Direct Tv Schedule

Registered voters in battleground states should be advised to reinforce or upgrade their mailboxes by Sept. 2. Because, as of Sept. 3, that steady trickle of political mail could turn into a flood as new restrictions on election-related television and radio advertisements kick in.

In the 60 days leading up to Election Day (Nov. 2), a provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign law keeps interest groups off the airwaves unless they can buy TV and radio spots with hard money (maximum of $2,000 per contribution). Groups that rely on unlimited sums of soft money from mega-donors or corporations must find another way to play late in the game.

The object of the rule is to curb last-minute attack ads from outside groups trying to influence the outcome of an election. The likely side effects of the rule include an August spike in television and radio ads followed by a surge of ground war tactics. Insiders say direct mail is likely to absorb the biggest share of the redirected soft money.

"Typically a lot of independent groups have last-minute donations that are earmarked for political purposes," said Peter Valcarce, president of Salt Lake City-based Arena Communications, a direct mail firm retained this year by Bush-Cheney '04 and a host of Republican congressional candidates. "A lot of this money will go toward mail because TV won't be an option."

Although television still makes its case as the most powerful medium in American society, the new rule accelerates a shift away from mass media that began at least four years ago.

"In 1998 and 2000, people saw they didn't get as much bang for their buck through the mass media," said Anthony Corrado, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of government at Colby College.

One such group is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent most of its $13 million political budget in 2000 on TV ads. The chamber's national political director, Bill Miller, noticed that labor unions and other groups had more success without a major TV presence.

"We have now moved to a three-dimensional chess match where you worry not only about the methods but the timing," Miller said. "You begin with mass media in the pre-60 day phase and from day 59 to zero you go with mail, phones and people on the ground and in the streets."

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Miller said there is a hazard in too much telephone campaigning. According to a Harris poll taken after the "Do Not Call" registry went into effect, nearly half the people who signed up did not understand that political calls were exempt. An even greater proportion said that political calls were "always annoying."

That was the case in the hotly contested 2002 U.S. Senate race between U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson (D) and then-U.S. Rep. John Thune (R). Johnson won that contest by 524 votes.

"There's no doubt that we had overload on the phones," Miller said. "You have to think the people you offend is balanced by those you get out."

So with TV off-limits, phone banks risky, and door-to-door volunteers scarce as usual, interest groups are left to dump soft money into direct mail at unprecedented levels. Consultants who specialize in mail welcome this new campaign dynamic.

"Some people wonder who the direct mail industry has lobbying for them in Washington, because we're the only medium that hasn't been touched," said Jim Spencer, a Democratic consultant at The Campaign Network in Boston.

Under The Radar

The growing appeal of direct mail, Corrado said, has to do with what he called "niche targeting." The sophistication of voter research allows well-funded campaigns and interest groups to identify which message is appropriate for a given household.

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Another side to this precision targeting is that less campaigning is done within view of a general public audience. Campaigns have more liberty to say something to one group that would hurt their cause with others. Without immediate scrutiny from the press and opposition, mail is often a convenient vehicle for attacking a candidate.

Spencer, who worked on U.S. Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in Iowa, said he knows how this unseen battle can transform a race. With one month to go, polls showed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean ahead of the pack and U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., trailing in second.

Seeking to close the gap, Gephardt's staff set their sights on the front-runner and launched a series of mail pieces criticizing Dean. Spencer said the Gephardt campaign sent 20 to 30 direct mail pieces criticizing Dean. Dean's campaign countered with an equal number of pieces attacking Gephardt. Kerry and Edwards, he said, stayed out of the fray.

"One of the factors in our win is that these two just knocked each other out with incredibly negative mail pieces," Spencer said.

Valcarce said greater negativity does not necessarily follow an increase in the use of mail.

"You can simply discard mail, so it needs to be edgier," Valcarce said. "It has to stack up against 10 to 15 other pieces in the mailbox."

The Forecast

Although campaign watchdog organizations monitor television ad wars on television, tracking mail is more difficult. The Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy (CSED) at Brigham Young University provides a rough indication of the volume and origin of mail in competitive congressional elections.

