Doug Forand is the chief strategist of the New York Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, DSCC.
Q: Doug, good morning. Three days out, what’s your take on the state of the race? Do you see any surprises on Election Day?
A: Good morning. Right now, the races are tightening as the undecided voters start to break and we feel very good about how that’s going to shake out. There’s strong sentiment out there that the GOP has simply failed voters on every level - federal, state and local – and people want change. The early argument that the Senate Republicans were making – that McCain would drag them across the finish line – has evaporated in the face of Bush’s economic collapse and the high-tax, low-job-creation environment fostered by the Senate Republicans.
Q: We on the blogs have been writing for years about the importance of taking the Senate for any number of reasons. What are, speaking for yourself, the top three issues that will be positively affected by a takeover?
A: I graduated from college during the Bush 41 recession and I know what a tough job market that was. Upstate New York never fully recovered during the subsequent economic expansion. People graduating now face even dimmer prospects, so the first thing that will change will be a real focus on meaningful job creation. Current policies have resulted in billions of dollars worth of tax breaks going to politically well-connected businesses rather than businesses that actually create jobs.
Second, decades of unfunded mandates and irresponsible spending have created an unsustainable tax system. We need to ease the tax burden on middle class and working families, and again, on those businesses which actually expand the job base.
Finally, we’ll see a change in the culture in Albany. The idea that you can have responsive government when (in the Senate) certain votes aren’t even recorded for fear of voters finding out is ludicrous. We need a Senate in which ideas can be discussed and debated in full view of the taxpayers. We need to recognize that no party has a monopoly on ideas – if there’s a good way to create jobs or lower taxes, whether it comes from a Democrat or a Republican, it should be heard. . Democracy works best when dissent is encouraged. It’s the process of hearing different viewpoints and considering different perspectives that leads to the best decisions being made.
Q: Republicans have been playing their usual upstate/downstate card against Democrats this year, but so far apparently without much success. We already saw, with the Aubertine race, that this attack has been somewhat blunted. Why do you think that’s the case?
A: Because the voters are smarter than the Republicans assume. All you have to do is look around upstate New York to see the abject failures of Republican policies. Job loss, high taxes, high crime rates – on all of the issues that were the once core of the GOP’s argument as to why they should stay in power, the Republicans have failed. And rather than come up with new ideas, they just yell “downstate” as loud as they can and hope that it works.
Above all, as we’ve also seen on the national level, voters know that the politics of divisiveness do not get things done. They may try to argue upstate versus downstate, blue state versus red state, my state versus your state, but as a former State Senator I very much admire once said, “We are the United States of America”. Similarly, we are One New York. When the upstate economy is failing, when families on Long Island can’t afford their property taxes, when a family in Queens has to choose between rent and paying for health care – these are problems that the entire state must deal with. Voters get that, but the Senate Republicans don’t.
Q: Any final appeals to our readers? What should people do to wake up in a blue state on Wednesday?
A: Make sure that you and everyone you know votes, and votes the entire ticket. There’s going to be a lot of excitement for Barack Obama, but we need vote for change in Washington and vote for change in Albany. In past presidential years, we’ve seen falloff (the percentage of people who vote for President but don’t vote at all for State Senate) as high as 25% in some districts. People need to vote for every position.
If you have any time at all, get out there and volunteer for a campaign. Some of our races have gotten a lot of press, some have gotten less. But every campaign can use some help.
For people who wonder whether their volunteering really makes a difference, just remember Andrea Stewart-Cousins in 2004. She lost by 18 votes. That means if just 10 people had voted differently than they did, she would have won. If 19 people who voted for Kerry but did not vote for State Senate had voted for her, she would have won. Any good volunteer who commits one day to a campaign can swing that many voters, and those votes could be the difference between a Democratic and Republican Senate come Wednesday.
Thank you, Doug. Let's go out and win this thing.
