How Karen Bass prevailed against Rick Caruso’s $100-million campaign for the United States Senate
How Karen Bass prevailed against Rick Caruso’s $100-million campaign for the United States Senate
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has lost three House primaries to Republican incumbents since her election in 2013. In each district, the party has prevailed. But in a fourth district, the Democratic challenger, Karen Bass, a former Navy intelligence officer and attorney, won by a landslide.
In Missouri, a state Gillibrand represented for 16 years before she was elected governor, Republican Rep. Todd Akin was ousted in 2012 by Democrat Claire McCaskill. But Missouri Democratic operatives predicted that Akin would be defeated in a rematch this year by an even more vulnerable incumbent, Republican Sen. Roy Blunt.
How the Akin campaign was destroyed by Akin’s extremist supporters, and how a candidate with little money can run against a party’s incumbents
By Brian D. Johnson Illustration by Chris Strom April 1, 2014
Karen Bass, a former Navy intelligence officer and attorney from Lake Oswego, Ore., came to the Missouri Senate race with a simple idea. She would compete, and win, in a district where a long-time Republican member of Congress had lost his bid for re-election.
She had an idea that seemed to make sense—but, as she approached the end of her Senate campaign, she faced a harsh reality: that her approach was impractical.
By the time the Missouri primary was called, Bass had raised more than $200,000—in a district that was barely competitive and where Republicans were in the majority of government offices. And her campaign manager, Jim Henson, had more than $1 million in hand. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which supports Republican incumbents, had contributed just $100,000 to the winning campaign, on the condition they be kept out of office.
Despite the outsize firepower backing Akin, bass had been unable to close the gap before the August 7 primary. That day, Akin became the first Republican senator to announce his intentions to run for re-election. Bass found herself facing an opponent who not only had support from the R.N.C. and its allies in the party establishment, but was also backed by a long list of antiabortion groups, including the American Medical Association and the
