Grasping for straws - the myth of GOP support in County-wide races.
I’ve been reflecting on the impact of the election wins/losses, MCDC’s search for the brass ring, the beginning or the end of Maggie or Minarik, and who in the County Legislature is going to flip to give Democrats control. Much to comtemplate.But this quote stuck out from Saturday’s paper - Steve Minarik is claiming strength of the local GOP because of county-wide wins despite scattered Democratic victories in traditional Republican town strong holds. So let’s talk about that first.
Steve Minarik, chairman of the Monroe County Republican Committee, said he was analyzing each town loss separately, rather than as part of a general trend. He pointed to Republican victories in county-wide races as a sign of the party’s continued support.
“It’s a mixed bag,” he said. “I don’t think you can say it was a Democrat year or a Republican year. I just don’t see that.”
Folks- that is spin. Actually it is a textbook example of spin.
Let’s look at the County-wide races
Supreme Court - Ark (R) over Murphy (D). Remember, the Democrats originally wanted to endorse Ark. He refused the Democratic endorsement and the Dems, at the last minute, asked Murphy to run. Someone who, as of a news article on October 15, 2007, entered the race and didn’t have a campaign strategy. There was limited activity and funding applied to this race. Even though Ark was an incumbent. - Murphy gets 40% of votes without actively campaigning.
County Executive - Maggie Brooks (R) land slip and slide over Christopher (WFP). Btp has already discussed the numbers in this race. More people voted in the DA race that the Exec race. It is nearly impossible to lose if you run unopposed. It is merely difficult to lose if you run against a “minor” party candidate. The perception that anything other than a Democrat or Republican is a minor party and therefore has no chance is very strong. Hats off to the Working Family party for fielding someone and raising their party visibility. Still less that 100,000 people voted in this county-wide race. 123,000 voted in the DA race. This was an off-year election and the voters who came out wanted to come out on a rainy deary, cold day.
26,000 people choose not to vote for Maggie or Christopher. I’d argue that Christopher’s ballot location hurt coupled with people simply withholding support for Ms Brooks.
Family Court - Nesser (R) over Farber (D). This really isn’t that difficult to discuss. Seems like Nesser had more visibility (including, as Louis in the comments calls out, an effective attack ad) and frankly Sid Farber had a reputation that detracted from Democrats I know wanting to vote for him. Really - and it had nothing to do with his recent switch to the Democratic party (Duffy and Green are ex-Republicans). No, I had friends who really didn’t like his personality. So, it seems like he was one of those folks you really like or really don’t.
Nesser had better visibility and an opponent with a split base. What do you expect? Still - it is a county wide race and Farber loses by about 4500 votes.
District Attorney - Mike Green (D) over Carla Briggs (R) - Mike Green kicked ass (69% to 31%). Just for perspective. David Murphy who did not activity campaign for Supreme Court gets 40% or 47,000 votes. Carla Briggs who actively campaigned got 38,000 votes– only 12,000 more votes than Patrick Christopher.
Couty Proposition One - The Taxpayer protection plan (Yes over No). There are a couple of things going on here. Lack of information about it, it is a proposition and people missed it on the ballot the Democrats chose not to make an issue over it. To those who say it had merit - I refer you to the D&C editorial where they did not endorse it (so much for endorsement relevancy, huh).
The proposition is meaningless and essentially amounts to someone saying to you “don’t spend a million dollars this week”. When was the last time you spent a million dollars in a week? Well - now we have a law to make sure you don’t do it.
Victory here amounts to bragging rights for the County GOP and sets the stage for mailers next year. Yes - this is a strategic activity. Shudder to think as we continually hear/read these words out of Maggie/Minarik’s mouth next year.
Republicans are protecting your tax investment via the voter endorsed Tax Payer Protection Act (C)
But why did it win? Well - ask a friend if they missed it on the ballot. Many people I know missed it.
