By Tess Orrick
Russ Feingold, the incumbent Senator from Wisconsin, should have had all the advantages going into the 1998 election, if it had not been for the strong principles for which he had become known in Washington. His opponent, Representative Mike Neumann, had challenged Feingold to run his campaign by the campaign finance reform he was pushing for in Washington with Senator John McCain, likely never thinking Feingold would agree to it. But in February 1998, Feingold listed ten promises to guide his reelection campaign. The most significant was the spending cap, which he adopted as his own.
Mike Wittenwyler, Feingold’s 1998 campaign manager, was the person tasked with figuring out how to win reelection when incumbent advantages had been given up. Wittenwyler first met Feingold when he worked as a college intern on Feingold’s 1992 Senate campaign. After Feingold won, Wittenwyler dropped out of college to follow the senator to Washington. He later returned to Wisconsin to finish his education and was in his first year of law school when Feingold approached him about managing his 1998 reelection campaign.
Feingold only narrowly won, by a margin of 51-49.
I talked with Wittenwyler about what he remembers of the 1998 campaign.
This interview has been edited for clarity and grammar.
Q: Had you always wanted to work in politics?
A: Yes. I think the first campaign I worked on was John Anderson’s presidential campaign for the 1980 election. I circulated petitions in Illinois where my father was in graduate school to get [Anderson’s] name on the ballot and then turn them into the campaign, only to be told because I wasn’t 18 years old they were all invalid. It was quite a learning experience. My afternoon standing outside a grocery store getting signatures, so he could be on the ballot only to be told sorry, tough luck.
Q: When did Feingold approach you about managing the campaign?
A: It must have been during my first year of law school that he and I had breakfast and he said do you want to do this. I remember sitting there saying to him yes, but do you really want me as your campaign manager, and the reason for that is that my politics are much more libertarian and centrist. I am definitely not a democrat with a big D. That’s when we began talking about how I was going to do it when I was in school, how many meetings, things like that. Part of the issue was as an incumbent you always want to start the campaign late into the cycle. Incumbents don’t want a campaign to begin early and that was one of the things that did begin early is that campaign against [Republican U.S. Representative Mark] Neumann. The Republican Senate Campaign Committee began airing ads and doing things sooner than we would have wanted. It was shortly after that he [Feingold] started getting attacked. It sped things up.
Q: Feingold limited his campaign spending to a dollar per voter, around $3.8 million. Where did the idea originate?
A: It was 100% his idea, much to the surprise of some of us. I believe he told us at a meeting and I can’t remember exactly what the numbers were, but I had done one budget and he said no, no, no that’s too high. I think we started at around $8 million and then we got it down to more like a $6 million campaign, which I kept telling him was too low and then lo and behold it was oh no it’s going to be $3.8 million and that was just this shock because when I signed up for this and agreed to do it, I wasn’t thinking I was going to have a dollar per vote limit. And now all of a sudden a $6 million campaign budget has to be reduced by two plus, it wasn’t fun.
We had an economics professor from one of the universities in the state who helped us with the budget work and the books. Another campaign staffer and I would go to his house and we’d sit at his dining room table with this budget on spreadsheets and it would be like okay what can we cut today.
Q; Did the restrictions impact the end result?
A: I think it made it much closer of a race than it should have been. We were outspent and outmaneuvered because of the fact that we had less resources. Now, I think there was probably a positive to him taking the high road and sticking to his problems. I joked with people over the years it was 18 months that became my personal Vietnam that I wanted to shut out of my memory. There was a lot at stake and he was taking a route that many people thought was not smart. We had supporters who were complaining about it saying it’s suicidal for him to do a dollar per vote. I was on the receiving end of many political people in Washington D.C., as well as members and colleagues of his in the Senate who thought that it was the stupidest thing ever that he was doing. There was pressure.
Q: Was there any point when you thought you might lose?
A: Yes, well, actually I would never say that, and you know why because nobody told us we could win in 1992. Remember I went through the primary too where everybody told us for sure we were going to lose. You go through an experience once of winning when everybody told you it wasn’t possible and it’s hard for you to see how you’re going to lose again because you proved them wrong the first time.
Q: In your time working for Feingold did you ever meet John McCain?
A: At one point during the campaign, I said to Feingold if we actually win this you’re taking me as your date to the State of the Union. He was like, seriously? We won, and he kept his word and I was his date for the State of the Union that year. We had dinner with John McCain and Cindy McCain before, it was a senators dinner that they held in the Capitol.
McCain was always on the same cycle as Feingold was, so he had just gone through a campaign but his was nothing like Feingold’s. I can’t remember how much he won by, but his tough campaign was in 1992 after the Keating Five scandal. We’re sitting there having gone through this campaign and I remember Harry Reid, McCain and Feingold having this conversation and McCain essentially saying that going through a battle like you just did Russ will make you a better senator and you may have gone through hell but you’re going to benefit from it.