The state Senate candidate stays committed, even if his party doesn’t.
By Jack Firneno
Wire Editor
The 50 or so people at a fundraiser in the upstairs bar at Maxwell’s on Main last Thursday in Doylestown were just enough to nearly fill the room. The cost of admission was approximately $20 a head and there were T-shirts for sale at the same price.
The event was for Steve Cickay, the Democrat running against incumbent Chuck McIlhinney for the 10th Senatorial District. It’s his first foray into politics — after decades of government work he’s finally able to run for office — and while he’s a relative unknown, the people at the fundraiser are already strongly behind him.
“Steve is an unbelievably accomplished individual who I know will work his guts out for us,” said supporter Neil Samuels. “This guy’s not going anywhere.”
There’s no doubt Cickay works hard: he campaigned door-to-door all through the rough winter, constantly writes letters to the editor for various local publications and is hands-on at phone banks and charity races.
But elbow grease alone may not be enough. It takes a lot of money to win a political campaign, even a state Senate seat and especially as a newcomer against an incumbent.
The challenge is so great, apparently, that even members of Cickay’s own party doubt he can win.
With gubernatorial candidate Wolf now safely in the lead, and the Senate currently split with 27 Republicans and 23 Democrats, the Democrats can seize control of the Senate if they can win two seats from the opposing party.
The 10th District race is one of the few the party is confident it can win. Now that the stakes are higher, reports leaked last week that state Democrats have been pressuring Cickay to bow out of the race.
In his place would be Shaughnessy Naughton, who lost the 8th Congressional District primary to Kevin Strouse but still has more name recognition and campaign funds than the novice Cickay.
Ed Rendell has gone on record saying he spoke with Cickay and respected his decision to stay in the race. Cickay himself said U.S. Sen. Bob Casey called him to discuss an exit strategy but ended up apologizing and saying he had no right to interfere once Casey realized Cickay wanted to stay in.
Some state senators have called and asked him to step down, but Cickay won’t say which. And, despite rumors that gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf pressured him, Cickay said they’ve never spoken. “He left me a message asking how my campaign was going but we’ve never been able to connect,” he explained.
Cickay said he was also approached about a job offer in a Wolf administration in return for dropping out of the race. But, he added, he didn’t even let the conversation go far enough for him to find out what it would have been.
Naughton herself broke the news to Cickay that the party wanted a switch. According Cickay, she pulled him aside at a reorganization meeting in early June to tell him.
“I was flabbergasted that something like this would be on the table,” he said. “Word has it she was asked in November to run for state senate and leave [Strouse] unopposed [but she] decided to reject that and shoot higher. She has allowed herself to fall into that pattern of not thinking about party but thinking about herself and winning.”
Through a spokesman, Naughton declined to comment.
Now, Cickay is refusing to back down, saying that it would be subversive to the Democratic process since he won the primary, albeit he ran the race unopposed. And, he said he won’t do so even if it means costing his party the seat and potential state Senate majority. In response, it seems, the party has cut his funding.
In fact, money is a big part of the problem: According to Aren Platt, former executive director of the Democratic State Senate Campaign Committee, the cost of a viable state Senate race starts at $1 million.
Between April 1 and June 6, Cickay raised $7,475. He did not comment on any funding raised after that point, but said that he has “met his goals.”
His opponent, incumbent Chuck McIlhinney, raised $113,095 in the same period and started off with a cache of just over $100,000.
As of June 6, Cickay had $1,717 on hand, and McIlhinney had $152,472. But, even those numbers don’t paint the whole picture.
“In Pennsylvania, the Republicans control the Senate and governor’s office, and this gives them immense power,” said Platt. “Because they have centralized fundraising, it goes to the two highest-ranking party leaders.”
And, those funds are just a wire transfer away to whoever those leaders think needs it. “If McIlhinney needed $2 million, he could get it in the blink of an eye, literally,” said Platt.
Anywhere from 60 to 75 percent of a campaign goes toward television ads, pieces of direct mail and, increasingly, Internet advertisements. The average state Senate race involves between 100,000 and 135,000 voters, noted Platt, and in terms of media, he said, a voter needs to see a television ad more than at least once a week to have an effect.
Those impressions are measured and sold in “points,” and add up quickly. The same goes for direct mail and Internet ads which now account for 10 percent of a media budget.
Add all those up in an expensive market like the Philadelphia area, continued Platt, and “$1 million is the floor. It’s more like $1.5 million.”
The Democrats, in the minority, also have funds available but not as much and not as liquid. And, it seems the party doesn’t want to send them to Cickay. Since refusing to bow out of the race, Cickay lost funding for his two full-time staffers and potential media buying.
But despite the challenges, Cickay is confident he has a fighting chance, and that last week’s coverage could only help him.
“It’s not about the money, It’s about the issues,” said Cickay. “If people can capture the imagination and the concerns of the people, then all the money is pointless.”
He sees the recent events as disappointing, but ultimately invigorating.
“Unfortunately, there are some people who are trying to subvert [the Democratic] process and paint a picture that they have the right to convince me to resign with the illusion that there’s a better candidate … which to me is a misperception that they have more validity than a democratic process whereby people choose their leaders,” he said.
“You need to decide whether winning is more important than certain fundamental democratic principles. Maybe I’m being too idealistic about the primary but many other people have supported me in this. They feel that my responsibility is not to the party but to the people and to democratic principles,” he said.
Despite these challenges, Cickay is confident he has a fighting chance, and that last week’s coverage could only help him.
“The challenge is to convince the Democratic Party that they will get stronger and be flourishing if they remember their roots to deal with the people and their principles in an uplifting way.”
And so, he’s soldiering on. Cickay is hiring a new campaign manager, and relying on phone calls, door-to-door campaigning and small fundraisers like the ones last week to make impressions and raise money.
It’s an uphill battle, not only because of funds but because of history. When discussing budgets and strategies, Platt did not want to comment on this race directly. But, he said, “Historically, it’s hard for challengers to beat incumbents in American politics. That’s just the way our system is.”
And, that’s especially so for a political novice: “For a challenger who doesn’t have personal wealth or a rolodex of rich people or a groundswell of political focus around them, it’s very, very hard.”
And expensive. Cickay is offering up to $700 a week for a campaign manager, not much less than what he likely raked in at Thursday’s fundraiser alone. And, he has to introduce himself to tens of thousands of voters and earn their support, all without calculated mass media campaigns.
Not that those challenges give him pause, “It still is a David vs. Goliath but there’s vulnerability there,” said Cickay. “If the Democrats can get past this sideshow, there’s an opportunity.”
