RK ARCHIVE - Andy Hurst, Looking BackGÇªand Forward

GÇÿTis the season to look back and reflect on the year gone by GÇô and look forward to the next year. One of the pleasant surprises of 2006 for Northern Virginians was the aggressive, upbeat, insurgent campaign of Andy Hurst against Rep. Tom Davis in the 11th District. Although Andy Hurst fell short of unseating Davis, his David vs. Goliath campaign inspired many GÇô while scaring Davis into spending about $3 million on endless mailings and robo-calls.

I recently had a conversation with Andy Hurst to discuss his experiences in the campaign. HereGÇÖs what he said:

I asked him how he found the courage to run against a 12-year incumbent and political heavyweight like Tom Davis. First of all, Hurst said that, as a lawyer, he was used to people attacking and insulting him, which can be one of the hardest things for a new candidate to handle. Some people had warned him that Davis is known for retaliating against those who oppose him, but as a partner in his own law firm, Hurst felt fairly secure from DavisGÇÖs clutches.

He says that many career politicians decline to run against Davis because the loyalty of most of Northern VirginiaGÇÖs developers and business community to Davis makes it hard for his challengers to raise money. Whereas some career politicians seemed afraid to put their careers on the line to challenge Davis, Hurst felt like he had nothing to lose.
Hurst was motivated to run because of his concern about the direction of the country, particularly on issues of corruption. He said that his campaign was worthwhile to the extent that he made people more aware of and concerned about these issues. Although he was running to win, he believes that his run may make Davis a better public official by forcing Davis to be more open and honest in his dealings from now on. He believes that, regardless, DavisGÇÖs days are numbered as Fairfax County grows more Democratic and Virginia Democrats become stronger, bolder and more organized.

He did, by the way, have a few compliments for Davis, calling him a very impressive politician and a very hard worker, who spends many hours going around the district and the state, meeting constituents, cultivating allies, and fundraising.

The biggest lesson for Hurst was that when youGÇÖre running a campaign, itGÇÖs a team effort, and the candidate is not necessarily the most important part of the team. He was very encouraged to find out how many people came out of the woodwork to support him GÇô he never felt that he was alone in his journey. The most enjoyable part of the campaign for him was meeting people and making new friends. He also enjoyed participating in debates. He was less excited about fundraising.

His biggest disappointment was finding out how little time campaigns allow the candidate to really delve into, and talk about, the issues. With the voters and the media, you only have a few seconds to give your sound bite, and the campaigns push you to do events and fundraising, leaving little time to focus on the issues. He said that campaigning also takes up an enormous amount of time and is a bad lifestyle in which you have to eat on the run and donGÇÖt get much sleep. By the end he was ready for it to be over; but looking back, he thinks it was a great life experience.

Despite Davis spending some $3 million on the race and showering the district with negative flyers against him, Hurst still motivated 100,000 people to vote against Davis (more than any other House challenger in Virginia) and punctured DavisGÇÖs myth of invulnerability. Hurst won the vast majority of Democratic votes in the district but lost among Republicans and independents.

Hurst said that after he ran better than expected, he heard from many Democratic party leaders GÇô more than he had heard from while he was running! He said that they encouraged him to run for other positions, such as the state legislature, but that he declined to do so. Hurst said that he ran for U.S. Congress out of his concerns for national issues, and not because he has any desire to be a career politician and GÇ£work his way up.GÇ¥ He said that he may or may not run for Congress in GÇÖ08 depending upon whether he feels inspired about running at that time.

In the meantime, he is going to focus on helping other Democratic candidates win in 2007, such as Chap Petersen, who was very helpful and supportive of his campaign. He will also be supporting his preferred candidate for president, John Edwards, who first motivated him to get seriously involved with politics, encouraged him to run for Congress and helped him raise money GÇô and who Hurst thinks will do very well in the 2008 presidential race.

Finally, needless to say, Hurst is once again enjoying having the time to focus on his family and his law career.

