Five Signs Your Campaign Is Toast
As the midterm-election season winds down and voter attitudes harden, some races are too close to call. Others are painfully easy to call—the ones where campaign headquarters seem to be emitting chaos, disarray, and sometimes outright surrender. Here is NEWSWEEK's five-step self-diagnostic manual for candidates to tell whether they're toast.
Many politicians spend most of their time trying to raise money. When you start giving it away, it's bad news. In Ohio, Democrats hoped Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, a repeat loser in statewide races, might finally find his stride in the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. George Voinovich. But Fisher has never found his bearings against Republican Rob Portman; October polls have put him between 15 and 20 points back. With his campaign cash not doing much to help him, he apparently figured it must be good for something--so he paid for one last TV ad and then gave away his remaining funds to the Ohio Democratic Party to help shore up the House candidates and Gov. Ted Strickland, who trails in a much closer reelection contest with John Kasich. Want some insult to add to that injury? Fisher had only $100,000 left to give away.
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