So I'll admit it: I'm kind of a traitor. Though a resident of the state of Texas, I opted to attend college in southern California-- an act of base ingratitude that broke the heart of every diehard Texan I know.
"What's wrong with UT?" they ask me, lower lips quivering in hurt and bewilderment. I never know exactly how to answer them, but profuse apologies and fervent hopes that the Horns "hook them" are usually involved.
One downside of being all the way in "exotic" California, as one UT friend put it, is that I'm a little isolated from Texas politics. Not really knowing who's who or what's going on, I am forced to take my cues off of other people, adopting their enthusiasm or disdain as my own and pretending it's coming from a place of actual knowledge.
Imagine my gratitude, then, when opposition researcher and guest speaker Jason Stanford indicated exactly how I should feel about Jack Martin, who came today to visit with the Campaign Academy during our lunch hour, through his wide-eyed and slightly breathless declaration that we were extraordinarily lucky to be graced with a rare Jack Martin sighting and even-rarer dispensation of Jack Martin political knowledge. Jack Martin, he said, was the last and best hope for a Texas Democrat seeking statewide office, and one of the smartest people we would ever meet.
Based on this slightly star-struck reaction, I was sort of expecting a combination of Yoda, Justin Timberlake, and Jesus Christ. (The normal-looking guy in the suit who ended up being Martin kind of threw me.) But once he started talking, I started getting it: Though not bathed in a golden glow, Martin knows his stuff. Between anecdotes about important political events in Texas-- like turning his college town wet in the early 70s-- Martin dispensed such down-to-earth advice as "don't count on a surge of new voters as a recipe for victory" and "if you're denying before noon you're in trouble." Nothing flashy, no complex statistics or algebraic formulas; just solid, no-nonsense analyses that pierced through the illusions and needlessly complicated political stratagems that Democratic candidates especially have a tendency to fall victim to. Is Martin a rock star, a minor deity, the messiah we've all been waiting for?
I couldn't tell you.
But I'd sure trust him with my campaign: I may have been out of state for so long that I practically need a passport to get back in, but I do know that in a place as crazy as Texas, you need a guy who's got a good head on his shoulders.
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2 comments:
Great write-up, Elisa. Another important point he made is that the era of appealing to voter to vote for your party, rather than for your candidate, is over. This is especially interesting coming from Jack Martin, who literally invented the idea of the coordinated campaign. When Matthew Dowd comes to speak to y'all, I want you to ask him about that. I THINK Matthew will agree with it, but it's an interesting question because it was Matthew who, as a chief strategist for George W. Bush, determined that the battle would be won by the party that turned out its base, rather than by appealing to swing voters. It would be interesting to ask Matthew what's different now.
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