Craig Huey staged a Friday meeting (11/ 16) to review what went wrong, went went right, and what was simply unexpected in this race. The public sector unions and the special interests, along with Muratsuchi's own campaign, dumped $3-4 million dollars into this Assembly seat. With $6 billion dumped on the nationwide campaign, with $7 million coming out of Bill Bloomfield's bank account, the notion that money will buy a campaign has lost all seriousness.
Not money, but ideas matter and sell the point. Not advertisements, but outreach makes all the difference. Craig Huey was more than a credible candidate. He had the incredible integrity to tailor his message to reach out to concerns of many voters in the South Bay. His message did not reach enough people, nor was his campaign strategy prepared for the Obama-juggernaut to bring out the vote for the incumbent President against a lukewarm Republican challenger. Despite former House Speaker Tip O-Neill's assertion that all politics is local, the nation race had a devastating impact on the 66th Assembly race.
For all the mailing and persuading that Huey published and released, all too much of it was garnered toward the older, more propertied set of voters. Protecting Prop 13 is an admirable platform, but I heard very little about what the Republican candidate or the statewide party were offering to do in order to help struggling high school and college-age students, many of whom were convinced that without Prop 30, without more revenue, their education would be more impoverished than ever.I also received very little which touched on the concerns of Hispanic voters -- immigration, the DREAM Act -- or other issues which would invite more inquiry from African-American voters: school vouchers.
The biggest bombshell that I learned about in the meeting, and I applaud Huey's willingness to review his failures as well as his successes, is that their strategy underestimated the turnout in Gardena, West Carson, and Harbor City. According to previous election results, the turnout in the Eastern sections of the South Bay has been minimal at best. This year, those expectations received the thorough thrashing which they deserved. Consultants in Sacramento or elsewhere are losing touch with the voting trends of our times. Internet, mass media, and intensive word-of-mouth information has all but decimated the previous projections.
It is not wise to write off entire constituencies just because in past cycles, there was a low turnout. An election campaign cannot rest on the empty assumption that certain demographics will not vote. I spoke with two women leaving the Huey office. Both of them shared that they were Democrats, and both agreed with me that a strategy which assumes little participation in one section of a district was not wise.
No comments:
Post a Comment