In Virginia - Minorities Yes, Republicans No?

Matt Vespa has this piece at PJ Tatler praising the virtues of the New Model RNC Army campaign, now being deployed in Virginia.

“They gave him a communications plan, along with ways to execute outreach into the black, Latino, and Asian communities.  . . .  We are in communities we’ve never been in before . . . we have conducted both mainstream and ethnic media training efforts . . . The RNC has a total of seven paid staffers dedicated to engaging minority communities and have attended numerous events on behalf of the Republican Party. The RNC has also done significant paid print, radio, and TV advertising in ethnic media outlets.”

The plan seems heavy on racial identity politics.  What it lacks, perhaps, is getting Republicans and conservatives activated.

True, an anecdote does not a trend make, but here are some troubling facts.

I have voted in numerous Republican primaries in Virginia.

Number of pieces of direct mail, emails, telephone calls or door knocks I received from either the RNC, Republican Party of Virginia or the Cuccinelli campaign: Zero.

Perhaps they were too busy with ethnic media outlets.

Now, to be fair, I moved in early 2013 and thereafter changed my voter registration.

But that didn’t stop Democrats from hitting me with lots of literature and campaign contacts at my new address.  In fact, I received literature and calls from the Virginia Democratic Party, the McAuliffe campaign, and various lefty groups.

All they had to do is buy an updated voter list.

One side did it.  The other side apparently didn’t.

Remember that on Tuesday night if the results go badly for the GOP.

Outreach to people who never voted for a Republican won’t do much good when people who often do vote Republican are forgotten.

Let’s compare the failure to execute the run-up-the middle and simply get an updated list to contact me with what the Democrats have at their disposal.

A local election official told me that the Democrat party rejected a poll worker this fall as an insufficiently loyal democrat because the voter five years ago said in a telephone poll that they did not support the Democrat U.S. Senate nominee.

Think about that.  One side doesn’t mail a current voter list, while the other side has a database so powerful they are rejecting poll officials for subversive thoughts during the Bush administration.

It’s like Terry McAuliffe has the NSA on staff.  (By the way, the name of the databank is Catalist.)

Meanwhile, Republican consultants are too busy tripping over their bank accounts to play nice and cooperate to build a conservative response.

Let’s see how the Democrat-lite, ignore-the-base, watered down racial identity politics works on Tuesday for Virginia Republicans.  If  the GOP wins despite a 1990’s style ground game, I’ll gladly eat crow, and gladly accept campaign junk mail next year.