2009 Election Winners And Losers
By Greg L | 4 November 2009 | Virginia Politics | 18 Comments
We already know, for the most part, all the candidates who won or lost in yesterday’s election. They’re not the only ones with either a reason to celebrate or feel despair today. Plenty of others are, or should be caught up in the emotional wake of yesterday’s stunning results, and you might be one of them.
First, the Losers.
Loser #1: The Washington Post. No organization has done more to trash its own reputation this election cycle than the Washington Post. The incessant and ridiculous attack editorials, many of which curiously appeared outside of the editorial section of the paper, attacking Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli in particular left a lot of people utterly convinced that the Post is little more than an extension of the DNC. When the Post attacked candidates in the past, they got concerned. Now when the Post attacks a candidate on their front page for weeks on end, campaigns shrug it off understanding that it just doesn’t matter. The Washington Post is now proven largely irrelevant in Virginia politics.
Loser #2: Illegal Alien Supporters. Creigh Deeds has always been a big roadblock in the Senate to immigration enforcement reform, and Steve Shannon attacked Ken Cuccinelli on the campaign trail for his principled stands on immigration. Did they get the big reward from certain ethnic groups we all keep hearing is so important? It sure doesn’t look that way. The only place where one might think that pandering to illegal aliens worked was in the 52nd District where Torian, a big supporter of illegal aliens narrowly defeated Raphael Lopez, who hardly differed from him at all on the issue. Instead, the Republican victors in the Governor, LG and AG races all support state-wide participation in the Section 287(g) Program and the E-Verify program that prevents identity fraud by illegal aliens trying to get jobs. The next four years are going to be even more difficult for illegal aliens unlawfully residing in Virginia and the myth that being strong on this issue is politically dangerous has been obliterated.
Loser #3: “Progressives.” The liberal strategy has consistently been to demonize opponents while offering poll-tested platitudes such as “hope and change” that they think are going to capture the emotional allegiance of voters. Well, not so much. Issues matter. Solutions matter. Keeping government small and efficient matters. What doesn’t work are the “all options are on the table” double-speak that barely conceals an agenda of growing government and raising taxes, because we’re seeing what happens with that in Washington, and voters don’t like it at all. No matter who Democrats would have nominated this election for the top of the ticket, the message they would have given would be the same, although it might have been delivered a little more deftly. You can’t dress up a “courageous” (as the Washington Post described it) willingness to raise taxes in order to grow government to the point it becomes attractive because no one can do that better than Obama, and those “courageous” policy positions are increasingly despised by the voters.
Now, on to the Winners.
Winner #1: Faith. Yes, even after unrelenting attacks against the Christian faith held by the top spots on the Republican ticket, that ticket still crushed candidates who mostly refused to talk about faith and their surrogates that openly attacked the Christian faith of their opponents. If painting someone who holds to Biblical truth as a Taliban-style religious freak was ever effective in Virginia politics before (which is doubtful), it clearly is not effective now. The easiest way to alienate broad swaths of the electorate is to start taking anti-Christian potshots at a candidate’s Christian beliefs.
Winner #2: The Tea Party Movement. If ever there was an opportunity for leftists to attack Ken Cuccinelli, it was Cuccinelli’s cementing himself to the Tea Party Movement, adopting some of their symbolism as a major campaign symbol of his own, speaking frequently at their rallies, and lending whatever support he could to the cause. The left despises and ridicules the Tea Party Movement at every opportunity, but in this case it seems that they polled the likely result of taking this grass-roots movement on as an enemy and thought better of the notion. As a result, they hardly ever mentioned it. The Republican Party on the other hand decided to throw Tea Party activist Catherine Crabill under the bus and disavowed themselves of her, only to have her come strikingly close to winning against Al Pollard. Had she not been given the red-headed stepchild treatment here, she probably would have won. Let’s hope the Republican establishment learns a lesson here.
