With Friends Like These ...

Today State Senate Candidate Bob Duff (D-25) hosted a fundraiser BBQ in a Norwalk neighborhood. This is the stuff of local campaigning, meet and greet, door by door, neighbor by neighbor. Usually, every attempt is made to promote other candidates candidates running under the flag of party unity. In this case, the Senate 25th district is also the State Rep 137th District and the 4th Congressional District. So it should come as no surprise that up sprouted campaign lawn signs for the Democratic candidates running, Bob Duff of course, Chris Perone running for re-election in the 137th and Ned Lamont. But where is the Diane Farrell sign?

Sometimes campaigns don't deliver their campaign materials to HQ, or a staffer can't make a drop off at the last minute, but in this case, there was a Diane Farrell sign, you just didn't see it. The small sign posted on a lawn sign, directing people to the event was taped onto a Diane Farrell sign that had been inverted. And in this case it wasn't the indirect actions of campaign staffers who made this decision, the signs were placed on city property by the manager of the Duff campaign.

While it is true that not all the direction signs along the route were taped onto inverted Diane Farrell signs, (the rest that were checked were old Bob Duff signs) these are the kind of oversights that shouldn't happen. In 2004, Diane Farrell came within 4% of Chris Shays. Norwalk Democratic party insiders knew from the postmortem that Norwalk underperformed during that election. As the 2006 campaign season unfolded, the state Democratic party has been enthusiastic about supporting all its congressional candidate challengers. Nationally, the focus on gaining 15 seats in the House of Representatives is the most important outcome of the midterm elections. Even conservative pundits have acknowledged that this is the Democratic control of the House is not such a bad idea.

Bruce Barlet in Washington Monthly

...one-party government encourages the majority to pass legislation using votes only from its own side and usually leads it to bargain first with those on its own extremes (those least willing to compromise on anything) instead of moderates across the aisle. This almost guarantees that controversial lawmaking will be the norm.

Divided government has other advantages, too. For one, it restrains government spending.

And from the same issue, Joe Scarborough:

But compare Clinton’s 3.4 percent growth rate to the spending orgy that has dominated Washington since Bush moved into town. With Republicans in charge of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, spending growth has averaged 10.4 percent per year.
...
This must all be shocking to my Republican friends who still believe our country would be a better place if our party controlled every branch of government as well as every news network, movie studio, and mid-American pulpit. But evidence suggests that divided government may be what Washington needs the most.

Chris Shays has been part of the rubber stamp Republican controlled congress. He's an acknowledged supporter of privatizing social security, which President Bush recently acknowledged is his priority for 2007.

With all the acrimony that persists in the Lamont/Lieberman race, splits within local party do have reverberations towards other candidates. Whether the this lawn sign incident is just a small example or part of a larger problem, is something to be resolved by the Farrell campaign. The bigger lesson here is that for Democratic candidates to succeed in winning elections, Democrats must work together. The question will be, when will they all get along?

Washington Monthly Bring on Pelosi, By Bruce Bartlett.

Washington Monthly And we thought Clinton had no self-control, By Joe Scarborough.