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What Happened To Judy Feder
By Greg L | 9 November 2006 | US Congress | 3 Comments
The folks over at Raising Kaine seem puzzled that their favorite hometown girl Judy Feder got crushed at the polls on Tuesday. At the risk of curing RK readers of their delusions, maybe a bit of a post-election analysis is in order.
Judy Feder came across to 10th District voters as an absolute nutjob. Although her rhetoric and silly stunts may have warmed the hearts of the left-wing base, it really turned off everyone else. When you run a candidate with no legislative experience, who has a questionable political history, and who sounds as bizarre as Judy Feder the only question is how big the landslide will be. But I urge Democrats to keep running her for office — now that we all know who she is, maybe we’ll change our minds about her someday.
Frank Wolf knew he was going to be solid in this race and didn’t feel he had to unload on Judy and go negative. There’s a ton of stuff out there on Feder’s experience with HillaryCare that hasn’t really been shown to the voters. If she runs a competitive race in the future, all of this will certainly be dropped right on her doorstep forcing her to go on the defensive. But in this race Judy Feder was the best political operative Frank Wolf could have had working for him. The more she attacked, the less voters liked her.
The only thing Judy Feder had going for her was an uncanny ability to raise money from outside of the 10th CD, and especially from outside of the state. Unless voters are willing to buy what you’re selling though, no amount of advertizing is going to get them to buy.
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3 Comments
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Honestly? I think it was his glasses that cost him the election. What? Judy’s a her? Oh, I think it was her glasses that cost . .
Ah, you must be referring to this:
http://www.bvbl.net/?p=17
You may have a point, but I am going to credit 10th CD voters with having better reasons for their vote than the physical appearance of the candidates.
I love Bruce Roemmelt’s comment:
from a foot soldier (4.00 / 5)
Judy is fantastic, but from a foot soldier’s perspective Wolf did what he had to do to win. Nothing.
As a long term incumbent with pretty good name recognition he just stayed in the bunker. did some negative ads at the end, and rode ammendment #1 to the finish. every once in a while he told about consitiuient services.
the numbers are indicative of gerrymandering. judy was solid around 45% in FX, 40% in PW-Loudoun-Manassas and MP, and low to upper 30% in the west Clarke-Fredrick-Faquier-Warren and Winchester. you can see the blue trend, but compared to Socas in ‘04 generally a 5% bump up.
a lot comes down to ground game and what kind of bench you got. the Dems in the 10th are starting to get a ground game going but most of the effort from existing troops goes to the top of the ticket.
there’s still a pretty good R ground game and since Wolf anever came out of the cave - well you see.
i really hope judy runs again. she’s awesome. gotta build on the name recognition.
“judy, call me…”
b
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by: bruce roemmelt @ Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 10:25:26 AM EST
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I agree 100% with Bruce…
Judy has proven that she can level the playing field and has built her name recogition, with our changing demographics she will be very well positioned to run again next time (BTW, these same dynamics apply equally to Bruce).
Perhaps Wolf will start thinking of retirement in the meantime, without incumbency/name recognition the repubs will have a much harder time holding this seat.
I really must confess to being one of the foot soldiers that dedicated a much higher percentage of my time/effort/money resources to Webb than Judy but Mrs. LCD worked exclusively for Feder so we balanced out a bit.
George Allen = Senator ‘Spit for Brains’…
Frank Wolf MUST GO!!!
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by: Loudoun County Dem @ Thu Nov 09, 2006 at 10:35:21 AM EST
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Obviously, Bruce is talking out of his southern orifice. Frank Wolf is a hard campaigner, and was everywhere. As long as Moon-bats like Feder, Roemmelt, and Rishell are the candidates here, Republicans will be able to hold these seats. Crow about Webb all you want…the Dems had to go recruit a turn-coat Republican to run as a Democrat. That should tell you something.