Most importantly - the very tactically focused Democrats failed to have a sufficient counter punch message. Without a message they could not tell a story why this proposition was nonsense. In the end, people could walk into a booth see a promising title with words like “Taxpayer Protection Act”. I mean Who is against a title like that?
Percentage wise it won overwhelmingly - (65% to 35%). But did it? The DA race had the most number of voters so out of the potential 123,300 voters (total number of voters in the DA race) - only 36,053 voted Yes on the Taxpayer Deception Act (19,674 voted no). That means less than 30% of potenmtial voters liked/cared/believed in/found it enough to actually vote for it.
So strength of county-wide races? Sorry Steve. His argument works if the DA race went the way of Family Court. But it didn’t.
The Republicans essentially won by default. There was no Democratic Candidates for Exec, a last minute placeholder candidate for Supreme court after Judge Ark refuses a Democratic endorsement, a fractured base with Farber, invisible opposition to a worthless proposition, and resounding mandate for the current Democratic District Attorney - Mike Green.
I will confess to not having direct visibility to MCDC support for these county-wide races but judging on my exposure to volunteer activity from MCDC I’m guessing what support they provided went to mostly to Green. This is based on the volume of calls for volunteer support I received for Mike Green - nothing from any other county-wide Dem candidate (via MCDC).
County-wide GOP support from voters in county-wide races? I don’t see it.
Now I mentioned the brass ring earlier. In subsequent posts I’ll ask if MCDC really wants to get the brass ring. This time around MCDC focused its energies in the towns and Legislature. That said -
Aiming high is what we party folks expect from MCDC.
We really don’t expect placeholder candidates turned into actual candidates. We expect focus and energies applied to races where we can win. It is great that Mike Green won but frankly was there really a danger? Sort of like pouring MCDC resources and energy getting Louise Slaughter, Hillary Clinton, Eliot Spitzer getting reelected/elected respectively. Is there a doubt?
Take the proposition for example. Minarik did very well out maneuvering and out hustling Morelle and the Democrats in the Legisalture with this proposition. The lack of of a counter punch indicates the listlessness and lack of message. This was an opportunity where the Legilsature messages could have been amplified by the operational prowess of MCDC. From my perspective - silence.
Ultimately MCDC needs to expand the base of candidates and ensure that no line is left unfilled. That is beyond the Exec race but we will discuss that later.
A couple of other comments -
Ark versus Minarik - Ark was an experienced Supreme Court judge who had received high ratings from the local bar. So they ran what one could consider their best against a literal nobody, and he still pulled a huge proportion of the vote.
Brooks versus Christopher - I agree on all points, especially ballot location. I had to look for Christopher on the ballot, and if I hadn’t looked, I know I wouldn’t have noticed his name there.
Nesser versus Farber - I wonder how much of the results could be attributed to those who knew him personally? Isn’t 4500 a pretty big number? This race is an example of one of the problems with elections of judges - Nesser definitely comes across as the friendlier guy. But Farber is well more qualified. And this case is also an example of unfair advertising. Nesser ran an ad in the last few days of the campaign claiming that Farber’s experience was in “traffic court”. It ended with a car driving past and a little “beep beep.” But Farber’s judgship in the towns involves handling of all sorts of cases. So the ad was misleading. And it may have misled people into thinking Farber was being dishonest. I suspect most people didn’t realize just how untruthful that ad was.
Green versus Briggs - I think a lot of people didn’t care for either candidate. Do you know what the total number of votes cast in the county was? I wonder whether everyone who voted, voted in this race.
Propositions - I think ballot location caused a lot of people to miss these.
I think the failure to run a County Exec was critical. For folks who don’t live in a town with a leg race this time around, if they didn’t have a candidate for County Exec, and their town wasn’t running a leg race , they may have had less incentive to come out. I guess that cuts both ways, but I’m still furious there wasn’t someone at the head of the Dem ticket.
I had forgotten about Nesser’s ad - I’ll update the post - to call it out.
Re Farber - I’m not saying that 4500 people based on solely on reputation chose not to vote for him I am saying that the base was split - and many I know chose to ignore that race entirely or voted for Nesser.
