As someone who has covered local elections for many years, I tend to chuckle when a candidate blames his opponent for his loss.
This happens often. A candidate loses, but accepts no responsibility for it, implying that he failed only because voters were hoodwinked or otherwise misled into casting a ballot for the other, lesser guy, who ran an unethical, nefarious campaign.
This is the clear message from former Democratic mayoral candidate Dan Miller, who officially left the race yesterday, choosing not to run in the general election as a Republican, having received 196 write-in votes on the GOP side.
In his parting words, Miller blamed “a well-funded campaign of distortions and dishonesty” against him. His statement portrayed himself as a simple, sincere man — a non-politician — who was thwarted in his commendable effort to have “an honest debate on the issues” and then fight for what was right for Harrisburg. He even distributed a worksheet showing that he was outspent $241,513 to $90,785. (Note: Papenfuse disputes this estimate of his expenditures and, in any case, financed about half of his own campaign.)
Is money important to a campaign? Damn right it is. However, it’s only part of the story, the part that Miller, an accountant, is solely focused on. There are three other vital elements to a campaign, which Miller has chosen to ignore: public persona, campaign strategy and overall messaging.
Let’s tackle the easy one first.
Miller and Papenfuse are both genial men who would never give John F. Kennedy a run for his money in the charisma or looks department. I consider public persona to be basically a draw between them, with maybe a small edge to the more outgoing Papenfuse.
Campaign strategy, then, is what began to separate the two candidates.
Miller started out well, unofficially announcing his candidacy and holding his first fundraising events way back in late 2011. This was an excellent way to start — begin early, deter competition through strong fundraising, build support and turn yourself into the inevitable nominee. But then his campaign rather petered out.
He wasn’t very visible last year, with most of his publicity tied to unflattering public spats with Mayor Linda Thompson. He then seemed completely unprepared when Papenfuse, starting in March, began to pose a serious challenge.
Miller needed to step up his game, but didn’t. He skipped debates because, he said, he couldn’t spare two hours in the evening during tax season, leaving many people puzzled over his priorities and seriousness as a candidate. He didn’t have a strong ground game or presence, was reluctant to go outside his comfort zone and had a poor social media strategy.
Meanwhile, Papenfuse came on like a house on fire.
From nowhere, more than a year after Miller had started, Papenfuse suddenly was everywhere. You couldn’t attend a clean-up, go to a community event or even walk down the street without seeing Eric Papenfuse. He made alliances quickly in nearly every neighborhood, spent days knocking on doors, engaged everyone in conversation, got community leaders to support his campaign and tweeted and Facebooked obsessively. Did his sudden omnipresence seem somewhat opportunistic? Sure, but that’s what campaigning is often about.
Now, Miller certainly was right that there was an unsavory element to the campaign, mostly in the form of negative direct mail and TV ads. I personally never saw one of the TV spots, but always considered them a waste of money for such a tiny city. On the other hand, I saw plenty of direct negative mail — from both campaigns. In my opinion, Miller gave as good as he got. I read the ads from both candidates, laughed at their silliness and threw them in the trash.
As of the first week of May, I still thought Miller would win (I had long discounted Thompson’s chances, despite the multi-candidate race). But then came the debate hosted by Harrisburg Young Professionals.
Papenfuse didn’t perform brilliantly, nor did Miller perform so poorly. But that debate — covered by all media and attended by hundreds, including nearly every influencer and thought-leader in the city — had a big impact.
It had a big impact because it showed to a mass audience that Miller’s general campaign message was, well, strange. Many average people had only begun to tune in, and he repeated to them what he had been saying all along. Only he could save Harrisburg because only he was a financial expert: he opposed the receiver, condemned the receiver’s plan and supported municipal bankruptcy.
Huh?
I’m sure that not everyone in the audience was a wild fan of the receiver or receivership. However, they recognized reality when they saw it, and the receiver and his plan had been a reality in Harrisburg for well over a year. And bankruptcy? That already had been tried and failed.
But Miller appeared oblivious to this. He seemed lost in time, suspended in a world before state Senate Bill 1151, before David Unkovic, before William Lynch, before Judge Leadbetter, before City Council’s failed bankruptcy petition. Over the previous two years, all this had happened, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to Miller, who stuck to his guns that he wanted to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which he called a “wonderful, wonderful thing.”
At the time, Lynch was deep into implementing his recovery plan, in negotiations for the sale of the incinerator, the long-term lease of the parking garages, revised labor agreements. Did Miller actually believe that somehow, as mayor, he could oust the receiver, nullify his plan and unilaterally declare bankruptcy? By this point, even the receiver’s sworn enemies on City Council had come around to back the recovery plan.
This was where Miller lost the election.
Following the debate, two subjects were on everyone’s mind. The first, of course, was Lewis Butts, who provided the night with much comic relief. The second, more seriously, was Dan Miller, who seemed to many people to be a man out of touch — or at least lost in time.
Miller’s message may have resonated during the previous mayoral campaign of 2009, when Harrisburg desperately needed a plan for financial recovery following the extended spending folly of Steve Reed. Miller’s plan — focused on bankruptcy — would have provided some new ideas and direction, even though it was full of assumptions that may not have been realistic (for instance, it required creditors to take a big haircut, which always seemed dubious).
But, by 2013, forced by the state, Harrisburg was well down another path. It long ago had accepted the reality of the receivership. Now, it was ready to take the best deal it could get and move on to the next phase.
The last thing most people wanted was to go back in time — or elect a mayor who thought he could. Yes, Miller retained his core group of supporters, but he had trouble attracting new voters seeking a credible alternative to Thompson. So, the once-inevitable nominee stood still while Papenfuse — a candidate for three months but one who recognized the simple reality that Harrisburg had no choice but to make the best of the receiver’s efforts — breezed right past him.
