Seeing this ad today reminds me of I neglected to mention last week, what with getting knocked on the head and all.
I ran into Mike Campbell at the State House the day of all the excitement over McGill becoming Senate president pro tem, McConnell resigning, McGill becoming lieutenant governor, Massey giving his “coup d’état” speech, and Leatherman becoming president pro tem — whew, I have to take a breath after saying all that.
I asked him how he thought he was doing, and he said the same thing that campaign manager Hogan “Chuckles” Gidley said in that story in The State over the weekend — that “the scoreboard has been reset” for his lieutenant governor runoff against Henry McMaster, that even though McMaster did a lot better in the original vote, it’s all about who turns out for the runoff (which is tomorrow, in case you’ve forgotten), and you never know what will happen.
After all, as he reminds me, he got the most votes in the initial vote for this same office in 2006, only to have Andre Bauer — who was everywhere, campaigning tirelessly and visibly in his cast after his plane crash — come from behind and beat him. It was a bit of a stunner, widely attributed to Bauer’s pluck and indefatigability.
Some other random thoughts on this lieutenant governor runoff:
- It’s interesting to me to see Hogan managing the Campbell campaign, while Rick Santorum — whose 2012 campaign Hogan helped run — is endorsing McMaster. Meanwhile, Campbell has the backing of Mike Huckabee. Another interesting thing about this (to me, anyway), is that Campbell (through his late father) and McMaster are both guys I identify with the GOP’s mainstream, while both Santorum and Huckabee reflect different flavors (Santorum Catholic, Huckabee evangelical) of the religious conservative wing. Not sure what all that means; I just found it interesting to draw the connections in my head.
- Campbell is focusing more than McMaster on the Office of Aging part of the job, for what that’s worth. But he makes sure you know he’s for limited government, too.
- The State is still using that picture I shot for my blog in 2006 for its go-to mug shot of Campbell. So I’m still contributing to the paper, in an oh-so-subtle way. I told you these would be random thoughts…
- If you ask me to pick a winner, I say it will be McMaster. But Campbell’s right, it’s about the turnout, which will be miniscule. So which of these guys has the best ground game, identifying supporters and gigging them to go vote tomorrow? I don’t know…
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Talk about shameless corporate logo rip-offs!
Can’t we adopt a system that doesn’t require runoffs? Turnout will be so low it could really skew the will of the people. Maybe same-day runoffs where you pick a second choice.
We could and should. There are many more efficient ways to conduct elections!
How about just awarding the victory to the top vote getter, regardless of if they receive 50+ percent or not? Or, better yet, since these are partisan primaries, how about the parties pay for the cost of holding the election.