I remember sorting through potential campaign songs with Dee Dee Myers in 1991 on the Jordan campaign. I can’t remember what we picked for that race now. But I remember how iconic “Don’t Stop” was in 1992, and I still think it has Dee Dee’s touch to it, even though I don’t know how they came up with that choice.

This blog post by Howard Wolfson gives more insight into the inner-workings of Clinton campaign than anything I have read.

“The selection of a presidential campaign song was deemed especially critical. A group was chosen, some for our musical tastes, others to act as censors.

Everyone had favorites, and every favorite had its detractors. We studied lyrics and performer biographies. We downloaded possibilities and listened. Some of us danced, while others sat and frowned.”

The selection of a campaign song is a small choice, but campaigns are made up of a thousand small choices, often times how you make a choice is more important than the choice itself. I believe this is one of those cases.

How did the Clinton campaign decide? Well not to use a sports metaphor but they punted:

“To break the stalemate, we sponsored an online contest for supporters and gave them options to choose from. The votes and commentaries rolled in. Celine Dion’s “You and I” was selected, a decision I jokingly predicted would signal the end of the campaign.

Sadly, my prediction proved correct.”

We are moving a little slow today and we are still waiting on some final results but here is story about one of our ballot measure clients.

11-05) 00:26 PST SAN FRANCISCO — Ballot measures to push San Francisco toward running its own public power system have failed 11 times over nearly a century, and on Tuesday voters rejected the idea again.

Proposition H would have authorized a feasibility study of public power and set clean energy mandates culminating in all of the city’s electricity coming from renewable sources by 2040.

With 98.5 percent of the precincts counted, 41 percent of voters were in favor of the move toward public power and 59 percent were opposed.

Supporters called it an important reform that would have put the city in charge of its own power rather than relying on profit-driven Pacific Gas and Electric Co. They also argued it would have put San Francisco at the forefront of fighting global warming.

Opponents maintained the city has more important priorities in these tough economic times and that it would have been foolish to entrust city leaders with running a power system when they can’t fill potholes or get Muni running on time. They called the clean energy part of the measure just feel-good language that had little to do with the meat of the plan.

“We had a campaign that asked voters to invest time in reading the measure that had been presented to them by the politicians and analyze it for themselves,” said Eric Jaye, spokesman for the No on H campaign.

“Moving forward, the intention is to reach out to supporters and opponents and work together toward the shared goal, which is to make sure San Francisco has reliable and renewable power available,” he added.

The campaign was hard-fought by both sides. PG&E spent more than $10 million to stop the measure, financing TV ads and filling voters’ mailboxes with leaflets warning passage of Prop. H would be devastating to the city’s bottom line.

With far less money to spend, the Yes on H campaign got creative by, for example, having the band Cake perform at a benefit concert, installing fake wind turbines in front of PG&E offices and airing a TV ad during Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report.”

Julian Davis, spokesman for the Yes on H campaign, said he is pleased with the campaign’s showing considering the huge amount of money spent to defeat it.

“It wasn’t just an uphill battle - it was like trying to scale a cliff face,” he said. “We’re going to continue to fight for clean energy - one way or another, we’ve got to do it.”

This was the 12th time since the 1920s that San Franciscans have voted on public power measures. In 2001, a public power measure lost by just 500 votes, and uncounted ballots were discovered weeks later. Ballot box lids were later found floating in the bay.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian took up the cause in the 1960s and has been crusading for public power ever since. Yet Prop. garnered a broader array of support than just the readers of the left-leaning weekly newspaper.

Eight of the 11 supervisors, the San Francisco Democratic Party, the Sierra Club, the San Francisco League of Conservation Voters, Service Employees International Union and other groups endorsed the measure this year. Supporters said a public system would pay for itself over time, and that ratepayers would actually see their bills go down.

Opposing the measure were Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Mayor Gavin Newsom, three supervisors and the Chamber of Commerce. They called it a thinly veiled takeover of PG&E, arguing the city would have to spend at least $4 billion to buy the utility company’s operations and assets, and that consumers would see their rates go up under a public power system.

