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Sestak’s 6 keys to victory

by Tom Ferrick

It’s now official. Joe Sestak is going to run against Arlen Specter—and he must be serious about it because he’s going on The Colbert Report to talk about his decision.

As I wrote in an earlier piece, Sestak has the potential to be a superb candidate and can beat Specter in the Democratic Senate primary. Clearly, though, it isn’t a lock. For all his vulnerabilities, most political pros learned long ago to never, never, never count Specter out. The man’s relentless will to win, his access to big money, his long history of running statewide make him a formidable opponent.

For all his potential, Sestak is unknown and untested.

Just raising the money he needs to run statewide is going to be difficult, especially given the hostility of the Democratic establishment—not to mention that of the Obama White House—to his candidacy.

Here’s my list of six things Sestak will need to do if he is going to beat Specter.

1. Hire some pros

Sestak needs to hire pros to handle his campaign and his media, preferably folks with a track record of running campaigns in Pennsylvania. He’s already off to a good start on this front by hiring Gov. Ed Rendell’s longtime political adviser Neil Oxman, and he’ll need more of that ilk.

Running for Congress in Delaware County, Sestak has used family members to run his campaigns and I hear they were chaotic affairs. It would be a huge mistake to put them in charge of this one. They don’t know anything about statewide politics and they shouldn’t be forced to learn on the job.

The only thing worse than using family members would be for Sestak to run his campaign himself, which he may be inclined to do—he is, after all, a former Navy admiral and they think they were born to rule. Trust me, that would be a disaster.

2. Listen to the pros

If he hires professional managers, Sestak should do himself a favor and do what they say (as it turns out, Navy admirals also are more used to giving orders than taking them). Political professionals—even if they are hired guns—have wisdom to impart.

One thing they are likely to tell Sestak is that his job is not to run the campaign. His job is to raise the money. That will go against Sestak’s instincts, but he should follow those orders and get out of their way.

3. Put a zip on it

Another thing professionals are likely to tell Sestak is to stop with the 40-minute answers to simple questions. At times, Sestak can make Joe Biden look like Gary Cooper. You can give three-minute answers and still say something with substance—most of the best pols can do it.

4. Don’t get nasty

There’s enough material in Specter’s record and his flip-flop of parties to keep your media advisers happy with “record” pieces for the paid media, so there is no need to go personal against the incumbent. In fact, Sestak’s best strategy might be to go gentle on Specter and aim instead at Pat Toomey, the likely Republican candidate in 2010.

Democratic primary voters may be cool to Specter, but they wouldn’t be distraught if he won re-election. They would be distraught if Toomey won.

If Sestak presents himself as the man most likely to defeat Toomey, that message will resonate the most with activist Democrats, who are inclined to vote strategically.

5. Go up early

Sestak’s instincts may be to marshal his media money for the final days of the campaign. That would be a mistake. Sestak has a compelling personal story to tell and he should go up relatively early in the campaign to tell it. If Sestak doesn’t define himself with voters early, Specter will do it for him. Specter will have enough money to do saturation media and a lot of the early stuff will be aimed at raising his opponent’s negatives.

6. Keep Obama out of it

The most important moment in the Sestak campaign won’t come on primary day, but about three weeks before it. That’s when the final polls—public and private—will give everyone a good reading of where the two men stand. If Sestak is up a few points and the trend lines are showing Democrats leaning to him, the President may be disinclined—the kind of word he would use—to do a last-minute blitz in person or on paid media for Specter. The President’s advisers won’t want to make the election a referendum on Obama’s popularity and lose. Sestak should do his best to keep Obama out of this campaign—early or late.

The writer, a frequent contributor to pa2010.com, is a former Inquirer reporter and columnist.

August 4, 2009 at 12:28 pm

--Tom Ferrick

Tags: Arlen Specter, Barack Obama, Joe Sestak, Tom Ferrick

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