Strategist: Braley needed ‘high-risk’ element in campaign

JOHNSTON - A leading strategist and consultant to Bruce Braley's unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign said he thinks the Democrat needed a more 'high-risk” element in his campaign.

Jeff Link made the observation Friday during the taping of Iowa Public Television's 'Iowa Press.”

Joni Ernst, a Republican state senator from Red Oak, defeated Braley, a Democratic U.S. House member from Waterloo, this week in the race for Iowa's open seat in the U.S. Senate. Ernst's eight-point victory over Braley was part of a national wave that led to Republicans gaining control of the Senate.

Joined by Republican strategist David Kochel in a retrospective on the U.S. Senate race for 'Iowa Press,” Link said Braley's campaign employed a 'low-risk” strategy in the general election. He said in hindsight that may have been a mistake.

'The other thing I've thought about is the way the two campaigns sort of approached things. Because Sen. Ernst was in this primary (election) and was in, really, pretty bad shape before March, they took a very high-risk strategy with the castration ad,” Link said, referring to a campaign ad in which Ernst said her experience castrating hogs on the farm will lead her to cut 'pork” spending in the federal government. 'You make an ad like that, it could either take off like a rocket, which it ended up doing, or it could be a huge disaster.

'The Braley campaign chose a different path. We didn't have a primary, so we didn't have any high-risk moments in the primary. And then we had a very low-risk strategy in the general election. We didn't try and make any moment in his life similar to the ad that Sen. Ernst did. Instead, we sort of went out methodically and talked about issues, and it turns out a high-risk strategy was necessary for Congressman Braley given the big Republican surge that we were up against.”

Link said he did not think the campaign was lost the moment a video surfaced showing Braley warning donors that if Republicans take the U.S. Senate that Sen. Chuck Grassley, 'a farmer from Iowa,” would become chairman of the Senate's Judiciary Committee. Rather, he said, Braley faced an uphill climb against voters' anti-federal government sentiment.

'I think this anti-Washington message really resonated with people. I think voters are frustrated with gridlock in Washington,” Link said. 'Congressman Braley, the only connection he had to Washington was the fact that he had worked there for eight years. For 24 years, he served in his community, was a volunteer, was a community activist, worked in a law firm. But it was his eight years of service is what Dave and the Ernst campaign focused on more than anything else, and that was a hard charge in this environment.”

Kochel insisted the race was not only about personality but also about the issues. He said Republicans just chose the right issues on which to campaign.

'The race was about issues. The race was about spending and debt,” Kochel said. 'I think some of the issues that the Democrats use in these elections, that playbook was tired this year. ... People don't walk around every day in their daily lives and just worry about that one issue. Jeff and the Democrats wanted to make it about personhood and Social Security and Agenda 21 and nullification and all these things that people don't really feel are important in their everyday lives.

'Joni was talking about the debt, she was talking about the budget, and she was talking about regulations and job creation. So it's not like she wasn't talking about issues.”