Boyda did it her way

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Nov 8, 2006 by Tim Carpenter

By Tim Carpenter

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

U.S. Rep.-elect Nancy Boyda thumbed her nose at advice offered by political consultants.

The Democrat proposed a 2nd Congressional District campaign against Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., that relied on old-school methods of communicating: newspaper inserts, radio ads and word of mouth. It was as if FDR whispered into her ear.

Reaction of Washington pros who pulled the strings of Boyda's disastrous 2004 campaign against Ryun ranged from polite skepticism to open ridicule. The Kansas City Star suggested Boyda was essentially committing political suicide.

Boyda just shrugged and pressed ahead.

"The benefit of having run two years ago is that you learn the rules of campaigning," she said. "We went ahead and broke a lot of them."

Boyda's willingness to ignore conventional thinking, combined with the good fortune of running at a time marked by dizzying backlash against Republican incumbents, carried her to an improbable victory Tuesday over a five-term incumbent.

It bears mentioning that Ryun ran a lackluster re-election campaign. Ryun was caught in a lie about his knowledge of a Washington neighbor, disgraced Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla.

Ryun initially said Boyda didn't have a prayer in the rematch but later admitted polls showed the race was tight. It was a shocking position for a GOP incumbent in a state where registered unaffiliated voters outnumber Democrats.

Perhaps more telling was that Ryun had difficulty defining himself.

Late visits to Topeka by Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush on Ryun's behalf may have inspired more of his GOP base to vote, but those high-profile guests gave Boyda new opportunities to frame Ryun as a puppet of status-quo Republicans in Washington.

Boyda opened her campaign with a grass-roots appeal to groups willing to listen to her stump speech. The idea was for 20 people to donate $20 each to her cause. The cash did more than bolster a bare- bones campaign. It brought people into the fold.

"Each of those $20 represented somebody who was also going to get out there and work for change," Boyda said. "That got the conversation started at the grass-roots level."

Boyda intentionally kept a subdued profile before the August primary.

"We had limited resources," she said. "Staying low was clearly part of our strategy. We didn't want to wake a sleeping giant."

A key Campaign 101 violation was Boyda's decision to insert 750,000 campaign tabloids in newspapers serving the 2nd District. There were three different voter guides that delved into Boyda's views about immigration, health care, Iraq, the federal deficit, energy, education, jobs, Medicare and other topics.

These supplements also chronicled her controversial claim that a 4,000-mile NAFTA superhighway from Mexico to Canada would one day cut through Kansas. Ryun called it an Internet hoax. Boyda said it would cost Americans real jobs and used the project to tap into voters unhappy about the nation's porous borders.

The Washington consultants didn't think Kansans would read the newspaper inserts, which were produced by Boyda and her husband, Steve, with the help of a $99 software program.

"We figured if 10 percent were read that we would be doing well," Boyda said. "From what we can tell, someplace between 15 percent to 25 percent have been read."

Boyda was banking on the notion that any Kansan willing to read also were likely to vote.

Boyda made a conscious decision to spurn TV in the early stages of her general election campaign.

She opted for radio.

"Last time, we did very, very, very little radio," Boyda said. "We learned that people in Kansas listen to the 6 o'clock farm report."

In the final weeks of the campaign, Boyda offered up a series of folksy television ads. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee threw $300,000 into slick television spots that ripped Ryun.

Boyda said her winning low-to-the-ground campaign should be national news.

"The voters have moved so far past Washington," Boyda said. "When Jim Ryun started this campaign and said over and over again that things are going well in Iraq and that he doesn't know of any real problems in the 2nd District, I think he believed it. That's how it felt to him in his world in Washington."

Tuesday's balloting popped Ryun's bubble. Voters also pushed Boyda's humiliating 15 percent loss in 2004 into history books and showed the D.C. consultants what works in the 2nd District of Kansas.

Tim Carpenter can be reached at (785) 295-1158 or timothy.carpenter@cjonline.com.