Yesterday over at Hot Air, I ruminated on what to look for out of the results from yesterday’s round of elections. There’s one bit of good and a whole boatload of ugly that came out of last night, including something I didn’t quite foresee that should shake my side to its core.
The one bit of good came from the 12th Senate district, where the number of votes for winner Kim Simac (11,301 votes according to the Associated Press) and Robert Lussow (7,767 votes) came very close to the 19,255 signatures that Simac and her group gathered to force the recall election of incumbent Democrat Jim Holperin. Among what can be fairly described as the “anybody but the incumbent” crowd, that 99% “retention” rate from the recall to the election is the second-best of any effort.
The percentages were not nearly as good in the 22nd Senate district, where the votes for winner Jonathan Steitz (5,981 votes, again according to the Associated Press) and Fred Ekornaas (3,369 votes) totaled under 55% of the 17,138 signatures gathered by the recall group. That is the worst “retention” effort of the bunch, even worse than Democrat Nancy Nusbaum’s 59% “retention” rate last week or David VanderLeest’s utter failure against Sen. Dave Hansen in the 30th last night, with a 71% “retention” rate.
That leads me to the 30th Senate District. The 66% (once write-ins are considered, something the Associated Press did not track) of the vote Hansen received went above the 65% “trouble” level I set based on a DailyKos/PPP poll that had Hansen beating VanderLeest 62%-34%.
More troubling than the percentage is the raw number of votes Hansen received. Special elections, which is what a recall election is, are “turnout” elections. The 22,052 votes Hansen received is nearly 88% of the 25,192 votes fellow Democrat Tom Barrett received in the gubernatorial election last November. It is also greater than the number of votes either Supreme Court Justice David Prosser (20,536) or challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg (18,706) received in April, and far greater than the 15,540 signatures VanderLeest’s group gathered to force the recall election.
I toyed with the idea of titling this “Big Trouble in Little Suamico” because the results from that town in Oconto County and the 30th Senate District perfectly illustrates the current enthusiasm gap. In November, now-Governor Scott Walker beat Barrett 1,115 to 554. In April, Prosser beat Kloppenburg 549-348. Yesterday, Hansen beat VanderLeest 520-385.
That is not, to say, all is lost. The two challengers to the incumbent Democrats still under election threat who I consider to be stronger won last night. As we found in both November 2010 and April, a “max effort” from the Left can be beaten; however it takes a “max effort” on our part. We also know, thanks to the Supreme Court election, even a belated “max effort” can carry the day. In this regard, I am (almost) thankful John Nygren screwed up on his nomination papers – we know there is an enthusiasm gap and there is just under three weeks to counter it.
Revisions/extensions (9:34 am 7/21/2011) – Craig Gilbert took a different tack on turnout, looking at total turnout versus “opposition” turnout. While he noted that none of these races were expected to be competitive, he also noted the one serious precedent, the recall of George Petak down in Racine County after he flipped on the Miller Park tax vote, saw a turnout of estimated 37% of voting-age-population.
Assuming the Democrats actually had a “max effort/near-max turnout” in the 30th, Hansen would have been in trouble had turnout been 34% instead of 25%, may well have lost had turnout been the 37% it was in Racine in 1996, and would have lost had turnout been the 42% it was in November.
I was listening to Belling today and he talked about how the Republicans up for recall aren’t trumpeting the good news resulting from the budget repair law and taking credit, instead running mostly negative ads about their opponents, and thus he was becoming pessimistic about the recall elections. Do you think he’s right?
There is some truth to that. I can’t answer how the ads are playing out outstate, but here in the Milwaukee area (where both Belling and I are), there isn’t really a focus from Alberta Darling on the positives of the budget repair law. Of course, Sandy Pasch and the Left has been doing everything BUT focusing on that, and as an Assemblywoman, Pasch has a track record to attack. In the other districts except the 10th and the 18th, there is the same dynamic of the Dems running those looking for a promotion from the Assembly.
