Taffwatch

No recount. The general election matchup is set. Here we go...

Kris Kobach has won the Republican primary in Kansas' Third Congressional District, defeating Adam Taff by 207 votes.

We can assume our work here at Taffwatch is concluded.

Our work at http://kriswatch.blogspot.com has just begun. (We'll maintain a link from www.kriswatch.com for easier surfing.)

That's when the Johnson County results will be known, though if we hear earlier we'll post it. In the meantime, you can checkout Brad Cooper's story in the Star.

Cooper also wrote a Metro Watch item (everyone has a "Watch" these days) about the phone calls...the Sunday after the election.

Today is D-Day for KS03 Republicans. Taff needs to pick up 82 votes in Johnson County to win, but we're going to see a recount either way so don't expect things to be 100% settled.

Regardless of the "winner" of the primary, analysts say that Congressman Moore has a good shot of keeping his seat.

LJW: Republicans 'couldn't get it together'
Analyst predicts Moore will win 3rd District general election

"The Republicans couldn't get it together," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist and director of Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

"They have blown it again."

Sabato said nothing was certain in politics but predicted Moore would win the general election Nov. 2.

"It doesn't matter which Republican candidate emerges as the winner," Sabato said.

"That candidate will be representing a divided party. To defeat an incumbent, all the ducks have to be lined up perfectly in a row. The Republican ducks are all over the street."
...
Sabato said Republicans had themselves to blame for Moore's success.

"The Republicans have severely damaged themselves again. Dennis Moore is the luckiest member of Congress," he said.

Meanwhile, Moore continues to take the high road and talk about issues people actually care about.

For his part, Moore, seeking re-election to a fourth term, declined to respond directly to the Republican attacks lobbed at him during the rally. Instead, he said he would focus on health care, education and national security and wait to see who the GOP picks to run against him.

With a five point pickup in Wyandotte County (maybe the members of his steering committee who actually live in the county?), Taff's deficit is now down to 82 with Douglas County set to announce results at 4:30 p.m. today.

Johnson County, taking a more leisurely approach, won't canvass until Monday, leaving both campaigns watching and wondering over the weekend.

We predict that whoever wins will:

1. Not win by more than 40 votes
2. Still not have a majority of votes

Based on our previous prediction track record, we see at least one of those coming true.

Republicans love to talk about how much they can't stand trial lawyers. Trial lawyers are responsible for everything from rising insurance rates to weak corporate profits. Heck, trial lawyers would be blamed for global warming if Republicans believed in it.

But whenever an election is in doubt, Republicans can't get lawyers fast enough. Bush did it in 2000 (he was the first to file suit over the Florida results, if you recall) and attorney Kobach is doing it this time:

Kobach assembled a legal team to monitor the process of counting
provisional ballots, and campaign volunteers began making fund-raising calls and
focusing on the general election, campaign manager Todd Abrajano said. -- Johnson
County Sun

Brad Cooper of the Kansas City Star, in a piece that everyone expected to be very different, details how the Kobach campaign's "aggressive tactics" led to the cliffhanger.

Showing more strategic acumen than their tactical mistakes would indicate, the Kobach camp was able to get Taff to fight on ground of Kobach's choosing, namely abortion, gay marriage and immigration. And once it got Taff there, it pummeled him with questionable attacks, forcing Taff to respond and diverting him from his own message (whatever that was besides "I have tactical military experience.")

The article gives an indication of how Kobach would face off against Dennis Moore, with Kobach manager saying:

“We looked at Adam Taff as the incumbent. The only way to beat an incumbent is
to be aggressive and challenge that person. If you try to run a campaign and
just talk about what a great guy you are you're not going to win. That's what
Adam did against Dennis (in 2002), and that's why he lost."

We don't doubt that Taff's failure to make a case as to why Congressman Moore should have been defeated was part of the reason for his loss, but every challenger has to rely on mistakes made by the incumbent to get an opening and the Moore campaign was virtually mistake free in 2002 (and 2000 and 1998.)

