I don't think very
many of us saw this one coming.
Privately, I had
told a very few close friends that I thought Matt Bevin was going to
be the next governor of Kentucky, but that we might not know until
the early hours of Nov. 4, the day after we had the opportunity to go
to the polls.
A statewide margin
of less than 10,000 votes either way would not have been a surprise
and the lingering question would have been the effect of a
third-party candidate.
While the effect of
Drew Curtis on election dialogue could be open to debate, there is
little doubt that Bevin's performance with voters was very strong,
regardless of sensational Internet stories claiming the election was
rigged or stolen.
I'm no political
expert and believe election shenanigans do go on, but I find it very
hard to believe a margin of 85,000 votes, or better than 9 percent of
those cast, could be influenced by voting machine hanky-panky.
That being said, I
am an interested observer. Elections affect all of us, including
sports editors. How we perceive they affect us is obviously
different, but, yep, they are significant exercises of our
citizenship.
Over the last week,
I have tried to figure out how Matt Bevin fooled the pollsters to
pull off the most one-sided Republican gubernatorial win – in terms
of his percentage margin – in my lifetime. Here are some thoughts,
in no particular order.
1.Jack Conway might
have run the weakest campaign by a major party candidate the state
has ever seen.
Back in May, after
Bevin won the Republican primary by 83 votes, the general consensus
was the GOP had given the Governor's Mansion to the Democrats for
four more years.
While that was
premature, the race was probably Conway's to lose.
I can't say
anything about how much either candidate was out shaking hands and
kissing babies, but do know that the advertisements from Conway
simply had the message, “Bevin is the Bogeyman.”
We knew little of
what Conway wanted to accomplish other than the “better jobs and
better schools” mantra that nearly every candidate since Isaac
Shelby has espoused.
That was it.
Precious little other than “Keep the Bevin the Bogeyman out of
Frankfort.”
Even if attack ads
work – pundits say they do – somewhere along the line, people
want to know why they should vote for anyone.
Conway gave them
little reason to do so.
2.Bevin's campaign
was much stronger than given credit for.
That was evident in
the primary when he ran that memorable commercial depicting rivals
Hal Heiner and James Comer in a food fight. It was about that same
time I told my wife, “Bevin is letting them pick each other off and
will slip through in the primary and win this fall.”
Full disclosure: I
am a registered Republican, but did not vote for Bevin in the
primary.
In the fall, most
of the Bevin ads I saw showed him as a smiling businessman with his
wife and nine children. It was very effective.
It would be unfair
to say there were no attack ads on Conway, but, for the most part,
they came from political action committees who successfully tied him
– rightly or wrongly – to President Obama, who is not exactly a
favorite in Kentucky.
Bevin was
unorthodox, but the perceived gaffes, such as walking into Democratic
headquarters during the campaign might have actually solidified some
support in a climate where the a large portion of the electorate
would like to give career politicians of both major parties a piece
of its mind.
And agree or
disagree with him, you knew a vote for Bevin was a vote for
dismantling Kynect and for smaller government, among other things.
3.Bevin's win was a
landslide among those who voted, but it was far from a mandate.
Bevin got 53
percent of the vote 938,715 who voted. Many of them are passionate in
the call for a smaller government that Bevin rode to victory.
But over 2 million
registered voters did not vote. About 70 percent of the so-called
“responsible adults” did not take a few minutes to go to the
polls on a beautiful day.
That's not just
sad. It's pathetic.
Some pundits
lamented that neither Conway nor Bevin excited the masses, but to
that I say, “So what?” If the masses have to be prodded to go to
the polls, it is much more of an indictment on the people than the
candidates.
Regardless of where
you stand on the political spectrum, there are few excuses for
someone not voting. When Americans have one of the greatest freedoms
of all and don't exercise that freedom, we are all losers.
Over the years,
I've had some great political discussions that invariably devolve
into “The politicians don't listen to me.”
Au contraire. They
listen very carefully.
And when 70 percent
of an electorate stays home, the message is, “We don't care.”
And we wonder why
our country is in the mess it is in.
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