PG&E received 11.4 percent of its power from renewable resources last year, and the California Public Utilities Commission says it and other investor-owned utilities in the state are unlikely to make a state deadline for reaching 20 percent by the end of 2010.

With just three days until the election I wanted to point out that the San Francisco Chronicle has endorsed Carmen Chu and Sue Lee for Supervisor in San Francisco.

District One (Richmond): Sue Lee. Experience and judgment count. Lee has served on the Planning Commission, worked for three mayors and staffed a neighborhood center. A Richmond District native, she knows the turf. Her outlook and temperament match this neighborhood which demands better Muni, clean streets and well-kept parks. Another impressive candidate in the race is Fidel Gakuba, a political newcomer who exudes poise, practicality and a command of the issues.

District Four (Sunset) Carmen Chu. Appointed to the seat vacated by the disgraced Ed Jew, Chu is obliged to run for election after only 14 months on the job. She has proved a quick study on the budget and is unafraid to buck the board’s “progressive” majority. She’s done this without the rancor and sharp words that have dimmed the reputation of the board. Chu has earned a full term.

With just three days to go until the November 4, 2008 election I thought I would share with you Marc Blumenthal’s take on polls, tightening and predicting an out-come on Tuesday.

The most important thing to keep in mind about pre-election polls is that they come with random variability built-in. That mostly predictable variation — known to most of us as “the margin of error’ — comes from interviewing what we hope amounts to a random sample of likely voters rather than everyone that casts a ballot. So, if you look at a batch of new polls every day, the law of random chance guarantees that some polls will show your favorite candidate doing a little better and some will show that candidate doing a little worse. Moreover, one poll in twenty should produce, by chance alone, an odd result that falls outside of the reported margin of error (since that statistic is typically based on a 95% level of statistical confidence).

Both the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign are interested in keeping the “it is a close race” story line moving. McCain because he needs to keep his base from losing hope and Obama because complacence is a real concern.

In less than 48 hours this will all be in the hands of voters and all of the spinning and persuading will be at an end. At least until the McCain campaign starts to explain why they lost. You will hear a lot about this being a bad environment for Republicans, about Obama’s spending and media bias. They will say nearly anything to distract this from what this will be, the repudiation of the Republican brand by a majority of the American people.

The San Francisco Examiner weighs in on the race out in District 4.

Still sore about snub, Dudum takes on Chu

SAN FRANCISCO – Political corruption in District 4 led to the appointment of a young political newcomer to represent the residents of the Sunset district, but that youthfulness is now being turned against the incumbent.
Of the three races for a seat on the Board of Supervisors with an incumbent running, District 4 is considered the closest. Seven seats are up for grabs this November.

The races will decide the political flavor of the Board of Supervisors for years to come, and possibly move what has been a progressive board during the last eight years toward a more moderate position, aligned closer with Mayor Gavin Newsom.
The Sunset has 37,580 registered voters and a large Chinese population that historically votes moderate.
Newsom appointed newcomer Carmen Chu to the seat when Ed Jew resigned amid public-corruption charges to which he pleaded guilty Friday.

Businessman Ron Dudum lost in the November 2006 election to Jew by about 50 votes and remains critical of Newsom for not appointing him instead of Chu.

Dudum, 52, says his experience and his longtime Sunset residency make him best suited for the job.
His campaign volunteers are calling residents to specifically point out that Chu is young and was born in Los Angeles.
Chu, 30, dismisses the charges.

“I don’t have any say where I was born or where my parents chose to raise me,” Chu said. “I do choose where I plan to have my future. [The Sunset is] a place where I am invested.”

Chu said her three years in Newsom’s budget office have provided her with more knowledge of city dollars than her challengers.
Dudum said he would bring a more independent voice to the board and look out for middle-class interests.
On Oct. 8, Chu’s campaign disclosure showed she raised $180,336, spent $139,362 and had $28,558 remaining to spend.
As of Sept. 30, Dudum had raised $48,979 and had received about $50,000 in public-finance dollars from The City. He reported having about $46,000 left to spend.

