all.
Denise Krause met and talked with about 55 people Sunday afternoon.
Campaign fundraisers for state and local campaigns have a pattern. The candidate lines up a host and venue. The campaign and host invite people. The event last about two hours, starting with mingling for the first 30 to 40 minutes. The candidate makes the rounds. Then someone, usually the host, goes to the microphone and welcomes people. The host introduces someone well known to the audience who shares positive thoughts about the candidate for a couple of minutes. The candidate speaks and answers questions for about 40 minutes. Then someone other than the candidate makes a wrap-up speech urging people to donate money.
That is pretty much it.
Sometimes the well-known person speaks briefly after the main-event candidate's speech, instead of before. That is what happened yesterday. A popular former Democratic county commissioner, David Gilmour, M.D., played that role.
On Sunday a guest, David Lane, stood up and shouted out an impromptu appeal to fellow guests to donate more than they had planned.
I did the wrap-up appeal for donations.
My wife later told me I went on too long. I reiterated a point I have made multiple times in this blog. Krause's opponent makes no mention of being a Republican. He presents himself as "working across the aisle" and opposing "rubber stamp" politics. That is smart messaging, but it belies the very partisan behavior of the organization he led, the Medford Chamber of Commerce and its PAC. It also belies the extraordinary amount of partisan Republican money he is receiving, which he is using to buy commercials saying he is neither partisan nor Republican. I watched CNN for 10 minutes this morning while making coffee. Hicks had two 30-second ads during those 10 minutes.
I made the point that Trump has nationalized state politics. He has attacked Oregon's vote-by-mail system and his Big Beautiful Bill cuts the Affordable Care Act's support for insurance premiums. This is causing a cascade of cancelled insurance, cuts to the Oregon Health Plan, and distress and closure of Oregon's rural hospitals because the care they provide is billed but uncollectable. Republicans could publicly object to this, but don't. That means, even if they pretend otherwise, they are partisan Republicans.
I urged people to donate money, but Krause need not match Hicks' spending. Even casual followers of politics notice all the ads: Wow! The message is independence but the meta-message is a pawn in a party of billionaires. The public's unease with data centers and financial and industrial elites shows the danger in that meta-message. His being a former Chamber of Commerce executive further locks in that association: the candidate of very very big money. My own sense is that this is a structural disadvantage for Hicks, and more money doesn't cure it. Meanwhile, Krause has a structural advantage: a single mother, a long career in health policy, and scrappy survivor of both cancer and an insurance company that tried to deny coverage to her and women like her.
Some voters will prefer Goliath in any contest. He represents powerful people and some voters trust that. My sense is that more people will prefer David here, especially this year. All David needs is a few stones to make her point, and that is what this fundraiser was about.
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