In many regards this campaign was worthy of its historical stature. Baldwin and her Republican opponent Josephine Musser held 28 joint appearances and debates in the 56-day general election campaign. Media coverage of the campaign was extensive and the candidates clearly articulated their policy views. Turnout was high-over 60 percent in some parts of the district-- and 49 percent district-wide. Perhaps most significantly, Baldwin's campaign energized the electorate in a manner rarely seen in electoral politics. Her grassroots field campaign was modeled on the strong parties of an earlier era, and it worked! In short, this appeared to be exactly the type of race promoted by the advocates of reforming campaign conduct.

Paradoxically, the campaign also epitomizes everything that is wrong with today's political campaigns: massive amounts of money (about $4.3 million spent by the candidates in the primary and general elections, a total including outside groups approaching $6 million) that required both candidates to spend substantial time "dialing for dollars" rather than talking to voters, floods of money spent by outside groups on soft-money negative ads, poll-driven messages that shied away from tough issues such as entitlement reform, and hard-hitting ads that turned off many voters.

David Welch, the media consultant for Jo Musser, summed up his frustration with her campaign when he said, "We could have won this race. We lost it more than Baldwin won it, but I give them credit for running a great campaign." While this race could not be characterized as an upset, given the district's underlying Democratic leanings, it is clearly an example of how campaign organization, grassroots effort, and a good campaign theme and message can make the difference in a campaign.

But turnout was the key. Pundits typically argue that turnout is crucial in midterm elections, and for once the pundits were right. The 49 percent turnout far exceeded expectations and certainly contributed to Baldwin's victory. But the gross turnout was not as important as the differential turnout in parts of the district. More than half of Madison voters turned out (52.9 percent), compared to 50.3 percent of the suburban voters, and only 42 percent of the rural voters. Given the relative strengths of the candidates in the city and rural areas, it is easy to see why turnout was so critical. Baldwin carried 65.9 percent of the Madison vote, 48.2 percent of the suburban vote, and only 43.5 percent of the rural vote. These numbers were not far from the goals initially established by the Musser campaign: they fell less than one percent short of the Madison goal, 2.2 percent short of the suburban goal, and 3.5 percent short of the rural goal. Thus, turnout was key, but Baldwin also ran somewhat stronger in the suburban and rural areas than projected. She actually carried a few of the suburbs, such as Middleton (Feingold's coattails helped here; it is his hometown), Monona, and Oregon (which she carried by two votes). She even won a few rural towns, such as Stoughton, Mount Horeb, Black Earth, and Mazomanie.

One Republican party insider pointed out that Musser was hurt by a confluence of five elections that turned out Democratic voters in Madison: Feingold (U.S. Senate), Erpenbach (state senate), Garvey (governor), Doyle (attorney general), and Baldwin. The first two were especially important because they were running against Republicans whom Democrats were especially wary of (Mark Neumann and Nancy Mistele). The problem for Musser was that her campaign did not anticipate the Democratic field effort and do anything to counter it.

There are several broader lessons from this campaign for campaign conduct and strategies. First, conventional wisdom holds that in competitive districts such as the Second District in Wisconsin, moderate candidates are better positioned than either liberals or conservatives. This should have been especially true in 1998, which has been dubbed "the year of the moderate." This bit of common wisdom was clearly rejected in the Second District. Jo Musser had the perfect mix of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism in the tradition of the popular incumbent, Scott Klug. Tammy Baldwin was probably the most liberal candidate in the nation who was running in a competitive district, yet she won.

The second bit of wisdom comes from Tammy Baldwin: don't watch TV if you are running for office. Baldwin said that she knew at the start of the campaign that there were going to be negative ads and that she would be able to maintain a better frame of mind if she did not see them. John Nichols, editorial page editor of the Capital Times, thought this was an important decision. "You could just see in the debates how personally Jo took the ads whereas they didn't bother Tammy. They didn't bother her because she hadn't seen them! When Jo complained about the ads during debates, the audience saw this as a continuation of the tit-for-tat battle that they were sick of, while Tammy was able to stay emotionally above the fray. If I were a political consultant, I would put this one in the playbook."

Third, it is essential to have clear lines of authority and communication among the candidate, campaign consultants, and campaign manager. The breakdown in the Musser campaign and the smoothly running Baldwin campaign provide vivid testimony to this point. The differences between the two cannot be dismissed because a winning campaign has an easier time maintaining harmony than a losing campaign. Throughout the entire campaign, internal polls showed this race to be a toss-up.

Finally, and most importantly, this campaign demonstrates that modern elections cannot ignore grassroots organization and get-out-the-vote efforts. In an era in which campaigns are increasingly waged on the airwaves, it is refreshing to note that an old-fashioned focus on "people power" can make a difference. I do not mean to imply that it is possible to return to the William Proxmire era of politics.¹ However, the lesson of the 1998 midterm elections may be that the pendulum had swung too far in the direction of television-based campaigns and it is time to put more effort into field organization and getting people to the polls. Jo Musser made precisely this point in assessing why she lost. "We forgot about the fundamentals. We have to get away from the formula-based, media campaigns and back to the grassroots." Perhaps a national trend in this direction could help arrest the slide in voter turnout and simultaneously restore confidence in our democratic process.

Notes

1. The only money the popular Wisconsin senator ever spent to get reelected was to pay for the filing fee; even when he was in office, he was a throw-back to an earlier time. He left office in 1989.