{"id":305,"date":"2018-06-15T09:10:48","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T13:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=305"},"modified":"2018-06-15T09:10:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T13:10:48","slug":"it-was-a-good-day-until-it-wasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=305","title":{"rendered":"It Was a Good Day, Until it Wasn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent Primary Day roaming the First District putting out signs and helping volunteers where we had them at the polls talking to voters.\u00a0 Took some photos of John Suddarth<\/a>voting.\u00a0 Started off at a polling place in Caroline County where I greeted a handful of voters and spent 30 minutes talking to Steven Brodie Tucker<\/a>about the state of the Republican Party, whether Nick Freitas<\/a>or Corey Stewart<\/a>can win Tim Kaine\u2019s<\/a>Senate seat this fall, and single payer health care.\u00a0 Interestingly, he seemed open to the idea once I explained that John\u2019s proposal would actually free up markets in health care by removing for-profit health insurance companies from the mix.<\/p>\n

As I spoke to voters I began to feel a bit better about John\u2019s prospects.\u00a0 Quite a few people told me that someone had knocked on their door or they had received our mailer or a text.\u00a0 Those who said they\u2019d voted for John reported that they liked Edwin Santana\u00a0<\/a>and Vangie Williams\u00a0<\/a>just fine but believed John would have a better chance to defeat Rob Wittman<\/a>in November.<\/p>\n

An encounter with an older couple at a Prince William County polling place reinforced this thinking.\u00a0I told them about John and handed them a palm card but they told me they were Republicans and would take the Red ballot.\u00a0A few minutes later they came out and stopped to tell me that they just couldn\u2019t do it \u2013 they just couldn\u2019t vote for any of the GOP Senate candidates.\u00a0 They had switched and reported that they voted for \u201cyour guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a polling place in Montclair I introduced myself to an older woman sitting in a lawn chair with an Eagle Forum\u00a0<\/a>newsletter open on her lap.\u00a0 She had volunteered to staff this polling place and recruit volunteers for the Republican Party.\u00a0 We chatted for a few minutes and when the subject of gun violence came up she tried to tell me I don\u2019t know what an assault weapon is. \u00a0I rolled my eyes and started to respond when she interrupted me to yell her \u201cwould you like to volunteer for the Republican Party\u201d ask at a woman who had just voted.\u00a0 This woman never left her lawn chair \u2013 she just yelled at people as they walked by \u2013 and I wondered about the effectiveness of her technique.<\/p>\n

The woman responded with a polite \u201cno, thank you\u201d and moved on.\u00a0 Then a couple walked out of the building and my new GOP friend asked the same thing: \u201cWould you like to volunteer to support the Republican Party?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man responded: \u201cI don\u2019t speak Russian.\u201d<\/p>\n

I laughed of course, and thought to myself that if \u201cin bed with the Russians\u201d has become the GOP brand among the kind of folks who vote in primary elections, perhaps a Blue Wave really is coming.<\/p>\n

From there I began to make my way to our watch party venue to set things up.\u00a0 Banner up, laptop hooked to a big screen, and a beer in my hand I opened the State Board of Elections website and stared.<\/p>\n

Vangie was ahead, by what looked like a comfortable margin.\u00a0 I scrolled down to see what precincts remained out and saw that neither Hanover nor Prince William had reported.\u00a0 We thought we would do well in Hanover so I held out hope but as the returns updated I realized pretty quickly that second would be the best John could do, and even that turned out to be overly optimistic.<\/p>\n

So what had been a very pleasant day turned sour very quickly.\u00a0 Reflecting on how I\u2019d arrived at my expectations, I realized that I\u2019d completely missed an obvious Vangie strategy: focus on minority voters, get them out, and hope that this plus whatever votes she could capture from women would get her over the top in a low-turnout election.<\/p>\n

Not sure what we could have done about this had this occurred to me sooner.\u00a0 We probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to make many inroads with minorities (and perhaps not with women) in the current political climate.\u00a0And generating high turnout as a general matter was a challenge given that all three candidates shared a Progressive vision.\u00a0 I can imagine a lot of voters thinking out loud to themselves, \u201cThey\u2019re all good, so why bother?\u201d<\/p>\n

In any event, it\u2019s over and Vangie won.\u00a0 She ran a great campaign \u2013 very savvy \u2013 and I know she\u2019ll be an excellent candidate and a fine Congresswoman.\u00a0 Time to get working on the next phase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent Primary Day roaming the First District putting out signs and helping volunteers where we had them at the polls talking to voters.\u00a0 Took some photos of John Suddarthvoting.\u00a0 Started off at a polling place in Caroline County where I greeted a handful of voters and spent 30 minutes talking to Steven Brodie Tuckerabout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[29,96,97],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-elections","tag-elections-in-virginia","tag-vangie-williams","tag-virginia-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}