NC DU'ers: Was Erskine Bowles a good Senate Candidate?

A political junke/friend of mine in NC said that Bowles turned out to be a disaster as a candidate. He ran a pretty good race, but he was vulnerable on too many issues and didn't do well among Western NC'ers.

He said that Rep. Bob Etheridge would have been a better nominee against Bowles, and they couldn't have exploited past connections with Clinton.

Any thoughts?

...Burr had better backup and a better-run campaign. He used Liddy Dole who is popular here in NC even though we have no idea what she's doing in DC; he effectively killed Bowles' attacks on his horrible voting record by trotting out his sister, a breast cancer survivor; and he seems to have used anti-Clinton sentiment to some effect, though it's hard to tell how much it mattered.

I think it came down to looks. As much as I hate to say it - because it really shouldn't matter - facts are facts. Burr is ruggedly handsome; Bowles looks like that kid who always has a note to get out of P.E. I never thought he had a chance.

He was a little better than OK. He got more votes in NC than Kerry. I too hate to say this, but I think looks did come into play. Burr does look rugged. Bowles could have lost those silly glases and picked up a few percentage points. I know, I know -- entirely superficial, but I honestly think it had an effect.

Appearances are not everything but they are important.

Bowles didn't have a lot going for him among the general (read: non-political junkie) public. His Clinton association definitely hurt him among conservatives & Clinton haters, of whom there are still quite a few. He didn't really bring a lot to the table to energize folks, no charisma, no "vision thing"... personally, I'd have preferred to see Elaine Marshall go up against Queen Elizabeth in '02, and think an Etheridge-Burr matchup would have been successful, although Bobby Etheridge is too conservative for my own taste. Of course, Blue-Burr would have been a good one, too.

Feel free to flame-away, but it's simple reality.

I suppose I would get flamed by pukes if I said the same thing (In reverse, of course) about some of their senators from the northeast.

Etheridge is definitely more conservative. But I don't think Bowles is that far left. He just got played that way - as Etheridge probably would have been as well.

The Burr ads (and there were a ton of them) all blamed Bowles for the terrorist attacks and for cutting the military's budgets. Guess what? Bowles had nothing to do with these things since he wasn't a member of Congress or the Senate. Burr was. But it worked very well.

It doesn't matter who we put up against a Republican in North Carolina. If we don't start working on improving our image and attacking the image of the "moral" GOP we will lose.

I think that reframing is probably the best tool we have right now. We need to start a campaign of letters to the editors in all the small and local papers in the red states to try to influence the way people see the two parties by reframing the debate in terms more favorable to us.

I live here and will gladly write and mail letters and opinion pieces. But we need to use a page from the GOP playbook and we need to all be on the same page. For example, if we are trying to reframe the "moral values" issue, then everyone here needs to stick to that issue for a week. Then we can move on to another subject.

That's why you see the GOP talking heads (most of whom are from conservative "think tanks," by the way) all talking about the same thing, no matter what channel you watch on Sunday mornings. They are very organized. We need to become organized in this as well.

Maybe our candidates in similar states need to be "Less Clintonized" than "Less Liberal"?

This is a tough state for us, but I was shocked at how close (and for how long) this race was.

He had a legitimate shot at victory.

Could there have been a better candidate? Sure... if the Governor wanted to give up his seat - and why would he do that? Otherwise, I suspect Bowles was our best shot.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

How do I get that beer to come through my screen?

I offer the following:

1) He didn't learn from the mistakes of his 2002 candidacy. His campaign was run out of Charlotte. While this isn't bad, per se- we've learned from the Gantt/Helms race that a Charlotte dominated campaign with limited statewide reach doesn't work. Erskine apparently didn't learn that lesson from Gantt, and unfortunately, didn't build a statewide apparatus necessary to make him a viable candidate. and then he repeated the same mistakes in 2004

2) He didn't fight back. When Richard Burr tied Bowles to Clinton, Bowles was silent. The Burr commercials ran and ran... and ran. If Bowles was so adamant about not wanting to talk about the Clinton years, he shouldn't have run in the first place. Either time. (I personally see a parallel here between Erskine's initial non-response to Burr's negative campaigning and Kerry's initial deafening silence on the swift boat crap.)