Nesser won solely due to his dishonest attack ads. Having had experience in family court, I can tell you that Nesser has appeared in front of Judge Farber in Family Court more than once in the recent couple months! It is sad that someone can run an attack ad like that and win a judicial position through a complete lack of ethics.
Here’s something interesting, in thinking about MCDC. This link shows Morelle’s contributions (both his and his committee’s) since January of 2007.
http://www.elections.state.ny.us/plsql_browser/CONTRIBUTORB_COUNTY?NAME_IN=morelle&position_IN=ANYWHERE&date_from=01%2F01%2F2007&date_to=11%2F10%2F2007&CATEGORY_IN=ALL&office_IN=ALL&county_IN=28&amount_from=&amount_to=&ZIP1=&ZIP2=&ORDERBY_IN=N
Nothing to Dunn, nothing to Nixon. $1000 to Green who was going to win anyway, and $1000 to Gumina only on 10/10 (maybe after this site encouraged the support?).
Now the Board of Elections site shows the Democratic Leadership Fund making contributions to Dunn and Nixon, ($1750 and $1000 respectively). Who is the Democratic Leadership Fund? If it’s not Morelle, why wasn’t Morelle contributing to their campaigns?
It was like watching a football game. 2 teams, all with their players. Their leaders in life much like they stand side to side - one overbearing and menacing, the other short, but throwing out the words and trying to compete.
Minarik chose to play the game by “cheating” - dirty, mud & lie slinging campaigns in the DA’s race, the County Exec and the Family Court spots. It was his way of trying to secure the “power” positions on the ticket, thinking that if he could sway the main ticket items, the voters would continue down the line voting republican. His team was overly agressive, and his quarterback, Brooks, did a good job on confusing the plays and the crowd. Good thing the referees in the Fair Campaigns Practices Committee had their eyes open, and that the tight-end O’Brien did the right thing in filing the complaint.
The Democrats had no quarterback and relied on Joe Morelle to kick all the field goals. Problem with Morelle is that he wore his Water Authority kicking shoes and seemed about as outdated as anyone on the field in trying to kick an issue in. Instead, he put all of his energy into playing the Legislature and Esposito’s campaign in particular in Irondequoit (the home team) to try to bring it home locally. Not thinking beyond his own nose, he didn’t try to get the championship ring. He fumbled the ball frequently, and had it not been for some of his star players, and a good back-up defense from the Working Families Party, his team would have probably been defeated miserably. It was the last minute in the clutch save (provided by exterior forces) that helped him bring it home.
Final score? If victory was had by the GOP, you wouldn’t know it at the convention center. They announced Maggie and Ark the winners, and went home. No partying, no celebration, no smiles to be had in the room. Hardly a “victory” celebration”.
The Democrats partied late at the Hyatt, and munched on town victories all night long. Victories in play that occured in places they NEVER thought they would. Some might even say, they overindulged on them.
In that way, Minarik is correct. It’s the anti-Bush, anti-war sentiment that carried many of the small races home, and brought Democratic victories and increased large margins to places where Democrats have never tread - like Mendon, Chili, E. Rochester. Pocket areas of massive growth were had in Pittsford, Greece, Gates, Parma, and more.
Here’s where real game strategy is critical. The GOP would be smart to dump Minarik at the sidelines in favor of a “new” face locally that actually is in touch with the sentiment of the nation down to the local front. The decision to throw “terrorism” and “Islamic” images on drivers licenses on mailers and in phone calls was feeding into the unrest America as a whole has with the war. Would things have been different had Steve-O not reminded everyone of their anger and the wars, and instead kept them focused locally? Probably.
One has to question Morrelle as well. His lack of a real quarterback to run the ball on the County Exec line, and instead focus on the legislature only was a missed massive victory. Had he found a challenger, focused on FAIR, not the Water Authority, ditched the You-Tube videos in exchange of mailers for local candidates, more towns would have flipped, and control of the County could have been Democratic.
