Saturday, November 22nd, 2008...8:26 am
Recriminations
The Arizona Democratic Party will be meeting down here in Tucson today. Expect some tough questions. I have heard grumbling and sniping from not a few elected officials and former candidates about what happened in the legislative races. The big question: how did Barack Obama manage to excite the base and increase Democratic turnout but we still lost seats in the legislature?
Our congressional candidates also, obviously, did well. A quick look over numbers in districts 1, 5, 7 and 8 indicate that our candidates did better as both a proportion of the vote and in the raw number of votes. Why didn’t this translate into better results down ballot?
I’ve been holding back criticism until I see an official canvass to see what might have happened. Take District 24, where Teresa Ulmer lost. Her seat is centered in Yuma County where for the first time, Raúl Grijalva beat the Republican candidate. Or take District 26, where we lost a senate seat and failed to gain a house seat (in fact, our second candidate, Don Jorgenson, came in fourth). This happened despite a tremendous turnout operation on the part of Gabrielle Giffords’s campaign.
Does this mean that someone, somewhere in Yuma thought Grijalva is a great congressman and voted for Russ Jones? Are there pockets of voters in Oro Valley that agree with both Giffords and Marilyn Zerull on policy issues? Or, were there voters who excitedly voted for Obama and either Grijalva or Giffords, but couldn’t be bothered with the rest of the ballot? As I said, I’d have to see the numbers in individual precincts, but either way, despite the amount of money spent by the party, we didn’t get our message out on legislative races.
13 Comments
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
The Republic ran a story last week with a bar graph of the top 2 vote getters statewide. President got the most votes and Prop 102 got the second most, followed by several other Props. Corp Comm didn’t even show up in the top 10. Obviously, they couldn’t account for Congressional or local races but I’m going to guess there was substantial drop off down ballot by Dems.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Voter education failed, there was no message conveyed to vote the down ticket races. There was an obvious failure of leadership and strategy.
November 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
The Party targeted long shot districts (5, 12, 21, 30) and neglected to protect districts that have been fragile at best for years (10, 24, 26). I know that the candidates in 21 and 30 worked their tails off but in the end you cannot overcome the sheer registration disadvantage.
Dems should have focused on protecting the vulnerable seats we already held and then expanding our majorities from there. Instead they tried to do the latter first and now we are worse off than when we started.
Also, I think the victories on the Congressional level show that when Dems have the money and name recognition AND face Reps who run crappy campaigns and are nuts (CD1 comes to mind) the voters we can win. In Legislative races most voters don’t know either candidate and as we all know, the most reliable indicator of how a person will vote is their party registration – and Independents tend to follow their trend of their neighbors.
Ted – I am more interested to know what the “buzz” around the State Committee was about Janet?
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:56 pm
My sense is that the 2006 elections were anomaly and that this year’s elections represented a return to the status quo. Perhaps down-ballot Dems would have done better without McCain and Prop 102 on the ballot. Donna’s comment seems to support that theory to some extent.
November 22nd, 2008 at 10:32 pm
In at least one case, Dems tried to win two seats where they could realistically win only one (Jackie Thrasher would have easily recaptured her seat in District 10 if she didn’t have another weak Dem and a phony Green running against her). Single shotting is a strategy that works well in districts with lopsided registrations and should be employed more often in such districts. Witness the success of Dr. Eric Meyer in District 11.
We might also consider running fake Libertarian candidates to suck off votes from the Rethugs if they continue to run fake Green candidates. Better yet, let’s start a fake God Party to suck off Rethug votes. Or how about an Arizona Secessionist Party? The possibilities are endless!
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:34 am
I agree with all of the above and glad Zelph mentioned single shotting. In 2006 many of the candidates did just that even when the party was trying to put someone to run with them. Lena comes to mind in 2006 and she almost walked away and the party backed down and what do you know she won. In 12 the first candidate in the race wanted to single shot and back and forth went on and on and she moved to the Senate running against a popular respected candidate and in my opinion she was the strongest candidate. I could name many other districts wherer this happened. We do need to look forward but learn from 2006 and why we won- it wasn’t an accident. There was a couple of key players in 2006 who I will not name but they were not part of the mix in 2008. Put all of these factors together you start to realize what went wrong and what was done in 2006 that was not done in 2008. I think we can all say we overreached but there was also indications that there were reasons to think we could & should. In 2006 we almost won a few seats 9 & 21 and this year didn’t come close- I think numbers will eventually show why. We also had so many seats that were not a pick-up but a new candidate (23,25,26, to mention a few). Any time you thought it was a “pick up” it was just a “keep” with a new cadidate due to term limits and candidates running for the first time. There are a lot of factors and hopefully we can explore them all.