Winner #3: New Media. While a truly vast amount of money in this election flowed to traditional direct mail and robo-calling, new media promoters such as Project Virginia delivered demonstrably more cost-effective results per dollar spent. For minuscule fractions of the total campaign expenditures spent this cycle, new media engaged at least an order of magnitude the number of voters they reached four years ago, and kept them engaged. Direct mail, and probably robo-calls aren’t going away any time soon, but new media has proven itself to be an increasingly important part of a campaign that will certainly continue to grow. Just take a look at the Berry Award winners this year, and how the elections turned out for them.
I imagine readers have a few winners and losers in mind also, and I’d be interested in hearing what those might be.
UPDATE: Mason Conservative has an excellent list here, covering a lot of the individuals that made a huge difference this election.
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18 Comments
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Winner-RPV Chairman Pat Mullins. He had his doubters after having to take over in the wake of difficult circumstances (I won’t reopen old wounds here). Needless to say, he and his team did a great job of keeping the Ds on defense and providing the necessary support to lead to huge statewide and local victories!
[Ed note: Hear! Hear!]
Crabill got thrown under the bus not because she was a member of the Tea Party movement, but because she espoused nutty conspiracy theories on her campaign web site, such as the Fed. gov’t being responsible for blowing up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. Had the 99th Dist. Cmte. done the right thing and given the nomination to Ham Sandwich, we’d be addressing him as Del.-elect Sandwich today!
Nice summary. Well done.
This is a great read. directly from the campaign:
http://blog.pos.org/2009/11/congratulations-to-bob-mcdonnell/
This is from the Washington Post just a little before the election. Can you believe they uncritically pushed this garbage twenty days out, predicting Dems would pick up seats in the General Assembly if they did a good job with GOTV?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen…
Speaking of losers…
Biggest Jeanette Rishell blunder?
* Hiring porn advocate as campaign manager (26%)
* Raising money for Mexicans Without Borders (15%)
* Attempted DCMA takedown of BVBL video (12%)
* Opposing the Rule of Law Resolution (9%)
* Lying about opponent in ‘07 election (6%)
* Campaign signs at the “Liberty Wall” (6%)
* Hosting website with moonfruit.com (6%)
* Not knowing precincts in her district (5%)
* Blaming staffers for lies in ‘07 election (3%)
* Peddling ObamaCare (3%)
* “June With a Cleaver” comment (2%)
* Opposing the Marriage Amendment (2%)
* Lying about NAACP debate (2%)
* Using the NVA Flag as a logo in 2007 (1%)
* Lying about VEA Endorsement in ‘09 (1%)
* Padding her resume in a campaign ad (1%)
Total Votes: 163
Excellent summary! This should send a message loud and clear to all of those politicians in Washington that advocate amnesty or pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens…YOU WILL BE VOTED OUT OF OFFICE! The people have spoken!
Add to that list:
*Getting huffy and defensive when a voter at Metz refused to shake her hand out of concern for H1N1. The voter explained patiently that if he shook her hand, he’d be shaking the hand of everyone else she touched that morning. Her reply? A very snotty “Well, I don’t have swine flu!”
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=114889
“Amnesty to be ‘coup de grace’ to United States?”
Let us all settle down from the “party” mode of republican wins and start concentrating on our critical tasks of preventing amnesty or pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens.
I would really like to see our new elected officials lead off with calls for statewide implementation of 287g for all state law enforcement agencies and E-Verify for all state/local contractors. We need to go on the offensive with illegal alien presence in the Commonwealth. It is a viable solution to our budget issues in terms of medical, public assistance and education costs. Now is the time, as the Obamacare initiative is floundering/failing.
Greg, I can’t beleive you missed these:
Loser: VA Governor/ DNC Chairman Tim Kaine
In the first election cycle of his chairmanship, he has managed to run the “Good Ship Lefty” aground, and worse, he did this in his home port. His manner of governance of the Commonwealth helped drive independents to the Republicans. While he benefitted from Warner”Blue Dogs” and other potentially vulerable Dems will look at this as an inablility of the party to deliver support.
