Running for statewide office is not easy, whether your goal is to win or just get the 50,000 needed to establish a new party.
While my friend Kristin Davis fell short statewide, polling a tad over 23,000 votes, she did do significantly better in our neck of the woods, garnering 755 votes in the final Jefferson County tally....If that were extrapolated statewide, she would have polled well over 100,000 statewide.
What all that shows is that in that kind of race, a few boots on the ground can help in getting folks to cast a vote for a symbolic candidacy. That wasn't the case elsewhere where she and strategist Roger Stone largely had to depend on the sizzle generated by whatever free media she got, as the budget was limited. Life got tougher once Rent's Too High Jimmy McMillan became the novelty candidate and media darling in the race.
While she did heed my advice to dump prostitution as an issue, it lingered and probably hurt overall. Other issues like pot law reform, marriage equality and casino gambling were endorsed by most of the other candidates leaving little room for a niche candidacy on those issues.
With a little promotion among customers at Fort Pearl and at the Wicked Wench and a bit of media coverage, more people percentage wise voted for her here than anywhere else. She did well in individual contact with voters as was evidenced by the couple of three hour visits to Watertown and Carthage. A good debate performance was eclipsed by the farsical show by McMillan, but I saw her in a couple of pressers and she spoke well.
Its an interesting exercise in political science and was a bit of fun too. And really, what's the harm?...There never was a real race for Governor anyway since Andrew Cuomo had it sewn up for a year.
One lesson should she run again in four years, its that a 50,000 vote race requires not just a good candidate and a publicity strategy, but also some kind of organizational network....
Of course thats the challenge, but one more easily met having run once already....
1 comment:
for the record, I'd rather see prostitution legalized than marijuana
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