Campaigns Are The Key?
Our friend Bwana has an interesting take on Sen. Ken Cuccinelli's victory. He argues that we should not discount the value of a perfectly run campaign; and makes the case that ultimately is why Cooch won.
I think we have discounted this same concept in many other races over the past few years. We blame issues, comments and the media; but we rarely blame the campaign itself. I think there is evidence to show that we need to at shoulder at least some of the blame on the campaigns.
Anyone with knowledge of the race will tell you that the campaign was at fault for losing the Paula Miller-Mike Ball special election in 2004.
Kilgore largely lost b/c of the barrage of negative ads, specifically the death penalty ads.
Allen's loss can be at least partially attributable to the campaign's declaration of war on the Washington Post early on in the election; which ultimately bit them in the rear.
Even in 2007, many of our very close races should not have been; but were due to poor campaigns.
I don't mean to bring this up to point fingers, but to show what we really need to focus on. Good candidates can still lose if we don't run good campaigns. The key to this is getting good talent to run our races, and making sure those people are from the area the races are in (if at all possible). One of the biggest liabilities we have seen over the past few years is having campaign managers who don't know the turf they are working in.
Certainly running a great campaign is no substitute for a great candidate, but it sure helps if you have both. If the GOP is going to win in the future, we have run solid campaigns.
I think we have discounted this same concept in many other races over the past few years. We blame issues, comments and the media; but we rarely blame the campaign itself. I think there is evidence to show that we need to at shoulder at least some of the blame on the campaigns.
Anyone with knowledge of the race will tell you that the campaign was at fault for losing the Paula Miller-Mike Ball special election in 2004.
Kilgore largely lost b/c of the barrage of negative ads, specifically the death penalty ads.
Allen's loss can be at least partially attributable to the campaign's declaration of war on the Washington Post early on in the election; which ultimately bit them in the rear.
Even in 2007, many of our very close races should not have been; but were due to poor campaigns.
I don't mean to bring this up to point fingers, but to show what we really need to focus on. Good candidates can still lose if we don't run good campaigns. The key to this is getting good talent to run our races, and making sure those people are from the area the races are in (if at all possible). One of the biggest liabilities we have seen over the past few years is having campaign managers who don't know the turf they are working in.
Certainly running a great campaign is no substitute for a great candidate, but it sure helps if you have both. If the GOP is going to win in the future, we have run solid campaigns.
posted by GOPHokie @ 9:44 PM
4 Comments:
At 12/04/2007 11:56 PM,
Anonymous said…
What happened in the Michael Ball-Paula Miller special election in 2004?
At 12/05/2007 10:57 AM,
Brandon Bell said…
I agree that we have to run good campaigns. However I have seen and been part of great campaigns that lost and horrible/inept campaigns that won. So many factors are at play in each electoral cycle that can overide even the best of campaigns. To win or lose by less than 100 votes and point the quality of the campaign as the result is absurb.
At 12/05/2007 1:34 PM,
Anonymous said…
Well, I am sorry to hear that you think my opinion and reasoning is absurd...at least I assume that is what you meant by "absurb".
My post addressed how folks are pointing to the Cooch and saying "see? Conservatives can win in Fairfax!"...as if simply changing or adjusting orientation or ideology is all that needs to be done.
Too many recent GOP candidates have lost due less to issues than to poorly run campaigns or poorly executed campaign tactics...and to ignore the need to get to back to running fundamentally sound campaign efforts (as opposed to focusing on ideology) will cost us down the road.
At 12/05/2007 8:49 PM,
Brandon Bell said…
I'm sorry I shouldn't have used the word absurd. I wasn't refering to your post in that comment but to those who point to the "one thing" that won an election. I agree with the thrust of your post. You can't draw a simple conclusion like "conservatives can win in NOVA" based on one campaign in one given cycle. My point is there are always many variables that may or may not exist in future election cycles. For instance I ran a slightly better campaign in '91 for senate than '95. In '95 I got 1500 more votes than '91 and came within 200 votes of my target vote. Yet having won in '91 I lost by 4000 votes in '95. Too many other factors were involved to mention. Maybe I'll do a post on my blog someday about them.
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