2008 ILLINOIS CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 11

Electing a Pro-Choice Candidate in Anti-Choice Territory

Halvorson for Congress

Tough Terrain

Illinois 11 may not seem like the most natural target for a Democratic takeover in 2008. The Republican district stretches from the Chicago suburbs to the Indiana border, and all the way down into central Illinois. A mix of suburban and rural communities, IL-11 hadn't sent a Democrat to Congress in fourteen years. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry here by over seven points, and the outgoing Republican incumbent won re-election by ten points in the strongly-Democratic 2006 cycle.

Two Overriding Challenges

Illinois State Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson was heavily recruited to run for the seat. Halvorson brought a number of assets to the race, but she also faced some liabilities.Two among them were potentially disqualifying. First, she was pro-choice in a conservative district. Second, her opponent was a millionaire, self-financing his race — in the year that the Supreme Court threw out the Millionaire's Amendment, freeing him to dig deep into his pockets.

Setting the Terms of the Debate

From the campaign's start, we refused to be defined by social issues. Instead, we went on the offensive, determined to frame the issues at stake in the race in economic terms. We deployed Halvorson's biography to connect with voters' concerns in a personal way.

We then contrasted Halvorson's middle-class roots with our opponent's indifference to working class families. We also used Halvorson's reputation for toughness to demonstrate how she would stand up for families hit by the recession.

Once we established this frame for Halvorson, we used data lists to build a universe of "near-retirement voters" for a targeted Social Security message and went on the offensive, holding our opponent accountable for his words and actions while reinforcing Halvorson's core economic message.

The End Result

Debbie Halvorson won with 58% of the vote to her opponent's 35%, an incredible 20+ points margin in a district carried by George W. Bush.