One of the cardinal rules of campaigning is that an attack cannot be left unchallenged. Another one is that if one’s opponent has a record, especially one that was so recently rejected in the parts of the district he or she does not already represent, by all means use it to full effect. The problem for the Democrats looking for the promotion (outside the “outlier” of the 32nd) is that each of their candidates who already are in the Assembly represents the most-liberal third of the district, and that liberalism, even in the ObamiWave year of 2008, was not shared by the rest of that district.
It would seem to me that in this situation attacking the opponents record should be the job of the 3rd party ad buyers. The candidates need to be trumpeting their successes, no one else is. Is there any news about the ad strategy of our 3rd party groups?
Until the campaigns “notice” the 3rd-party groups doing that, they have to do it themselves. Frankly, the conservative 3rd-party groups aren’t exactly in the game yet.
Side note – there’s a reason why I put “notice” in scare quotes. The campaigns can’t officially coordinate with the 3rd-party groups. Of course, various liberal 3rd-party groups just happen to be shacked up in the same buildings as certain Dem candidates.
I saw Governor Walker on Fox Business News last night. He struck me as worried. He said the national unions are expected to drop $20 to $25 million on these recall elections, which he thought would be more than double what the Republicans can be expected to spend. The Democrats will have a huge informational/messaging advantage.
That said, based on reporting I’ve read from Byron York, the GOP has a good story to tell in that some districts are already showing how Walker’s plan is paying off. I’m no political consultant, but I’d bet taht even if the GOP is outspent on advertising, if they mount a positive messaging campaign that emphasizes the recent accomplishments, and stay away from a negative campaign, it might be the way to go. Given the near constant state of protest in WI in recent months, I have to believe many voters are fed up with it and will repond more favorably to positive good news than more negative ads.
Which, I believe, is Belling’s point. That positivity is something that at least Shelia Harsdorf and Randy Hopper had better be doing 24/7 as their opponents don’t have the Assembly Democrat baggage.
The other 6 incumbent Republicans can and should mix the positive message with the “Do you really want to go back to the Doyle era of $3 billion deficits?” one. The fine art is what mixture is something that works; if Belling or I knew, we’d be political consultants rather than pundits.
I concede that your mastery of the numbers is FAR greater than mine, and likely of 99% of the population as a whole.
Having said that, the Suamico results tell us that ~150 (R) Suamico voters disappeared after considering the possibility of voting for a semi-crook (R) candidate.
Frankly, I would NOT have voted for the guy, period. He smells enough so that I can detect the odor 150 miles south of him.
They, by and large, disappeared. Even though Nygren wasn’t running a write-in campaign, a couple of bloggers who will remain nameless were encouraging it, and only 5 of those in Little Suamico availed themselves of the write-in option.
It’s tough to tell what’s going on from across the St. Croix, but from what I’m seeing and hearing Sheila Harsdorf should be okay. The 3rd party ads are matching what Moore’s supporters are putting out pretty much on a 1:1 basis, especially on the Twin Cities television stations. The video of Moore shrieking “WE BREATHE UNION” and shaking her fist like Mussolini is especially effective.
The fact is, the R’s ran a fatally flawed challenger against an incumbent who won his last election by a considerable margin.
To expect your C-team guy to beat the other gies’ A-team guy on his home turf is unrealistic, and I think not much should be read into it.
Ugh. I read this at Hot Air, then came here to see if it were any more comprehensible. Disappointed. Without a scorecard, it’s impossible to understand what you’re talking about. I may be the only one confused, but I think it would help if you would put an [R] and [D] after the people you are talking about. These are extremely obscure political figures, even if you live in Wisc., I’m guessing, and I can’t even get the gist of your nub of who is ahead, who is the incumbent, who is in what party, etc. Party designation and [I] Incumbent markings would be helpful, to me and I’m guessing to others as well.