I do not doubt that we will come out of these recent events stronger and better than ever. Thanks.

Where is the love for us Clark people?

I say this as someone who was involved in the Coordinated Campaign in 2002, 2004, 2006 & 2008.

There have been many problems over the years and mostly around the personalities that worked at the State Party not the plans ( with a few exceptions ), so the desire for more input from the P.Cs et al is a good idea but the previous poster is right you can go “too far” in deciding things by a committee. Still, a little responsibility for the decisions made would be nice and review.

In 2002, we had the last true “coordinated” campaign in which there was no central power except Jim Pederson ( who paid for everything. literally, I am not kidding, everything! ) and you had a lot of competing interests fighting with the ADP staff caught in the middle trying to straddle and win an election.

In 2004, the Coordinated got taken over by a young man from the Kerry campaign and effectively ran a meritocracy of the ADP. But, not without reason. We spent the better part of 03 recruiting warm bodies for the P.C spots and we saw the disasater that was 04 in which about 75% of the P.C’s refused to even walk their districts. A great vacuum for someone to fill and fill they did with 64 campaign staffers and 47 offices in rural and urban Arizona. The nice thing about 04 is all those P.C’s I referred to never bothered to get their signatures again and most of what we see today are the results from that vacuum of power. Howard Dean should be credited for about 80% of that.

Then there was 2006… This began your professionalizing of the ADP. Professional staff. professional training, materials, message etc. Helps when you have an actual leader of the party and Jim Pederson running for Senate to pay for everything and a stream lined chain of command. Also leaves no room for input from the people …

Then there is 2008. Same idea, less money, no clear leader with the Guv out of town. Free for all, disorganization. All of the bad, none of the good.

The one thing that has persisted throughout all of these years though that has never been discussed is the Legislative strategy. Which to say is spend about 300k-500k on mailers. You design 10-15 and send the same 10-15 to every district, just change the name, district etc. It didn’t work in 2002 and yet we tried it again in 2004, 2006 and 2008. We lucked in 2006 with the blue wave and you had an active leader from Phil Gordon’s office steering the other more important parts like candidate recruitment, training, field support, etc etc. It may be time to retire the strategy and spend the 500k or more , better.

Now we face 2010 with a gubernatorial primary, 3 protect seats, and a fervor to win back the house, senate or both. Competing interests, but no Jim Pederson. So, thats the choice you face. How to fund, how to handle the competing interests. 2004, 2006 and 2008 will not be replayed again simply because of the power vacuum, so I would not “plan” to fix 2008, but to learn from 2002 instead.