Transcription – Jay Timmons Interview

Q:                    Something you said earlier was kind of interesting, and that is even though this turned out to be a big Republican year, at the outset, you’ve got a 51-49 majority–

TIMMONS:      That’s right.

Q:                    — in the Senate, which meant the Democrats could reasonably think of regaining control.

TIMMONS:      And if you think about what my predecessor went through, Mitch Bainwol, what he went through to get to that 51-49 majority when George Bush was elected with a majority Senate, Jim Jeffords switched parties, so I guess he was elected with a 50-50 Senate, with the vice president that made a majority.  Jim Jeffords switched parties and suddenly, the president’s party was in the minority in the Senate, so gaining that back was a pretty difficult thing for Mitch Bainwol and Bill Frist, who was the chair of the NRSC at the time.  So in addition to maintaining that 51-seat majority, obviously, [00:08:00] we wanted to run the number up; we wanted to get it to a higher number.  And you’re right, we — it could have gone either way.  We could have easily have had 47 Republicans and not 55, but it just happened that — and it was really right at the end where I — where we really saw a lot of polls moving in our direction.  There were few candidates and campaigns that were always in the lead and always consistently ahead.  But toward the end, we started to realize that the majority was going to be bigger than we once had anticipated.

Q:                    It’s interesting because…

TIMMONS:      John Thune, by the way, was a perfect example of that.  We were going back and forth on the lead with Daschle and Thune right up until the last week.

Q:                    And we will come back and talk about that South Dakota election, but overall, 19 Democratic seats on the ballot in 2004, 15 Republican —

TIMMONS:      Right.

Q:                    — seats. [00:09:00] Overall, incumbents ran for reelection in 26 out of the 34, total.  And —

TIMMONS:      You’re giving me some reminders, here of those numbers. (laughter)

Q:                    Well, none of — with one exception, and of course, we keep coming back to South Dakota, so we should get there quickly.   But with that one exception, all the incumbents were reelected, and —

TIMMONS:      We had a lot of open seats.

Q:                    And it was the open seats where the gains took place, but again, in deciding — so incumbents running for reelection had a very good year.  In fact, they won by an average 64%.

TIMMONS:      But it really wasn’t, from the start, perceived as a good year.  So if you look at Pennsylvania, for instance, Arlen Specter had a very, very tough challenge in the primary, and you know, that was — so one of the roles of the NRSC — and it’s really ironic when you look at the Specter race — one of the roles of the NRSC is to always protect incumbents, at least it was at that time, it may be different now, I don’t think it is.  But we — you know, we had to make sure that [00:10:00] incumbents were first and foremost at the top of our priority list.  Well, Arlen Specter was in a tough race in the primary, and Rick Santorum was a trooper.  He was not at all simpatico with Arlen Specter, philosophically, but he was in there pitching for Specter.  The president was in there pitching for Specter.  We spent money from the NRSC on the Specter primary.  I think that was the first time that the NRSC had gotten involved in a primary, at least to that degree.  We got through that primary and then he did a lot better in the general election, but the primary was tough.

Q:                    Was this just a matter of — I mean, it sounds like you were doing more than just the ordinary to support an incumbent, seeking a renomination.  Was there a fear that —

TIMMONS:      I sure was there, yeah.

Q:                    — the challenger would be a weaker candidate in the general, and you might lose the seat if Pat Toomey got the nomination?

TIMMONS:      You know, I think that’s part of it.  I think the other part of it, too, was that Specter, at the time, was a quasi-member [00:11:00] of the Republican leadership.  He wasn’t an elected leader.  He was — he sat, though, at the leaders’ table, and he was always part of Bill Frist’s leadership cadre, and I think that Republican senators generally wanted to rally around one of their own.  I don’t know if that’s the case today; I can’t speak, obviously, for how the caucus operates today.  But at that time, it was very collegial, and if you were elected, your colleagues generally wanted to help you out.

Q:                    Did the NRSC in 2004 — did you coordinate your work in any way, even informally, with the Bush reelect Campaign–

TIMMONS:      Sure.

Q:                    — and how did that work?

TIMMONS:      Well, we met quite a bit with Ken Mehlman, who was the campaign manager.  We also met regularly with the RNC, so Ed Gillespie was the chairman at the time, and we even met with the House Committee, so Tom Reynolds and Sally Vastola [00:12:00] became very important allies in our efforts, and hopefully, we became allies in their efforts.  It really was, I think, a team effort to help build the president’s — to help the president in his reelection, and also to build majorities for him in the Senate and the House.

Q:                    Do you think this was to an unusual degree, this cooperation?

TIMMONS:      You know, I don’t know because I don’t have that perspective.  It was — I have to say it was — in my mind, it was an extraordinarily positive effort.  It was, you know, Ken Mehlman was somebody who understood the importance of teamwork.  He understood the importance of building allies that could help with the overall cause, and I think in his mind, and I think the President’s mind, was that this was just more than just a presidency; this was leadership for the entire country, which included the House and the Senate.

Q:                    Well, there’s a [00:13:00] quotation from George W. Bush that came out after the election where he said, when he was thinking about other presidents who got reelected often by landslides and their party lost seats in the Senate, and he’s quoted as saying — having told Rove or Mehlman or somebody, “I don’t want a lonely victory.  I don’t want what Reagan had.  I don’t want what Nixon had,” which suggests the pos…

TIMMONS:      Well, we wanted to surround him with his friends. (laughter)

Q:                    (laughter)

TIMMONS:      I think we succeeded.

Q:                    Do you think he was actively interested in running a party campaign, building…

TIMMONS:      Well, you know, I think every campaign starts with the candidate focusing on their own race, which I think is an important thing to do.  And if you start to see that you have some — I don’t want to use “coat-tails” because I think that’s really trite — if you think you’re going to have a positive impact on the outcome of certain races, because of the platform that you’re running on — and the focus that year was the War on Terror.  It was whether we were going to continue to [00:14:00] ignore what was happening in the Middle East or whether we were going to try to do something about it.  The president was very aggressive on that message, and candidates began to echo that sentiment.  They started talking about supporting the administration in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on the War on Terror generally.  It was also a referendum on the domestic side on his tax cuts that were implemented in 2001 and 2003.  And so our candidates were echoing all of those principles, all of those — all of those challenges that he was presenting to the nation.

It was really a referendum on George Bush.  A lot of times, campaigns are referendums on the challengers, but he seemed to happily make it about his record and what his vision was for the future of the country, and I think the Republican candidates that year generally felt comfortable in associating themselves with that platform that he was running [00:15:00] on.

So yeah, I think he was very interested in building that majority.  He gave a lot of time to the House and the Senate candidates on the road, particularly during the last month of the campaign cycle.  So, you wouldn’t do that if you didn’t think that you could be helpful and help run up the numbers.