‘One of the worst campaigns’: Why Conor Lamb’s Senate campaign never took off
As early as 2020, Democrats in Pennsylvania were billing the expected U.S. Senate primary between Conor Lamb and John Fetterman as an epic clash between two titans: the clean-cut moderate “beauty” against the populist goateed “beast.”
What they got instead was an old-fashioned thumping that ended on Tuesday night with Fetterman routing Lamb – an outcome hardly in doubt for many months. The lieutenant governor walloped the second-term House member by a double-digit margin.
The primary that began with two lions, went out like a lamb.
Interviews with more than a dozen Democrats in Pennsylvania and those who have been involved in the race from afar largely boiled Lamb’s failure to launch down to a single foible: Hubris of his campaign.
It was hubris that gravely underestimated Fetterman and his resources from the start, misread the wishes of the Democratic base and refused to allow outside allies and even internal voices to pierce their campaign’s insular hierarchy.
“It’s one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen run,” said Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh-based Democratic strategist. “Strategically it’s been mind-boggling to watch this. They completely blew an opportunity…Conor should be the nominee and it’s the campaign’s fault.”
The Lamb team – led by Abby Nassif-Murphy and Coleman Lamb, the candidate’s brother – settled early on an electability argument, presenting Lamb’s three wins in a red southwestern Pennsylvania congressional district as compelling evidence he’d be the superior general election candidate.
But Fetterman, who jumped into the race six months ahead of Lamb and is now running his third statewide campaign, had more familiarity with voters across the commonwealth. A cluster of progressives view him as a cult-like figure for his support of Bernie Sanders in 2016, providing him a national pool of small donors.
The Pittsburgh-based Lamb had to play catch-up in a primary in which half of the votes would come out of the Philadelphia region.
“[Fetterman’s] elected statewide. How do you make an argument that guy’s not electable? Of course he’s electable, he’s been elected,” said Doc Sweitzer, a Philadelphia-based Democratic media consultant. “Hubris is the right word. I don’t know what they were thinking.”
Neither Murphy nor Coleman Lamb responded to emails seeking a response.
‘A classic super PAC blunder’
Meanwhile, a poll taken two weeks from the primary showed 39% of Democrats still had no opinion of Lamb, whose cautious centrism left some activists with the feeling he’d capitulate to Republicans at a moment they’re craving a fight.
“Conor Lamb, he’s the corporate Democrat. He’s a very attractive young man and he is conservative in his outlook and he just does not resonate with the individual voter the way John Fetterman does.” said Marcia Wilson, chair of the Adams County Democratic Committee in Gettysburg. “I think it was a little cheeky, if you will, to go up against John Fetterman.”
When Lamb started his Senate bid last summer, he was immediately forced to play catch-up to Fetterman financially, who ended up spending nearly $10 million more than Lamb during the entirety of the primary.
Penn Progress, a super PAC established to help Lamb close the cash gap, didn’t bring in the receipts many expected it to and spent around just $1.7 million. The entity was probably most remembered for an attack that went sideways. Its advertisement that inaccurately described Fetterman as a “self-described democratic socialist” was pulled off the air by at least one TV station and sparked considerable backlash that became counterproductive for Lamb.
“Those early attacks from the super PAC, it just turned so many people off,” said Adam Bonin, a Philadelphia attorney who has worked with Fetterman in the past but was unaffiliated in this contest. “A classic super PAC blunder attacking the guy on something that the guys who are funding the super PAC care about, rather than the voters.”
The super PAC halted its broadcast advertising at the beginning of May., according to Medium Buying, a tracker of political advertising.
Whereas the Fetterman campaign devoted $1.3 million to Facebook ads, Lamb’s team allocated just about $40,000 to the platform, according to data reviewed by McClatchyDC.
Kyle Tharp, the CEO of FWIW Media, a company that tracks digital trends in politics, said the Lamb campaign’s neglect of paid advertising on places like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube was a major red flag.
“It’s 2022, and ‘electability’ means getting the basics right when it comes to online fundraising, persuasion, and grassroots engagement. Lamb’s campaign chose to go a different route,” said Tharp.
Because Lamb was starting from such a significant polling deficit, outside observers believed that he needed to take the fight to Fetterman sooner and more consistently.
‘Never took the fight to Fetterman’
A 2013 incident in which Fetterman confronted a Black jogger with a shotgun was seen as a huge potential liability for the front-runner, particularly among Democratic primary voters who are more sensitive to racial injustices.
Mikus said he reviewed polling on the episode which showed how damaging it is to Fetterman’s image but noted that the controversy has never been litigated in a sustained advertising campaign.
“It’s political malpractice that they never understood they were behind. And two … they’ve never took the fight to Fetterman,” Mikus said of Lamb’s campaign.
Instead, the campaign appeared more preoccupied with securing and touting endorsements from elected officials, which critics see as an outdated campaign model.
Lamb, a telegenic military veteran and former federal prosecutor carrying familial political roots, embodied the precise resume of someone from Washington. Despite his Harvard degree, Fetterman looks more like someone you’d encounter outside a biker bar in Berwick.
“John connects like no other I have seen,” said Terry Noble, who chairs the rural caucus of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “Conor needed to show up a lot more and probably needed some blunder by John that never happened.”
Rich Fitzgerald, an Allegheny County executive who backed Lamb, complained that the current political atmosphere rewards media characters over people most qualified to achieve results.
“Often times the electorate goes to the outlandish: Donald Trump, AOC, Bernie Sanders. People that don’t do anything, but the media loves them and the media gives great content to them,” Fitzgerald said. “Pennsylvania is just a microcosm of what’s happening nationally.
“You end up with the lesser of two candidates and that’s unfortunate,” he added, noting that he would back the Democratic nominee in November.
But the Lamb team may have also miscalculated the ideological evolution of a party that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but is now frustrated by the lack of progress on his agenda in Washington.
Whereas Fetterman repeatedly put out statements expressing his displeasure with moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, many Pennsylvania Democrats saw Lamb as a potential replica of the West Virginian who has become a thorn in the side of the Biden administration.
Fetterman’s early advocacy for marijuana legalization and criminal justice reforms during his unsuccessful 2016 Senate bid also laid an early marker down to where the party was moving before it was popular.
Meanwhile, in the closing days of the race during a national TV interview, Lamb conveyed his core message to be protecting Social Security and Medicare, hardly a galvanizing issue for primary voters.
Still, many Democrats don’t think Tuesday’s result is necessarily a death knell for Lamb’s political career. At just 37, he has plenty of time ahead of him for him to rethink the strategic decisions of this campaign and imagine a future run for U.S. Senate or governor.
There’s a long list of politicians who have lost their first statewide race. Just ask Fetterman.
This story was originally published May 17, 2022 at 10:39 PM.
