Mr. Cooper's responses are... disingenuous.
(1) "The 2004 GOP Convention will be held a whopping 4 days later than the 1996 DNC Convention."
The issue is the strategic advantage w/r/t the same limited pool of monies. So, only someone wishing to elide realitry would fail to omit that the GOP convention in 1996 was 8/12-15. Meaning... the Dems were a whopping two weeks later, making this point... irrelevant.
(2) "The GOP could have held their convention a week after the Democratic Convention --the closest 2 conventions since 1956."
And this would be a problem... why? For whom?
As with
(3) "The GOP could have held a convention that was "historically stupid" by holding it August 9-12, with the President accepting the nomination the night before the lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens."
"The Olympics" are not really ** that ** big a deal, unless (a) held in the U.S. or (b) if our ostensibly down out and foes in George Bush's purportedly well-run War on Terror strike a major blow. The claim that their anticipation in the sports pages would bump out convention coverage from the front of the newspaper... verges on sophistry.
{and remember, "the lighting of the torch" is part of an artistic sideshow the day before primary athletic competition begins...}
I can understand why direct competition on TV is an issue, but the week of August 9-12 would be the obvious choice. And combined with the fact that the selection was in a really Blue, non-competitive (I know NJ is theoretically in play according to some, but no Bush TV ads have yet aired there, so....) metropolitan area right before the anniversary of 9/11....
And, as it stands, the GOP will be beginning right after the Olympics, which ought to have just as great an impact, under the logic that the Olympics are an incredibly powerful event... that recent history suggests that they are not.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cooper, James" <jpcooper3@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 8:15 am
Subject: Re: Convention Timing
> "historically... anomalous"?
>
>
> The 2004 GOP Convention will be held a whopping 4 days later than
> the 1996 DNC Convention.
>
> That aside, with the 2004 Democratic Convention being held later
> than any other convention of the Party out of power since 1968,
> let's examine how else the 2004 GOP Convention could have been
> "historically anomalous:"
>
> 1) The GOP could have held the first convention during the
> Olympics since 1952
>
> 2) The GOP could have held their convention a week after the
> Democratic Convention --the closest 2 conventions since 1956.
>
> 3) The GOP could have held their convention before the Democratic
> Convention --the first time the Party in power has done that since
> 1908.
>
> On the other hand:
>
> The GOP could have held a convention that was "historically
> discourteous" by holding it August 2-5, four days after the
> Democratic candidate accepts the nomination.
>
> Or
>
> The GOP could have held a convention that was "historically
> stupid" by holding it August 9-12, with the President accepting
> the nomination the night before the lighting of the Olympic torch
> in Athens.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Jeffrey MA Hauser <jmh248@nyu.edu> wrote:
> (1) Of course Kerry can direct monies to the DNC; he has been
> doing that (each candidate has fundraisers with both the campaign
> and party as beneficiaries), and would have done that post-
> convention regardless of timing. So, how is that a response to
> the timing problem?
>
> (2) The bigger issue is that Kerry's non-advertising expenses for
> those five weeks -- which will be quite considerable (HQ and field
> staff, travel (including Veep), surrogates, polling/focus groups,
> literature, rent on various HQs, electronics, insurance, phone
> banks, other voter ID efforts, and any experiments with direct
> mail or robo-calling -- come from the finite pool of financial
> monies. As a result, Kerry inevitably will be well behind Bush
> financially on 9/2. This used to be a trade-off, as with less
> divisive incumbents, most challengers were gasping for funds after
> the primaries and couldn't wait to get the infusion, even if it
> left them with less money after the incumbent's convention. But....
>
> (3) The Kerry campaign's currently clunky communications team has
> failed completely to get out the message that the Bush team has
> chosen a convention date that is historically... anomalous. And
> you can cite the Olympics all you like, but there were
> alternatives to hosting the convention a week before 9/11 and 3
> miles from Ground Zero in the Bluest City in America. The Kerry
> team ought to be putting the GOP on the defensive here, rather
> than falling victim to a poorly constructed statute.
>
> (4) Moveon.org's Statute of Liberty ad... does go to show how 527s
> are not a perfect substitute for coordination, and the
> historically greater unruliness of Dems makes their implicit
> coordination less effective than that between the GOP and the
> "501(c)(??)s."
> > ATTACHMENT part 2 message/rfc822
> Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 07:49:26 -0700
> From: Rick Hasen
> Subject: news of the day 5/24/04
> To: election-law
>
> "Gov. Converts Celebrity into Cash; Schwarzenegger's fund-raisers
> prove a windfall for GOP"
> The San Francisco Chronicle offers this report.
>
>
> FBI Probe of Redistricting continues in Mass.
> See here.
>
>
>
> "Revisiting Redistricting"
> William Rasberry offers this Washington Post column.
>
>
>
> "Lawyers Fill Candidate's Coffers"
> Legal Times offers this report. Thanks to Steven Sholk for the
> pointer.
>
>
> More on Potential Kerry Nomination Delay
> The Boston Globe offers this report. The Kerry campaign floated
> this trial balloon on Friday afternoon. Given how the reaction is
> decidedly mixed (does it make Kerry look like someone who is out
> to bend the rules even if there is no "controlling legal
> authority" on the question? will it affect network coverage of
> what is in essence a four-day-long infomercial for the Democratic
> Party?), would it not be in Kerry's interest to instead borrow
> from the George Bush playbook for "super rangers?" Kerry need not
> borrow Bush's bundling strategy, but can simply allow the
> Democratic Party to push donors (especially those donors with
> somewhat larger incomes) to give to the Democratic Party (in
> larger amounts than they may give to Kerry directly by the way).
> Though Kerry would not have the same direct control over the money
> for the five week period after his primary season ends but Bush's
> does, the Democrats can (like the unconnected 527s) follow Kerry's
> lead in advertising. Surely the De
> mocrats
> can figure out how to spend their money in ways that help Kerry.
>
>
>
> "Bipartisan Bill Aims to Restructure the FEC"
> The Washington Times offers this report.
>
>
>
> Mutch on Corporations
> At the 2003 American Political Science Association annual meeting,
> Robert Mutch presented a very interesting paper, Corporations and
> Elections: A Century of Debate. The paper for some reason is no
> longer accessible on APSA's website, so with Bob's permission I am
> posting a copy here.
>
>
>
> "Wall St. Firms Funnel Millions to Bush"
> The Washington Post offers this report.
>
>
>
> "U.S. Churches Cautious on Politics to Keep Tax Exemptions"
> NPR offers this audio report.
>
>
>
> "Reassurance for Florida Voters Made Wary by Chaos of 2000"
> The New York Times offers this report.
>
>
>
> "Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes"The New
> York Times offers this report. Thanks to David Ettinger for the
> pointer.
> -- Rick HasenProfessor of Law and William M. Rains FellowLoyola
> Law School919 South Albany StreetLos Angeles, CA 90015-
> 1211(213)736-1466(213)380-3769 -
> faxrick.hasen@lls.eduhttp://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.htmlhttp://electionlawblog.org