LetGÇÖs close out the year with thanks to those who, like Andy Hurst, had the courage in 2006 to challenge the Republican establishment. Thank you, Andy, for stepping up to the plate to challenge an entrenched Republican congressman, and giving him a run for his (millions of dollars worth of) money. ItGÇÖs an inspiration to all of us to get out there, take some risks and stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone, in order to stand up and fight for what's right.

Comments

Three cheers for Andy Hurst! (demnan - 12/28/2006 11:17:13 AM)

One of the best candidates I've seen for that Congressional seat. I hope he runs again. The llth District is really a Democratic seat, we need to get it back.

Andy is one of the most personable people I ever met in politics. He has a personal warmth and enthusiasm and joy in the dialog. He also does have many personal and professional associates who regard him highly. His endorsement from Governor Kaine was awesome!

Run, Andy, run! I'll see you on the campaign for Edwards soon.

Ps. You still owe me dinner!

Issues v, Fundraising (Teddy - 12/28/2006 11:44:28 AM)

Andy was a terrific candidate and would have made an outstanding Congressman. Not only does he deserve the thanks of every thinking Virginian for defining the issues and running, but I truly hope he runs against Davis again, and beats him, as he can now he has name recognition.

Andy also raised a couple of very important points: the difficulty of truly defining and speaking to the issues in today's sound-bite oriented mass media world, and the time constraints of having to do endless fund raising rather than do on-the-ground campaigning on the issues. The problem is that the system today is saturated with money, the cost of campaigning has put it beyond the reach of any but the wealthy or those who pander to big money mostly corporate interests. We MUST get money out of the equation, and soon, or our democratic system will finally be overwhelmed forever by the power of those with the money.

Some ideas for eliminating the need for huge dollars include restricting political donations to those who live in the relevant district, government funding of elections and of campaigns with instant equivalent donations of public money to any candidate whose opponent spends money beyond that provided by the government; free (to the candidate) television ads for the campaigns, which means no ads allowed by any group outside the campaign; taking redistricting out of the hands of politicians and giving it to a nonpartisan group like demographers, thus eliminating "safe" districts, and so on. Shorter campaigns would help, too.

Some of these ideas are already being tried out in different states. The only real answer, though, is for a disgusted public to insist on a system that severely restricts the weight of money at the same time they demand that candidates run on and discuss issues rather than plumping emotional or negative non-issues.

Great Run for Andy..... (bladerunner - 12/28/2006 3:59:05 PM)

Andy and his gang ran an outstanding campaign. A tough one without the Tom Davis type funds--but that's Andy's stick. Nobody begged him to get in at the beginning--but people soon found out that he was a Uniter not a divider and he's easy to get in a foxhole with.

I think he's right to not be over eager to run again, because the quality of life for a politicians family is not good, and hard to sustain over the long run--especially one with younger kids. Andy's a family man!! That being said, if he does decide to run again, I am sure he'll have thought it over quite carefully. Hats off to Andy Hurst and his family.

Andy "right candidate at the right time" (totallynext - 12/28/2006 4:07:55 PM)

The mentality of many out there that Andy's pursuit for Congressional office should be weighted on wheather or not if Gerry Connelly is going to run is a bunch of crap!

If Connelly had the guts he would have ran now - he choose to take the easy way out and run when he would not be supposedly opposed by Davis.

Andy had the strenght, the beginning of a great political foundation, and the ability to walk into the 2008 election cycle with 44% of the vote from $300k of campaign dollars.

In 2008 he will have the Presidential coat tails and name recognition.

Here is an interesting tidbit - why did this not come up in the campaign that Davis annoighted Rev Moon as the messiah in the halls of Congress. Talk about crazy - this should have been on every piece of political literature from the National, State and Local pieces. But once again we let it go by.

dailykos http://www.dailykos....

Reverend Moon is no-touch (Teddy - 12/28/2006 6:14:28 PM)

Moon has poured money (much of which supposedly comes from the drug trade and other illegal businesses) into American politics, he owns the Washington Times and has enormous connections throughout the conservative cabal. Professional politicians are scared spitless of him, and are afraid to touch him in any way, since doing so would bring down the wrath of God, not to mention that uncovering his shenanigans would result in howls that you are attacking religion and Christianity, etc etc. That deification ceremony in the House Office Building was a pretty outrageous event, a combination of hilarious and frightening, but it went almost completely unreported--- just another example of Moon's immunity.

