I didn’t think I would ever financially support a Republican candidate in my lifetime, but life is full of surprises. The husband of my wife’s best friend is a sheriff’s deputy in a rural county and ran for Justice of the Peace. He was a great candidate, knowing the vast land, larger than many states, the people, and the law, but the first and most important requirement, my wife told him, was he had to run as a Republican in that county.
He did in 2014, but made the decision too late to get on the ballot, so ran as a write-in candidate and still got 30% of the vote. But he lost. That is Lesson #1 for the Democrats this fall: please stop rejoicing about the “almosts.” A year ago, doing better than expected was encouraging. But the winner still voted to repeal the ACA. The situation is dire enough that nothing less than winning matters.
Our friend stayed in his day job, did well, and bided his time. Four years passed, 2018 arrived, and he filed to run against the incumbent, who had a lot of problems, including a rumored federal investigation into corruption. Lesson #2: don’t underestimate the power of incumbency; Lesson #3R: only results from the investigation may matter, not the fact there is an investigation. (Lesson #3D: any investigation matters, and if the result isn’t guilty, there needs to be another investigation.)
My wife’s best friend became a skilled, creative campaign manager, making a great video of her husband’s telling why he was qualified for JP, and what the position entailed, which was educational. She got the message out every possible way, even by a horse-drawn float at the county fair. Her husband looked right for the job, which shouldn’t matter but does, he was available for questions and was a straight shooter, figuratively and literally.
It was a three way race, and one of the other candidates was member of a certain religious group. Lesson #4: that’s a problem in the rural West. I’ll leave it there.
We had a chance to win: Lesson #5: You don’t really know what will happen. Do not, under any circumstances, become overconfident: 2016s happen, and we had no idea what the voters would do. Or how many would not vote at all.
The days before the primary, the candidate’s wife called many, trying to get out the vote. One of the county election commissioners thanked her for calling people and informing them. The commissioner herself hadn’t been doing that. Lesson #6: don’t assume the electorate will show up. Primary elections are arguably the most important elections of all. In this particular one, the Republican winner was going to be the JP. The general election was a formality. The primary is a hurdle that has to be crossed. Fail to get by the primary, if you are Eric Cantor, majority leader in the House, or Joe Crowley, headed for a possible speakership in November, your career is over. Lee Bight, one Republican who believed in global warming and attendant climate change, was ousted by Trey Gowdy in a primary, the Gowdy who kept investigating Hillary Clinton. See Lesson #3D above.
The primary turnout in Arizona this year was 30%. And that was a record. Seventy per cent of the electorate, for whatever reason, didn’t vote. In the county where our race occurred, turnout was 25%. A quarter. In 2016, 81% of Republicans voted, 74% of Democrats. There’s your 77,000 votes in three states. In 2014, 21% of millennials voted. In California, 8.2% of 18-24 year-olds voted, and the youth, who were 14.5% of the voting population, cast 4% of the ballots. If the millennials continue to be relative no-shows in elections, they are going to be dictated to by the conservatives in my generation. Just sayin.’ The problem we have in the Senate, where the Affordable Care Act narrowly survived, if one can call what has happened to it survival, where we have two conservative supreme court justices so far in this term (and a possibility of as many as three more), where Republican-leaning judges for federal courts have been approved in record numbers, can be directly laid to poor turnout in elections. I am beyond angry at those who didn’t vote in 2014. Lesson #7: Not voting because nothing ever changes is wrong. Things can change for the worse, and the country has seen that in spades since the last election. Or am I the only one who hasn’t slept well since then?
A single vote does matter: Florida in 2000, Virginia in 2017 (a tie occurred), and some House race virtually every year. If perfection is desired in a candidate, move to Mars.
What happened to our candidate was predictable, although we didn’t predict it: the results of the investigation into the incumbent would come after the election, enough of the certain religious group voters turned out, and there were too many no-shows. He lost, finishing again with 30%.
I was upset, not at the campaign, which I thought was wonderfully run, in the spirit of America, or at least the America I once knew and served, but at the selfishness of those who can’t be bothered to vote, the religious turnout for someone whose qualification is the right religion but nothing else, and how people in power can delay investigations until a convenient time, read “after the election.”
Lesson #8: gerrymandering and a profound war on voting rights were aided by state legislatures, the Supreme Court AND by those too busy to vote, still stuck in the mindset that both parties are the same AND by those who threw their vote to a fringe candidate who ran only for their ego and had NO chance of winning. The single best weapon is convincing every possible person on one’s side to vote. What swung Alabama a year ago was the black vote, black women in particular, who increased their turnout from 25 to 30%. That still is paltry, but it mattered. There were six thousand people who didn’t vote in the primary for JP3. True, it’s better sometimes that some of them vote. We will never know what would happen if they all showed up and voted, but in this race, like every other race in the country, would at least be truly decided by the people, not a few. It’s a different world when everybody votes, and I think a lot fairer one, too, usually.
Ayanna Pressley (and yes, spell check, better allow the second “s”) had no chance to win, but the voters turned out and she won by 18%. There might have been a different JP in that county come November, despite Lessons #3R and #4. Arguably, the JP is going to affect one’s life in that district far more than a single representative.
In the low moments after I failed big time in my career change nearly two decades ago, I always knew the answer to, “If only I had resigned and gone back to school.” I knew the answer, and besides, one career of mine suffered but another one did well. My wife’s best friend will never have to say, “If only I had…” That might be Lesson #9.
Tags: General writing, Philosophy
Boreal B[l]og 
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