Critz vs. Burns for PA-12

[12th Doctor]

I'm hardly an expert in what went wrong in this race, but as someone who worked on it every single day for the last four weeks, I'll offer some of my thoughts:

1) The national media is billing this as a "loss for the Tea Party" which makes me wonder if the national media is in any way engaged with the facts of the reality on the ground here.  Tim Burns was not the Tea Party candidate... Bill Russell was the candidate that most of the Tea Party fell behind.  Many of them voted for Russell in the primary and in the special, or simply refused to vote for any candidate in the general.  Eitherway, they lifted not a finger to help Burns in the election and did nothing but sow discord in the Republican Party.  We don't have the figures yet, but I assume that the undervote played a significant role in the results. 

The undervote wasn't the only thing that hurt us, though, Russell's presence in the race acted to confuse the conservative Democrats that we needed to have vote for us in order to win.  His presence in the primary, while many still supported him in the Special, blurred the line for a number of voters who then simply defaulted to the party they were registered with.  Republican turn out was 6 percent higher than Democrat turnout, but we failed to win over the register Democrats we would need to win, and failed to sure up our own base... the real political effect of the Tea Party on this race.

Russell did turn around and endorse Burns in the Special at the 11th hour, but to me it seems more like he did it to be seen doing it, as the endorsement came far too late, and with far too little publicity to make a difference.  The handful of people he had out at the polls passing out "Vote Burns in the Special, Russell in the Primary" cards probably only helped to confuse voters even more... but he comes out getting to say that he tried to be a team player.

2) The Burns campaign proper responded far too slowly to the ads that Critz and his backers were running against Burns.  Even after Critz was forced to admit, in the debate, that the ads being run in his name contained false information about Tim Burns, they still failed to hit back in a timely fashion.  I won't get into the inside baseball reasons for why this happened, as I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but the ad, which was patently false, stating that Burns pledged an addition 23 percent sales tax on top of the current tax system was patently false, and extremely damaging, and the Burns people didn't even bother to address it until three days before the election.

3) All the turnout models we had showed us winning this race.  All the polls we had showed us winning this race.  Problem is, there has never been a competitive race in the district proper, and no one has any clue what an accurate turnout model looks like for the PA-12.  All the numbers we had were simply untrue.  I, and everyone around me, believed that we would win up until the time that 50 percent of the precincts reported... and we were simply stunned.

[12th Doctor]

It also didn't help that, aside from the competitive U.S. Senate and Governor's races, there were also competitive State House and Senate races on the Democrat side in large areas of the district.  Heavily Democratic areas of the district that did not have this, and from where we derived our early returns (just because that's where we had volunteers), were all highly favorable to us, with almost half our vote coming from Democrats.  In the areas with other competitive races, they pretty much voted straight ticket.

[12th Doctor]

I just can't tell you enough how pissed off I am at how the National Media is portraying this.  MSNBC is saying that this is proof that Tea Party backed candidates can't win in a real competitive race, Fox is trying play this as a strong showing for the Tea Party in race that Republicans weren't supposed to win anyway, neither side gets the fact that the Tea Party abandoned Burns for "their guy" Russell, who is a total charlatan and a Peg Luksik lacky, who, like Critz, isn't even from the district, simply because he ran as anti-establishment and more "ideologically pure" than Burns.

The Tea Party jackasses cost us the race, by not supporting Tim Burns.  JJ is right, and this is only proof of what I have been saying for a long time... if this is a trend, then we are in big trouble in the Fall.  The Tea Party people also loved Peg Luksik, even though Toomey is a true blue conservative, simply because she is a shrieking dumbass who couldn't win party backing because there is no way she could win a race for dog catcher.

[12th Doctor]

I almost forgot my absolute favorite ad; the one charging that Tim Burns' company sent jobs overseas.  It was a total fabrication.  It absolutely did not happen.  But it played well in the 12th where class warfare is at it's height and people were deeply concerned that Tim Burns was a millionaire.  Nevermind that he grew up poor and was totally self-made.

Edit: That was supposed to say "12th" not "14th."