The third candidate in the race, Dave Ferguson, has not raised a significant amount of money.

From the Reno Gazette Journal

Democrats now outnumber Republicans in Washoe County for the first time since 1978, the Washoe County registrar Dan Burk confirmed this afternoon.

As of 2:45 p.m., Democrats had 958 more registered voters than Republicans in Washoe County. However, that number will continue to change over the next several days as registrar officials input new voter registrations. The office is still working through a backlog of applications turned in through registration drives. And prospective voters are reportedly lined up out the door to register this afternoon. Tomorrow is the deadline to register in person and is expected to be a busy day.

So I could not sleep the other night and was surfing the Internet when I came across an interesting study posted on DailyKos. It is a breakdown of the television buys of the McCain and Obama campaign. The number that stood out to me is McCain is spending $1,530,000 on national television. Now some of this time will air in battleground states but a huge chunk of this airs in states that have long ago been taken off the map for either candidate, places like California and Texas.

For comparison the Obama campaign is spending $307,000 on national television. So you have to wonder why McCain’s campaign is dumping 5 times as much money into this type of buy than the Obama campaign. Really only one reason occurs to me why and that is to prop up his national polling numbers. By keeping the margin reasonable in places like California and keeping those margins large in places like Texas the McCain campaign is inflating his national polling numbers.

Why does he care? Because with the slipping poll numbers in battleground states and in traditional Republican states like Virginia and North Carolina, McCain could see his base collapse if he slipped below 40%. This would effect fund raising for the RNC and simply destroy down ticket races.

Over the years yard and window signs have been a constant issue. Who has the most? What does it mean? And how do we get more up? Recently the Obama campaign has received some grief about their sign program in places like Northern Virginia.

Like anything in a campaign, signs are a tactic that should be implemented to achieve a strategic goal. Signs have a few purposes 1) to improve name identification of a candidate 2) to demonstrate a base of support and give a campaign credibility 3) annoy and demoralize your opposition and motivate your supporters.

When running the Governor of Oregon’s reelection campaign we did not put a major emphasis on signs. Because as a sitting governor he had solid name identification, he had a strong base of support and we chose that annoying our opponents could be achieved through other means. Our opponent was obsessed with signs but that obsession did not get him elected.

While managing Gavin Newsom’s first mayoral campaign we faced Matt Gonzalez who implemented perhaps the largest sign campaign in City history. But when it came to actually driving turnout and winning the campaign, the Gonzalez campaign fell short.

But in smaller races and down ticket efforts, signs can have a huge impact on a race. Name identification can be a deciding factor when running for the School Board, Board of Supervisors, City Council or even State Assembly.

So just like television, phone banks, direct mail and other communications tools; signs are just a tactic.

I wanted to make sure you saw today’s article on the race for San Francisco Supervisor District 1.

While it is at the end of the story I particularly liked this:

“You need to be well rounded - you need to understand what it takes to get things done,” she said. “People are very tired of the bickering and the posturing. They just want to get the problem solved.”

That sounds good to Kendra Lock, who has lived in the Inner Richmond since 1991 and owns a boutique in the neighborhood. She said street signs and even some houses have been marred with graffiti, and her family has suffered from five car break-ins in recent months.

As for a supervisor, she wants someone with “more connections and a bigger voice.”

“We’ve been ignored by City Hall,” she said.

Melissa Griffin from the San Francisco Examiner writes an interesting column on politics in San Francisco, including watching Board of Supervisor meetings so you don’t have to. I enjoy her column it is kind of like getting the notes of the most organized student in class. This week she posts on Proposition V, the resolution to keep JROTC.

So I did three years of JROTC in High School, until it interfered with my skiing schedule, seriously that is why I dropped out, and never once did I feel any pressure to join the military. Now my father was career military so I probable had enough influence if I was going to choose that path.

But here was the thing about JROTC it was really a great program. We learned navigation, public speaking and leadership principles. Of the things that I learned in High School, the ability to navigate with a map and compass is still very useful. The ability to identify the gracilis muscle in a frog has proven less useful over the years.

Vote Yes on V.