Loser: Illana Kaplain-Shain
Her first experience as a campaign manager is probably going to be her last. Just 12 months after Obama received 58% of the vote in the 50th, she failed to turn this into an advantage for her candidate. She also resorted to the same failed tactics that Rishell’s previous camapign manager employed, namely attacks that are easily proven false. Additionally, she ran into the BVBL buzzsaw, regarding her personal background. Shame on her. Having grown up in a “Google World”, doesn’t she realize that once potentially embarrassing aspects of her life are in cyber-space, they are there forever? Now, whenever someone googles her name, it will be associated with the proliferation of porn and toilet humor. Having grown up in the shadow of Chicago, and worshiping at the alter of Obama, didn’t she know that Chi-town isn’t the only place where bare-knuckle politics are practiced? Maybe she should re-read “Rules For Radicals”. One last bit-o-insight: How badly are you mismanaging a campaign when you have to fly your Mother in from Chicago to man a polling place for you? No joke. She actually did this. Her Mom worked all day at a precinct in Manassas. I hope she’s considering a career change.
Greg:
Proof of your point about using new media was Rich Anderson’s campaign. Granted, he and Ruth plus his campaign staff knocked on over 27,000 doors (according to his meeting the other night). However, he had to start with a lot less money and instant name recognition than Nichols did. Plus, he couldn’t campaign until he officially retired from the Air Force eight months ago. On top of that, it looked like every other business in the 51st District had one of the huge Nichols campaign signs. However, Rich was able to place a number of well done campaign videos on YouTube, thus getting a lot of well deserved attention.
27,000 doors is pretty impressive for the Anderson campaign. You will always hear about candidates who had more money, signs, and endorsements lose, but you never hear about candidates who knocked the most doors lose in a head to head race.
Greg, simply put: Are you f***ing high?
Catherine Crabill is a nut. She believes that the federal government was responsible for the Oklahoma City Bombing and the murder of 168 people for crying out loud!
There goes the respect I had for you.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a Crabill fan or a detractor of hers. I don’t know much about her at all.
What I do know is that even though her candidacy was abandoned by the Republican Party, tea party activists nearly vaulted her to power against an incumbent who was considered pretty strong. For Crabill to get within ten points, and as I’m typing this I seem to recall she got within five, is a testament to the power of the movement, not necessarily her candidacy.
Republicans need to probably field better candidates in this district, but I recall Crabill was unopposed for the nomination the last two cycles. If the tea party movement is taking control of the political future of this district while Republicans have spats over who the nominee should be after the nomination is decided, to me it looks like the tea party movement at least in this district may be rivaling the power of the local Republican party and the local Democratic party as well.
The tea party flexed quite a bit of muscle. Maybe next time they’ll have someone better to get behind.
Losers are PWC residents having to gather all the loser dems popsicle signs all over PWC that are still up after the election. I’ve only seen on sign for Mr. Miller, but literally hundreds for Deeds and Bell and Shannon. Time for the dems to clean up their mess.
Greg, your YouTube video of the PWC debate b/n me and Shannon was - by far - the most viewed video of my race. Over 20,000 views. Awesome. Great job, thanks!
Winner - The United States Constitution, and the 2nd Amendment in particular.
I’m with Ribeye, in that part-time Governor Kaine is a loser. Actually, a double loser for his role in the defeats here in the Commonwelath of Virginia and up in my home state of New Jersey. kaine should be given honorary NJ resident status for the amount of time he spent in the Garden State. Come January he will be out of office and should be out of his DNC job, although the way he is running things, I hope they keep him on. Kaine can then demonstrate his incompetence on a full time basis.
Now that we worked to elect our candidates, our jobs are not over. We must make sure they govern they way they campaigned. Let’s keep them honest.
Also, let’s get some Congressional candidates worth electing next year as we move toward taking back the House of Representatives and sending Obummer a nationwide message.
Keep those sleeves rolled up boys and girls and keep the momentum going in the RIGHT direction. We now have plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!