For Burner and Pingree, risks and rewards in courting progressives

WASHINGTON, DC - When Darcy Burner and Chellie Pingree, candidates for U.S. Congress in Washington State and Maine, respectively, presented a plan for Iraq last week they were not in Bellevue or Portland. They were in a conference room at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, in the Woodley Park neighborhood of Washington, DC, where the heavily progressive Take Back America conference was taking place.

It is not necessarily easy to find similarities in the campaigns that Burner, a former Microsoft employee who after her 2006 run is seeking a rematch with Republican incumbent Dave Reichert, and Pingree, the former head of Common Cause and a 2002 U.S. Senate candidate, are running. While Burner is campaigning for a seat that has traditionally fallen under Republican control, Pingree is running in a district that has recently leaned Democratic.

But Burner and Pingree do have something in common: they are actively and aggressively courting the progressive, activist wing of the Democratic Party. In taking on the strategy, the campaigns are reaping benefits – but are also taking on certain risks.

In a joint interview at the conference this week, Burner and Pingree offered kind words for the activist crowd.

“What you see here are people incredibly hungry for an opportunity to help, to do something that’s going to make a difference for our country,” said Burner. “…The more we can engage them…the healthier our democracy is going to be.”

“It’s great, I sort of feel like part of what we are doing is fostering this debate,” said Pingree. “…People have this whole sense that they can engage right now, it makes a difference, every little action makes a difference, because it’s part of a collective action that’s moving things forward.”

And progressives, for their part, have reciprocated towards Burner and Pingree. During the conference, prominent liberal blogger Matt Stoller praised the candidates for their plan for Iraq, arguing the candidates had come forward with a map for ending the war responsibly.

“Bloggers tend to like clear choices and political courage,” Stoller said in an email.

Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congressional elections, said that for candidates like Burner and Pingree, a significant benefit in courting the activist base is that they are reaching out to a group of people that will go to work for them – especially in the fundraising realm.

Perhaps that explains why both candidates have found fundraising success in the ActBlue program, an online fundraising clearinghouse for Democratic candidates that has brought in more than $20 million for Democrats this cycle alone.

In her 2008 run, Burner has picked up just short of 5,000 ActBlue contributions totaling almost $157,000. The “Burn Bush for Burner” fundraising drive that started up on the network in late February has raised almost $100,000. Pingree, meanwhile, has taken in nearly $300,000 in contributions since she joined the network about a year ago.

Marissa Doran, a spokeswoman for ActBlue, said that Burner and Pingree have been aggressive in courting the online fundraisers, cultivating local networks and reaching out to national blogging networks.

“Both Pingree and Burner are specifically trying to grow their contacts outside of their districts. They're willing to take risks, and to join forces with other Democrats,” said Doran. “And they both recognize the value of network-building for the long-term strength of the Democratic Party.”

But experts also say courting of the activist wing of the party carries with it a potential risk for Democratic candidates – that it will alienate moderate and conservative voters in the general election. And that is a drawback that is magnified for Burner, who is running in a largely suburban, affluent district that has a moderate voting tendency, and to a certain degree for Pingree, who is already seen by some as more liberal than the voters in the First District.

L. Sandy Maisel, a Political Science professor at Colby College, said that Pingree is the heavy favorite in the room - “the 2,000 pound gorilla in the room” as he put it - but that she runs the risk of positioning herself too far to the left, and might provide ammunition for a Republican opponent.

“(Republicans) will try to paint her very left,” Maisel said. “They will try to make the war an issue. They will try to make what she did last week in Washington, DC an issue.”

And in conversations, Republicans said they would make Burner and Pingree’s activist outreach an issue in the fall.

Mike Shields, a spokesman for Dave Reichert, who will be facing off against Burner, called Burner “an ideologue of the left,” who is “out of touch with the suburban tilt of the district.”

And he indicated that Burner’s fundraising would be brought up.

“That’s a fair question,” he said. “If you’re raising money from far left groups do you agree with them?”

And Michael Pajak, a spokesman for Dean Scontras, one of the Republicans running in Pingree’s Maine race, said Pingree would be scrutinized for her outreach.

“You can make no mistake that the progressive, activist base is going to be the opponent,” he said, arguing that moderates will likely be turned off by Pingree and looking for somewhere else to go.

But Norman Ornstein, the Congressional analyst, said Burner and Pingree’s activist outreach would likely fly under the radar screen of most general election voters.

“The practical reality is that you could hit voters in the face with a brick and they wouldn’t notice,” said Ornstein.

Burner and Pingree, for their part, don’t believe partisan finger pointing will work this cycle. In the interview they seemed to repeatedly suggest that voters in their districts were more interested in seeing candidates present solutions to issues like the war in Iraq rather than starting a partisan food fight.

“At every political and ideological level people want to know, ‘What are we going to do now?’” said Pingree.

“We are not a state that automatically says, ‘we are Democrats,”’ she added. “It just can go either way. And we are not a state where people do this intense party identification. It’s like, ‘OK, what’s the right thing to do here?’”

“That is actually something our two districts have in common,” Burner joined in. “(There) is a tremendous number of people who think independently about who they are going to vote for and why.”