Summer Ends, Ads Go Up

Some of our critics happily noted we have been on a bit of a hiatus.  Yes, we broke out of our blogger basement for the summer.  We’re sorry.  Can you blame us for not wanting to spend the summer writing about the debt ceiling or the nonsense coming out of the Kennedy campaign? 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve notice that Mayor Ballard and Melina Kennedy are both up on television.  Ballard’s ad touts accomplishments of fiscal responsibility, fixing neighborhoods and lower taxes and crime.  Pretty much what you would expect from an incumbent.  Mayor Ballard has said several times he is running to his record and this ad is a prime example of doing just that.

Kennedy’s ad struck us as a bit odd.  The first half is the typical bio advertisement about how she helped pay her way through college as a waitress, is married and has kids.  The second half is focused on education. It seems like an odd thing for a candidate for Mayor to make a focal point of their campaign since the Mayor of Indianapolis doesn’t have any control of education outside of charter schools.  Maybe we need to draft a job description so Melina Kennedy understands the office she is seeking.  Right now, it sounds like she wants Eugene White’s job.

What Does It All Mean: Marion County Primary Election Results

While some over at Indianapolis Times spent their Friday night writing a blog post on the Marion County Primary Election Results and criticizing us for not blogging on them yet, we took our time writing this post.

After a few days of reflection, here is what we are taking away from the Primary Election:  Melina Kennedy is the Democrat nominee and will face Greg Ballard in the fall.  The Marion County slates won.

Simple?  Yes.  The only actual facts you get from a primary election?  Yes again.

Did the Democrats have more votes?  Sure.  They had a contested race at the top of the ticket. They also had a 20,000 straight ticket vote advantage in the last General Election.  From that perspective, they may have had more votes but their turnout was lower than it seems.

Did Melina Kennedy get the majority of the votes in her 3-way race?  Yes.  But 23% of her party voted for someone else.   Are they going to end up voting for her in the fall?  Probably.  Will they definitely go vote?  Will they be motivated to work for her?  Who knows.

A lot of people will try to draw conclusions on how the Primary results will impact the General Elections or what clues it gives us as to what will happen in the fall.  There are a hundred different ways to run numbers and spin these results.  Our guess is that people will continue to do it. But the fact is that we won’t know what clues these numbers gave to the outcome in the General Election until we know the outcome of the General Election.

The only thing we really know is this will be a hotly contested race and there is a lot to shake out over the next 6 months.  On to the main event!

The Primary Race and the Expectations Game

We believe it is safe to say that this has been the most boring Primary Election Day in the last several years. 

As a result, we’ve been reading the blogs more than usual and noticed that Paul Ogden wrote a post on the Primary Election and the expectations game he feels we are playing on our blog. 

On the Primary Election, Ogden said the Kennedy and Ballard campaigns have not followed textbook campaign strategy and are not using the window of opportunity before the primary election to build up positives on their candidates.  First, we’d like to see Ogden’s Textbook of Political Strategy published.  Second, we have a split opinion. 

We have written that we are surprised the Kennedy campaign was not more aggressive.  We thought they should make sure they won the primary with a overwhelming margin.  They really did not have much of a grassroots effort–their yard signs didn’t even arrive until last week.  They did not do a large amount of mailers though we won’t say they didn’t do ANY since we would not be on their list anyway.  They did not put out a television ad.  This is particularly interesting since a candidate running At-Large against the Democrat slate was able to do a cable ad while Kennedy sat silent.  Really, the only thing the Kennedy campaign has done is send emails, conduct a city tour and put up a radio ad with Andre Carson.  We don’t think they really took this primary campaign seriously.

As for the Ballard campaign, we aren’t really sure why they would do a great deal for the primary.  Kennedy is facing two opponents while Ballard is unopposed.  Ballard won the primary when the filing closed.  It makes sense that the Ballard campaign would do far less than the Kennedy campaign and save their resources.

As for the expectations games, we’d say Ogden is the pot calling the kettle black.  Paul is trying to help out the Kennedy campaign by lowering expectations.  The fact is that if Melina Kennedy gets 60% of the vote as Paul predicts, 40% of the voters in the Democratic Primary voted against her.  Like it or not, that is not a strong showing in a Primary where your opponents have no money and no real campaign effort.   The fact that they couldn’t clear the field for a candidate that raised nearly $1 million last year shows there is a problem. And the fact that both of these candidates are African-Americans indicates there could be a divide in the Democratic Party in a very key constituency.

The bottom line: A 60-40 win is not a mandate in a primary election.

Finally, we want to remind everyone of Ogden’s political genius.  In his post just before the New Year, Paul wrote on the Republican Primary saying,

The Star will label it an overwhelming victory for the Mayor that propels him toward the fall general election as the Mayor trounces an unknown opponent 71% to 29%. Political professionals though will know that an unknown getting nearly 30% of the primary vote against a sitting mayor represents a deterioration of his political base.

As you all know, there was no primary opponent for Mayor Greg Ballard.  And, now it is apparently okay to have more than 40% of the primary vote against the slated candidate who is the clear nominee and has run for countywide office in the past.  Like we said, we’re really looking forward to Ogden’s book on political strategy.