Will Kobach's strategy work in the general election like it worked in the primary? We doubt it.

While Kobach was able to lure Taff onto ground of Kobach's choosing in the primary, the general election battlefield is much different. Kobach cannot rely on wedge issues that only fire up his base. He's facing a Moore campaign that is better funded than any campaign in the district's history and a candidate who has dealt with conservative opponents twice before.

Assuming he wins, Kobach will try to make this campaign about issues that have little impact on the daily lives of voters.

Moore, on the other hand, has already staked out where he's taking this campaign and it isn't on ground favorable to the Ashcroft protege:

“I'm going to discuss the issues that are important to the people in this
district, and those issues are affordable health care, quality public education
and a safe, secure nation where we're not deep in debt.”

If you want to read the mainsteam media's reports on the Republican unity rally, check out Brad Cooper's report here and Scott Rothschild's report here. But if you want to go inside the unity rally for the stuff they didn't mention, keep reading.

Our source inside the rally described the three candidates' moods as such:

Adam Taff: Stunned
Kris Kobach: Exuberant
Patricia Lightner: Pissed

National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds was a no-show, but that didn't stop Sen. Sam Brownback and AG Phil Kline from showing up. (Though we have to wonder, if Taff was up 87 votes, would Kline have decided he really wanted to watch Law & Order instead?)

Sen. Brownback introduced Rep. Lightner, who apparently then refused to speak.

She later found her voice during Kobach's speech when he said "this was a great campaign where we really discussed important issues." This prompted a Lightner aside to her husband that many in the audience could hear: "Oh really, when did we do that?" Like our source said, not terribly happy.

Kobach, deciding he too can talk like a military man (we enjoyed his "We have to be marching" quote in the Star) said "my army is still out there." Our question: are they "out there" the physical sense or are they "out there" in the metaphorical sense? We could argue it both ways.

Regardless, a few moments later he remembered it is a unity rally and kindly pointed out "and if Adam turns out to be the winner in a week or so, we'll all get behind him."

Finally, in our quote of the day, Phill Kline noted that "Republicans know George Bush and Saddam are two different people with different values." We guess there had been some question about that. News to us.

Unity fever: Catch it!

If Adam Taff does end up losing the primary, will he continue to campaign?

Brad Cooper of the Kansas City Star, who probably thought he would get a few days off after the primary, swings into action with a report on the provisional ballot process. Is there any reason for the provisional vote percentages to not mirror the regular count? We don't know.

What we do know, however, is that regardless of whether Adam Taff wins or whether Kris Kobach wins, the "winner" will be a man who 56% of Republicans looked at and said "You know, I think I'll vote for someone else."

Republicans will talk about unity, but a majority of them will not have voted for the "winner."

Scott Rothschild of the Lawrence Journal-World reports that Kobach is taking on the mantle of the nominee, by virtue of his 87 vote advantage. Meanwhile, Taff's campaign appears to have chosen the Gore 2000 playbook and is already talking about a recount.

The look on Kobach's face is priceless.

LJW: http://etc.lawrence.com/galleries/primary04/3785_lores.html

Well, this is unexpected.

Ok, so Fox4 reported Monday night that the Taff campaign has admitted the calls were made and that they left the disclaimer off by accident. Yeah, that five second "I'm Adam Taff and I approved this anonymous phone call" disclaimer sure is easy to forget.

Reporter Hector Contreras wrapped up the report by saying: “Now ,the last minute flyers and phone calls are not against any political rules but both campaigns admit the dirty tactics are not good for politics.”

Not so fast.

The Federal Election Commission guidelines suggest that the calls were, in fact, illegal.

FEC Candidate Guide -- Chapter 11
http://www.fec.gov/pages/candguide2004/chapt11.htm

"Any public communications made by a political committee, even those that do not contain a solicitation or express advocacy, must include a disclaimer.”

“Public communications include electioneering communications" and include a "phone bank (more than 500 substantially similar calls within 20 days).”

