Left In Lowell

Dick Howe has a great post up comparing numbers from the OCPF reports that are now out. I’m sure there’s a lot more detail to delve into, but I wanted to comment on some of the numbers. Mostly, because I want to see just how many more “new” desperate drive-by Doherty commenters attacking Eileen I can get before the primary. Ha.

The big sense of this campaign is that some less-than-beloved background characters have been shaking the trees for Doherty - and the feeling is, not because they love Doherty, but because even a toaster, for them, is better than a Senator Eileen Donoghue. The fact that there’s a lot of out of district support (28% to 53%) and big maxed-out donors (158 as opposed to 78) for Doherty as compared to Donoghue supports that, in a general kind of way.

The “average” donation is about the same, but Dick also mentions that Donoghue aggregated her small donations (under $50) which is common, while Doherty line-itemed each, so the average would actually drop for Donoghue if we knew total number of small donors including the under-$50s. How much it would drop, is uncertain.

But there’s another number, one most won’t pay much heed, that I found interesting. In the “Amount spent on paid staff” category, Dick lists Doherty as having spent $3575, while Donoghue spent $26,206. That is clearly a huge difference.

And I think you can see the difference in the campaigns. Doherty might be surrounded by young kids from college (supposedly), but he ran a relatively unprofessional campaign. Instead of spending some of his money making sure his communications, messaging, and other high-level aspects of his campaign went smoothly, he had to have been letting some big decisions be run by young volunteers. Meanwhile, Donoghue hired staff to manage those things, and I think, had a more coherent campaign all together.

It helps of course that Donoghue has some pretty extensive experience running a larger campaign, as well as smaller ones.

Now, on first blush, one might think that, well, wouldn’t it be better to be able to attract volunteers for your staff than to have to hire any? It would seem to make sense, except that the end results are a sloppy campaign as opposed to a tight ship. Trust me when I say the Donoghue campaign runs a tight ship and have very specific goals and strategies worked out. And I know volunteering pretty well, too, and I wouldn’t want to run a campaign this large (district-wide) with mostly volunteers in charge. You need people dedicated to the job, and that means paying something. I wouldn’t want to have a volunteer web developer to help me on a project - I will attract better talent and be a bigger priority if I pay someone. The same holds true for campaigning on a broader scale than locally (where you can get away with an all-volunteer force).

The paid staff number makes you wonder who really was advising Doherty during this race. Was it the low paid or unpaid staff, fresh out of college (or still in it) who had little actual experience? Or was much of the advice from other sources, ones that don’t show up on OCPF? Whoever it was, I can say pretty objectively (all “biases” aside) that the messaging and the tone was pretty unprofessional and ultimately, will likely cost Doherty the race - and more importantly, his reputation going forward. I think people will remember the photoshopped puppet/crown debacle, or the push-like poll, for quite some time - and not in the way Doherty intended.