OH-Sen: Old Media begins campaign to make news rather than reporting it.

Today's story from the Columbus Dispatch on the Democratic Senate primary shows that the media has its knives out for Jennifer Brunner.  The only thing that's changed is that they're just more transparent about it now than they were from the beginning.   Let's face it:  the media has been trying to downplay Brunner's candidacy since the moment she announced.  Not a story has been written about Brunner that did not, at some point, explicitly or implicitly suggest that there were rumors that she is not really going to be on the ballot.  Combine that constant media narrative with the fact that Brunner is running against an Ohio Democratic institution, and it's not hard to figure out why campaign money is Brunner's biggest weakness. 

What is sad is that the media, because of its bias, refuses to acknowledge Fisher's weaknesses or the other strengths of the Brunner campaign that makes talk about her being "defiant" in not dropping out yet laughable.

Right off the bat, the Dispatch in its headline calls Brunner "defiant" for not dropping out of the race already... a race that won't even be voted on in another seven months.  And, yet, Joel Hallett doesn't even get anyone on background, let alone on the record, to suggest that they think Brunner should drop out. It is a premise entirely created by the reporter that has no support for it in the story.  That's just bad journalism.

In fact, the only political observer mentioned in the story calls the Dispatch's self-created narrative premature:

John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said it is too early to say Brunner's effort is in trouble, "but certainly these fundraising numbers aren't good for her campaign. Low fundraising at this point can convince observers that a candidate is not viable."

That's exactly right.  That's the problem with the Dispatch's story, because from beginning to end its designed not to report the news, but to make it:  they want to be able to claim that they are influential enough to shape politics. This story is nothing more than to kill the Brunner campaign by saying the Brunner campaign is already dead.

Jennifer Brunner has name recognition, so unlike Rob Portman or John Kasich (who despite his fundraising woes is not on death watch), Brunner isn't going to need to raise money to raise her profile.

What the Dispatch fails to note is that the Fisher's campaign fundraising abilities seem to be drying out.  This is the second straight quarter where Fisher substantially raised less money than the previous one: this despite the fact that he's the presumptive front-runner for the Democratic nomination, has gathered a multitude of endorsements, and opened a slight lead among Democratic primary voters in the latest Quinny poll.  Yet, he, too, had his worse fundraising quarter to date.

But that same poll shows 53% of primary voters are undecided between Brunner and Fisher.  Chances are many of those fence sitters are on the fence because the media simply cannot understand why Brunner won't go away.  They've already written her political obit.  Doesn't she get that they're the newspaper of record on Ohio politics? 

Brunner leads better in the general election with independent voters: a key swing bloc that was largely responsible for the Democratic gains in Ohio in the past two elections.  From a totality of the bigger picture standpoint, Brunner is more than just alive in this race.

If you didn't predict that Brunner's campaign against Lee Fisher wasn't destined to have fundraising problems from the start, then you are an idiot.  Of course, Fisher and his supporters have used his historical biggest strength-- campaign fundraising-- to try to starve Brunner of campaign cash.   He's still tied to the hip of Gov. Strickland who despite a drop in poll numbers is still a very influential person in the Party.  This narrative was written about right when the entire Ohio political establishment realized that there was going to be a Brunner-FIsher primary. 

So, what's really changed?  Nothing, except that the media--which is so obsessed of reporting facts within the paradigm of the conventional narrative, is ignoring that Fisher is starting to tire with seven months to go.  If Brunner can go the distance, she can win the fight.

I've talked to a number of people both inside and outside the Brunner campaign and I'm hearing the same thing over and over again: the announcement that Brunner replaced her campaign finance team was poorly timed because it became public the day before this campaign finance report deadline.  However, it needed to be made because the folks she had simply did not have experience with implementing an effective campaign fundraising strategy when the candidate is running against an established figure in the Democratic Party that the major figures in the Party have already united behind.

The criticism I've heard is why Brunner's campaign waited so long to make the change because the campaign fundraising strategy stuck out like a sore thumb: in what in every other aspect was an unconventional campaign, the campaign finance team was running a very conventional fundraising strategy that focused on the large donors in Ohio whom Democratic statewide and national campaign have historically relied.  Those folks, the campaign's critics say, were obviously going to be with Fisher and the campaign spent too much time running off a playbook that didn't realistically play to the campaign's political environment. 

The people I talked to outside of the campaign, but who describe themselves as supporters of Brunner's candidacy, though, also believe that a critical factor in the delay to make this necessary switch was because the folks being replaced were essentially EMILY's List folks--an that is the one institutional political group that has been willing to give Brunner any counterbalance to Fisher's institutional supporters.  Therefore, that created some hesitancy in making a dramatic switch in personnel.  I would note that Fisher's campaign has also seen staff reshuffling, but none of it has been portrayed as a sign of weakness or trouble for the campaign. 

Brunner's campaign is now looking to focus more on small and less traditional donors, people who aren't traditionally considered "established" players in Democratic circles but are attracted to a progressive candidate like Brunner.

Of course, yesterday's news about Brunner's latest campaign finance report was not good news for the campaign, but we don't live in a purely binary world.   Brunner isn't defiant in giving up a race in which not one person has voted, 53% are reportedly undecided, not one paid media ad has run, no debates have been held, and the election is still seven months away. 

The race really hasn't changed much at all since Brunner announced.  Not even the Old Media's obsession with officially declaring her campaign politically dead has changed in the last seven months.