Hindsight being 20/20, They can both “say” what they want - but in the end, those who played in the game, or watched from the bleachers, or worked to support the “team” know that neither side truly won. And we know that something needs to change at the top to bring in leadership that is more in touch with how the community feels. Overkill on one side, not enough on the other - meet in the middle and both declare victory.
But the ones who lose here are the constituents. As a result, the score is closer to even, and the fighting will begin that will posture candidates for the next election, but will not bring relief to the taxpayer who ultimately is the one who pays for the plays. The political game will just continue to escalate, and the residents will grow even more frustrated in the lack of any real reform or relief.
If there was ONE true victor in this whole mess, it has to be the Working Families Party. I’ll be curious to see where they sit on the ballot in the next round of elections. The numbers cast will decide their position over the Conservative and Independence lines. Patrick Christopher and the WFP brought it home for the Democrats in the long run, and they deserve MUCH more credit than they are receiving by the armchair quarterbacking after the race.
I hope the WFP regroups, recharges, and fundraises like hell to get a full slate of candidates again in the next election, and secures a position on the ballot on the third line of the machine. The people have spoken, and obviously the top two parties are not listening. The WFP not only listened, but delivered.
They are the true winners in this race, hands down. (or touch down!)
Extremely good comment, we thank you.
Check out today’s D&C - the WFP comes into its own.
http://democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071111/NEWS01/711110350
You forgot where, after Morelle kicks a field goal but his team is still behind, some other players ran touchdowns to bring the team ahead, and then Morelle grabs the ball which is no longer in play, runs into the endzone, and does a big victory dance.
I was avoiding that play intentionally Louis
Sorry - sometimes I have no ability to exercise discretion.
Working Families Party has potential. I vote one the WFP line for all candidates I support unless they aren’t on the line. It’ keeps the party viable to offer a true third party candidate in the future.
Morelle has spent far too much of his time over the years talking candidates OUT of running. Think about what things would be linke know if Carrie Andrews had listened.
Morelle have FOUR YEARS to line up a candidate for county executive.
Morelle does a great disservice to all candidates when he excuses not having a Democratic candidate for county executive because of the massive Republican war chest. By playing into this and by stating it publicly, Morelle further fuels the idea that only money is important in politics.
The lesson learned this year is “anything can happen.” Democrats should have been ready for the opening provided to us so generouly by the Republicans to make inroads with a county executive candidate.
It isn’t a great leap of imagination to have Democrats looking to WFP for candidates and that isn’t a bad thing. I’ve been growing more sick and tired of major party politics and will continue to contemplate changing my enrollment to WFP.
Morelle needs to resign or be ousted. His leadership of the party has been laughable.
We need to have a replacement for Morelle in mind beforehand.
Okay - so who does everyone think are the best local candidates for -
MCDC Chair?
County Clerk?
Any other local positions running next year?
What about the seats opening in two years for the Monroe County Leg?
You can bet the Republicans are already starting to gear up. Why not us? I know there are a few other significant races next year, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the local ones. And the first thing to do is to begin to create a field of candidates. And someone who will actively run viable candidates.
What do you all think?
Seriously, in the last three years under Morelle the Democrats have made huge leaps in fundraising, campaigning and winning. He has re-energized the committee and made progress … slow and steady as it is, it’s progress and the Dems hadn’t seen that in a long time.
Slow and steady is relative. I understand slow and steady and moving forward but I also understand seizing upon unexpected opportunity. Building an infrastructure that can capitalize on opportunities. Bringing the Dem voters together and focus their collective energies.
Building a bench so all elections are contested. Winning the idea/message battle. Broadening appeal. I can go on but taking a long view and putting structure in place to deliver it is what is required.
If said structure is in place then wonderful - it needs to be communicated.