Good point, but... (bladerunner - 12/28/2006 5:59:04 PM)

There are a ton of things that Davis did that could have been picked up by the press. The Hurst campaign tried to get out things like the Terry Schiavo supeana, and other things that showed that Davis is not a moderate. But the Washington Post had made up their minds that Davis was their man and wasn't going to print anything bad about him. The one article they did, on August 1st had absolutely no follow up, none, zippo. And frankly it was a big ethical deal.

Also, and know one really goes here these days in politics but it has been said that Davis had a "close" relationship with Jean Marie Devolties long before it was over with his first wife--sorry but I don't buy that everyone does that so it's okay. Obviously the right wingers didn't buy it from Clinton.

Propping up the incumbents (Kindler - 12/28/2006 8:22:36 PM)

The Post unquestionably favors Tom Davis, and they help him by constantly labelling him a "moderate" despite the many actions Davis has taken to help the right wing consolidate its power.

IMHO, the Post in general favors local incumbents so as to avoid creating any bumps in the cozy relationships they enjoy with their sources. As someone pointed out, they endorsed Moran, Wolf and Davis, despite the wide range in ideology among those three.

Hurst is for real; WaPo, not so much (Andrea Chamblee - 12/29/2006 2:19:26 AM)

A series about corruption that prevented the Government Reform Committee from perfoming oversight was the subject of several Post articles. Tom Davis is the perpetrator of the fraud discussed in the stories, yet Davis escapes almost unnamed. The stories are linked through their authors here, Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow.

The first article discussed Davisâ€™s frauds prominently, but it appeared on a summer Friday before the July Fourth weekend, as if the Post were ashamed of the discoveries. As you might expect from the timing, the story did not get the attention it deserved.

Later articles did not name Davis, and also appeared when it was likely to be ignored; the next one on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

The story Dec 6 mentioned incoming chair Waxman but not outgoing chair Davis. One quoted Christopher Shays, a subcommittee chair from Connecticut, but inexplicably did not name the actual Committee Chair, a WaPo local!

The most recent article appeared on Christmas Day, again sure to be ignored.

If you doubt the Post would stoop to protectionism to keep its access journalism, you need only note the Bob Woodward gave himself a front page story this week on how President Ford told him two years - and 2,000 dead soldiers - ago that the Iraq War was a mistake. Like the secret prisons and the leak of Valarie Plame, Woodward protects us from news about the way our democracy functions so he can ... what? Get more access to more "secret" news? (And would anyone other than Woodward be able to justify a front page story on a two-year-old pronouncememt of something everyone knows by now?)

Anyone who feels this protection is unworthy of the paper should write to Post Ombudsman Debroah Howell or letters@washpost.com ,or both.

For those of you lucky enough to hit the Birchmere Wed or Thurs, we got to hear "This Time It's for Real," a song I lobbied the Hurst campaign to adopt as its theme:

Baby, you can't slow me down
I've come too far to ever turn back now
I've spent my whole life working
Working so hard for it, yes I did

Baby, I changed the odds today
Gonna push the scales, baby, till they tilt my way
Pass that bottle, deal the cards
'Cause I ain't waiting no more, no more
Baby, this time it's for real.

Thanks Andy (Shawn - 12/29/2006 10:59:28 AM)

Let me join the praise for Andy and his campaign team. They worked hard and did a lot to build up the Democratic party in the 11th. He and his campaign can correctly state that, if it were not for their combined efforts Jim Webb would not be "Senator-Elect Webb" today.

With modest expenditures (my review shows $3.24 per vote for Hurst vs. $21.73 per vote for Davis) Andy and Virginia's 11th CD Democrats have moved the goal posts. Every contributor of their vote, their time, their talents, and/or their treasures to the campaign got and excellent "return-on-investment"

My very best wishes to Andy, his family, his campaign team and all the Democrats that supported him in 2006! May each of you enjoy a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!

Shawn