Before the spinning starts
Written by Stephen on January 31st, 2006Let’s identify why Mick Staton, a good man with solid principles, lost today’s election in Virginia’s 33rd Senate District.
The conventional wisdom in Virginia is that low turnout favors Republicans, because they can do a better job turning out the base. That was true in the 1990s, but the GOP got lazy towards the end of that decade and has since failed to do effective or coordinated voter identification. At the same time, two factors came into play that would benefit the Democrats.
In the first case, Virginia’s population took off and we had a lot of new people move in. This antiquated all the old voter id efforts. (While knocking on doors and making phone calls for Staton you wouldn’t believe the number of people who moved… sometimes two or three owners again.) While I am not yet sold that a majority of the new people are left of center, the GOP is clearly not identifying those who are right of center.
In the second case, Mark Warner and the Democrats learned to do effective voter identification and GOTV. In 2001, he spent $1,460,000 on “GOTV/Election Day Activities.” His opponent, Mark Earley, spent $36,140. So the Democrats whipped the GOP in voter id, the basis for effective GOTV efforts. This doesn’t explain the entire Staton-Herring debacle, however.
IMHO, I’d also hazard a guess that money and party unity played a significant role. In plain speak, Mark Herring raised $156,280 and Mick Staton raised $36,500. Yet where the money comes from is telling.
According to the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) Democrat Mark Herring received $96,750 from his party’s state, local, leadership, and campaign committees. If you include individuals listed as Democrats, that jumps to $100,200.
In contrast, Mick Staton received only $10,000 from the GOP. The GOP party establishment provided less than one-tenth the support to their candidate that the Democrats did to theirs.
This funding disparity has larger implications. As party moderates frequently speak about the need to run moderates to win, they set up those conditions by failing to support conservatives. This is particularly true in the Virginia State Senate.
Two questions now arise: how should conservatives punish the establishment for failing to support their candidates, if they should at all, and how do we go about repairing the rifts in the party’s wings.
It’s something I’ll have some thoughts on later. For the time being, I simply want to assert that Staton lost not because of his ideology, but because the party is both dysfunctional and failed to support the candidate.
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AM
While not a member of the Loudoun Republican Committee, I am one of those Republicans definitely right of center who has had to suffer with Dick Black as my delegate and Eugene Delgaudio as my supervisor. I am a conservative, pro-life, NRA member and almost anywhere else in America would be honested appraised as a solid conservative. But, Black and Delgaudio would consider me a “squishy moderate”, would likely call me a RINO, and would tell me to my face that there is no room for me in the Republican Party. You want to know why Staton lost every precinct in Eastern Loudoun County that George Bush carried in 2004? That’s why. You cannot blame the Loudoun Republican Committee. They worked their tails off with essentially no help from the Republican Party of Virginia. However, Staton could not escape his endorsements from noted homophile Supervisor Delgaudio, former delegate Father-in-law Dick Black who likes to pass fetus dolls around the General Assembly, and former GOP delegate nominee Chris Craddock who tells us the week before the election that AIDS was caused by Africans having sex with animals. I also think that Michew’s candidacy brought out Republicans to the primary who would have sat out this election otherwise. These Loudoun Michew Republicans, at his urging, all voted for Staton.
But, that being said. The Loudoun GOP really does need to get a voter ID program going, pronto now that it knows what kind of Republicans cannot win here anymore.
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PM
Peter,
You seem to have self esteem issues. If you are what you say you are then why would Delgaudio and Black call you a Rino?
You claim that they are the problem with the Republican party, yet you seem to be throwing stones at four Republicans without much of a thought.
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Mark Earley spent much more than $36K on ID & GOTV activities. I believe the number you are quoting is the total of the payments to the “volunteers” in the three days leading up to election day.
With that said, Mark Warner spent millions and over a full year id’ing voters to be able to turn them out. The effort was led by Mike Henry, later to be Kaine’s manager, and was funded by the unions primarily as Victory 2001, so that Warner did not have to take union dollars into his campaign. That was a major investment of time and money that has paid dividends for 5 years now.
I’m not aware of what happened with ID in 2005, but previously the last time that RPV ran an extensive personal ID program was 1994 for Ollie North. Needless to say, that data has not aged well. In the late ’90’s and for Allen in 2000 they used demographic targeting linked to precinct results, backed up by polling data, to push turnout. It was amazingly effective in taking control of the Assembly in 1999, and also served Allen well and cost much less than the traditional voter Id programs.
In fact, after the 2000 presidential debacle (a win is a win, but…) the RNC used the 1999 targeting efforts as a case study on which to base their 72-hour task force.
By the way, the RNC case study of the 1999 elections showed one clear conclusion; turnout efforts can make the difference in competitive elections. The flip side of that conclusion was that in an election where one candidate clearly outclasses the other, you can turnout everyone you want but they are most likely voting for the other guy.
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PM
Peter is right on in his analysis.
I am very conservative and actually qualify as a social conservative in State matters, but when looking at local politics, I tend to get rid of those who tax me to death, all the while touting their no tax stance.
Massive development in Loudoun, and the associated tax load is a no-brainer. Most of the taxpayers here had Mr. Staton’s number, and Mr. Black’s number was punched sometime back.
Anyone who still defends these two squirrels and still has the audacity to call me a “RINO” is deserving of the empty house that the LCRC will become once you’ve evacuated all the common sense republicans, as well as any hope of filling the public offices.
Think about it.
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April 5 2008 posting. I just found this website today and want to say a belated thanks to the webmaster or host. The money and the voter identification are the key to understanding what has happened. The Republican Party of Virginia is dysfunctional. You are one of the few voices on the internet to state it so concisely. As a former volunteer for the 100s of Republican candidates, that is what MOST of my respective efforts went towards prior to my own election in 1999. Today everybody in the GOP thinks that is below them. I have many friends in both parties and we are all cordial to each other no matter the differences over policies or candidates. We all work at voter identification every single day. What is the mystery? Regarding RINO’s: their leadership for conservative values is non-existent and to claim to be conservative is part of a false mantra or bankrupt refrain.