Are you sure it was Morelle who did this? Or was it Bush and the Republican Congress, and the response from people who began blogging, running and volunteering? If credit’s due, fine, but I haven’t been impressed with contact of those I know with MCDC (disorganized and clubbish, not open to ideas from the outside) and I can’t get past the idea he didn’t run anyonoe for County Exec. And I don’t think he gave support to the county wide leg races that he could have. I heard he was great in the Mendon town races, but we need a big picture person.
In fairness - I’ve seen dramatic improvement in MCDC since the Dollinger and Clifford days. I will be the first to admit that Joe Morelle has put a professional face on the MCDC HQ and has brought in a certain fundraising prowess in the 2 years he has been head.
That said - I believe the jury is still out if MCDC is being all it can be in terms of uniting the Dem registration advantage and putting it towards electoral success in November. There are tremendous opportunities to listen to other ideas and embrace those who actively seek change.
He has been getting slammed for lack of a candidate in the Exec race. Maybe he could not find anyone to run but we also left off challengers in 3 legislature races, the town of Henrietta (those just off the top of my head)
Points well taken. There is always room for improvement, but I think it’s important to keep his successes in mind and not just go into trash mode.
The Democratic enrollment advantage in the county is mostly focused in the city, that does very little for town and county leg races outside of the city. Even with that said and despite great disaadvantages in the suburbs, Dems made headway. Look at Parma. The enrollment percentage is Repub, Blank (no party) then Dem respectively, yet Dunn was able to come within just over 100 votes of winning. Erie county Dems had a terrible year and they are under the same aweful Presidency we are under, obviously something is being done right.
I am not saying to settle for less, i am just saying not to forget to celebrate the positives.
I just wanted to comment on the County Proposition that was on the ballot…there was very good reason to pass it. The basic intent of the proposition was to make it so that the county legislature could not increase non-mandatory spending by more than the increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI is more or less, a cost of living index, it uses a basket of goods to track price changes year to year.
Not being able to increase spending more than the increase in the CPI is actually a step in the right direction because it means Monroe County is actually recognizing that we can’t deficit spend the way the State and Federal Governments do.
Sorry G - Almost spilled the koolaid on my keyboard.
The proposition is bunk. A political move that had moot point written all over it. What was missing in all the hype (the D&C op-ed board actually caught it as well) was that the 20% of the budget this would affect this was never an issue. Also the definition of exactly what was covered was not clearly defined.
I would encourage you to read this post and follow the links.
This link gets you there faster
I understand that completely, I just think limiting spending increases is never a bad thing to do.
But why would you need a law to do so if you had an open and publicly involved process - much like the schools do.
Limiting spending in a case where spending increases has NEVER in recent history exceeded the amount that they are now limited.
I’ll say again - the proposition was a sham. A political ploy and as such it should have been defeated.
Want a worthwhile proposition? Move the budget discussion and approval prior to the election.
The budget thing is definitely a worthwhile discussion. The budget proposal, discussion and approval should all occur before the general election.
I should clarify my point about the spending limit. Having had a lot of education in economics I like to see governments take advatage of the indicies that are available to them in any way they can. I realize that this spending limit will probably never have to be called upon, but that fact that Monroe County lawmakers are looking at things like the CPI in order to try to change Monroe County is encouraging to me. Go ahead and bash it as a ploy, but I believe that it is forward thinking in many ways.
Your assumptions are flawed with regards to Monroe County.
If you read the original post on the subject there were questions raised what exactly was mandated, what could be exempt and so on. There were too many questions raised for a purely academic answer.
What is to say that budget people were not using the CPI or inflation as a benchmark already?
So based on your logic a ploy can be forward thinking? I’ll give forward looking credit to Minarik for outhustling Morelle and the Dem Legislature on this issue getting it on the ballot and passed. As a functional item - No thanks.
We are stuck with agreeing to disagree.
Nesser won his race vs. Farber because of his completely dishonest attack ads. Claiming that Farber only does traffic violations when Nesser himself has appeared in front of Farber in family court in the recent couple months is a complete lie. It is sad that someone can win a judicial position through such a complete lack of ethics.