There's a primary brewing the 26th Congressional District that Democrats should avoid.

The contenders are Jon Powers, an Iraq War veteran and teacher, and Jack Davis, a local businessman who ran for this seat in 2006, narrowly losing to republican incumbent Tom Reynolds. Some background on the race is sketched out by Robert Harding of The Albany Project, here.

The reason this primary should be avoided is this: it would take away resources better used elsewhere, would damage the Democratic brand, and might result in an outcome, a Davis victory, that would likely lead to defeat in November.

Why, over the fold.

The argument about resources is inherent in the structure of a race that includes a self-funding millionaire and is currently playing out on the national stage in the contest between (the putative nominee) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. With the nomination contest now going on at least until the Pennsylvania primary - despite the fact that there is virtually no mathematical possibility for Clinton to overtake Obama in the number of actually elected convention delegates - resources that could be used against John McCain are instead being used to diminish Democrats. A Davis entry into the NY-26 Democratic primary - which also features another contender, Alice Kryzan - would likely bring about a similar result, with a long primary season dedicated to nothing but making the eventual winner as unacceptable as possible. Davis' recent statements make clear that this is exactly his strategy; Buffalo Pundit:

Powers, Davis said, “is a kid. He’s 29 years old and he’s never had a real job,” said Davis. “If we do get into a primary, he won’t have any money left.”

Powers was an army officer in Iraq, and he was a school teacher in Clarence. Not only that, but he’s a gracious and humble man. He’s 29 years old and has more class than you’ll ever have, Jack. He’s 29 years old and he’d held at least two real jobs that I can count.

Positively Hillaryesque, and not in a good way. More in a "John McCain and I have experience, Barack Obama has a speech" way.

From a branding perspective, Davis is awful. Visitors to his web site are treated to gems of unabashedly xenophobic immigrant-bashing in the Tancredo style. Some examples of articles linked underline this point: Professor Predicts "Hispanic Homeland", Tancredo [sic] Foresees Immigration Battle, Devvy Kidd - News With Views: Illegals Invading America: Something You Can Do.

Because nothing says "Democrat" like quoting Tom Tancredo, approvingly, about brown people. In an election we plan on winning by differentiation, that is truly an awesome approach to take. Of course, one could even go one better and have a page titled 'supporting views', which credits Davis as being in line with Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Alan Greenspan, Ronald Reagan and Karl Marx, among others - notable Democrats all. That's not, and should not be mistaken for, anything that might plausibly be billed as post-partisanship: it's incoherence.

Going further, if Davis has positions on issues other than immigration (against) and free trade (against), these are not apparent from his online presence. It's not even readily apparent why he's running as a Democrat, which is not in itself surprising, given that he was not a Democrat until Dick Cheney had him kicked out of a fundraiser in 2003.

Absolutely: what we really want and need in a Democratic Congressional candidate is a proven ability of being so hardcore on immigration that they get evicted from an event with Dick Cheney. That positively screams "Vote for us, we're different".

Well, so much for brand value. But can Davis win in November? No, probably not. There are multiple reasons for that, but it's sufficient to focus on three of them.

Positioning: As is apparent from his web site and public record, Jack Davis has two intertwined issues: immigration and trade. On both, he adheres closely to a policy line best described as Tancredoism. The available evidentiary record suggests that Democrats running against republicans as republicans tend to lose; this is colloquially summed up in the phrase "why vote for a false republican when you can get the real deal?", and has been a consistent critique of the netroots against party committees doing just that. This is probably why Davis lost the 2006 election to Tom Reynolds, who coincidentally is more moderate than Davis on Pat Buchanan's issues. Davis' myopic focus on the Lou Dobbs argument is the prime reason why he couldn't credibly take Tom Reynolds to task for protecting Mark Foley, for example.

Persuasion: The available evidence also suggests that a focus on trade and immigration issues is insufficient to win an election. For example, in the republican Presidential primary, anti-immigrant positions resulted in failed candidacies, such as Mitt Romney's. On the Democratic side, John Edwards strong stance in favor of fair trade was not rewarded at the polls. Quite the contrary: as Markos documents here, "immigration is killing republicans".

Campaign performance: Simply put, Jack Davis is a lazy campaigner. On Election Day 2006, he refused to campaign, for example. Rather, his efforts to date have relied heavily on television advertising; however, it is pretty much received wisdom that candidates who do not engage in retail campaigning tend to lose. There are structural reasons for this, including the demonstrated superiority of word-of-mouth information over that from mass media in terms of persuasive power. In short, if you meet a given candidate, or have a friend, relative, spouse tell you of support for a candidate, you're more likely to vote for him or her. That can't happen with a candidate who refuses to press the flesh.

It's well-nigh inevitable at this point that Davis is going to run, not least because there's a good deal of money to be made off such a run - money for ad buys, commissions thereon, consulting fees, the stream of warm dollars that provide income to the consultant class.

That does not mean, however, that this is a good primary for Democrats to have; quite the opposite, in fact.