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Wednesday, December 07, 2005

CA-48: Campbell Wins

Posted by DavidNYC

Alas, it didn't happen. Whereas I had hoped that Gilchrist would pull votes only from Campbell, he appears to have pulled them from Young, too. The final tally, with 268 of 268 precincts reporting, looks to be:

Campbell: 45
Young: 28
Gilchrist: 25

I'll let the spinmeisters take it from here.

Posted at 01:38 AM in 2005 Elections, California | Technorati

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Comments

All night long, the link you provided showed zero movement and still does at 1 a.m. central time. It still reads 0 out of 268 precincts reporting. Is the problem at my end or are they not updating it there?

Posted by: Mark at December 7, 2005 02:02 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I know nothing about the 48th District -- so this is all pure speculation on my part:

A strong showing by Gilchrist probably showed a deep dissatisfaction of establishment politics, as opposed to mere "we-hate-brown-people" crypto-fascist xenophobia. Just like how Pat Buchanan tapped into the anger of anxious workers, who responded to his message of "corporate butchers."

In a solidly Republican district, for the Bush-anointed candidate to get less than 50% vote is troubling indeed. Very, very troubling.

Posted by: Paul Hogarth at December 7, 2005 02:27 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

From what I can tell, Young has done no better or worse than most House candidates in CA-48.

What I can't figure out is why the House races go so poorly compared to Gotre/Kerry, who outperformed in both 2000 and 2004.

Posted by: Craig McLaughlin at December 7, 2005 02:46 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I kept my mouth shut and tried being supportive during the campaign but... you can't beat the Repugs with nothing. Young looked better on paper than he was. He didn't spend the kind of money he promised (from his own wealth) and his fund-raising was tepid. He wasn't able to line up DCCC support and he wasn't able to communicate what we all feel about Republican corruption-- right in Cunningham's neighborhood and while everything was breaking in the mass media down there-- to the voters. He polled far fewer people than Kerry and he should have polled more. Not a good candidate in a tough race that demanded a good candidate to do something that would have been very very difficult. When I met him in person the feeling was NOT "winner." As pissed off as I was at the DCCC about not getting behind him, down deep I understood why they didn't want to.

Posted by: DownWithTyranny at December 7, 2005 12:21 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Specifically to Craig McLauglin:

You are unintentionally comparing apples and oranges. Those elections were Presidential Elections with Hundred of Million spent to heighten the demand for votes.

On 2004 when Kerry got his famous 40%+ in CA-48 it was with a 60% turnout.

Last night we had a total turnout of 23%. But when you exclude the Absentee ballots from the equation then you find a stunning statistic:
Only 8.6% of the electorate actual went to the polls!

You cannnot compare races where millions are spent to drive turnout of both sides and a race 119 days long and, on the Dem side, little money and NO efficient direct mail plan. We did our with electronics, blogs and some shoe leather and that came mostly on the last days.

8/6% went to the polls. What a sad statement of election fatigue or campaign prep. Or both.

Posted by: Stuart O'Neill at December 7, 2005 12:25 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Stuart O'Neill-- don't you think a victory strategy would have been to turn out potential Democratic voters? I mean sitting around and hoping everyone in the district was reading the Swing State Project and Daily Kos isn't an effective way to win that district. I feel it was a winable district too and that we wasted the opportunity on a dissappointing candidate. It was Young's job to turn out voters by setting them on fire. Wrong guy for that.

Posted by: DownWithTyranny at December 7, 2005 12:34 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Tyranny:

I think, from close view there were factors at work that aren't obvious:

1: The Statewide Special Elections, with that host of horrible propositions, sucked most of the experienced volunteer help and interest right out of the air. Labor, Interest Groups and the rest of the political world made it their goal to Stop Gov. Muscles at all costs! They did. Unfortunately, any other cause was left wanting at the same time.

2. The District had 3 Elections in a Row...Oct 4, Nov 8 and Dec 6. Even with the best of efforts on all three candidates part the turnout on Dec 6th was nearly identical to the turnout on Oct 4. People were just tired of voting.

3. No one had any real money but Campbell. And he hid behind 'high-gloss, direct mailings' and only debated 3 times out of 12-14 (I forget honestly) between the Primary and the General.

4. The Local Media, including the LA Times, crowned John Campbell the winner in every article every time. Without exception he was 'the presumptive winner'. How many times have you heard my yell at the skies about the Repubican Kool-aid that has been fed to the Democrats in the CA-48 and much of the rest of OC? If you read Dkos etc you've seen me write about it a lot.

And this is were the low turnout came from...Dems telling other Dems on election day..to their faces'no I'm not going to vote. period. And nothing we could say or do could move them.

Could the field op have been more effective? Maybe, but that's for another day...but facing the factors above...I'm not certain.

And what more could Steve Young have done? 18-20 hour days, 7 days a week. More Media coverage, local and national than any other Dem candidate has ever gotten...what more? Oh yeah...may we could have had more money.

Do you know how hard it is to raise money in a District where everyone in the beginning thinks you are are making a suicide run? Steve invested very heavily of his own money plus raised money plus the Blogsphere kicked in too.

Could we have used Mr. Campbell's $1.5 M? You bet. But we didn't have it. So we did the best we could and most the active Democrats...those at the meetings who volunteer and get out into the street to make a difference, think Steve Young did just about everything he could.

And if you never saw Steve Young set a room on fire...well you never saw him speak. I've been doing this since 1966 and he's the best retail politician I've seen in better than 25 years. When he get it going the room goes too. That how he got so many endorsements. If he was such a horrible candidate he would never have gotten all the endorsements. And he would never have been invited back to the Randi Rhodes show time and again etc.
Sorry...you just never saw him.

He'll be back.

Posted by: Stuart O'Neill at December 7, 2005 04:06 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I think Young did a good job running in the district. I think his campaigning picked up votes in the final few weeks. This election however was won in the absentee ballots. Just look at the stats:

....................Absentee....Precinct......Ttl Votes....+/-10/4
Campbell.......30,895.......10,555......=41,450........(+30)
Young............14,697.......11,229......=25,926........(+17,985)
Gilchrist.........10,944.......12,293......=23,237........(+9814)

If you look at the stats, Young and Gilchrist actually outpolled Campbell on election day which to me shows that there wasn't any great groundswell of passion for Campbell. However it looks like a strong absentee ballot thrust by the Campbell campaigin carried the day.

Young actually picked up the most amount of new votes from the Oct. 4th election to the Dec. 6th election. In the Oct. 4th election Democratic candidates only received 14,859 votes total. So Young ended up picking up 11,607 more Democratic votes besides all the other Democratic votes for Oct. 4. Campbell only picked up 30 votes from Oct. 4th! So that shows that few if any Brewer (the moderate republican in the Oct 4th election) voters switched to Campbell. Some might have been democrats that switched back to Young.

But I think the biggest problem for Young was the issue all along. Trying to get more Democrats out to the polls. If they had done that Young could have won. However that didn't happen.

Although it was still a big victory for Campbell the stats do tell some interesting stories.

Posted by: statfollow at December 7, 2005 04:08 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment