Students attend a discussion on strategic and tactical decisions made during the just-completed U.S. Senate election at an event called “After Virginia Votes,” hosted by the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at the Arlington Campus. Photo by Alexis Glenn
By Buzz McClain
The bruising, expensive and surprisingly close race for Virginia’s U.S. Senate seat that ended last week was dissected Tuesday by top campaign strategists for candidates Mark Warner (D) and Ed Gillespie (R) at George Mason University’s School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs on the Arlington Campus.
The capacity crowd of 270 George Mason students and Virginia voters at Mason’s Founders Hall, with another 65 listening via live streaming, were given access to two hours of “What were they thinking?” questioning by the school’s acting dean, Mark Rozell, moderator of the forum “After Virginia Votes.” David Hallock, senior advisor for the Warner winning campaign, and Paul Logan, communications director for Gillespie, shared the stage in an exclusive tête-á-tête co-hosted by the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) and sponsored by Verizon.
Rozell gave the strategists opportunities to remark on what devices used by their opponents gave them the most pause.
“The Enron ad,” Logan replied, referring to an often-aired TV spot highlighting Gillespie’s previous career as chief lobbyist for the energy company’s willful and corrupt bankruptcy. “We saw early on in our numbers that it was effective, and we had limited resources to respond to it.”
“The 97 percent [quote] that was part of every ad they ran,” Hallock countered, referencing a statistic highlighting Warner’s Senate voting record that rarely did not mirror that of President Obama. “We knew that would be the heart of their messaging.”
Strategists from the Mark Warner and Ed Gillespie campaigns David Hallock (r) and Paul Logan (l) provide insights into the strategic and tactical decisions made during the just-completed election at an event called “After Virginia Votes,” moderated by School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs Acting Dean Mark Rozell (center) at the Arlington Campus. Photo by Alexis Glenn
Hallock and Logan left any lingering animosity off the stage as they engaged in a candid and wide-ranging conversation about how incumbent Warner won by only 17,000 votes out of 2 million cast.
Rozell asked about the high drama of election night: how ballots cast hardly matched poll expectations; how outside political action committee spending influenced their plans; the impact on votes that went to a Libertarian candidate; and how current events affected the camps. These included the ongoing prosecution of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and the revelation that Warner had participated to some degree in a scandal involving a job offer to a state representative’s daughter.
The access project is a Richmond-based bipartisan nonprofit organization that brings transparency to Virginia politics by electronically posting information about politicians, their policies and their funding sources. It was the third time Mason and the Virginia Public Access Project have co-hosted the breakdown of a major state election.
“George Mason is the epicenter of Virginia’s population and a key location to bringing public policy-makers and decision-makers to this event,” said Albert Pollard, chair of the project. “As a public university, its mission perfectly parallels VPAP’s, which is to give tools to the public for making critical decisions.”
Political campaign studies continue at Mason’s Arlington Campus on Thursday, Nov. 20, at 5:30 p.m., when former Virginia congressman and current Mason rector Tom Davis takes a look at possible candidates for president in the first of a new series of forums leading up to the 2016 election.
For more information, contact Robert Guttman, director of the Center for Politics and Foreign Relations, at rguttman@gmu.edu.