“The notice must state that the communication was paid for by the authorized committee..."

So any citizen who received one of the calls can file a complaint by sending a letter with documentation of the illegal call to the FEC General Counsel. The fine for a missing disclaimer is twice the cost of the communication that was missing the disclaimer. So, a hypothetical $1,000 in illegal calls would warrant a $2,000 fine.

What's the FEC General Counsel's address, you ask? Why here it is:

Office of General Counsel
Federal Election Commission
999 E Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20463

The original must be submitted along with three copies, if possible.

It's a little late in the game with the polls open for only a few more hours, but we've got the anti-Kobach automated phone call that is going out around the district.

You can hear it here.

Thirddistrict.org has said that Adam Taff's campaign manager Bob Zender has confirmed that the Taff campaign is paying for these calls, but we're unable to independently verify that claim. (If you can, e-mail us.)

Now if Taff is responsible, then this classic dirty trick is being propagated by someone who has previously claimed to be above this type of campaigning.

This isn't the first time such phone calls have been detected in the waning hours of an election. In 2000, automated calls to Democrats claiming that it was illegal to vote without your registration card went out. They were ultimately traced to a failed Republican state representative candidate and prompted Congressman Dennis Moore to introduce legislation requiring such calls to carry the same disclaimer as other forms of campaign communications.

UPDATE 8/3 2:50 p.m.: Sources tell us that such calls are illegal under current campaign finance laws (thank you McCain-Feingold) so if Taff's campaign has been doing them, then they'll have some explaining to do. And if his campaign hasn't been doing them, then the third-party person or group who has been has some explaining to do.

UPDATE 8/3 6:00 p.m.: We'll admit right now that we don't listen to much talk radio, but a Taffwatch reader has e-mailed to tell us that Taff manager Zender told 710 AM this morning that the Taff campaign is responsible for these calls. This reader reports that if you call Taff HQ, however, they deny it (we're sure they'll busy right now, so we won't call to find out.) Big ups to P for this report.

Taffwatch is not paid for by or affiliated with any candidate or committee. In fact, Taffwatch isn't paid for by anyone since Blogspot is free. And regarding FEC laws governing independent or third-party expenditures during the weeks before an election, we'd be considered a news source (hey, if the NRA can open a TV station and have it count, we can run a blog.)

Ok, here it is:

Taff -- 53.2%
Kobach -- 42.3%
Lightner -- 4.5%

In our reasoned opinion, we believe the "Hey, I think I've heard of that guy" factor for Taff will override any Kobach Fever that may have broken out within the primary electorate.

But, who knows? Nobody thought Taff would win in 2002, but the JoCo education sales tax pushed more moderate voters to the polls.

But, like we said, who knows? Maybe the specter of married gays, illegal immigrants, abortionists, and married gay illegal immigrant abortionists will lead more conservatives to vote.
Or not.

We'll say this right now: Thirddistrict.org is more plugged in to the local Republican Party than we are, which isn't surprising since we don't get around in that circle much.

We have enjoyed reading their reports of hijinx throughout the campaign from their position within the Republican operation. Though we expect that, come Wednesday, we'll not be linking to them much unless they follow the lead of many conservatives who in 2002 backed Congressman Moore after Taff won the primary.

Yet we want to give them a virtual tip of the hat and link to one more story about the shenanigans that have been going on of late.

While the Kobach campaign's lights went out, the Taff campaign's phones seem to be working just fine, as they apparently have been making calls saying Kobach isn't endorsed by GWB. (Though we will say the idea that the Moore campaign would spend money to help Taff is far-fetched.)

Will unity return to the party? We can only hope that conservatives' desire to have a real conservative in office will trump their desire to beat Moore, as it is not unreasonable to believe that, if elected, a moderate like Taff would hold the seat as long as he wanted to, shutting out conservatives for a long, long time.

But that is not for us to decide.

And if you'll excuse us, we must retire to prepare our prediction for the outcome of the race, which we'll post this evening.