We do have two years to educate voters why voting down ballot matters and what will happen or not happen at the state house will give us that opportunity to educate that all politics is local and why. Put on your seatbelts, strap yourself in – it is going to be a wild ride.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
What about running ballot initiatives that are GOTV machines themselves? The right uses wedge issues, but surely there are progressive issues that enjoy wide support, would motivate our base AND the mushy middle, and also do a whole lotta good for Arizonans when they pass. Ballot initiatives are certainly expensive, but a midterm year is when to do it. If it’s going to be done, it has to start now.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
I’d like to know if there were any tough questions after all. I left early, bored and annoyed with the applauses and the waaay too cheerleadishy atmosphere. Please, enlighten us.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
My thought is this…it is a massive opportunity squandered and I agree with Ted. I am not sure the message on the legislature got out at all. Why was there nothing whatsoever pinning the massive deficit here to GOP control of the legislature? I also wonder about the quality of candidates and even those that were appointed to run later. Like, find someone well known…and find someone that might “fit” the district. Last, was the party simply outworked?
I have to think it is poor strategy or poor candidate recruitment. I dont know that anything else makes any real sense.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Michael,
Not sure that the ballot initiative issue was what mattered here, although I agree with you in principal. Turnout was already quite quite high.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
For anyone who voted against an increase in salary for state legislators–That pitiful $24,000/year salary for a job which is actually full-time means that only retirees, the well-off, or those with spouses with good jobs can afford to run. However, even with the crappy salary, the LD 26 DEMs had three excellent candidates.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 pm
A few observations:
#1 —base salaries, we put that stupid initiative on the ballot every year, and every year it gets shot down. There is a reason for that….we only have the 22nd lowest or 28th highest paid legislature in the union…..where do we go wrong? Our per diem, maxes at 60 dollars, which ranks 47th, moreover, our session has not met for the 120 day standard in like 15 years, those guys haven’t finished by May 1st for a very very long time…..As it stands AZ legislators typically make what amounts to under $200 per actual legislative day in session. That puts us at the bottom compared to other states. The increase needs to be at the per diem, going to about 100 a session day for 120 days and 50 for each day after 120; with an additional 35 dollars all days for non Maricopa County Residents…… If the session stayed at 120 days, like it is designed to, we would be about 20th….maxing at 335 a day. That is a competitve wage.
2. What happened down ballot? Let’s not all start shoveling blame like it is going out of style, we screwed up, get over it, let’s form a legislative committee and figure out where gains can be made, and seats taken back. Also, while the radical right are licking their chops, lets caucus with the moderates and find a “dirty dozen” that can make practical decisions. At this point, Paton, Atenori, Vic “the wild thing” Williams, are Pima County People, are they willing to stand up for Southern Arizona over partisan politics? time will tell.
3. As most may not know, I spent what little time and resources I had this past race in the TUSD override race. TUSD has continually had one hand tied behind its back over the years, and is now having trouble competing with Charter schools. Let me say, after the last round of Schools ratings, TUSD has made great strides at the High School level, and has an opportunity to emerge as a model school district in the next few years. Please consider supporting the override next time it comes out…..we got beat by over 22000 votes in ;04 and that number was reduced to around 1900 this campaign season……
4. As for our legislature, if they start doing wacko things, the happy hunting, we face them on street corners, restaurants and casual conversations, we can face them in the blogosphere, we can face them at town halls and in email blitzes and phone banks, After Jan Brewer takes office, she will probably do something we may not appreciate, lets inadate her with e-mails until the server crashes….it is time we stand up to the bullies and not allow them kick us around.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Michael,
You are spot on with ballot initatives. Labor ran the minimum wage in 2006 and candidates attached themselves to them. This year there were attempts to get populist issues on the ballot but the SOS soon to be Gov. picked through all the signatures and kicked them off. It is expensive to run a ballot initative a total of about 3 million minimum.