3) Visibility. (Or lack thereof.) Where were the yard signs? Oh, right. There weren’t enough made. And the bumper stickers- why was it next to impossible to get a hold of any of them in large enough quantities to supply local democratic party headquarters needs? Where was the visibility? Maybe it was in Charlotte? (See point #1) Burr signs were EVERYWHERE.

4)He really had no base. The rallying cry was “Save John Edwards’ seat.” I haven’t heard anyone who was really excited by Erskine, but maybe there were some… His positions were republican like, and uninspired. (and uninspiring.)

I agree that Bob Etheridge would have been a better candidate. He's much more plugged into the party machine, and would have made better use of the resources that he had access to. He's a smart politician, and this is what we should have been looking for as the democratic senate candidate from North Carolina.

rightwing fever. It didn't matter who we ran.

but our NC Senate and General Assembly gained seats for the Democrat party?

:hi:
Also, NC elected an openly gay democrat to the state senate. And other liberals were able to pick up seats.

The Repug talked just like a cheap televangelist. Bowles made a lot of sense. But Bowles MUST GET A DIFFERENT PAIR OF GLASSES. It sounds ridiculous, but he DID look geeky. When combined with his Southern soft-spokenness, he just didn't come off as "dynamic" as Mister Televangelist (though, obviously, his answers to the questions were superior!).

And, as we know, something as stupid as "looking French" can be played to great advantage by the Repugs.

Bowles and his family have done great things for people in need -- founded all sorts of nonprofits (Bowles' sister and father (I think) died of Lou Gehrig's disease, so they've established foundations for research etc.). His father founded some sort of reseach facility dealing with the genetic causes of alcoholism.

Did you know that, when Bowles was Clinton's chief of staff, he took a salary of only ONE DOLLAR? Compare that kind of integrity with the Halliburton/Enron brand of public service we've got in the White House these days!

Bowles -- great guy, great public servant. But, as I watched that debate, I could just SEE how the Repugs were gonna run right over him.

but he needed to be a great one. He did blow the ad war (in particular the utter hypocracy of Burr using Guiliani given Guliani's marriage). But he did significantly better than Kerry did.

They got worse.

At least Jesse Helms cared for the rednecks and racists. Burr doesn't even care about them. It's all or nothing for big business with Richard Burr.

He's the biggest crook in DC.

His campaign line was, "Of course I voted with the President 90% of the time, but that's because he's right 90% of the time."

Needless to say, I loathe and despise Burr even more than I do Bush and Cheney, and that's a lot!

As for Bowles, I told everyone back in March and all summer long when he was leading in the poles by 10%, that the race would substantially tighten near or after the debates. The more the GOP advertised Burr who "looks like" a Senator, the more Bowles who "looks like a geek" would go down in the polls because, it's not a coincidence that the best looking candidate wins most of the time, and in Bowles' case, the candidate who looks like a human being wins most of the time (E. Dole, R. Burr).

In a made for television era, Bowles will lose every time.

He was obviously the better choice, but people are too stupid to make wise choices based on anything but image.

Bowles should have run on "intelligent and creative ideas in difficult times" and played to his nerdy image. Use his nerdy image as an assest instead of running away from Bill Clinton..."I'm a different kind of democrat", with all of the desperation in the world in his voice.

Yeah, Bowles was a terrible candidate.

A better Senate Candidate would have been David Price, not Bob Etheridge: http://price.house.gov/

You look at Price's biography and you see the type of Democrat who can easily win in the south. He could have easily beaten Burr.

"I voted with the President 95% of the time...."

I agree that Bowles should have countered the clinton ads much sooner