Two weeks ago, we awoke to the news that Cuyahoga County Council Member Shontel Brown defeated Progressive heavyweight Nina Turner in a hard-fought effort that featured a war of noteworthy proxies in the process. Since that time, debate has raged among progressives as to how the darling of the Bernie movement could have squandered what appeared to be an insurmountable lead in both fundraising and the polls. A number of her supporters have co-signed onto Turner’s assertion that the influx of “evil” money sabotaged her campaign while others cite the conspired intervention of so called “establishment” Democrats as the source of their crusade’s failure.
However, when all was said and done any impairment suffered by the Turner campaign was self-inflicted. Turner, who had successfully branded herself as a political firebrand and disrupter who would shake up Washington was the presumptive favorite based on her national name recognition as a close Bernie Sanders advisor. This status enabled her to raise a prodigious amount of early money. She also had history in Ohio serving as both a Cleveland City Council member and an Ohio State Senator. Turner also received additional national and statewide exposure as a candidate for Secretary of State in 2014. Given this set of circumstances, Turner should have won this race going away.
There’s little argument that without the intervention of the CBC Pac and other external financial benefactors, as well as the support of individual CBC members and high-profile advocates like Hillary Clinton, Brown would have had a tougher time securing the primary win. However, let’s also not underestimate her ability to frame herself as a moderate voice who was the superior option based on her commitment to support both Biden and the caucus in their efforts. Turner, on the other hand has maintained fraught relations within the Democratic Party, particularly its hierarchy. Once Brown distanced herself from the pack and refashioned the race into a head-to-head competition, the voters were offered contrastive options and, in the end, rewarded Brown.
Now that this particular skirmish is over, there are sure to be other opportunities for Progressives to make inroads in the 2020 Congressional elections. However, there are lessons to be learned if they hope to succeed in upcoming contests. In the meantime, my five takeaways from the OH-11 election are:
5. Elections aren’t won on Twitter
If you took the opportunity to browse Twitter during the course of this primary, you wouldn’t have blamed Shontel Brown if she’d just packed up and called it quits. The Bernie Bros and other Progressives were out in force sharing first and foremost their undying love of all things Bernie, their disdain for established Democratic politicians and their belief that a Turner victory was pre-ordained. However, after Brown pulled the upset, the bravado evolved into a blame game of tweets. On primary day, Nina Turner had 484,700 Twitter followers, while Shontel Brown possessed 25,200. Need I say more?
4. Turner’s campaign failed her
A lot of blame can be assigned as to why Turner lost. She was not the greatest candidate and her past interactions within the Democratic Party came back to haunt her. But it can also be argued that her campaign’s structure and strategy was unproductive in several areas. With a 35-point lead and a relative boatload of money, the campaign overspent on consultants and underpsent on infrastructure. In addition, their media buys were also questionable, and the campaign lacked leadership in several areas, particularly in their field operation. Whether or not it was due to candidate discipline, the campaign should have persisted with the effort to mainstream Turner and advance a more policy and results oriented pitch. Turner is undeniably smart, yet they did everything possible to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
3. All politics are local
It’s been almost 40 years since Tip O’Neill uttered those words, yet they hold true to this day. What was overlooked in much of the coverage of this primary race and particularly as Progressives begrudgingly perform their autopsy is that Shontel Brown paid her dues on the ground. For more than nine years she served on the Warrensville Heights City Council, the Cuyahoga County Council and as the Chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. During that period, she was able to establish and manage relationships with elected officials, voters, and business interests throughout the district. So as the election tightened, she had a reservoir of good will to tap into that bolstered her effort. It also didn’t hurt that Marcia Fudge was her mentor.
2. Candidates matter
Make no mistake, the Turner campaign did try to moderate her image initially by emphasizing her Democratic Party roots. But as the campaign progressed, past statements and actions rapidly eroded that narrative. Perhaps her most detrimental utterance was comparing Biden and Trump to a half of a bowl of excrement vs a full bowl. Not only was this offensive to Biden supporters, but it was also crass and turned off a lot of voters. Moreover, as the campaign progressed Turner displayed a mean spiritedness that played into the “angry Black woman” analogy that on occasion had been embraced by her, but at other times had been used as rallying cry to augment the idea that she was under attack by outlying forces. Bottom line, she was not a likeable enough candidate to overcome her campaign’s deficiencies and her ungracious concession speech only evidenced that perception.
1. Never poke a sleeping giant
Had Turner and self-annointed political savant and universal know-it-all Michael Render aka “Killer Mike” not smugly invoked Rep. James Clyburn’s name at a forum by ridiculing his so-called “stupidity” in his negotiations with President Biden, he and the CBC may very well have sat on the sidelines or at least, not actively campaigned for Brown. However, this particular exhibit of arrogance evoked a visceral response from Clyburn and other established democrats that heightened the race’s visibility and attracted additional support on Brown’s behalf. The words of “Killer Mike” were the beginning of the end of Turner’s effort.