In the infancy of the Charles Robert Bone campaign for mayor, Tennessee kingmaker Tom Ingram and his staff put together a plan. They wouldn’t talk about The Plan. But would only say they would stick to The Plan.
But The Plan didn’t work. Bone, a well-liked lawyer and Democratic fundraiser, came in fifth place in last month’s general election, spending more than all other candidates except for real estate developer Bill Freeman, ultimately shelling out $211 per vote and falling nearly 13,000 votes shy of making the runoff.
Ingram tells Pith he and the campaign miscalculated how many candidates would stay in the seven-way race and how much money they would spend.
“Obviously, we didn’t do everything that we needed to do to build his candidacy. But I think that was complicated for us by the number of candidates who got in and stayed in, which is greater than what we anticipated, and the amount of money being spent, which was also greater than we anticipated. It gave us a more narrow path that we had to try to maneuver than we expected,” said Ingram. “But you step up to the plate like Charles Robert did, you do your best. And I think he did that with class and professionalism and I think he’ll see another day.”
Collectively, the seven candidates spent $12.5 million toward their mayoral bids leading up to the August general election.
“We opted to spend money early thinking that the field would be different and thinking that the play of money would be different. That was a gamble,” said Ingram.
Asked about what worked in the campaign of David Fox, which came from behind in the general, Ingram attributed the success in part to the work of Citizen Super PAC, a political action committee funded to the tune of $500,000 by his brother George Fox that spent money on research and advertising in favor of Fox.
"I think it was strategically an effective campaign in its timing of its own message, and the timing of the super PAC’s messages and in the expenditure of money," said Ingram, who added he's "generally skeptical about the separation, real or imagined, between super PACs and campaigns. “Whether it was by plan or luck, and was probably a little bit of both, they held off and released late and the timing was very effective. I commend them for that.”
