The Consultant Mafia

Don't let national consultants run a statewide campaign.

That's one of the lessons from a new book I just got done reading, "Crashing The Gate," by 2 left-leaning bloggers about how "ineffective, incompetent and antiquated the Democratic Party has become." There are many notable portions. But one part takes aim at the so-called Beltway Mafia -- when national consultants come in from out of town to run a statewide campaign.

The book cites Nancy Farmer's 2004 U.S. Senate campaign against Kit Bond as an example.
"Faced with an incumbent who was clearly going to raise three times as much, Farmer wasn't in the position to tell the party committee to leave her alone," authors Jerome Armstrong and Markos Zuniga write.

"So not only did the DSCC pick almost all the consultants for her campaign, they eventually forced significant changes in her campaign staff, including ousting her hand-picked campaign manager - the same one who had successfully managed Farmer's previous campaigns - in midstream and bringing in one of their own. Farmer lost to Bond by a 56-43 margin."

A possible lesson for the McCaskill campaign?