THE PRESS ROOM: Another PR coup for Sestak

An occasional series of articles exploring how political campaigns are playing out in the media.

It was a familiar scene: Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) gracing the airwaves, talking about his military background, criticizing Senator Arlen Specter and lamenting that party leaders had chosen to crown him the Democratic standard-bearer.

In fact, Sestak’s evening media blitz on Wednesday was eerily similar to the string of television appearances he made shortly after Specter announced his party-switch last month. The difference? This time, the media storm wasn’t of Sestak’s making—at least not directly.

It started late Wednesday afternoon when Talking Points Memo broke the news that Sestak had been telling supporters he “intends” to run for Senate. Within moments, the story was ricocheting across the blogosphere. Less than 30 minutes after TPM’s scoop hit the Web, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, always quick nowadays to point out troubles facing Specter, had blasted the story to reporters.

Soon enough, Sestak was popping up on cable news, first on CNN and later on MSNBC.

“I don’t understand why the political establishment in Washington D.C. did an anointment of Arlen Specter,” Sestak told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz in repeating a well-work talking point. “I don’t know if that’s best for us Pennsylvanians.”

Before the night was over, he’d made time for interviews with, among others, his hometown newspaper and The Inquirer.

Almost lost in the shuffle was the fact that little, if anything, had actually changed. Sestak still isn’t a declared candidate, and beyond the boilerplate statements that his decision would come in “the not too distant future,” there’s no real indication that a formal announcement would be forthcoming anytime soon.

There’s a pattern emerging here, one familiar to any political observer who has watched candidates hover around a race, soaking up the limelight for everything it’s worth. Small nuggets of news break—sometimes prompted by Sestak and sometimes not—that allow the second-term Congressman to make the media rounds. He talks about his district, his military background, his political independence and his disappointment with Specter and Democratic leaders. And then he tells reporters to just hold on, he’ll have an announcement soon. We in the media happily indulge with headlines galore.

This time, his stance was that he has made his decision personally, but still needs to consult with his family.

“My intentions are to get in this race, pending a finally family decision,” Sestak told Schultz.

For a politician who’s main obstacle to statewide electability is arguably a lack of name recognition, Sestak has been unquestionably media savvy.

“He’s playing it exactly the way he should play it,” said David Dunphy, a Democratic political consultant in Philadelphia. “He’s keeping his name out there, he’s building up a ton of name recognition. He wouldn’t be the first politician to flirt with an office for a while before he decided whether or not to run.

“I think what Sestak is gaining from this is, he’s biding his time,” Dunphy added. “There’s no downside.”

There’s no reason—for now at least—to think that the leak of Sestak’s intentions to TPM was authorized or engineered by the Congressman, who is known for the narrow political counsel he keeps (his brother and sister are seen as his closest political advisers). Indeed, conversations with people close to Sestak seemed to signal that they were genuinely caught off guard by the leak.

But if it had been a leak from the inside, it would have been a model of media management. It started on a liberal-leaning blog where it could gin up support—and money—from a left-wing base dissatisfied with Specter. It moved to Schultz’s liberal slot on MSNBC. It finished in the hometown papers, through which Sestak could speak directly to both the constituents he currently represents and the voters who still don’t know him well. And it left him with at least one more chance to bask in the spotlight, if and when he makes a formal announcement.

“He’s waiting to see if Specter makes a mistake,” Dunphy said, “a mistake with a core constituency that would give him a platform of funding from which to run.”

•Previous articles in The Press Room on pa2010.com:
For the Specter campaign, loads of media but no spokesperson
Leak caught Torsella camp off guard
Kortz gets some CQ love

May 28, 2009 at 10:59 am

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Arlen Specter, Joe Sestak, The Press Room