Taking cues from party committees and interest groups in 2002, CSED selected a sample of races most likely to draw outside involvement. The center then contracted with local academics in each of the districts to monitor political activity. The U.S. Senate races studied averaged a total of 118 unique pieces of mail and U.S. House races 51. Eighty-seven percent of the mail messages relating to the race did not come from candidates.

The project asked registered voters from both parties to collect and record political mail sent to their address. In the last three weeks of the election, the average registered voter in South Dakota received 18 pieces of mail. Voters in Minnesota were hit with a similar amount of mail even though all campaigning stopped for five days after the death of the incumbent candidate, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone (D). One Minnesota respondent gathered 80 pieces from the mailbox in this 21-day period.

This year CSED is monitoring the presidential contest in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Iowa and Missouri, all swing states closely contested by the Bush and Kerry campaigns. Project director Kelly Patterson said interest groups are steering most of their resources to presidential battleground states because they consider control of the House and Senate less in play.

The flood of mail could be heaviest in Florida because of that state's unique position as a presidential battleground state and a competitive U.S. Senate race. Patterson said direct mail surges in Alaska, Oklahoma and two new Texas House districts could surprise voters who are accustomed to relatively uncompetitive federal races. Pundits consider U.S. Senate seats in Alaska, which is currently held by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), and Oklahoma, where U.S. Sen. Don Nickles (R) is retiring, up for grabs, along with newly redrawn Texas House Districts 19 and 32. In Texas 19, two incumbents, U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R) and U.S. Rep. Charlie Stenholm (D) face each other, while in Texas 32 Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions faces Democrat U.S. Rep. Martin Frost.

Keeping Your Message Afloat

As political mail increases, so does the likelihood that a piece will drown on its way to the trash.

"It takes something special for voters to pick out a particular piece of mail after they have been receiving several pieces for a couple of weeks," Patterson said.

Those who worked the Iowa caucuses, where the circle of caucus-goers includes around 100,000 households, know the problem well.

"One of the things that worked for Kerry in the mail is that we focused on this group of people outside of the normal caucus universe," Spencer said. "At the caucus that I attended, maybe 60 people of 205 stood in the line to change party registration or register as a first-time delegate. Every one was a veteran or somebody that was married to a Vietnam veteran."

In Wisconsin in 2002, Valcarce designed a piece that capitalized on the state's love of football and hunting to benefit U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis. The pocket-sized piece, "Football Fan's Guide and 2002 Hunting Schedule," featured the season schedule for the Green Bay Packers, the University of Wisconsin Badgers and eight different hunts. The piece also carried a Green slogan, a picture of the candidate's family and an election schedule.

"We try to make mail less candidate-focused and more on what the voter cares about," Valcarce said. "A piece with a picture of candidate and three words that describe the candidate won't do as well."

Getting the right message to the right audience, however, is not enough if it comes too late. The proliferation of states with early voting laws and looser absentee ballot requirements blurs voter outreach timelines.

In the South Carolina primary this year, Miller had to double-check 250,000 names on the Chamber of Commerce's mailing database against lists of absentee requests from each county. Those who had requested absentee ballots early were crossed off the final mailing list.

"In some cases we would chase the absentee ballots with a piece of mail," Miller said.

Another innovative way to draw attention to a mailing is through sandwiches. To most the word still means lunch; to a growing number of campaign professionals it refers to efforts to "sandwich" a mail piece between phone calls that play brief, pre-recorded messages.

The first recording in a typical sandwich alerts voters that they will receive a message in the mail. After the mailer is deployed, a second automated recording follows up to see if the voter got the mail and invites them to get involved in the campaign.

"This doubles or triples the impact of the mail, but at a much lower cost than a second or third mailer," Spencer said.

Through audience research, some groups such as Emily's List have found that intense, drawn-out campaigns produce election fatigue among targeted voters. Even with that, mail consultants believe their industry offers more room for expansion than other campaign methods.

"People get tired of commercials, calls and solicitors because it interrupts their time to relax at home," Spencer said. "People don't go to their mailboxes to relax or to be entertained."

COPYRIGHT 2004 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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