Sleeper candidacy

A sleeper candidacy is a candidacy for public office in which the candidate does little or no campaigning, hoping to ride into office by being confused with a better known person, or by just being the alternative to a well-known but widely disliked incumbent, or on the strength of good ballot position and a not very visible grassroots organization, or even on the strength of a popular ethnic name.

Once famous examples of sleeper candidacies include the victories of John Kennedy (no relation to the U.S. Senator and future President) for State Treasurer of Massachusetts, and Robert Casey (no relation to the former Auditor General and future Governor of Pennsylvania) for State Treasurer of Pennsylvania. The successful sleeper candidacy of a LaRouche backer for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois made the Democratic nomination for Governor meaningless, and effectively ended the gubernatorial campaign and possible Presidential candidacy of former U.S. Senator Adlai Stevenson III.

Sleeper candidacies are most effective in low-spending, low visibility races. As these have become rarer over time, the threat of sleeper candidacies has declined; but variations have occurred. For instance, when party-switcher Michael Forbes switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, he and his Democratic backers successfully worked to get big-name Democrats not to challenge him for the Democratic nomination. But they did not get a basically unknown librarian out of the race for the Long Island, New York Congressional seat.

Suddenly the Republicans poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the librarian's campaign, and ran a saturation advertising campaign attacking Forbes for being a Newt Gingrich supporter and a conservative. Forbes' backers responded too slowly, and he lost to the librarian. Upon her victory, a key Republican operative told her "Congratulations, you are now on your own," and proceeded to elect a Republican nominee in what was now an open seat. The backlash to these tactics, though, helped elect a Democrat to the seat in the next election.