Greg Galligan’s massive loss to George Barker brings home an awful reality. Negative campaigns- especially in low information races- work. George Barker went very negative toward the end and Greg Galligan mentioned George Barker a grand total of ZERO times. On another blog I was indirectly accused of being dishonest about the nature of Barker’s campaign, so in keeping the promise I made in response, here are some of the things Barker put out there. This isn’t all of it, just what I was able to get my hands on.
While I have little doubt that George probably could have won without his scurrilous attacks (hats off to his great turnout in what everyone knew, going in, were HIS precincts), the deafening margin is clearly a result of the negative mail voters received in the final week. When voters know little to nothing about the candidates they are especially susceptible to such tactics. Imagine: the voter looks at the materials from both candidates, both candidates print positive aspects of themselves and only one prints negative aspects of their opponent. This voter, not having any other impressions from which to test the validity of the attack, only knows good things about one candidate and at least something bad about their opponent. This accounts for Greg falling short of his IDs in the neutral precincts.
The downside of negative campaigns is that there are now literally dozens of local volunteers that will be difficult, if not impossible, to convince to work for the nominee. I, for one, believe strongly that regardless of what has happened we must defeat Jay O’Brien. But George Barker has some serious explaining to do. Time will only tell if he is willing to put in the necessary work to re-unite the party.
een thinking a lot lately about primaries. I’ve volunteered on Greg Galligan’s State Senate campaign and I was active in helping David Englin in his Delegate campaign in 2005. Some activists hate primaries and most at least seem to avoid them. Those that hate them say that primaries cause unnecessary friction, that they can split the party and leave the prevailing candidate weakened for the general. While this post isn’t a rebuttal to that logic I will say that I don’t agree. Primaries are no more divisive than any other part of our “small-d” democratic process. Primaries are the broadest, most open way to allow regular people a voice regarding the direction their political party will take. It’s a neutered form of democracy that permits the party selection process to become so removed from the people that when the voting finally happens in November a whole range of policy options have been foreclosed, or worse, the election itself is a foregone conclusion. Primaries can be messy, but so is democracy.
