Pre-Decision 2006 Postmortem PT. 1: Ohio 13

It’s terribly late, but as soon as I go to bed, I will be stricken with anxieties about what the levy failure will do to my city, so I’ll blog for a bit more.

I went to the Sutton victory party after the declaration of unvictory at the school party. I’ve never been to a post election victory party that was actually about victory, so that in itself was refreshing. I tried to get an interview with Betty, but believe it or not, the Akron Pages is not first in the media line. We started, then she got called away. I talked to her campaign manager for a while, but when we got to the tricky stuff, she wanted some time to think and, you know, actually sleep a while.

What we were talking about in a minute. First, the wherefores.

One question I did get to ask Betty was “Just like you planned it?” She laughed, thought then said, “Yes. We knew where the votes were and went out and got them.” In other words, this was a victory about ground game. Sutton's beat Cafaro's and Sawyer didn't have one.

So why didn’t the person with the money to spend win the ground game? Some time ago someone, I believe it was Redhorse, averred that Cafaro had hit her peak. That was when she was at about 23 points. And indeed. Capri Cafaro just isn’t a terribly appealing candidate. I’m not the only one whose bullshit detector goes off when she speaks.

For anyone with deep misgivings about the result, consider this: With the money she laid out, the media she bought and the staff she should have been able to hire, she should have won going away. The fact that she couldn’t win against a fallen soldier with no war chest and a nearly unknown running a flawed campaign gives the final proof that she was the weakest candidate for the general.

So back to my line of questioning. As I went through the day, it occurred to me that, given the last couple weeks of this primary, I would be writing one of those Let the Healing Begin posts. And it occurred to me that it would be hardest to write such a post if Sutton won. Like Redhorse, I find the EMILY’s List mail campaign difficult to defend. As such, it’s much harder for me to say “Gee, let’s put it all behind us now,” than it would be to say “Well, you won fair and square and I’ll put it all behind me know.”

So I posited to both Betty and her manager that she has some work to do to build credibility with the sorts of people who live around me, hang out with me and read my blog. While politically sophisticated Democrats might not be the most important demographic in the race, our offense is reflected, among other places, on the newspaper ed-boards. What can bring folks like my friends around is also what can garner a few endorsements in the primary.

The one definitive I got was that the campaign would not distance itself from EMILY’s List. I get that, but it puts Betty in a difficult position. I don’t think much of what Betty herself did was that offensive, but pretty much only political junkies will draw a distinction between a campaign and a 527 campaigning behind it. And frankly, I don’t want it to be any other way. As much as the 527’s trouble me, I hope campaigns get burned a few times and learn to keep them at a distance. I’d just rather that didn’t happen to campaigns for people I like.

I’ll be interested in hearing more from the Sutton campaign about how they go about Letting the Healing Begin, especially here in the Merriman corridor. At one point it was pointed out that the people I’m talking about are particularly sophisticated. Exactly. That’s why I do this – so people who think like this have a place to find this sort of discourse and someone who’s in the position to press for answers to these sorts of questions. Stay Tuned.