Advisers for Democratic Senate Candidate Michelle Nunn (GA) warned that she might come off as “too liberal” and “not a real Georgian” and also laid out exactly how Nunn needed to approach key demographic groups to win the Senate race.
The documents, which seemed to be posted in December for a brief period of time, were reported by National Review on Monday.
One of the memos said that there is a “tremendous financial opportunity” to draw from in the Jewish community among fundraisers. But, the memo warned, “Michelle’s position on Israel will largely determine the level of support here.”
The documents also said that Asian Americans would need to be key fundraisers. The Asian American community was described as “very tight” and that people in that community strive “become citizens quickly.”
Strategists also said that there is a major opportunity to fundraise from people who are bisexual, transgender, or gay. The documents describe them as having “substantial resources.”
Also in the documents, Democratic Pollster Diane Feldman recommended working to increase voter turnout among Latinos and African Americans while looking to win about 30 percent of the white vote. The documents said that African Americans are a “critical” constituency for the Democratic base in Georgia.
The documents recommended that Nunn and her family appear in “rural settings with rural-oriented imagery” in order to fight the idea that Nunn “is an Atlanta-based candidate uninterested in, or unfamiliar with, the rural parts of the state.”
On policy positions, the documents anticipated that Nunn would be criticized on Healthcare and Obama, Gay Marriage, Guns, Cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and Syria.
The constituency outreach plan on guns, according to the documents, said that the campaign would “create messaging about Michelle Nunn’s moderate bona fides at a time when the Republican are likely to be making her appear like a liberal.”
The documents included a plan for attracting Republicans to Nunn. It centered around “identifying additional Republicans to be targeted and a plan for outreach.”
Some of the documents are fairly obvious and boilerplate. For instance, the campaign planned to monitor
“The Research staff will monitor the GOP primary debates and be prepared to highlight inaccuracies or politically relevant exchanges for the Communications staff,” one page of the memo said. “The staff will also prepare information for rapid-response press releases to be sent out from the party during or following the debate.”
Also notably, the campaign recommended highlighting Nunn’s work at the Points of Light Foundation, where she served as CEO, but said that she could be criticized for her time there by people claiming that the organization gave grants to “terrorists and “inmates.”
Read the documents here.
Nunn campaign manager Jeff DiSantis released a statement saying that the document was a “draft.”
Here’s the statement:
This was a draft of a document that was written eight months ago. Like all good plans, they change. But what hasn’t changed and is all the more clear today is that Michelle’s opponents are going to mischaracterize her work and her positions, and part of what we’ve always done is to prepare for the false things that are going to be said.
Michelle has always sought to run a campaign that brings people together and gets Washington focused on the real challenges the country faces. And that’s the kind of Senator she’ll be.
This post was updated.
No different than male conservative politicians in plaid shirts and bygone ideology. She is the best of the lot for obvious reasons.
Desperate times, desperate measures. The women in GA will see through the fog of Cuban cigars, bought on the black market, and the bourbon sucking constituency smoking them.
Another item from The “No Shit?!?” Files.
That’s what I thought. I was like, ‘you mean a politician has a strategy document? wow.’
And the story here is what? I see no scandal or expose. What candidate doesn’t go after the communities from which he or she expects support. It’s really pretty milquetoast. If this is all Nunn has to worry about, she’s just fine.